Brutal Journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the Epic First Crossing of America by Paul Schneider

It's peculiar that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca is not better known. That old saw, "truth is stranger than fiction" applies in his case, or at least his version of events, which one might as well believe because the fantastic fact is, Cabeza de Vaca did reappear in northern Mexico in late April of 1536, one of only four survivors of the 400 who participated in the Narváez expedition to Florida in March of 1528. He left a memoir, translated as Castaways, and based on this, as well as other documents and archaelogical research about the peoples he encountered, Paul Schnieder has written a jaw-stopping story that reads like a novel. It's only January, but without a doubt, Brutal Journey will go on my top 10 books read list for 2012. A few links for surfers:

Paul Schneider's website

The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca 1542, translated by Fanny Bandelier, 1905

Nicholás Echeverría's movie, Cabeza de Vaca, on Netflix

A bit about Guillermo Sheridan's screenplay for that same movie

Angell Expeditions, owned by Charlie Angell, expert wilderness guide, who is very knowledgable about the areas Cabeza de Vaca visited in the Big Bend region (La Junta de los Ríos and northwest).


UPDATE : Listen to my interview with Charles Angell.

Links Noted: Yayoi Kusama, Kevin Kelly, Thumb Thing, Sam Quinones, Ken Ackerman, Joy of Books, Ken Gordon

The World According to Yayoi Kusama
(The Financial Times)
A very unusual elderly artist whose polkadotted pumpkins fetch the price of a ski condo.

The Art of Endless Upgrades
(Kevin Kelly's kk.org The Technium blog)
I was thinking just the same thing the other day when I had to upgrade my operating system for the second time in a year.
(KK's latest book, What Technology Wants, is on my Top 10 Books Read 2011)

The greatest pug picture ever
(Burro Hall)
By someone who has a highly strange sense of humor.

The Thumb Thing
The Spoonsisters
(Did they just come up with this in the 21st century? I think I need one of these.)

Sam Quinones' True Tales
Cool, generous, amazing, engaging, and frequently updated.

Viral History
A blog hosted by historian Ken Ackerman
Highly recommended. Sign up for the free newsletter.

The Joy of Books Video
Yikes, 2 million plus views already!

People Who Claim to Communicate / Have Communicated with Disembodied Consciousnesses
My updated list for surfers in the more esoteric waters. (Apropos of my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911. Stay away from those Ouija boards...)

CleanSlateNow.org
Hopping freaked about about that 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission? Ken Gordon is doing something about it and so can you.

More anon.

Newsletter January 2012

Last year, after I found out about mailchimp on the bodaciously good swissmiss design (and general creativity) blog, I signed up and started sending a newsletter about my books, podcasts, upcoming writing workshops, etc., every once in a while (I'm aiming for 4 - 6 times a year) for those who would like to receive it. (Read about my newsletter philosophy here; sign up to receive the next one-- which will probably go out in March or April-- here.)



Dear Subscribers,

Warmest wishes for the new year and welcome to all, and an especially warm welcome to those of you who are new to this list. There's something in this newsletter for writers, anyone interested in Mexico, Iceland, undercover CIA agents (yeah!) and West Texas.

The past couple of months have been all about podcasting and a bit about making videos. As a writer enchanted by the myriad possibilities of enhancing text in the digital age, this is so exciting! Thanks to Ruben Pacheco . . READ MORE

Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Welcome and Introduction

Today, Monday, January 16, 2012 is the launch of the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas and Environs in 24 Podcasts, one per month through 2013. This project is lieu of (though maybe in addition to) writing magazine articles as I proceed with a book project the title of which... well, it's way too early to say much about that. Suffice it to say it will be a travel memoir about West Texas.

>>Listen in to today's podcast here.

The next Marfa Mondays podcast will go live on Monday February 20th. I am not sure yet but I expect it will be about Cabeza de Vaca's epic journey through the region in the 16th century.

It's been an age since I did some travel writing. My book on Baja California, Miraculous Air, came out in (ayy!) 2002. Since then, I published a couple of long essays in literary journals, (The Essential Francisco Sosa or, Picadou's Mexico City and From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion), but almost all my recent writing has been either blogging or fiction, e.g., The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (2009), another novel in progress, and translations of work by Mexican writers Agustín Cadena, Álvaro Enrigue, and Francisco I. Madero. I am very much looking forward to doing more travel writing; apart from venturing into odd corners of the world, one of the things I love about it is the chance to interview people.

