From Xico

Not Just about Jews in Mexico. Also about Samuel von Basch, the Emperor Maximilian, Mexico during Maximilian's Short-Lived Empire, Jews in Austria in the Nineteenth Century, etc. etc.

I have this pattern I now recognize to my chagrin.  A topic grabs my attention, preferably one about Mexico, even better one about our area, and I mean just to read a bit about it, talk to a few people about it, maybe look around and look at pictures and tell you about it.  But in the end I follow threads -- glittering threads which I can't let go of and which lead me to this nexus and that, to that thread and yet another.  And I spend hours and hours on these journeys, and the information from them> only a bit of it makes it into blog posts.

I guess I have to say "so be it." Or maybe "So what."  

The last topic, and the one at least theoretically lighting my way, was/is Jews in Mexico, particularly the Yiddish poet Yitzhkok (Isaac) Berliner whom I discovered in an article in Tablet Magazine.  I wrote several posts about him.  Richard Grabman picked up on him and wrote a good, concise biography.  I'm not so good at concise.  Anyway, through Berliner I discovered the Diario Judio de México (who knew?) which had a series of portraits of Jews who were either Mexican, immigrants to Mexico, or involved in some significant way in the life of Mexico as residents, at least for awhile. I read a number of the portraits, and for some reason I don't understand, fixed on Samuel von Basch, Maximilian's personal physician in 1866 and 1867, the year in which he was executed.  

But to understand this sliver of time, I found I wanted to know how von Basch's Jewish family got to Austria, how he became a doctor, what he was like.  Vienna is the city which embraced him, medicine is the field in which he excelled.  And of course how did he get to Mexico? First to Puebla where he was a physician to the French troops billeted there, and then to emerge to become not only the personal physician but a close confidante of Emperor Maximilian first in Mexico City (with an important short side trip to Cuernavaca) and finally in Querétero where the Emperor met his end?  

While I suspect his time in Mexico was the most intense of his life, von Basch returned to Austria and became an extraordinary physician and researcher considered now the father of the blood pressure measurer (sphygmomanometer is its proper name) and of circulatory system medicine.  Doing these things is what he spent most of his life at.

I am, of course most captivated by the Mexican period.  I hope I can put down my reading long enough to share some stuff with you before I find myself rushing down another path.

Yitskhok (Isaac) Berliner Z'L as His Granddaughter Remembered Him

On September 20 I put up a post that I started out intending to be about Isaac Berliner, a Mexican Jew, who wrote poetry in Yiddish. Having been struck by a feeling of connection that surprised me, I´m afraid I got carried away and wrote MORE about my family than about Berliner and other Mexican Jews or Jews in Mexico. 

So now I offer more on Yitzkhok Berliner, here my translation of an homage in Diario Judio de México that his granddaughter Feige Efter Berliner wrote as part of a series on outstanding Jews in Mexico for Diario Judio de México.

To speak about my grandfather, a man of letters, and an upright man, is an honor for me.  A man who left a great literary legacy and a good name for his family and for everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.  Born in Lodz, Poland on September 27, 1899, he died in México City on January 27, 1957.

On arriving in Mexico in the year 1922, he worked, as did other immigrants, as a street vendor, carrying in his mind and heart the wish to write, which he did throughout his whole life. He was one of the first writers in Yiddish [in Mexico] and so he found a place at the magazine Der Veg (The Way) where he worked for many years.

Later, with the writers Jacobo Glantz and Moisés Glikovssky he wrote the book "Drai Vegn" (Tres caminos/Three Ways) which was the prelude to more of his writings. Its words spoke of his feelings across time. "Guezan Fun Mentsch" (Melodía del hombre/Song of Man), "Ad Matai" (Hasta cuándo/Until When), "Shtil ol ain" (Que se haya el silencio/That There be Silence), a fragment of which is written on his gravestone, and "Shtot Fun Palatzn" (Ciudad de los Palacios/City of Palaces).

