“Just as definitive death is the ultimate fruit of the will to forget, so the will to remember will perpetuate our lives.”

José Saramago passed away yesterday, according to a post on his foundation’s website.

Here’s the first portion of an autobiography written when Saramago received the Nobel Prize in 1998:
“I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. My parents were José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade. José de Sousa would have been my own name had not the Registrar, on his own inititiave added the nickname by which my father’s family was known in the village: Saramago. I should add that saramago is a wild herbaceous plant, whose leaves in those times served at need as nourishment for the poor. Not until the age of seven, when I had to present an identification document at primary school, was it realised that my full name was José de Sousa Saramago…”

O escritor José Saramago morreu na sexta-feira, aos 87 anos. A escritora Nélida Piñon definiu como “imortal” e “eterno” o escritor português. Saramago sempre viverá nos seus livros.

Maria, Tamires, Frederic, James, me & Yacob on the farm

In preparation for an essay I wrote for an upcoming edition of Real Simple Magazine, photographer Frédéric Lagrange and his assistant Yacob Vincent visited the farm to shoot some photos of all of us. It was a great shoot, and the dogs (especially Lorenzo) were top-notch models. Lorenzo (who literally trembles and then hides in the bushes when we tell him it’s bath time) decided to swim in our pond (???!!!) for Frédéric. He performed some water ballet, waving his paws and flicking his tail, as if this kind of thing was perfectly normal.

Many thanks to Real Simple, Fréderic, and Yacob for the photos. I hope they turn out well!

My friend Aryn’s amazing collection of short stories was released on Wednesday.

Aryn Kyle, whose first novel was hailed as “reason for readers to rejoice” (USA TODAY) turns her gift for storytelling to the lives of girls and women in this spectacular collection. In “Nine,” a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious “Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore.” A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and the goth teenage girl who lives in the apartment below her in “Boys and Girls Like You and Me.” And in a notable exception to the rule, “Captain’s Club” features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation.
In moments electric with sudden harmony or ruthless indifference, the girls and women in this collection provoke, beguile, entertain, and reveal a poignant and searingly accurate portrait of the female heart. With her keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that permeate the female experience, Kyle has secured her reputation as a major young talent.

The Baroness / A Baronesa

English
I got some really great news this week. A Brazilian designer named Adriana Gontijo liked The Seamstress so much she used the book as the inspiration for her 2010 Fall/Winter clothing collection. Gontijo’s label, A Rosa Vermelha, produces women’s clothes made from sustainable and vintage fabrics. Adriana has named her dresses and blouses after characters in the book. The Baroness dress has a youthful elegance, like the Baroness herself. The Lindalva dress is fun and spirited, just like the character. I was really happy and honored to know that another artist has taken inspiration from the people and places in the book. I actually like fashion, even though I never get to wear spiffy clothes on the farm. To see all of Adriana’s designs, visit A Rosa Vermelha’s blog. (But I’ve included pictures here, of course!)

Vestido Lindalva / The Lindalva

Blusa Degas / The Degas Blouse

Blusa Coelho / Coelho Blouse

While browsing this other blog I like called Information is Beautiful, I came across the work of graphic artist Stefanie Posavec. According to David McCandless, the blog’s author and designer, Posavec’s work “is concerned with the unveiling of things unseen.” One of Posavec’s projects: to visualize the structure of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Being an amateur book diagrammer myself, I was intrigued. [Warning: Nerd Alert] After I read any novel I particularly like, I try to diagram its structure, making charts or graphs or weird timelines. These drawings are basically unintelligible to anyone but me, of course. When I’m stuck on my own work I do the same kind of drawing, hoping that a visual representation will help me fix whatever it is in the structure that’s baffling me. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t, but a) it’s fun to do and b) doing it makes me feel like I’m actually working. So when I saw Posavec’s diagrams of On the Road, I immediately got a huge crush on her. I mean, these illustrations are BEAUTIFUL. In a Literary Organism, she makes lines divide into chapters, blooms into paragraphs, sprouts are sentences. All are color-coded according to the book’s key themes. There are other graphic representations of the book’s rhythms, sentence structures, and word usage.

Here’s a blog with high-res images of Posavec’s work. And here’s her website.

Para vocês que falam Português, tem uma ótima entrevista com o escritor Carlos Herculano Lopes. Ele escreveu vários livros, entre eles: A Dança dos Cabelos, Memórias da Sede, Sombras de Julho, e Coração aos Pulos. O seu romance mais recente, O Vestido (Romance. São Paulo: Geração Editorial, 2004), baseado no poema “Caso do Vestido” de Carlos Drummond de Andrade, foi adaptado para o filme de Paulo Thiago em 2004.

Eu tive a oportunidade de falar com o Carlos alguns meses atrás, quando ele me entrevistou para um artigo no jornal Estado de Minas. Veja aqui a entrevista com Carlos no YouTube.

E, porque não posso resistir, aqui está o Caso do Vestido do outro Carlos!

