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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Floricanto Movement, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 51 - 58 of 58
51. Floricanto Returns to USC. On-Line Floricanto Continues.

Michael Sedano


Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow concluded its three-day run Friday evening with a reception for the exhibition Sueños by the Sea: Celebrating Los Festivales de Flor y Canto at USC.

The festival's first day reunited veteranas veteranos videotaped at the 1973 floricanto; that was Yesterday, a misnomer given the energy and ongoing power of these artists. Now I'm thinking we should bill the next festival--there will be another--as "From Yesterday to Today leading into Tomorrow," for clearly that is the status of Chicana Chicano, Latina Latino literature at this moment in history, a living, growing, vitally alive literary tradition.

The Today and Tomorrow themes spread across the second and third days that blended presentations of important contemporary poets and writers with several poets making their debut at an important event, as well as readings by a graduate student and three undergraduate poets, sponsored by El Centro Chicano, the original host back in 1973.

Great news for those unable to attend, and those wishing to relive the festival. In coming weeks, USC's Digital Library will be posting video of Festival de Flor y Canto Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow, filmed gavel-to-gavel by Jesus Treviño. In addition, I donated my archive of 1973 photographs to USC and these, too, will soon be publicly available on the digital library.

Available right now are the extant videos from 1973's first Festival de Flor y Canto at this link. For the most part, these videos have not been viewed since their distribution in the mid-1970s, and as I've reported in earlier La Bloga columns, nearly were lost. To view a collection of photographs from 1973, click here.


Foto: Francisco Alarcón / Source: Facebook.

All three days, the emotion that filled Friends Lecture Hall in Doheny Library was palpable. I could smell it, taste it in the air; felt it in the hugs and kisses of well-wishers; saw it in the abrazos and smiles shared in small and big groups; heard it in laughter and excited chatter coming from every corner and aisle in the room, in the hallway, at the reception.

Great news arrived at the exhibition reception, when USC Libraries Dean Catherine Quinlan expressed a view that USC needs another floricanto next year. ¡Ajua! Dean Quinlan, the audience nodded in joyous agreement. I believe the statement was not an offhand phatic remark. Given USC's long-standing commitment to Chicana Chicano, Latina Latino literature, a festival de flor y canto could become the signature event annually reaffirming that commitment. I volunteer to help. Anyone else?

Here is a slideshow of portraits of every presenter in the three-day event. As the emcee, I had a front row seat and w

1 Comments on Floricanto Returns to USC. On-Line Floricanto Continues., last added: 9/21/2010
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52. Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow This Week. On-Line Floricanto

Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow. Tomorrow (Wednesday September 15, Day One!) and Tomorrow's Tomorrow, and Then Friday's Final Festday.
Michael Sedano

Here are Frequently Asked Questions pertaining to this week's Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow events.

I am driving into LA. How do I get to USC?
The University Park campus of the University of Southern California is immediately west of the 110 Harbor Freeway, north of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Exposition Park. Here is a link that will get you to campus. The address of Doheny Memorial Library is 3550 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles CA 90089.

Where do I park?
Park on campus and pay $8.00. Do not park at University Village at Hoover and Jefferson Blvd. Street parking can be a lucky find. Entrance 5, on W Jefferson Blvd and Entrance 4 on W Jefferson may have public spaces. The friendly parking kiosk attendants at any of the 8 entry points will direct you to available parking structures.

How about public transit?
The downtown DASH F line runs every 10 minutes until 6:30 p.m. and is most convenient. Thereafter, regular bus routes serve the area. Cash only. LA is not a taxi city. The kindness of strangers option should work at the end of the day to catch a ride to a nearby drop-off point.

Where is Doheny Library?
Students and parking kiosk attendants are friendly and happy to point you in the right
direction. You'll see several tall buildings. Head toward those and the Library will be a few steps southeast.

Where is Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall?
2d floor, north side of Doheny. There will be signage. Follow the signs. Library Staff at the main entrance and at the stacks desk will be happy to point out the elevator and stairwells.

What if I'm late?
The literary festival model means the only people who have time certain schedules are writers who will appear at their appointed time. The public is welcome to come and go (quietly, please) throughout the day. Overflow seating will be nearby.

I love Magu's floricanto graphic. Can I get a t-shirt with that?
Magu licensed his copyrighted work to the festival for publicity purposes. There is no provision for t-shirts. If you want one nonetheless, La Bloga will put you in touch with the artist who will make arrangem

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53. Cuca and Eva Aguirre; Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow Update; Floricanto Adelanto; On-Line Floricanto. David Dolby ¡Presente!