Given that my grandfather walked on Mexican lands, although without knowing Spanish, he fell in love with its people, with its  freedom that had been longed for by those who arrived from a Europe at war, with its landscapes. But also he worried about the poverty which he saw ruled in our country. which penetrated deep in his life, in every corner. He wrote "Shtot Fun Palatzn", a book that spoke of Xochimilco, Popocatépetl, Tepito, and all that was emblematic of his beloved Mexico, but always taking into account the neediness of its people and its vices.  When my grandfather was working at "Der Veg", the great painter Diego River needed someone to write something in Yiddish on one of his murals, and thus began a close friendship between the two, to such an extent that the painter, at learning of the publication of the book, undertook to illustrate it.

The strong and solid foundation of his great caring and respect were what, from the beginning, he gave when he married a great woman, his Nejumele.  It was a love that began in Lodz (Poland) and that after many vicissitudes was consumated in Mexico.

Like a good poet, he saw to it that every day my grandmother received a rose and a poem. Thus the love for her family was converted into something vital for her life, since her health was fragile.  In spite of being very little, I remember that on many Sundays there were gatherings in their house with the presence of teachers and writers and as part of these unforgettable afternoons it was I who sang standing on one of the stairs of the big staircase.

I visited my grandparents on many days,  going outside to the garden filled with roses where my grandfather directed me to wander through them to appreciate their fragrance.

I feel very fortunate to have known my grandparents, to have received so much love and learning from them, with which they have given me these foundations that, in the company of my husband, I can transmit to my children and grandchildren.

They say that the greatest inheritance we can leave in this life is a good name and Isaac Berliner did this many times over.

Mexican Jews, Jewish Mexicans, Poetry and Yiddish, and Bronx and Brooklyn Jews

Recently I discovered a Jewish poet named Isaac Berliner who emigrated from Poland to Mexico in 1922.  He started out here in Mexico City as a street peddler selling (maybe ironically) saints’ images.  He loved Mexico City and the people he lived and worked among in the crowded streets.  I found Berliner in an article accompanied by some translations of his poems by Eli Rosenblatt in Tablet. Looking for some personal rather than academic insight into Jewish DF I discovered Ilan Stavans, a Mexican, now Mexican-American, Jew from DF who is a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts and an incredibly prolific cultural critic and novelist.  The book I chose to look at is Return to Centro Histórico: A Mexican Jew Looks at his Roots.  This is an informal bit of autobiography (he has a more formal one called A Critic´s Journey).  Its charm lies in the myriad family and local pictures which he includes and comments on.  It seems to me that in the 20^th century, Jews in Mexico City particularly followed a trajectory not all that different from Jews in New York City.  My great grandfather who lived in Brooklyn in the first part of the 20^th century sold vegetables from a pushcart.  His son, my grandfather, was a printer (and a socialist), a skilled trade.  He and his family (my grandmother, my dad and two sisters) started out in an apartment on St. Ann’s Avenue in the Bronx and went sort of upscale to the Grand Concourse.  My grandparents lived there for the rest of their lives, and as they aged, so did their building so that it was a bit worn down and shabby even when I was a child.

My father and his sisters left the Grand Concourse though my father became a doctor with a practice in the Bronx and so took a while to move, with my mother and me, to Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  My aunt Addie  married a large, handsome man with black hair who could have been Mexican.  He headed a firm of "interior architects."  They did the big lobbies and courtyards of big businesses and big apartment stores. They moved to a fancy subdivision in West Hempstead, Long Island. My Aunt Phoebe married a dentist and moved all the way to Utica in New York State where she served for a time as mayor.

Jewish immigrants in Mexico also started as pushcart sorts of people and then became owners and managers of small businesses and factoriesand then moved to the suburbs.  Stavans’s parents, as of the writing of Return to Centro stayed in DF, where they had moved, too, to a bit more upscale neighborhood. But among his relatives were an actor: his father; and an orchestra conductor: an uncle.  His father did run a small factory to pay for his art. Apparently nowadays, many Jews live in the more prosperous suburbs of Mexico City which are in fact in the state of Mexico.

But I should return to Isaac Berliner.  He is seen as a transitional poet.  Stavans doesn’t think he is very important, but Rosenblatt has a greater appreciation, with which, based on my scant exposure, I would agree.  Rosenblatt says, “The language is marked by its subversive use of allusions to the Jewish past.” He also notes Berliner’s surprising imagery.  Rosenblatt says he is a “modernist Yiddish poet,” more stuff for me to look up. By the way, Berliner became good friends with Diego Rivera who illustrated his book of poems, City of Palaces.  

