Showing posts with label Agustín Cadena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agustín Cadena. Show all posts

Chimalistac Mañana

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Some Mexico City news: The Spanish edition of my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, translated by Mexican poet and novelist Agustin Cadena as Odisea metafisica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita, will be presented tomorrow Wednesday February 25, 2015 at 7 PM in the Centro de Estudios de la Historia de México CARSO in Chimalistac. The panel will include Mexican historians Luis Cerda, Javier Garciadiego, Manuel Guerra de Luna, and Yolia Tortolero Cervantes. This will be for the beautiful edition just published by Rose Mary Salum's Literal Publishing, based in Houston, Texas.

The venue, by the way, is the home of Francisco I. Madero's personal library, a treasure-trove of extremely rare esoterica, including works by Annie Besant, Dr; Peebles, Majweski, Alan Kardec, and one inscribed to Madero by its author,  Dr Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, aka "Maestro Huiracocha" who was a his personal doctor, fellow Mason, Spiritist, and Rosicrucian.

Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolucion Mexicana is now available in major bookstores in Mexico City. If you show up at the event, you will no doubt learn some very interesting things and I shall be delighted to autograph a copy for you.

The Kindle and print-on-demand editions of Odisea metafisica are also available from Dancing Chiva, as are the English editions. All super easy ordering options are right >> here.<<

>> Listen in anytime to my talk about this book (in English) for the UCSD Center for US-Mexican Studies.

>> Listen in anytime to my talk about this book (in English) for PEN San Miguel at Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

>> Read excerpts in English and/ or in Spanish

>> Check out the reviews 

Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

(Want to know when I'm doing another event? I welcome you to sign up for my free newsletter.)
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Restituto Rodríguez and an Excerpt from The Museum on the Parque Juárez

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Really, I am at work on my Far West Texas book (I don't plan to interrupt it again as I did to write Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution), but well, actually, I am at work on a novel, if at a glacial pace. It's a comedy of manners set in an imaginary town with some features (such as the Parque Juárez) that might sound like San Miguel de Allende... or Antigua... or someplace west of Peru in an alternative universe overgrown with ferns. 

Anyway, I am delighted to announce that my amiga the Mexican writer Araceli Ardón has brought out a gorgeous anthology of artworks by surrealist painter Restituto Rodriguéz paired with original works, apropos of those artworks, by Mexican writers including Araceli Ardón, Agustín Cadena, Mónica Lavín, Silvia Molina, Pedro Angel Palou... and Yours Truly, with an excerpt from the novel-in-progress. 

(Restituto Rodríguez, Surrealista was published by the State of Querétaro, Fondo Editorial Querétaro, Código Áureo, Valverde Internacional, and the City of San Juan del Río, Querétaro. ISBN 978-607-96622-0-2).

Herewith:


Restituto Rodríguez, Surrealista
Edited by Araceli Ardón
Showing "El Prestigio," 2005
and the text of C.M. Mayo's
"Excerpt from the novel The Museum on the Parque Juárez"



