Shattered Reality! Podcast: Madero, Spiritism, and the Mexican Revolution

This past week for Shattered Reality! podcast Kate Valentine and Fahrusha interviewed me about my latest book,  Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Considered Mexico's "Apostle of Democracy," Francisco I. Madero was the leader of the 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. In the year he launched the Revolution he wrote Manual espírita, then published it in 1911 as "Bhima," a pen name taken from the Bhagavad-Gita, when he was president-elect. What's it all about?

>> Listen in here <<

(Transcript to be posted shortly)

I'm always delighted to talk about Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution-- which includes my translation of Madero's Manual espírita as Spiritist Manual-- and I have been fortunate to do so many a time since it came out in early 2014. 

For those looking for a more scholarly discussion, on the book's webpage you can find my lectures about Madero, Spiritism, and the Mexican Revolution for the UCSD Center for US-Mexican Studies (podcast); University of Texas El Paso (transcript); and The American Literary Translators Association Conference (transcript), among others, plus an ample and frequently updated page of Resources for Researchers.

In scholarly venues, with noted exceptions, I usually find myself before an audience flummoxed to horror by the idea of Mexico's revolutionary hero as a Spiritist medium, so it was a fun treat to have this freewheeling podcast conversation with Kate Valentine, an expert on UFOs, and Fahrusha, a well-known professional psychic. They were not in the least kerfuffled by, for example, discussions of channeling the dead, table tipping, and apparitions--  to mention only a few of Francisco I. Madero's esoteric enthusiasms. 

Whether you relish discussions of the paranormal or not, if you have an interest in Mexico per se, I warmly recommend the Shattered Reality! interview with Andrew Chestnut, professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, about his book Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint. Of late there has been a raft of sensationalist reporting on this visually spectacular cult which originated in Mexico City and is now popular among narco-traffickers, prisoners, and black magic practitioners, among others. Chestnut provides a well-grounded history of Santa Muerte (he identifies Aztec influences, as well as Spanish representations of the Grim Reaper, imported with the Conquest in the 16th century), and some very crunchy sociological insights. 

(I am often asked if Francisco I. Madero's Spiritism had anything to do with La Santa Muerte. The answer is a resounding no.)

>> Again, listen to my Shattered Reality podcast interview here.

Some of my other interviews on Madero, Spiritism, and the Mexican Revolution include:

> Jeffrey Mishlove's television show New Thinking Allowed

> Greg Kaminsky's podcast Occult of Personality

> Stephan Woodman's The Mexican Labyrinth

> University of Chicago Social Sciences Division newsletter

> All Q & A here.

Your comments are always welcome.

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No spam. Nor ham.

Newsletter goes out every other month-ish.

Book review for Literal:

Ax of Apocalypse: Streiber and Kripal's 

The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

Peyote and the Perfect You: Some Notes

On Francisco I. Madero as Medium:

An Interview with Rev. Stephen Hermann, 

Author of Mediumship Mastery

William Curry's Teresita

The Biography of Teresa de Urrea, la Santa de Cabora

Monarchy in Mexico: The Super Crunchy Conversation with M.M. McAllen About Maximilian and Carlota

It has been a while since I posted the podcast of my super crunchy conversation with historian M.M. McAllen about her very fine narrative history, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico. Since one of my own books, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, is about this same period, believe it, we got super crunchy in there. 

At long last the transcript is now available!

>> Read the M.M. McAllen Transcript <<

>> Listen in to the M.M. McAllen Podcast <<

If you're not familiar with Mexico's most peculiarly glamorous and hyper-complex (and very violent) transnational episode, listen in, you will learn a lot. And even if you already know about Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention, you're in for a treat yummier than champurrado.

About the Transcripts
Thanks to writer's guru Jane Friedman's wise suggestion to share transcripts of my podcasts, I have begun posting them for both my Conversations with Other Writers series and Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project. Although I do revise the transcripts, no, I don't do them myself-- if I did, I am quite sure every last brain cell would be fried like the proverbial egg on a Mexicali sidewalk! I use CLK Transcription. They do a fine and reasonably priced job, and I warmly recommend them.