Berliner wrote in Yiddish.  I’m not at all sure how much Spanish he ever learned.  My grandparents came to the U.S. speaking Yiddish and reading in Yiddish.  They only learned English after they arrived.  A heavy Yiddish accent marked their speech all their lives, and it was easier for them to fall back into their mother tongue than to try to explain complicated things in English.  I sympathize! My grandmother wrote her first letter (or anything besides a shopping list) in English to me when I was in Uganda in the Peace Corps.

Here are some of Berliner´s poems as they appear in Rosenblatt´s translation:

Godl Treads a New Land

 

(Fragment From a Long Poem about Immigrant Life in Mexico)

 

The sea behind is already suspended in green jelly

having been cast by a front of waves checkered and fluttering

like Jonah’s whale-fish, the ship remains, still by the coastline.

Here he encounters here a sun glowing with dust and pollen

He raises his eyes up to the heavens and prayerfully deep-dreams.

His still lips manage—Praise God, may His name be sanctified!—

I have just crossed the sea and arrived here in one piece.

 

Foreign-tongued voices deafen like the beats

of drums.

Strange men hand off the suitcase he carries

pulling,

His valise between valises, lifted on a wagon

two dark bodies flank him like two reyshes, bent.

Two palms lift and push the wagon hard

and Godl is off through the sunburned streets and intersections

He looks around and gazes upon it all, naked children in sand

messing around.

 

Big houses. Small, low-slung shanties bending down in prayer.

He touches the pocket in his overcoat to check if his tefillin

are there—if he had left them on the ship—God forbid—Deprivation.

 

He arrives at a house. An inscription on a board: “Hotel Espana”

A man opens the door to a room for him, better to say merely, “lodgings”

He washes his hands in a basin and wastes no time.

He takes a look through the shaded window to the eastern heavens astride,

fastens his tefillin upon his forehead and wraps the straps on his left arm

Forget it! He’ll pray in solitude, because here the Jewish street does not exist.

 

***

 

Let Us Relate the Power

 

It burns in me—the evil sin of Adam and Eve.

My troubles are soaked through with boiling tears and blood

I have never praised the Creator, I have never prayed.

I have never allowed God one tear through my wails.

 

My dreams dangle bloody on every picket

of this bright prison-world—I will beg, moan

My God—I come to you now with a holy quaking and panic,

Girded with prayers, like a devout Jew on Rosh Hashanah.

 

Each adversarial hour is a stumbling block,

Every coming day is for me a cold cruelty

Every bloody spot is a letter of Unesanneh Tokef

The red, agonized earth—an open page in the prayer book.

 

There, put those letters in all the corners of the earth:

Who from hunger? – Who in winter? – Who by fire? – and Who by water?

and I will stay a fleck of dust between red flecks

until the end of generations I will scream scream scream.

 

***

 

The Punishment Should Come

 

It became black it is a sunburned face

a piece of black coal

the light cries with red tears

toward a desolate destiny and unto horror

The Image of God wails

What has the world deserted?

 

There is no synonym

for sorrow that bullies

It is every letter

of a poem

an open mouth

that screams

moans

punishment.

 

For all

for beginning and end

for mourning-rips in cloth

upon a world of compassion and good

for us who have been dealt what we’ve been dealt

here, besides a variety of folk

for every bloody hour.

 

It moans

punishment

my song

blood, for a Jew

bloody scream

from each punishment.

 

The heart of time

has opened up a black secret

heated up my calm mood

God does not scream

in my song’s chamber

the blood of the Jew, it screams

it screams, it screams out to

a variety of folk

and it moans my every sentence

Punishment!

Punishment!

 

and I

a child

from a folk among wandering folk

 

through generations eternally in sorrow

through distant paths

through plague

through temptation

through wind.

 

I wait

for the ascent of a new day.

 

***

 

Marijuana

 

The path so muddy

A man, on the earth on the mist

Moving along lazy-stepped

with feet, like heavy pendulums

eyes, alight like candlesticks

small flames aroused, fall upon

womanly flesh and hips,

on girlishly tender faces.