Excerpt from the novel The Museum on the Parque Juárez


By C.M. Mayo
Pam Havelotte, accompanied by her advisor, Don Teddy, had been drinking café and rejecting pinturas all morning. Her Museum on the Parque Juárez had been filled but for one wall, this trumpet-blast of a wall, that needed a painting, one very special one... for it would be the first encountered by visitors arriving from the north gallery, that is to say, those agog from Liliana Cartwright’s early oeuvre, including the very significant sculptures, Jirafa IV and Jitomate VII. 
And now, upon the easel: the Restituto Rodríguez.
Teddy stirred another lump of sugar into Mrs. Havelotte’s café. He went on in his pudding-smooth and peppered-with-Spanish way, while she, silently sipping, wondered: What did the artist mean by that priest, looking left, so full of the dread of Judgement Day? The reptile perched on his head—such tiny claws, buckteeth! The umbrella, the helicopters, the waif-like figure on a chair on a pillar... Whatever Don Teddy said, that it was evocativa, rather than narrativa, that it deconstructed something... multifaceted, geometría de composición... She had long ago learned to settle into the woollen-walled comfiness of her own intuitions as easily as if she’d twisted a dial behind her earring, for Don Teddy was so wise. If he’d told her to live in a tent in Antarctica, she would have asked him, what equipment should she buy?
Pam Havelotte handed her cup and saucer to a gloved hand that seemed to disappear as surreptitiously as it had appeared. Still considering the painting, one arm akimbo, she took a step back. Then she crossed her arms. “Yes!” 
Teddy shot out his bottom lip. Mrs. Havelotte was going to find out, but he was not going to be the one to tell her, that the padre in this picture was the very doppelgänger of Teriasu’s first husband, Alfonzo, who had disappeared one fine morning to be turned up by her detectives, three years later, half naked and bald, in an ashram in Idaho. And whether it was or it wasn’t, he realized now, with a cold twinge in his stomach, Teriasu was going to conclude that the figure in that chair was herself. It was Teriasu who had sold her family’s 17th century stables so that her classmate from Sacred Heart, Pamelita, as she called Mrs. Havelotte, could elbow her museum onto the Parque Juárez. Why had Teriasu done that? It was a puzzling thought, like that little green lizard, and as he walked off into the Parque Juárez, arm-in-arm with Mrs Havelotte, Teddy had the sense that rain, somehow, was about to fall from the blue sky, and that that creature had lept out of its two dimensions and perched itself on his head. All through lunch, he kept patting the top of his head.


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Here is my translation of the text on the back of the book:


Restituto Rodríguez was born in 1931 in an old house in the Historic Center of San Juan del Río, Querétaro. He studied accounting and worked in various governmental agencies until his retirement, at which time he took a road of no return, dedicating himself body and soul to painting, a jealous lover that had bewitched him since childhood.
The two genres of his work have been portraits and surrealism, the language of which he uses with great fluency. In his youth, he imbibed the works of masters in this genre such as Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. In time he worked out his own style; today, his work, an audacious proposal, is completely derived from his personal experience, nurtured by the events of eight decades  in which he has lived with his eyes open and soul unveiled.
This book contains a  selection of his works together with the valuable contribution of 20 outstanding writers, offering poetry and short fiction from the United States, Hungary, Spain, Panama and various parts of Mexico, all inspired by the fantastic images created by Restituto Rodríguez.

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Madero Conference in Mexico City's National Palace: From Spiritism to the Bhagavad-Gita and Other Esoteric Influences

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Francisco I. Madero
It's in Spanish, of course, but it's worth noting here because 

(1) I know that many of you, dear readers, also read in Spanish;

(2) I'm speaking in the conference, December 2, together with Ignacio Solares, one of Mexico's most respected novelists, and; 

(3) this a major public reexamination of Francisco I. Madero, one of the most outstanding figures in Mexican history, for he was not only the leader of the 1910 Revolution, but President of Mexico from 1911- 1913.

All the lectures are free and open to the public and will take place in the Recinto Juárez of Mexico's National Palace.

FRANCISCO I. MADERO:
DEL ESPIRITISMO AL BHAGAVAD-GITA, Y OTRAS INFLUENCIAS ESOTERICAS

November 6, 2014
Yolia Tortolero
Nueve lecturas sobre Francisco I. madero y su creencia en el espiritismo

November 11
Lucrecia Infante
De espíritus, mujeres e igualdad. Laureana Wright y el Espiritismo Kardeciano en México

November 18
Alejandro Rosas
La Revolución de los espíritus
Manuel Guerra
Los escritos espiritistas perdidos de Francisco I. Madero

November 25
Carlos Francisco Martínez Moreno
Masonería, espiritismo e hindismo: senderos comunicantes en los tres pilares místicos de Francisco I. Madero

December 2
C.M. Mayo
Odisea metafísica hacia la revolución Mexicana: 
Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto Manual espírita
Ignacio Solares
Madero, el otro


COMMENTS always welcome.

















about my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, 
for the University of Chicago Social Science Division newsletter.