Summer Road Notes, El Paso, Texas
Cuca Aguirre and Eva Aguirre & the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s

Juan Felipe Herrera

In my brother-in-laws’ X-Terra I head toward El Bronco, an El Paso flea market.

I am in search of “Arriba Juarez,” a tiny clothes booth where Cuca Aguirre, now Cuca Aguirre García, at ninety-two years of age, sells clothes and waits for me, perhaps the one of the last pioneers of the Juarez Border Arts Renaissance of the 30’s that laid down the groundwork for the aesthetic revolution we are still living. José Montoya comes to mind, poeta, muralista and an RCAF general whom I met in the early seventies, back in Logan Heights, San Diego. Then I think of Alma Lopez, Lila Downs and Yolanda Muñoz, a digital artist, a singer and a sculptor – going strong.

My initial interest was to get more info on my own familia – los Quintana – who arrived in Juarez from Mexico City a few years after the Mexican revolution of 1910. And it happened that my uncle Roberto was a leading figure of Juarez’s “El Barco de La Ilusión” radio-theatre cast of XEJ and who worked with Germán Valdez (Tin-Tan), the comedic actor, originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco. After Tin Tan left Juarez to Mexico City in the early 40’s, he became a major movie star of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. An intimate portrait of Tin-Tan lured me too. After meeting Cuca and listening to her stories, songs and poems and returning a month later, things changed.

The more Cuca described her leap, as a teenager, into song, theatre, comedy and dance in the Juarez border Jazz and Ranchera scene from 1932 to 1942, the more I began to realize that she was a seminal part of an explosive site of cultural production.

With her sister, Eva Aguirre, now Eva Aguirre Amezcua, and Elvira Macías, Cuca formed part of “Las Tres Chatitas” singing and dancing and on occasion reading out loud, “declamando,” poetry touring Texas with Tin-Tan, and other artists. Returning to Juarez, she and her sister would delve back into a thriving cadre of radio and teatro artists, including “El Charro” Pancho Avitia, Pepe Gamboa, Meño García, Alfredo Corral and Roberto Quintana. The performance schedule was an intense project of experimental theatre based on improvisation and multiple characters all elaborated through various radio stations and radio shows such as “La Familia Feliz,” “Pablo el Ranchero” and “Pablo Barranquillo y Su Comadre Chencha.” There was no set script other than a last-minute given theme.

Cuca laughs recalling a one-act called, “El Millón,” that La Familia Feliz presented on XEJ. “They told us we had won a “million.” So, we jumped up and cried out our dreams – a palace, a world tour, a mink stole! Then the announcer gave us the leash to a tiny dog called ‘El Millón. We were so disappointed!”

The Juarez arts collective was tireless in production and in mentoring each other. Local singer Miguel Aceves Mejía, who later became a national sensation, stopped Cuca and pointed out various options in singing in harmony. “Once Miguel showed me how to do it, I never changed my style

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54. Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow Update. On-Line Floricanto Aug31

floricanto graphic ©magu
Plan now to attend all three days of Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow on the USC campus September 15-17. The schedule packs each day with a constantly advancing roster of writers reading their own work.

The free, three-day literary event brings nearly fifty poets and fiction writers to Doheny Memorial Library Friends Lecture Hall. Wednesday and Thursday the first reading is at 1:00 p.m. Friday's readings start at 10:00 a.m.

Wednesday's capstone event features the father-son team of Jose Montoya and Richard Montoya. Thursday's capstone event features "Celebrando Chicana Poetry: Diana Garcia, Maria Melendez, Emmy Pérez." The reading is sponsored by University of Notre Dame's Letras Latinas in partnership with the Poetry Society of America.

Friday brings an early highlight, a special presentation at 11:45 by Juan Felipe Herrera, of the UCR Tomás Rivera Lifetime Pioneer Award to Cuca Aguirre. Friday culminates with a closing reception for the festival and opening of a photographic display featuring Michael Sedano's 1973 photographs, Sueños by the Sea: Celebrating Los Festivales de Flor y Canto.

Parking will be tight Wednesday, but this veteranas veteranos day is not to be skipped. Consider the bus.


Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow

Here is a pair of fotos illustrating two pauses. Alurista savoring the moment in 1973, Alurista savoring another moment in 2010. Still making poetry. This portrait comes from a reading at Highland Park's Avenue 50 Studio and its monthly poetry reading, Palabra. The reading is part of a commemoration observing the 40th year since the Chicano Moratorium march.