 

What a waste!

He can’t avert his gaze.

Why, if man could master himself

slake in his eyes

these erotic flames.

 

The man smokes marijuana

A narcotic.

 

The dream-effect places him in a harness

 

The earth is not muddy.

He lays upon divans

that caress his feet, treading:

 

He doesn’t hear the laments,

The begging

The children on grimy corners,

play quartets

Here, thousands of singers sing

 

A man collapses from hunger?

They extend their hands and wail?

Their skin dried out?

 

An Emperor

A Youth

Upon thrones

Of red and bloody luminations

Nirvana

 

It smokes a man, that marijuana.

Narcotic.

 

He’s harnessed to the divan.

upon the earth, which is filthy.

 

Dick Cavett, Typepad, Shakespeare, Twain and Eleanor Estes

Once again Typepad annoys me.  It's NO WONDER I don't post more!  I'm just a simple little old lady blogger.  Can't they keep things simple for me?  So what happened is I started this out as a quick post on the Dashboard, and it started getting too long so I clicked to use a full entry, and what I'd written on the Quick Post quickly had completely disappeared!  So this is taking me a LONG TIME.  Anyway, all I really wanted to do was direct you to the interview with Dick Cavett in the upcoming NY Times Sunday Book Review here.  Just a couple of funny things stand out, so I am copying them for you:

"And for an instant cure for the blues, the great Robert Benchley most frequently supplied the most recent laugh. Who else could have reported that the plays of William Shakespeare had, in fact, not been written by William Shakespeare at all, but by someone else of the same name? Or that you can divide people into two groups: those who divide people into two groups and those who don’t?" 

Cavett who never sounded exactly like a young man even when he was one has settled nicely into a not-quite-stereotype of an elderly, aristocratic English teacher specializing for the most part in the comic with of course a deep well of wit.  Are you surprised that he read by himself by the age of ?  This is his account of "Rufus M." by Eleanor Estes, one of his beloved books when he was a precocious reader.

"Rufus was a hilarious kid. He planted beans for his not-wealthy family’s dinner table. Unfortunately, he also dug them up every day to see how they were doing."

His favorite book of all time is "Huckleberry Finn".  He says a couple of interesting things about race in Huck Finn and about the book being banned from a library Mark Twain knew about.

Anyway, read the article, as I said, here.

This was my break from translating.  Gotta go back to it.  You can check translations of good Mexican articles about current Mexican issues at mexicovoices.blogspot.com

 

In the beginning....

I don't have a clue why it has taken me so long to do this.  Probably because I'm in some ways nuts.

t is a shame, shame, shame that US students don't learn more about Mexican history, and from my perspective, Mexican history in particular.  It is one of those clichés that has a lot of truth: at least the Americans I know who live in the US and haven't visited Mexico still form their images from headlines about narcos and have only a tiny bit of curiosity about anything else in here.  There's a kind of "what's to know?" condescension which infuriates me.  I suspect they don't know much real US history, either.

I am going to try to draw pictures of Diego Rivera and Henry Ford and place them in their environments separately, and then bring them together as they came together in 1932.  They didn't really have much to do with each other as individuals, although they did meet, but they really serve well as, what should I call them, embodiments of their cultures and their times.  In this way, I hope we can see how these two very different cultures, Mexico's  and the United States'  developed, clashed, and paralleled each other particularly in the first third of the twentieth century. Also, I want to show how their economies became woven together along the edges at least while especially the US developed little understanding and empathy and appreciation for Mexico's cultures and history, a deficit which has had grave consequences.

But I don't want to do this in an encyclopedic way.  I'd be dead before I even got started.  So that you can dig in more depth, I am going to recommend books as I go along.  Don't feel confined to them!  My choices are all in English, usually written by Gringos: Maybe you can consider them introductory, or beginner books (though they are not simple-minded), and develop a passion for more as I have. Maybe you'll even study Spanish, as I did, if you don't already know it. 

Most (maybe all) are available for Kindles, and if they are, I've provided a link.  In no way am I boosting Amazon as the best source to buy downed-tree versions.  It's just that my Kindle has kept me reading like a junky here in our corner of Mexico where specific books can be pretty hard to come by.