Follow the Marfa Mondays Podcasts on twitter @marfamondays or sign up for my free newsletter here.

Yes, I Finished War and Peace on December 31, 2011

One of my resolutions for 2011 was to read War and Peace. This was, in fact, also a resolution for 2009 and for 2010... so, round about late October, I realized that if I didn't want to (sigh) put it on my resolutions for 2012 list, I'd better get cracking. It also occured to me that, as a novelist myself and a creative writing teacher, it would be an excellent exercise to keep a blog.

I'm always telling my students how important it is for a writer to read not as a passive consumer, nor as an English major, but as a fellow craftsman looking to see how, precisely, the thing was made. Some questions to ask are, what strikes you as especially good and why? Can you identify a specific technique that you could use? And if anything bores you, why does it bore you? And so on. (I'll be teaching a two day "Techniques of Fiction" workshop in San Miguel de Allende on February 20th and 21st and so I'll be updating my handouts on using point of view, detail, dialogue, etc etc with some examples from War and Peace.)

It turned out that throughout a rather crushing holiday season I was able to keep up with the reading but not, alas, the blog. I'm almost caught up with the blog, however. Meanwhile, you can check it out here.

Final word: wow. War and Peace is one of the best books I have ever read. It does take some investment and persistence, especially in the first few chapters, but it will blow the top of your head off. I'll have quite a bit more to say about it in the next few days as I finish up the blogging there.

P.S. This week I'm also getting ready to launch the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project on January 16th. Follow on twitter @marfamondays



***
UPDATE (January 14): The Reading War & Peace is finished-- check out the conclusions (no worries, not a plot spoiler) here.
***

Top 10 Books Read 2011

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
I have so much to say about this, why, I wrote a whole blog.

2. What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
The concept of the "technium" is something I find myself coming back to again and again. The author writes a brilliant blog called The Technium.

3. The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healerby Kyriacos C. Markides
This was one of the many books I read in preparing the introduction to my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911. Sociologist Markides' work stands out among the many books on esoteric subjects not only for the quality of the writing, but the author's open-heartedness combined with discernment. If anyone were to ask me where to start reading on the subjects of healers and mediums, I would tell them to start with Markides.

4. Holy Sh*t: Managing Manure to Save Mankind by Gene Logsdon
Highly amusing. I've become a fan of the author's blog, The Contrary Farmer, where, by the way, you can download a free e-book of his best posts.

5. Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and Living in Viet Nam by Wayne Karlin
Transcendent and fascinating, this is one of the most important works to come out of the Viet Nam War.

6. To Be Young by Mary Luytens
Oh, those wacky Theosophists...

7. Francisco I. Madero by Stanley R. Ross
The classic of the 1950s. I have my quibbles about the book but overall, it is an impressive work of original scholarship and reads as smoothly as a good novel. I'd put it on my short list of recommended books to read about Mexico.

8. Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir by Budd Hopkins
A deeply strange book by a deeply courageous and all-around original American.

9. Peregrina: Love & Death in Mexico by Alma M. Reed, Edited and with an introduction by Michael K. Scheussler; Foreword by Elena Poiatowska
This is the memoir of Alma Reed, a San Francisco journalist, a feminist far head of her time, who came to Mexico and fell in love with Yucatan's charismatic left-leaning governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. They were engaged to be married when he was murdered in 1924.(I hope to interview Michael K. Schuessler about this book for my Conversations with Other Writers podcasts in 2012.)

10. The Beekeeper's Lament by Hannah Nordhaus

Top 10 Books Read 2010
Top 10 Books Read 2009
Top 10 Books Read 2008
Top 10 Books Read 2007
Top 10 Books Read 2006

Conversations with Other Writers: Sara Mansfield Taber, Author of Born Under an Assumed Name

Just posted on Conversations with Other Writers:
SARA MANSFIELD TABER, AUTHOR OF BORN UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME: THE MEMOIR OF A COLD WAR SPY'S DAUGHTER

-> Listen on podomatic

-> Listen on iTunes

C.M. Mayo talks with Sara Mansfield Taber, author of the memoir Born Under an Assumed Name. For Taber, growing up in Taiwan, Japan, Washington DC, the Netherlands, and Borneo was tough as well as exotic, and she found the experience even more unsettling because, as she learned at fifteen, she was the daughter of a covert CIA agent. The conversation ranges from her father's work in Asia, including his daring rescue of over a thousand Vietnamese after the fall of Vietnam to the Vietcong, and his disenchantment with the agency while working in Germany; Taber's childhood in Taiwan, highschool years in Washington DC during the Vietnam War; her previous books, including Bread of Three Rivers and Dusk on the Campo; other travel writers, reading as a writer; writing practice, and teaching writing. Recorded in December 2011. (Aprox 50 minutes).