The current issue of The Sun features photos from Kristin Capp, a really talented photographer who took a series of photos in Itaparica, Brazil. See more of her work– including photos of Itaparica, Salvador, and Brasilia– here.
Abraços,
Frances

My dear friend Deanna Fei’s debut novel will be released this week, April 1, by the Penguin Press! It is an incredible book. Here are the great reviews it’s gotten so far:

Advance Praise for A Thread of Sky

Lin Yulan, a revolutionary and leader of the Chinese feminist movement, reluctantly returns to her homeland after a self-imposed exile for a guided tour of “the new China” with her two daughters and three granddaughters in an effort for the nearly estranged women to reconnect. Each woman arrives in China with her own agenda, and each discovers that some shameful secrets are simply too heavy to bear alone. This powerful, intricately woven first novel is a meditation on grief and recovery, strength and vulnerability, and the urgency to leave one’s mark on the world. A very promising debut.
- INDIEBOUND

A Thread of Sky is a lyrical journey through the heart of contemporary China, and the family of women who make the pilgrimage across these pages are as complicated, broad-ranging, and fascinating as the country itself. Deanna Fei is one to watch.
-ANN PATCHETT

A remarkable debut by a gifted young novelist… A wonderful book!
-ANITA SHREVE

This had me at the first page. Fei’s debut novel is both intensely enjoyable and, I think, important. This novel charts the cost of that famous Asian silence, as a family takes in the price of it across several generations. But it is also an intimate portrait of that famous ‘new China,’ as much of a surprise to Chinese Americans as it is to the rest of us. Truly a book for our times.
- ALEXANDER CHEE

Fei stakes a claim in Amy Tan territory with this satisfying tale.
-BOOKLIST

Deanna Fei writes gracefully and with powerful insight and feeling about love and loss, homelands and promised lands, and the various roles of women in family and society. The reader follows her passionately searching characters to China with a brimming heart, and with admiration for a first novelist so full of promise.
-SIGRID NUNEZ

With its mother-daughter conflicts, a feminist message, and an exploration of Chinese roots, this novel will appeal to fans of Amy Tan as well as readers who generally enjoy… Julia Alvarez, Gish Jen, and Gus Lee.
-LIBRARY JOURNAL

A dazzling, heart-pulling debut. With gorgeous lyricism and rare power, Deanna Fei maps an intricate constellation of loss and love that illuminates the lives of three generations of women. The novel is a startling achievement, braided with history and hope and deep empathy, and it introduces readers to one of the most gifted and captivating storytellers of her generation.
-BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON

For Valentine’s Day, some excerpts of letters between Franz Kafka and his fiancé, Felice Bauer. They had a five-year relationship carried out mostly through letters, and were engaged twice.

Hoje é Dia dos Namorados nos EUA. Para comemorar, trechos da correspondência de Franz Kafka com Felice Bauer. Eles eram noivos para 5 anos e, durante seu noivado, tiveram uma correspondência de mais de 700 páginas. (Só achei trechos das cartas em inglês, infelizmente.)

In 1912, Kafka wrote to Bauer about how she had become inseparable from his work, and also how anticipation of her writing kept him awake at night. He wrote:

“Lately I have found to my amazement how intimately you have now become associated with my writing, although until recently I believe that the only time I did not think about you at all was while I was writing. In one short paragraph I had written, there were, among others, the following references to you and your letters: someone was give a bar of chocolate. There was talk of small diversions someone had during working hours. Then there was a telephone call. And finally somebody urged someone to go to bed, and threatened to take him straight to his room if he did not obey, which was certainly prompted by the recollection of your mother’s annoyance when you stayed so late at the office. — Such passages are especially dear to me; in them I take hold of you, without your feeling it, and therefore without your having to resist.

Eleven days later, Kafka wrote to her:
“Fraulein Felice!
I am now going to ask you a favour which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well this is it: Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday — for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them.
For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?”

Something troubling has been brought to my attention. I’ve decided to include it in the blog so that all of those quietly suffering from the same affliction can find camaraderie and seek help.

There’s someone on the farm, someone very close to me, with a serious dilemma. I’m keeping her identity secret in order to preserve her dignity. Let’s call her “Long Zipper.” Long Zipper used to consider herself fashionable. She used to take a certain amount of pride in her appearance. But who needs fashion on a farm? When you are covered in mud, dog slobber, pig slobber, goat slobber, and every other kind of slobber, who really notices a cute pair of leggings? And you certainly can’t hike in ballet flats. (At least not every day.) So, over time, you (Long Zipper) begin to lower your standards of what is an acceptable way of dressing yourself. A shirt covered in blood stains is considered work wear. Pleated-front khakis two sizes too large that a random guest left in your house five years ago become your “comfortable” pants. Anything clean becomes your “going-out outfit.” It’s a slippery slope.

We’ve come to the crux of our problem: pants. (See Exhibit A below.)

Many of Long Zipper’s jeans button at chest height. One pair (Exhibit A) is peg-legged, and has the words “Pepe, London” embroidered on their back pocket. Who is Pepe? Why did he have his jeans embroidered in the UK? Where did Long Zipper acquire Pepe’s pants? It was a long and sordid road though the 1990’s. We’ll leave it at that.

Please send words of encouragement to Long Zipper, who is reluctant to let go of her pants. Please tell her to burn them, to liberate her belly button. With your help, we will find a solution.