The very first book I'd suggest is Richard Grabman's Gods, Gachupines and Gringos.  *,**I tried to think of something more serious to say start with, but I keep coming back to the fact that it's fun to read.  It is densely packed with personalities, opinions, punny titles and well-told tales which bring it to life.  Grabman races through the first I don't know how many thousands of years at mach speed, slows down a bit for the period of Spanish domination and hits his best stride with Independence and especially the late 19th through the first third of the twentieth century, my favorite years.  

While you are learning about Mexico in Gods, Gachupines and Gringos, I will catch you up on some American history.  

* You can order the book direct from the publisher in Mexico.  Here is the contact information:

Editorial Mazatlán, Av. Camarón Sabado no 610, Plaza Galerías, Local no. 11, fracc. El Dorado CP 82110, Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico Tel 52 6699167899, [email protected]

** Richard has an excellent blog at mexfiles.net. Definitely worth following.

Detroit: What's racist?

Focus first on the white man lying, beaten up, on the ground.  Then focus on the black woman, armed, lying on top of him, protecting him. And the black child hit by the car the white guy was driving, but not seriously hurt. Then pan to the black men standing around him and the black crowd a bit further back. 

What happened: a white guy driving a truck accidentally hit the black kid who reportedly dashed out into the street.  A dozen black men beat him up.  A black nurse who happened to be there wielded her gun as she threw herself on him to protect him.

Charlie LeDuff, a reporter now for a local Fox news station, has written an op-ed piece in the NY Times called "A Beating in Detroit" about this incident.  You should read it.  LeDuff walks the line between black and white, siding with neither particularly, but showing a lot of insight as he goes.  

The article reminded me: racism isn't always obvious at first glance, and sometimes what is called racism isn't.  

I'm sure I've mentioned that when I was a psychiatric social worker in southern Illinois, racism among the white staff was rampant.  And it was acceptable among the whites.  People believed that the views they held which I call racism were really an accurate measure of what blacks were.  Being racist also was a way of drawing the white staff together, a badge of belonging.  And it had been passed down from parent to child.  It was deeply entrenched in people's very souls.   But this shouldn't be surprising. Scratch the surface and you will find that pretty much all of us harbor a streak of racism, if unconsciously.

Here is a good definition of racism:

 "Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns."

The article continues:

"Racism is also a very touchy subject for some people, as issues concerning free speech and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights come into play. Some people argue that talking about supporting racial discrimination and prejudice is just words and that free speech should allow such views to be aired without restriction. Others point out that these words can lead to some very dire and serious consequences (the Nazi government policies being one example).

"[T]he American Anthropological Association says race is a powerful idea and an enduring concept, invented by society. It has also fostered inequality and discrimination for centuries, as well as influencing how we relate to other human beings."

Sometimes in the US at least, whites accuse blacks of being "reverse racists" and in some strange way manage to use this as a justification for continuing to hold their own beliefs.  

As I said, everywhere you look, racism has a grip on hearts and minds.  For a good global look at it, check out this post on Global Issues.

Here in Mexico, I'm always surprised to run into gringos who hold really terrible racist views about the Mexicans they live amongst.  Yet I'm sure such people would deny that they had any negative, unfounded views.

 Possibly some of ou white guys are starting to get all squinty eyed and grouchy at me for mostly discussing white racism.  Well, I am white and don't think I can get all holier than thou about non-white folks.  Most of the time, our prejudices don't seriously affect other people, and sometimes they are even a step or two towards understanding.  When it comes to the twelve black guys who ganged up on the white driver, I don't know if that's racism or simply hatred of a symbol of the group that has most hurt them.  A big point to bear in mind are the roles of power and the need for group membership play in racism.  For it to be reverse racism there has to be a racism on the other side that is identified with putting people down and causing harm to them.

I sometimes think speech shouldn't be politically correct.  Polite maybe, but not politically correct.  When PC rules, it's easier to deny problems and hide from responsibility. On all sides. For instance, it wouldn't be PC for me to say how irritated it made me when a car driven by blacks in St. Louis would stop in the middle of a street to talk to someone and not move out of the way when he saw me.