About Upcoming Podcasts
So when is the next conversation with another writer? Sometime in 2017, because I am at work on a book about Far West Texas. 

As for those Marfa Mondays podcasts, which are apropos of the Far West Texas book, stay tuned for Marfa Mondays podcast #21... I am still working on it... Podcasts 22, 23 and 24 have been scheduled and I hope to have a complete draft of the book by the end of this year. In the meantime, I invite you to listen in any time to the previous 20 Marfa Mondays podcasts.

Multitudinous Transcripts of Yore

More transcripts from the Conversations with Other Writers series:
> Rose Mary Salum
> Sergio Troncoso
> Michael K. Schuessler
> Edward Swift
> Sara Mansfield Taber
> Solveig Eggerz
This is an ongoing occasional series. Another will be available in 2017.

Selected interview transcripts from the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project:
> Raymond Caballero: On Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas
> Israel Campos: BBQ Pitmaster in Pecos
> Greg Williams: Gifts of the Ancient Ones, the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands
> Dallas Baxter: This Precious Place
> Michael Stevens et al: Cowboy Songs by Cowboys
> Mary Baxter: Painting the Big Bend
> Paul Graybeal: Marfa's Moonlight Gemstones
There will be 24 in the Marfa Mondays series; 20 have been posted to date. The 21st will be posted shortly.

Your comments are always welcome.

CLICK HERE.

Newsletter? Yes indeed.

It goes out every other month-ish.

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Maximilian ~ Carlota Research Blog

Q & A with Texas Historian Carolina Castillo Crimm

Q & A with Mexican Historian Alan Rojas Orzechowski 

About Santiago Rebull, Maximilian's Court Painter 

and Later, Professor of Diego Rivera

Podcasting for Writers:

To Commit or Not (or Vaguely?)

A Conversation with Solveig Eggerz, Author of the Novel Seal Woman

The complete transcript is now available of my podcast conversation with Solveig Eggerz about Seal Woman, her vividly poetic historical novel of Iceland. I highly recommend her novel, and am heartened to see that since our conversation, Seal Woman has been reissued in a handsome new edition from Unbridled Books.

A couple of quotes from the conversation:

"Iceland is really just the setting. For me, there's this particular phenomenon that's going on and it could have occurred anywhere, really. It's the notion of carrying within you everything that has happened to you in the past, and bringing it into a new environment, and then having to deal with your daily life while being haunted by everything that you're carrying around inside of you. Now, since publishing this here and doing a lot of book talks here in this country, I have sort of learned what the story is about in psychological terms because people have told me that they, too, have experienced this notion of carrying something around inside you. I have people telling me how they carry Iowa inside themselves all their lives, even though they never were in Iowa, but their mothers were."

"[W]riting a novel is way more important than publishing a novel. [Laughs] I'm working on a third novel now and just solving the riddle of how these characters interact and how this is all going to work out, that is my big task. Publishing?... I don't think people should be writing with publishing in mind. If you only have publishing in mind, then you're going to be losing a lot of the experience of really producing something that you are happy with yourself. The gap between these two is huge." 

> You can also listen in anytime to the podcast of this conversation here. 

> More podcasts and transcripts from my Conversations with Other Writers are here. The latest in this occasional series is my conversation with historian M.M. McAllen about her magnifcent narrative history of 1860s Mexico, Maximilian and Carlota. A transcript of that podcast will be available shortly. Other podcasts in this series include conversations with Rose Mary Salum, Sergio Troncoso, Sara Mansfield Taber, Michael K. Schuessler, and Edward Swift.

Meanwhile, I am working on podcast #21 in the projected 24 podcast series, Marfa Mondays, exploring Marfa, Texas and environs, which is apropos of my book in-progress about the Trans-Pecos. Listen in to any one or all of those 20 "Marfa Mondays" podcasts here. 