Alurista reads Wednesday, September 15 at 5:15 p.m. at Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow.




For additional fotos of Palabra's Sunday reading--there are quite a number of effective portraits--if you are a Facebook user, click here.


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55. Countdown to Festival de Flory y Canto Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow. On-Line Floricanto August 24


Michael Sedano

September 15,16,17 approach, and with them the arrival of Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow.

1973 saw history’s first floricanto, El Festival de Flor y Canto held at the University of Southern California. Chicano Literature captured attention among academicians, curriculum developers, and readers generally. Some readers hyperbolized, given the flourishing number of writers and publishers, a “Chicano Renaissance” had come. In actuality, the movimiento period marked the emergence of a young literary tradition that has come fully to fruition in this first decade of the 21st Century.

Even during its emergent life, Chicana Chicano writing went well beyond stereotypic identity and cultural nationalism. 1973’s Festival de Flor y Canto contained ample servings of the former mixed with oft stunning reminders of the sublime. A torrid declamation, a lover’s soft confession, humor ranging from gentle mirth to knee-slapping hilarity, the readings proved a listener’s delight and a critic’s dream with so much happening in so short a span of days.

2010 marks a genuine “renaissance” in the floricanto movimiento with the return to USC of Los Trece, thirteen writers who read at that original festival de flor y canto whose work was videotaped. They include: Alurista, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, Estevan Arellano, Ron Arias, Juan A Contreras, Veronica Cunningham, Juan Felipe Herrera, R Rolando Hinojosa, Enrique Lamadrid, Ernest Mares, Jose Montoya, Alejandro Murguía, Roberto Vargas.

Also returning to USC and floricanto are Sy Abrego and Mary Ann Pacheco. Sy headed El Centro Chicano in 1973. He was the institutional host of that first floricanto. Mary Ann Pacheco, along with Alurista, first proposed the idea of a large-scale literary festival.

Pacheco was the emcee for almost every event on the busy three-day schedule. Mary Ann has agreed to deliver the Welcome statement on Wednesday. Frank "Pancho del Rancho" Sifuentes recently RSVP'd for the opening day, too. Frank served as backstage host, festival mero mero, and all-night tour guide to a carful of vatos who cruised the streets of Aztlán.


Almost 50 poets and fiction writers across three days will take center stage for fifteen minute recitals. Unlike the male-centric line up in 1973, Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow’s artist list features a powerful array of women writers, including Thursday evening’s Celebrando Chicana Poetry: Diana Garcia, Maria Melendez, Emmy Pérez sponsored by Letras Latinas and the Poetry Society of America.

Two father-son artist pairs appear. Wednesday evening, Jose Montoya and son Richard Montoya, and members of Culture Clash, climax the day of 1973 veteranas veteranos. In addition to hearing the Montoyas read together, Richard will screen a preview of his documentary-in-process “One More Canto". Montoya narrates the story of a legendary 1979 Chicano Poetry reading from Sacramento featuring Ricardo Sanchez, Lucha Corpi and Jose Montoya. The second father-son duo has Marco Antonio Domi

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56. La Palabra Poets

Michael Sedano

"4th Sunday of Every Month," the email taunts me. Taunts, because invariably my good intentions of attending a La Palabra Monthly poetry event run afoul of some other commitment. I have subscription seats to Sunday concerts for LA Phil at Disney Hall and Coleman Chamber Music Association at Cal Tech. Often our tickets fall on a fourth Sunday. 
Or sometimes I start an early morning project that grows like topsy into the afternoon, and 2:00 p.m. comes and I'm covered in dirt or chicken poop and would make a poor seat mate to some hapless poetry lover.

And poetry lovers are whom one meets at La Palabra's monthly poetry celebration. At any rate, that's how it turned out for me when I was able to get cleaned up early enough on Sunday the 23d of November (tempus fugit!), to arrive unfashionably late.

I'm so late that I don't get a program and can show only the portraits of the gente reading their well-crafted work. I cannot tell you the names of these poets.

La Palabra evidently holds Open Mic readings to launch the afternoon, followed by scheduled poets. The Emcee pictured here with a close-up of her Open Mic sign-up board is most likely the Co-Host of La Palabra, Laura Longoria.

Despite the sign-ups of three men and a woman, one of the poets either did not perform, or, owing to my tardiness, she read before my arrival, and I missed her work.