There are all kinds of subtle (more or less) expressions and consequences of racism against blacks.  For instance, statistics show unconscious biases among physicians can affect black vs. white treatment.  This article offers one example  and this one another. Ironically, the effort to avoid bias can also lead to problems.  This article discusses actual genetic differences which affect health.  

As you might guess, the situation was historically pretty bad, too.  Here is an article which describes white vs. black medical treatment of soldiers in the Civil War.

So now read Mr. LeDuff's article and its interesting conclusions.  Also look for his book, Detroit: An American Autopsy which is really a great read. And it sure is not knee-jerk liberal.

Threads

In looking into the story of Diego Rivera and his murals in Detroit, I found myself following all sorts of stories I hadn't dreamed would interest me, but they did, big time. So now I am trying to pull them together into something comprehensible.  In doing this, I remembered why I so loved history: I love it because it or rather almost any scrap of it has loose threads that connect to other scraps which connect us intimately with the past. And the past is only a moment ago.  

Anyway, today I found another scrap.  I won't pursue this anywhere as far as I have the Detroit murals stuff (I don't have time!) BUT it is definitely worth following. This scrap is a piece of the story of anarchism in the United States and Russia and of some of its major participants. I have a funny feeling that if I looked far enough, I could tie it to the Diego Rivera stuff.  Of course this discovering of and weaving together of various themes is one of the blessings and curses of the internet.

There is a series by writers about writing in the New York Times called "Draft".  Today's piece was "A Collaborative Effort" by Karen Avrich. Avrich became her father's posthumous collaborator in a biography of Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman, two very important adherents of anarchism in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.  Karen Avrich's father, Paul Avrich is a leading if not the leading scholar of anarchism and worker rebellion in Russia and the US during that time. Karen Avrich creates a deeply loving sketch of her father.  She also talks of how she was enveloped in the work of finishing his book.  

And so I have found myself following the threads of Karen Avrich, Paul Avrich, Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman, just in a cursory google-y kind of way, but I find it amazing that I can trace them and their histories and other histories sitting at my desk in Xico.  

Wikipedia has a good article on Emma Goldman here.  It will be easy to find yourself sidetracked to major events in the U.S. past: The Panic of 1893, for instance, and the assassination of William McKinley.  And here are Margaret Sanger and birth control and Woodrow Wilson, World War I and The Draft....

I wanted to learn more about Paul Avrich, basically a quiet man who wrote and wrote and breathed life into the anarchists.  Of course you can find material on Paul Avrich on google. If you read Spanish, this is an interesting link.

In looking for information on Avrich the father, I arrived at the Kate Shipley Library, a treasure trove of anarchist literature and history, of primary sources, the creme de la creme for writing history.  And then there's this bit of gossip about Karen Avrich who turns out to be Mark Halperin's girl friend. 

The book that Paul and Karen Avrich collaborated on, Sasha and Emma,was well-received and sounds like it would be absorbing and lively.  Here is the NYTimes review. It was a NY Times notable book in 2012.

If you aren't up for anarchy, how about trying Alex Berensen's essay for Draft.  Berensen writes a series of thrillers centered on an agent, John Wells. The plots, which Berensen hangs on a careful and accurate use of history, could lead you down a path of research on terrorism, Al Qaeda, and the like.  

I HAVE to try to be more disciplined.  I really do want to get through Diego Rivera in Detroit!

 

Related articles

Some thoughts on Alexander Berkman

Emma Goldman: political thinking in the streets by Kathy Ferguson [Book review]

A Reading Group at Caftan Rojo in Coatepec

Our reading/writing group meets more or less every fourth Wednesday of the month.  The next one is coming up on the 16th of October.  We are a growing bunch of  yes-we-are, would-be, have been and would-have-been writers of various ages and "ethnic backgrounds".  We call it a readers' group because some (many) of us shy away from criticism and just want to enjoy each others' tales and because some of us haven't necessarily written anything new in a long time and don't feel like having the old stuff rehashed yet again.  For some reason I am reminded of children's hour at the library where kids sit in a circle on little chairs around the friendly adult who reads a page and then holds the book up and shows the pictures.  We each get a turn to be librarian, clearing our throats, looking around the circle of faces before we begin.  We read bits of our memories, stories, poems, even a letter. We know each other outside of our little reading group.  We can puzzle or say aha about the sides of each other we didn't know, the feelings revealed, the delicacy hidden behind a gruff voice. 