P.S. My every-other-monthly-ish newsletter with updates on podcasts, publications and upcoming workshops is going out to subscribers soon. I welcome you to sign up here. It's an automatic opt-in /opt-out anytime via mailchimp.com, and yes, it is free.


> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Q & A with Roger Greenwald,

Poet and Literary Translator of Gunnar Harding

Q & A with Independent Publisher Michele Orwin,

Founding Editor of Bacon Press Books

Edward Swift Interview: 

The Big Thicket, New York, the Orphic Journey, 

San Miguel de Allende, the Sierra Gorda & More

Podcasting for Writers:

To Commit or Not (or Vaguely?)

CLICK HERE.

Café San Martín: Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena at the Café Passé in Tucson, Arizona

Sparkling sky and only a jeans jacket on the night before Halloween, University of Arizona students everywhere, in witches' hats and zombie makeup: that's how it was in Tucson when, as part of the American Literary Translators Conference "Café Latino" bilingual reading fiesta at Café Passé in Tucson, I read my translation, together with the Spanish original, of Mexican poet Agustín Cadena's poem "Café San Martín." That translation appears in poet Sarah Cortez's recent anthology, Goodbye Mexico (Texas Tech Press).

> Read Cadena's poem and about Goodbye Mexico here.

> Listen to the recording of my reading of Cadena's "Cafe San Martin" in the Café Passé as a podcast here.

Alas, Cadena could not be in Tucson because he lives in Hungary, where he teaches Latin American Literary in Debrecen. Follow his blog, El vino y la hiel.

Cadena's name and many works -- he is incredibly prolific and writes in almost every genre--were mentioned many times over the course of this year's ALTA conference. My dear amiga Patricia Dubrava, who also translates Cadena's poems and short fiction, shared a panel with me on the following day. 

> Read about that panel, and my talk for that panel, here.

It was an extra special honor to read Cadena's poem and my translation because not only is Cadena a treasure of a writer-- among the very finest Mexico has ever produced-- but he has translated many of my works, including the most recent Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution (as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana). 


The audience was also especially distinguished, including Jeffrey C. Barnett, Mary Berg, Ellen Cassedy, Dick Cluster,  Pamela Carmel, Jill Gibian, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Suzanne Jill Levine, Angela McEwan, Barbara Paschke, Liliana Valenzuela, and so many other writers, poets and literary translators of note. 

And a very special thank you to Alexis Levitin, my favorite Portuguese translator (and, by the way, editor of Brazil: A Traveler's Literary Companion), who organized and MC'ed the reading.




P.S. I will be teaching the workshop "Podcasting for Writers" as part of the San Miguel Writers Conference this February 2016 in Mexico. More about that on my workshop schedule page and on the San Miguel Writers Conference page.

Five Quick Questions for Agustín Cadena

Q & A with Agustin Cadena

(Tameme)

Cadena's "Lady of the Seas" in Robert Giron's ArLiJo

La ofrenda debida by Agustín Cadena

Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion

listen to a podcast of the preface

plus read the short story by Agustin Cadena

Translating Across the Border

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers:

Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

CLICK HERE.

A Conversation with Sara Mansfield Taber, author of "Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy's Daughter"

An age ago-- December 2011, to be exact-- I interviewed one of my favorite writers, literary journalist and poet Sara Mansfield Taber for my Conversations with Other Writers occasional podcast series. Well, it may have taken me almost four years, but today's the day the transcript finally went up onto my website. 

Read and/or listen in any time to the interview with Sara Mansfield Taber (and find show notes) >>here<<.

(In case you were wondering whether I was somehow blessed with 48 hours in the day,  the answer is no, ho ho, I use CLK Transcription, which I found via Debra Eckerling's Write Online! newsletter and I do warmly recommend them. It was Jane Friedman-- another warm recommendation-- who urged me to start posting transcripts of my podcasts.)