Quick links:

-> Watch the trailer for Taber's BORN UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME

-> More about BORN UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME (and how to order)

-> More conversations with other writers, including Solveig Eggerz and Rosemary Sullivan

-> All C.M. Mayo podcasts

10 Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Writing Workshop

The article is now a podcast (about 8 1/2 minutes). Basically, this is everything I wish I'd known when I started taking writing workshops, ayyy, 20+ years ago.

--> All my podcasts
--> My podcasts for creative writers
--> Marfa Mondays podcasts coming soon (follow @marfamondays)

Yes, I'm giving a two day only "Techniques of Fiction" workshop this February 2012, directly after the San Miguel Writers Conference, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Find out more and register on-line.

More resources for writers here.

P.S. Updates on the Reading War & Peace blog asap. Whew, I'm on page 987! Moscow has burned to a charred mess, Pierre is in a pickle, and Prince Andrei has expired in a most romantic fashion.

Where the Buffalo is Marfa? About the Trailer

So, who are all these wacky people in my "Where the Buffalo is Marfa?" trailer for the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in 24 Podcasts? I have no idea. The clips and photos are all "gigs" from www.fiverr.com-- check out their profiles and many other gigs, all @ USD $5 each. All of these fiverr.com sellers were prompt and professional, and I can recommend them warmly. You can check out their gigs, their ratings-- and if you like one (maybe for a holiday greeting --or your own wacky trailer?), just hit the PayPal button.

Herewith, with my thanks, the cast:

Accordion player: squeezeboxhero

(Australian?) dude reading message and then smacking to wall: coreworkouts

American guy yelling "Marfa!" in a rant-like way: mel864

Plastic bag man: robertocarlos

Redneck character in blue sunglasses: johnwright238

Zombie: kristylynn

Psycho Welshman: facebook_poster

British banana: bethan

Peapod dancer: haleylujah

Funky dancer in brown shorts: coreworkouts (again)

Accordion guy (again): squeezeboxhero

Girl in elephant mask and Marfa sign: reticent

Guy in fur hat with Marfa sign: newsfromstreet

Swimmer with Marfa sign: rubikart

OK, what is truly mind-warping is that I don't know their real names and I don't know where they live nor where they filmed any of these. And these previously impossible, even unthinkable, digital juxtapositions interest me as something to explore in the book I'm about to start writing. When I did my last travel book, Miraculous Air, about Mexico's Baja California peninsula, in the late 1990s, almost no one (outside of a very few people in Tijuana, Ensenada and Los Cabos) was on-line and it was quite the novelty that a telephone or two had arrived in some villages. Now, looking at Marfa, Texas and environs (Alpine, Fort Davis, Valentine, Marathon, and the Big Bend), I find restaurants tweeting their breakfast menus and the local lamp shop on Youtube. I've yet to do a podcast-- the project starts in January-- but I'm already following a small community of West Texas tweeters, and you can follow me @marfamondays.

---> Read about the Marfa Mondays Project

Reading War & Peace

I'm plumb in the middle of it: wow. Reading War & Peace has long been on my "bucket list" and it is such a delight to find that it more than deserves its reputation-- and it looks like, yes, I will get to the end of it before December 31st. Right now I'm on page 722, just after the old prince (Andrei's father) has expired of a stroke and the French are about to swarm over his estate. Talk about tension!

Blogging-wise, though, I'm catching up, only on about page 192.

The latest: the part where Rostov falls in battle.

I'm keeping a log (blog) not to summarize the novel (many others have done that), but as an aid to help me read it as a writer: always asking, what do I admire and why? What bores me or confuses me and why? Above all, what can I learn from this for my own writing?

--> Read the Reading War & Peace blog here.