So I am treated to readings by the three Open Mic men. It's an intimate setting, a white-walled space with twenty or so plastic chairs arranged three rows deep. Being a photographer, I zig and zag myself through the chairs to take an empty seat in the front row. The space is small enough that every word would likely be audible from the back row. This adds to the enjoyment of the verse, not straining to make out the words.

 
One gentleman, weara a "Poetry Daily" t-shirt publicizing the website of the same name.


Another reader announces he's just written the piece he'll read. He reads his work off the back of the program. 













Dog gone it, I wish I could tell you the name of the Cubana who reads several pieces about her cultura and growing up in Habana with Orishas and Yemeya and Babalaos. She weaves an entertaining narrative between her formal pieces, playing a vinyl disc and a CD that illustrate her work. Fabulously entertaining, she doesn't, or cannot, stay at the lectern but moves about. At one point she dances to the infectious beat of island drumming.

Next up is Don Newton. I can tell you his name because he's one of the sponsors of La Palabra, and Don's and Emcee Laura's name is on the publicity posted at Avenue 50 Studio's homepage, the host of the event. Don shares some autobiographical work recounting events growing up in New Jersey, Mexico, and Brazil.





It's clear that Don and la Cubana are close friends. I'm sure their bonds aren't the sole reason they read today. Obviously both enjoy the process of reading and performing their poetry.

I am relieved I finally had the opportunity of a free fourth Sunday. Here all this time I'd been castigating myself thinking I was missing a grand experience. And I was right, La Palabra is a grand experience, not to be passed by under ordinary circumstances.

Now if the Phil or Coleman would just cooperate and not schedule competing events, I'd have no conflicts and could happily attend every La Palabra. Who knows, maybe next time I have a conflict, I'll give away my concert tickets and sign up for the Open Mic.

Flor Y Canto Progress Report

I spent last week at the University of California, Riverside Tomás Rivera Library Media Center, digitizing the library's collection of U-matic video cassettes. This is a time-consuming process that is 25% completed. Next week I'll post a few snippets of work, for example, Omar Salinas, whose readings would have been the ideal accompaniment to Karen Harlow McClintock's touching eulogy of her friendship with the poet.

I am happy--make that overjoyed--to report that USC, as the Copyright owner, has granted me permission to make these copies and share them with La Bloga and Read! Raza visitors.  Rest assured I'm no Digital Millenium Act scofflaw.

I'll be conducting  a workshop in "reading your stuff" at next year's National Latino Writers Conference, and am integrating selections from some of these 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto readings as part of my lesson plan.

With the creation of DVDs of these historic performances, planning for the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto is making great progress. Click here for the Call for Writers to that event. If you're an alumna alumnus of that 1973 Festival, please contact me for an invitation to the 2010 reunion!

That's the final Tuesday of November 2008. It's the week for tofu turkey loaf, if you're so inclined, or real roasted bird. My grandmother, Emilia Macias, was the best poultry dresser of the Inland Empire. People used to drive from all over southern California to DeYoung's Poultry in Redlands to get a bird prepared by my grandmother. Granma, you wouldn't recognize what they do to coconos nowadays.

Happy Thanksgiving, whether you're having tamales or turkey or tofu. See you next week, December 2, with some of those 1973 readers.

Ate, les wachamos,
mvs


La Bloga welcomes your comments on any column. Simple click the Comments counter below to share your views. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have an extended response to something you've read here, or when you'd like to do your own book or cultural events review, please, be our guest. To get started on your first--or next--visit as our guest, click here.

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57. Where are you, today?

Michael Sedano

Where are these poets and writers today? Back in 1973, all appeared at El Festival de Flor Y Canto, at the University of Southern California. In 2010, I'd like to see them together again at USC, at Festival de Flor Y Canto 2010

I shot these mug shots at the University of California Riverside, whose library is the only one in California holding an almost-complete set of the rare videos recorded of that first Flor Y Canto. Only Jose Montoya's presentation is absent; that videocassette was lost by UC Davis' library years ago. The videos, with a single exception, exist only on ancient 3/4" U-matic videocassettes. Only Oscar Acosta's performance has been digitized; it's for sale on the DVD of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." See link in Gregg Barrios' guest column. 































Pictured here are: Lynn Romero, Alejandro Murguia, Enrique La Madrid, Pedro Ortiz, Estevan Arrellano, Juan Contreras, Javier Pacheco, Jeronimo Blanco, Jorge Gonzalez, Ron Arias, E.A. Maress, David Gomez, Antonio G. Ortiz, Barbara Hernandez, Jorge Alvarez, Olivia Castellano, Avelardo Valdez, Ponce Javier Ruiz, Teresa Paloma Acosta, Tomas Atencio. 