You'll notice I've only posted one Conversation with Others Writer podcast this year-- an interview with Rose Mary Salum, the Houston, Texas-based Mexican poet, writer and visionary editor. Why not more? It's not for lack of enthusiasm on my part-- I relish talking with other writers-- but this year I've been putting my podcasting time into my "Marfa Mondays" Podcasting Project and the (related) book I'm writing about Far West Texas, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas. 

That said, on a recent foray to San Antonio-- en route to visit the rock art of the Lower Pecos-- I did manage to record an interview for my "Conversations with Other Writers" series with Mary Margaret McAllen, a super crujiente one about her splendid book, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico. Look for that podcast to be posted after the holidays.

I call my "Conversations with Other Writers" an "occasional series" because well, it's occasional, and it's occasional because podcasting on occasion beats not doing it at all! 

By the way, if you're interested in learning to podcast, while I may not be the world's Podcasting Poobah with a PhD in Sound Engineering, I do turn 'em out of the oven in my writerly fashion, and I'll tell you how in my podcasting workshop for the San Miguel Writers Conference this February. (You can also pick up my ebook based on my one day workshop for the Writer's Center, Podcasting for Writers & Other Creative Entrepreneurs, over in the Kindle store.)


> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Top 10 Books Read in 2012

#1 Sara Mansfield Taber's Born Under an Assumed Name

A Conversation with Rose Mary Salum

On Making Literary Connections

A Conversation with Michael K. Schuessler

On Pita Amor, Elena Poniatowska, Sor Juana and Alma Reed

Marfa Mondays #20 Raymond Caballero on 

Mexican Revolutionary General Pascual Orozco and Far West Texas

Marfa Mondays #19 Pitmaster Israel Campos in Pecos

CLICK HERE.

Occult of Personality: The Interview about Francisco I. Madero, Spiritism, and the Mexican Revolution

I'm ginormously honored to have been interviewed by Greg Kaminsky for his outstanding esoteric podcast, Occult of Personality. From the website:

"With a focus on authenticity, accuracy, and quality, Occult of Personality peers behind the veil to provide recorded interviews with serious esoteric practitioners, scholars, and teachers from all over the world. Established in 2006, the podcast reaches several thousand listeners each month and has been noted for the quality and depth of interviews."

> Listen in to the Occult of Personality interview here.
> More about my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, here.


P.S. Just a few of the many fascinating interviews at Occult of Personality:

The Life and Work of Henry Steel Olcott (interview with Mitch Horowitz)
William Kiesel of Ouroboros Press
Josephine McCarthy, author of The Exorcist's Handbook
Mitch Horowitz and One Simple Idea
Eastern Thought in the Western Occult World

Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe

Ingo Swann, Bon Voyage

On Francisco I. Madero as Medium: 

An Interview with Rev Stephen A. Hermann, Author of Mediumship Mastery

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

(My talk for a panel at the American Literary Translators Association Conference,

Milkwaukee, November 15, 2014)

Edward Swift Interview: The Big Thicket, New York, the Orphic Journey, San Miguel de Allende, the Sierra Gorda, and more

From my Conversations with Other Writers Podcast, a new transcript, from the 2012 interview with artist and writer Edward Swift. 

>>Listen to the podcast here.<<

C.M. Mayo: Edward Swift is one of my very favorite writers. I didn't come across his work until fairly recently, however. We met in Mexico City— I think it was in 2009— at an exhibition of our mutual friend, the Mexican painter Mariló Carral. Because Mariló went on about it, I got myself a copy of Edward's memoir, My Grandfather's Finger. And I have to say, it was such a good read that every time the subject comes up I get ridiculously effusive, and I've recommended it to almost every writer I know, and lots of other people, too, and well— we'll be talking quite a bit about this very unusual memoir in the interview.

Edward is also the author of several novels: Splendora, Principia Martindale, A Place With Promise, The Christopher Park Regulars, Mother of Pearl, Miss Spellbinder's Point of View, and most recently, The Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint. I'm going to read to you a little bit from his website, edwardswiftartist.com.

"Edward Swift made his debut as a novelist in 1978 with Splendora, which the Houston Chronicle praised as one of the year's best comic novels. He has since written five other acclaimed novels, as well as a memoir, My Grandfather's Finger.