I'm presenting the English edition of the book at the 



Read more about the Spanish edition, 
which has been beautifully translated by 
Mexican poet and novelist Agustín Cadena.


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My Novel about Palacio in Palacio

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This is all in Spanish, but I know many of you, dear readers, do speak it. So here's the big news: my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, translated by Agustín Cadena as El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, will be featured on Tuesday July 15, 2014 in the series of talks on (my translation) "Maximilian in Mexico, A Fictionalized History." The talks are all free and open to the public and held in the Recinto de Homenaje a Don Benito Juárez of Mexico City's National Palace. 
It will be a very special honor for me to present the novel together with Agustín Cadena, for his translation is such a superb one; he is one of Mexico's most accomplished literary writers (and I have been honored to translated some of his short stories); and he is an expert on the novels of the 19th century. (Those baggy monsters… which mine most definitely is.)
(Don't know who Maximilian was and why Mexicans find him so endlessly worthy of conferences and novels and conferences about the novels? Start here.)

Click here for the official announcement

CICLO DE ENTREVISTAS Y CONFERENCIAS:
MAXIMILIANO EN MÉXICO, UNA HISTORIA NOVELADA
Las escrituras de la historia son variables y a su vez coincidentes. La intrigante pasión por develar la memoria colectiva atrapa por igual tanto a historiadores como a novelistas. Mientras el historiador se ocupa de que los hechos narrados sean verdaderos, el novelista pretende sobre todo que estos sean verosímiles. Sin embargo, cuando el novelista se ocupa de narrar los “grandes” relatos de la historia, éste no puede fácilmente escabullirse del dato histórico, materia prima para el historiador. 
Para conocer las claves de la novela histórica y experiencia creativa de la escritura en voz de algunos de sus representantes, el Recinto de Homenaje a Don Benito Juárez organizó el ciclo de entrevistas presenciales y conferencias: MAXIMILIANO EN MÉXICO, UNA HISTORIA NOVELADA.

JULIO
Conferencia
NOTICIAS DEL IMPERIO DE FERNANDO DEL PASO
José Manuel Villalpando
Martes 1, 17:00 horas/ Entrada libre


Entrevista
IMPERIO. LA NOVELA DE MAXIMILIANO DE HÉCTOR ZAGAL
Entrevista al autor por Bertha Hernández
Martes 8, 17:00 horas/ Entrada libre 


Conferencia
EL ÚLTIMO PRÍNCIPE DEL IMPERIO MEXICANO DE C.M. MAYO
Agustín Cadena
Martes 15, 17:00 / Entrada libre


Entrevista
LA DERROTA DE DIOS. LA HISTORIA PERDIDAD DE MIGUEL MIRAMÓN DE JOSÉ LUIS TRUEBA LARA 
Entrevista al autor por Leopoldo Silberman
Jueves  24, 17:00 horas


Conferencia
EL CERRO DE LAS CAMPANAS: MEMORIAS DE UN GUERRILLERO DE JUAN ANTONIO MATEOS
Alfredo Moreno Flores
Martes 29, 17:00 horas / Entrada Libre

AGOSTO

Entrevista
LA LEJANÍA DEL TESORO DE PACO IGNACIO TAIBO II
Entrevista al autor por Bertha Hernández
Martes 5, 17:00 horas / Entrada Libre

Entrevista
MAMÁ CARLOTA DE ADOLFO ARRIOJA
Entrevista al autor por Ariel Ruiz
Martes 12, 17:00 horas / Entrada Libre
Entrevista
UNA EMPERATRIZ EN LA NOCHE DE MARTHA ZAMORA
Entrevista al autora por Guadalupe Lozada
Martes 19, 17:00 horas / Entrada Libre

Conferencia
JUÁREZ, EL ROSTRO DE PIEDRA DE EDUARDO ANTONIO PARRA
Carlos Mújica
Martes 26, 17 horas / Entrada Libre


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