Not illustrated are writers whom I've already made contact with, as well as Teatro Meztizo, Teatro de los Niños, and Teatro Pequeño, though it'd be tremendous to see those children all grown up, and their mentors.

Also not illustrated are writers who are now dead: Ricardo Sanchez, Tomás Rivera, Marcela Trujillo, Abelardo Delgado, raúlrsalinas, Omar Salinas, Oscar Zeta Acosta. QEPD.

Several of the where-are-they-now names Google-up older-looking folks, apparently writers. The popular internet search engine, however, fails to provide email or other contact information. Hence this La Bloga column. 

If you are among these writers, please contact me for an invitation to the reunion floricanto in 2010. If you know someone with the same name and whose face sure looks like that younger face shown here, please let your friend know about this column and the links to the Call for Artists to the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto.


Book Give-Away Update

Great news from publisher Hachette Book Group for La Bloga reader Liana Lopez of Houston Texas! 

Just after the 8-title give-away closed last week, La Bloga received Liana's 100% correct response. Publisher Hachette Book Group extended its generosity to six winners, and mailed this 8-book library to Liana Lopez of Houston, Texas:

Dream in Color By Linda Sánchez , Loretta Sánchez ISBN: 0446508047
Gunmetal Black By Daniel Serrano ISBN: 0446194131
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters By Lorraine López ISBN: 0446699217
Bless Me, Ultima By Rudolfo Anaya ISBN: 0446675369
Brownsville By Oscar Casares ISBN: 9780316146807
The Hummingbird's Daughter By Luis Urrea ISBN: 0316154520
The General and the Jaguar By Eileen Welsome ISBN: 0316715999
Tomorrow They Will Kiss By Eduardo Santiago ISBN: 0316014125

Congratulations, Liana, and your fellow Hachette/La Bloga Book Give-Away winners:

Tom Miller
Tucson AZ

John Alba Cutler
Evanston IL

Eduardo Pena
Tucson, AZ

Marie Madrid
Denver, CO

Diana Chavez
Littleton, CO

Liana Lopez
Houston, TX


Election Season

As Daniel Olivas notes in Monday's column, La Bloga's blogueras blogueros are posting political columns including our predictions of the winners and weenies. Lucky moi, I get Tuesday election day. See you then. Gracias de antemano for going to the polls and voting, for encouraging your familia to vote. 


La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and any La Bloga item. Click on the Comments counter below. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you have a book or arts review, an extended announcement, a response at length to something you've read at La Bloga, by all means, please, join us. Click here for your invitation.



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58. Bits and Pieces of the King's Gold

Michael Sedano

2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto Call for Writers & Artists

Planning is now in the definite maybe stage for a literary and arts festival at the University of Southern California in 2010 during fiestas patrias observances, celebrated in the United States as "Hispanic Heritage Month" in September and October.

Linked here is the first call for participants. If you are a surviving writer or presenter from the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto, please click and send your contact information. The festival looks to showcase the growth of Chicana Chicano Latina Latino literature since 1973, so contemporary writers need to click, too, and send along your contact information.

La Bloga will continue reporting on developments of the upcoming floricanto. For some background, see this post.

And thinking of that 1973 cast of artists, Daniel Olivas' Monday column reported Christopher Buckley's tribute to Luis Omar Salinas. The portrait in Dan's article shows Salinas at an advanced age. Here's a photo of Salinas, left, with Alurista, when both appeared at the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto.

To view additional photos of Flor Y Canto of 1973, see this page. The full collection of photos will be part of a gallery show at the 2010 event, including a portrait series I call "¡Presente!" featuring images of writers, like Omar Salinas, who have died since that first Flor Y Canto.

Front Range Paper Leading the Way

Who hasn't witnessed the shrinking space newspapers allot to literature and book review sections? One paper, The Rocky Mountain News, is showing the big rags east and west how to do literature honorably. Celebrating its 150th anniversary--and the city of Denver's 150th--The Rocky Mountain News is showcasing local writers by commissioning original fiction. As the paper observes:

This November, the city of Denver celebrates its 150th anniversary. In April, the Rocky follows with its own 150th. To commemorate both, we're celebrating the creative spirit that has marked our city since 1858, with a special series titled A Dozen on Denver: Stories to celebrate the city at 150. For the series, we've commissioned 11 Colorado authors to write original fiction. We asked the authors to choose a different decade of Denver's history, to mention Larimer Street at least once in their stories and to keep it all to 2,500 words.