We meet at Caftan Rojo which has within its walls and its courtyard an art school and various changing art exhibits as well as an English language book exchange and a Spanish book collection which you can borrow from.  On the Jewish holidays, it has celebrations which the small Jewish community of Xalapa and Coatepec attends. We attended the memorial of a friend there a year or so ago. Sometimes someone from the area gives a presentation as was the case when a former professor from the US gave a talk on peak oil which he hoped would alarm us more than it did.

If you are in Coatepec, wander in, have a seat if you want to rest your feet.  Look around.  You can find current information at www.caftanrojo.org.  Here are the phone number, address, etc:

Para más información puedes llamar al teléfono 01 o 52 (228) 816-3151 de lunes a sábado, de 9 de la mañana a 3 de la tarde, o visítarnos en la 3ª calle de Xicoténcatl nº 44, en Coatepec, Veracruz, México. 

Jo Nesbo, Colum McCann and Philipp Meyer: Books Not about Mexico

I am not a book reviewer, but I am an addicted reader, especially when it seems to be raining here almost nonstop. So I wanted to write briefly about three of my most recent reads, as they say.  My favorite books are mysteries and thrillers that have strong senses of place and really juicy characters.  But guilt sets in.  I decide I have to read more serious stuff.  So I did.

Colum McCann's Let the Whole Earth Spin and Philipp Meyer's American Rust are literary fiction.  Jo Nesbo's The Redeemer is a thriller.  It is The Redeemer which absolutely is the best of the three in what I would consider literary thriller terms: the main characters are vivid and very touching. I could feel my own feet crunching in the icy snow in Oslo.  The plot, since it is a thriller, is much mor gripping than the first two books' plots are. And there are themes of the deepest sort: of what corruption is, who deserves mercy, the pain in the human heart, what charity and, yes, redemption, might be; and who true redeemers are.  

McCann's novel is set in 1974 New York City on the day that Philippe Petit made his way dancing and sliding and skipping and walking on a tightrope slung between the Twin Towers.  He threads the stories of a disparate group of people through the eye of this event.  Some of the characters he does well with: Corrigan and Ciaran, Irish brothers who find themselves in the South Bronx; oddly, the upper class, Upper East Side matron.  To me, his efforts at writing the thoughts and dialogue of black hookers, a Guatemalan women, and an educated black woman seemed stilted and slide into stereotyping though he tries hard to show he had mastered the women's vernaculars.  New York City came through pretty well.  But it was a long and drifty novel, not taut at all.  

American Rust is a first novel.  It is set in the rust belt of western Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Philipp Meyer, the author, spends way, way too much time inside his characters' heads. NOBODY is that interesting, and these characters certainly aren't although they are likeable and are good characters for hanging a shorter version of this novel on. I do think Meyer must have caught the desperation of being adrift on the street without money or a place to go. Interestingly, Nesbitt does, too, in his thriller.

I read American Rust because I was particularly interested in what has happened to people left without factories to work in in the Northeast. I'm trying to think of how Meyer could have done it better. Maybe if he didn't spend so much time in his characters' heads and had them be a little less I don't know drifting off into strangeness.

 I think there are millions of American stories to be written about ordinary people in all the different patches that make up the country.  And more to be written about their struggles with their real lives. There's a lot of room for current writers.  The country has a good sturdy tradition to follow in this regard, from Theodore Dreiser to William Kennedy and Richard Russo, among others.  

AND for glimpses into other countries and cultures as well as our own,´people shouldn't shrug off thriller and mystery writers who often convey place and character better than anyone.    

IMPORTANT AND WAY OVERDUE UPDATE: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOK EXCHANGE

The English Language Book Exchange (and the Spanish one, too) are much expanded and open Monday through Saturday, 9-3 and 5-7 or so at Caftan Rojo in Coatepec.    You can find an excellent map of the location here. It is on the corner of Zaragosa and Xicotencátl near the crucero on the Xalapa side of town.  The telephone number is (228)8163151.

You can take a book (or two or three) and return them when you are finished or replace them with other books.  Enjoy!!!