Of Splendora, The Washington Post says, "Splendora reads like an exuberant fairy tale about a young man's search for himself." And writing in The New York Times book review, Anne Tyler wrote, "Edward Swift has a particular gift for capturing the continuous low musical murmur of small town gossip. He knows how stories seem to grow on their own, drifting almost unnoticeably toward the mythical."

And of A Place With Promise— which received glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Boston Globe, and many others— in the Los Angeles Times Carolyn See (no easy customer, by the way), writes, "A Place With Promise is a dignified, stately, intelligent book, everything a novel should be."

[MUSIC]

C.M. Mayo: It's the morning of February 22, 2012, and I'm in San Miguel de Allende with Edward Swift, and you might hear some chickens crowing, and children playing, and I don't know what. We have a lot of sounds going on here, and that's just the way it is.

We're in his workshop by his house— and I'm going to ask a lot of questions about the house, because it has a great story. So Edward, I am so happy to see you! I am so happy to be here to talk to you! This is really a thrill and an honor.

Edward Swift: Well, it's a thrill for me too. What in the world do you want to talk about?

C.M. Mayo: What in the world do I want to talk about? You have so many books. You have so many books! The one I love the most is My Grandfather's Finger, because it's the first one that I read by you. And you have a new novel, The Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint. You have several other novels, Splendora, A Place With Promise, and other books. And you have such an interesting life. But let's talk starting with page three of the essay that you wrote for Gulf Coast.

Edward Swift: What's on page three? I have no idea!

C.M. Mayo: [Laughs] "Come In, Mr. Proust: Remembering Marguerite Young." This is one of the most beautiful essays by a writer about his mentor, about learning to be a writer, that I have ever read.

Edward Swift: Thank you. Marguerite Young was very special to me. I sought her out. I read her book and it spoke to me, and I knew immediately that I had to not only know her, but study with her.

C.M. Mayo: And you studied with her for a long time.

Edward Swift: Four years in class at the New School for Social Research, and outside of the classroom we remained very close for about six years. And I met her for coffee almost every week, sometimes twice a week, down in the Village in New York in a little place called Reichert's, and then later on in a coffee shop called Pennyfeathers. And I was one of Marguerite's children until I was about 35 years old.

C.M. Mayo: So this was in the '70s.

Edward Swift: Yes, the early '70s.

C.M. Mayo: Greenwich Village, New York City.

Edward Swift: Yes.

C.M. Mayo: A very exciting time to be in New York.

Edward Swift: Well, it was the very last of the bohemian period in New York. Bohemian life was still alive in the Village. Now it is not. It is far too expensive now for artists to be able to move into the Village, so it's become very gentrified and full of families, and Wall Streeters, and people with a great deal of money who can afford those old brownstones and old apartment houses that we used to live in that cost nothing.

C.M. Mayo: And now they're several million dollars.

Edward Swift: Now they're several million dollars.

C.M. Mayo: [Laughs] You wrote in this essay that the image of the whale was of supreme importance to her. Quote, "To be swallowed up by the world and regurgitated, reborn with enlightenment, that," she said, "is the way of the artist. Some of you go into the whale but never come out again. Some of you go in and come out, but haven't the slightest idea you've entered another room. You walk through the door without seeing the portal."

You've been an artist for many, many years. You have written book after book after book. Your know, most people want to write a book, and never write it. Or they write it, and then it's such a searing experience they give up. But you have kept at it, and kept at it, and kept at it, and you also make art. You really are an artist, decade after decade. Do you think it's being swallowed up by the whale? 

[CONTINUE READING]

Edward Swift in San Miguel de Allende: 

How to Build a House Without Losing Your Mind

Sonja D. Williams on Writing 

Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom

It's Not Like Making a Peanut-Butter-And-Jelly Sandwich 

But It's Not Rocket Science, Either, 

or: How I Made My POD (And You Can, Too)

Conversations with Other Writers Podcast Archives