Today's Dozen on Denver featured writer is La Bloga co-founder Manuel Ramos. You can read his piece by navigating to The Rocky Mountain News' "Dozen on Denver" page here; m
ake sure to listen to Manuel's interview linked on that page. Here's a link to Manuel's story, "Fence Busters".

The King's Gold Doesn't Quite Fill A Formula

Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The King's Gold. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
ISBN 9781436240598

They say the memory's the second thing to go, when you get old, and I don't remember what the first thing is. Or maybe it's inattention. A few weeks ago, Daniel Olivas cited Rigoberto González' review of Yxta Maya Murray's new novel, The King's Gold. Only the title stuck in my mind. So when I browsed the new books shelf at the Pasadena Public Library, I saw that title, something triggered in my memory. and I picked it up.

The King's Gold I held is the work of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, not Yxta Maya Murray. Ni modo. Manuel Ramos turned me on to Pérez-Reverte, and I enjoyed Pérez-Reverte's The Sun Over Breda hence walked away happily with with my borrowed novel. You'll share the sentiment if you find your own copy.

It's a confection of a novel. With Fall hard upon us, it's time for sitting by a fireplace with something to pass a few hours. Nothing heavy, puro adventure. This one fits that niche. If some kid were to ask for a definition of the world "swashbuckler" I wouldn't bother with a dictionary, I'd give the reader a copy The King's Gold.

Sixteen years old, Íñigo Balboa narrates the story of his and Captain Alatriste's return from Breda to Seville, Spain. War, the pair learn, is a simple affair of point and slash. In Spain, nothing is nearly that obvious. Moreover, mid-17th century Spain is a mess of political intrigue complicated by old enemies, old friends, petty local cops, Moorish slaves, whores and crooks, and royalty.

The story's a reminiscence of an old man. Balboa alludes to his own high adventures and heroics yet to come, and much as he builds the larger-than-life character of Alatriste, Balboa magnifies the reader's affection for Alatriste by reminding us that the hero will be slayed in some upcoming adventure. This interplay of future against current events is an interesting technique to be on the lookout for, or have your emotions toyed with:

By God, it's been a long road. All the people in this story--the captain, Quevedo, Gualterio Malatesta, Angélica de Alquézar--died a long time ago and only in these pages can I make them live again and recapture them exactly as they were. Their ghosts, some loved, some loathed, remain intact in my memory, along with that whole harsh, violent, fascinating time that, for me, will always be the Spain of my youth and the Spain of Captain Alatriste.

The King's Gold is a work of translation, with the attendant cultural traps of vocabulary. These are reduced by the technology and setting of 1626, and the skill of Margaret Jull Costa. "The bluebottles," the cops, is so frequently used that I'd like to see the Spanish to see if this is a cultural substitution or a literal translation.

Irrespective of one's historical knowledge, Pérez-Reverte and his translator provide a vivid portrait of gritty hand-to-mouth existence of soldiers thrown into a world without a Veteran's Administration. To survive, some turn to thievery and murder. Our heroes accept a mercenary job to turn pirate and capture a treasure ship freshly arrived from Mexico. Sadly--because it would be such fun--the author misses an opportunity to draw out his story with the formulaic recruiting of his warriors like the movies "The Dirty Dozen" or "The Magnificent Seven". There's a colorful visit to a condemned killer and a fleeting glance at a couple of recruits. But drawing out character studies would take away from the focus on swordplay and bloodletting, and half of them will be killed in the raid, so we get a list of names and descriptions of their blades.

And use their blades they do. That's what swashbucklers do.


Book Give-Away Winner

Last week's winner came as a late entry, a Denver resident who discovered La Bloga by reading Manuel Ramos' bio in the Rocky Mountain News. Hachette / La Bloga are happy to recognize Marie Madrid's 100% correct responses to Saturday's questionnaire. Marie is receiving by US Mail these eight outstanding titles:

Dream in Color by Linda Sánchez, Loretta Sánchez
Gunmetal Black by Daniel Serrano
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters by Lorraine López
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Brownsville by Oscar Casares
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urrea
The General and the Jaguar by Eileen Welsome
Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago

Look for your opportunity to win the final set of eight this weekend.

And that's the antepenultimate Tuesday of October, 2008. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except, we are here. Thank you for reading La Bloga, and gracias de antemano for your comments on this, and any, La Bloga column. To comment, just click on the Comments counter below. And remember, La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you'd like to share your thoughts on books, arts, culture, or respond to something you've read here, click here to declare your interest in being our guest.

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