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Issue 87, Spring 1983
Guillermo Cabrera Infante was born on April 22, 1929, in Gibara, a small town on the northern coast of the Cuban province of Oriente—also the birthplace of Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro. Because his parents were members of the Communist Party, the family was obliged to move to Havana in 1941. He grew up with a double interest: literature and cinema. In 1947, he published his first story and in 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba. Briefly jailed in 1952 for publishing a tale containing English profanities, he had to write under a pseudonym: G. Cain.
Cain became Cuba's best-known film critic. In 1957, he took part in underground, anti-Batista activities. When Batista abdicated (December 31, 1958), he worked on the newspaper Revolución, as editor of the Monday literary supplement. He traveled in the entourage of Fidel Castro through the U.S. and Latin America. In 1960, he published his first book of stories, As in Peace, So in War. By 1961, his relation with the Castro government had soured: Lunes, the literary supplement, was banned. He was named cultural attaché in Brussels in 1962, the same year G. Cain published his collected film reviews (with a preface by G. Cabrera Infante).
The manuscript version of Three Trapped Tigers was nominated for the Prix Formentor in 1965. That same year Cabrera Infante returned to Havana for his mother's funeral and left Cuba forever on October 3. He remained in Madrid until October of 1966, when he moved to London, where he lives today.
His publications available in English include: Three Trapped Tigers (1971), View of Dawn in the Tropics (1978), the essay "Bites From the Bearded Crocodile" (London Review of Books, June 1981). His most recent novel, La Habana para un infante difunto (1979), is currently being translated with the provisional title Infante's Inferno.
This interview took place in 1982, during the spring semester at the University of Virginia, where Cabrera Infante was a visiting professor. It was conducted in the living room of the house Cabrera Infante and his wife of twenty-one years, the actress Miriam Gómez, had rented for the semester—a charming, yellow, mock-Georgian home that belongs to an English professor. It is decorated in a loosely eighteenth-century style, and contains a large collection of books, mostly by eighteenth-century-style British authors.
Cabrera Infante, a devotee of small work spaces, himself a smallish person, works upstairs in a tiny, untidy study adjacent to the master bedroom. When he is not writing or talking on the telephone, he birdwatches, joining Miriam Gómez, binoculars and Peterson Guide in hand among the trees surrounding the house, or peruses tv Guide in pursuit of old movies.
The high-ceilinged living room where we talk is decorated with prints of Hogarth's Rake's Progress. Outside, a subject of great interest to Naso, the family cat, are large numbers of cardinals, robins, and starlings gathered to eat the seeds Miriam Gómez has scattered for them—her desire to feed and watch birds in conflict with her love for cats. Above the sofa where Cabrera Infante sits, Hogarth's women crowd around the drunken Rake and provide a curious counterpoint to the interview: their silent brawling mocks our supposedly genteel conversation.
How do you write?
Do you mean the position I assume at the desk?
No, no. I mean your writing habits.
In fact I don't really write all that much. I type. Nowadays I type on my brand-new Praxis 35, an Olivetti made in Japan—the old Rome-Tokyo axis now become a merger. The problem is that this typewriter, instead of becoming unruly like all my old typewriters and old girlfriends, started out imitating my wife, Miriam Gómez, by trying to do my thinking for me. It's like living in a totalitarian state. No wonder they named it Praxis. That's what Marxists call "thought in action." Praxis may make perfect for them, but not for me.
Do you jot down notes on the typewriter too?
I used to, but the notes became pages and sometimes short stories. I write down notes in my acromegalic handwriting, with letters as big as fingers on a small pocket notebook or on steno pads, which I keep everywhere—on my desk, my night table, in the kitchen. Steno pads should have a better name . . .
What better name could they have?
Sterno pads. In honor of Laurence Sterne, digressor.
Sterne? Lots of critics—to say nothing of students forced to read him—attack him because of his digressions.
I don't have to defend Sterne; he is his own defense, the Sterne line. And I certainly agree when he says that "digressions are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading."
Swift was no less devoted to digression than Sterne. What do you think of him?
The digressor as aggressor. The difference is that Swift was all saeva indignatio and that savage indignation was the motor of all his writings. You couldn't find a less playful writer among his contemporaries. Compared to Swift, Pope was a stand-up comedian.
You seem to have an affinity for English eighteenth-century satire—something people might not expect from a Cuban writer. How do you understand satire, as a literary genre?
Look, my friend, who knows what to expect from a Cuban writer, or any writer anywhere? Why not Sterne and Swift? Or Armor and Swift? At best, satire is didactic. At worst, political. This means that satires are not ludic or playful but just the opposite. They are the play wherein the satirist catches the conscience of the audience, which is why they are so closely related to sermons, religious tracts, and political pamphlets. Personally, I feel closer to Swift's motto, Vive la bagatelle, than to his epitaph. Long live trivia! Where he and I part company is the grave, where his satire is most serious, and where I would rather turn that bagatelle into "bag-a-Stella." Swift wanted to use satire, literature, "to mend the World." To me this makes writing, which should be an end in itself—literature—into something political. Any literary work that aspires to the condition of art must forget politics, religion, and, ultimately, morals. Otherwise it will be a pamphlet, a sermon, or a morality play. Even the greatest moralist of our century, Joseph Conrad, was first and foremost an entertainer.
