ON HOPE; or, HOW TO CHEER YOURSELF WITH THE CERTAINTY OF FAILURE

the internet was down on my weekday computer, so i was forced into other distractions and had no choice but to plan a post in my head with naught but an old newspaper for inspiration. unfortunately, the arts and leisure section of the february 27th new york times featured a profile of lorin stein, focusing in particular on his manhattan party going. i was set ill at ease by how nonchalantly good in pants mr. stein came off in his profile and with reading the week in review from two weeks ago as my only alternative (what a day not to have a book in my bag), i went for a stroll to be inspired by the sights of the social services district and hatch a plan for becoming the editor of the paris review in eight years. with that magazine on my mind, i decided to head for powell's, which i hadn't visited, i think, since its recent layoffs announcement.

maybe i was distracted by trying to decide if i should ask an employee whether powell's was going to be okay to see if i got the canned response that powell's management had prescribed for staff in the wake of the announcement, but i bypassed the periodicals in the front room and walked directly into the blue room. p...q...r...it took me a full circle of an aisle to find the one book by mercè rodoreda on the shelves. it wasn't death in spring, the book i'd hoped to find, but i decided to buy the time of the doves because, well, i'd have bought and read anything by rodoreda, to whom i was recently introduced through her collected stories. if she's not my new favorite author (we should probably get to know each other better first), she certainly has me a bit obsessed. rodoreda wrote in catalan. from the introduction to the time of the doves (the rain had started coming down in sheets since i'd been inside, so i gave myself time to read): "the world has been slow to become aware of [catalan writing's] virtues -- partly due to a lack of good translations, and partly because of the franco government's deliberate suppression." "a writer's native language is usually his or her only medium of expression. if a language dies or is killed," david rosenthal, who translated as well as introduced the book, goes on, "then the writer also dies. thus, as with many catalan authors, [rodoreda's] personal story is of a kind of death followed by a recent and partial rebirth." rosenthal's translation is copyrighted 1981. it would seem that insufficient light has been shed on his subject since then -- though, to say nothing of the novels i haven't read, rodoreda's stories at least are about love in the worst way, and sometimes is nicer to stay in the dark.

the rain hadn't let up and the internet probably wasn't back up anyway, so i took my book with me to the small press section to scan the spines of old editions of the paris review. mercè rodoreda died in 1983. i bet lorin stein would print it if i could get an interview.