What would you say about Solzhenitsyn?
Solzhenitsyn is a failed artist but a very successful moralist. His novels are pretentious junk, but his political writing, The Gulag Archipelago books for example, are precious masterpieces of indictment.
Is George Orwell, then, also a failure?
Yes, a failure as an artist, but a superb pamphleteer. His political essays, together with Camus's, are the best written in Europe since World War II. These men are heroes because they fight swords with words—but that doesn't make them artists.
You raise the difficult problem of reading. How do we read a satirist such as Swift?
A critic, or let's say an attentive reader, reads Gulliver's Travels and decides that Swift must either be right as an artist and wrong as a moralist or the other way around. But Swift had no such problem: he was concerned with moral issues and with deploying his arguments with the best rhetorical devices he could muster. He succeeds as an artist, but to appreciate that aspect of his work we have to set aside his moral issues. Mind you, deep down he was right about something we are not ready to admit, namely, that man is a beast, a predator, evil without redemption.
What about the fact that Swift was Dean Swift, a cleric?
That's a big problem for Swiftians: Swift believed man to be rotten through and through. For him the only hope for humanity lay in beasts. The whole structure of eighteenth-century faith in the goodness of man collapses at the first whinny of the Houyhnhnm. That's where the slogan "Four legs good, two legs bad" really originated. But Swift was serious where Orwell was mischievous.
Do you agree with this misanthropic theory?
Totally. I think Creation, Evolution, or, what it is probably—Chance—made a mistake. Man is the most dangerous mistake in the universe, a glorious but miserable mistake. He is about to destroy the entire planet, and it's the rest of Nature that will pay for it. Man, to put it in Swiftian terms Swift could never utter, is the cancer of the planet!
Is that exclamatory tone the one you use in the pulpit?
All right, you're right. The tone is too high, but the tune is true. Besides, I share Swift's love for horses and women. The difference is that I like to play with women and he lacked any erotic vocation. He was sexually active, but I think he spurned intercourse finally because while he liked the foreplay he hated what Sade loved and Yeats lamented—that sex takes place in the site of the excreta. Add to that the idea that sex meant entering a body in the places where foul things were trying to exit. Remember that in the eighteenth century sex was a prelude to venereal disease, or, even worse, the procreation of evil. You know, I think "A Modest Proposal" is meant as much as a form of belated birth control as a comic remedy for poverty and hunger in Ireland. He knew that if horses (the perfect animal) were to survive, man had to cease to exist. The notion that a beast could be more perfect than man was, of course, perfectly un-Christian, so he has to be read as a comic writer or as a madman. We defuse his message by turning him into a humanist, the author of a children's book.
Perhaps we might return to Swift on the matter of digression.
We never left it; this was a digression on aggression.
Let me be specific: could you have written Swift's "Digression in Praise of Digressions"?
I'll answer if you use the Johnsonian "Sir" to ask me.
Just this once then: "Sir."
Thank you. Yes, I could have written most of it, especially the part about having heard of many attempts to write the Iliad in a nutshell and having seen a nutshell in an Iliad. And that quip that people use books as men use lords: They only know their titles but claim their acquaintance. I also like the way he sets up a polemic so he can attack both sides. One fault: Swift begs the reader's pardon for "digressing from himself" and claims it's a necessity. This for Sterne would be an excusatio non petita.
What literary device does Swift's writing hinge on?
Parody, sheer parody. If he weren't a parodist he couldn't have written "A Modest Proposal." And Gulliver's Travels is a parody of travel literature and, of course, Robinson Crusoe. There is an important parodic strain that runs through most of my favorite English writers: Swift, Sterne, even Lewis Carroll. In fact, the three could be said to have written a single book, with chapters called A Tale of a Tub, Sentimental Journey, and Sylvie and Bruno. Their remote ancestor is the Satyricon, with which they share a will to fragmentation and black humor.
None seems terribly concerned with plot, or, for that matter, character.
I don't know what plot and character are. Dickens created all possible (and impossible) characters, so that takes care of character. And plot, for me, belongs in mystery stories and movies. I am concerned with literary space, which is language, and not literary time. When we talk about character, we inevitably drift toward psychology: Choderlos Laclos was the first and the last to use it properly.
You know, you manage to make Swift, Sterne, and even Carroll sound rather melancholy.
Mea culpa! Don't forget we live a heritage of humorless thinkers like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, or Sartre. When you have a sense of humor, you can laugh off your philosophic melancholy even when you know the joke is on you. I'll bet none of those English writers we've mentioned really believed in God.
Even Reverend Dodgson?
He was too good a logician to believe in so absurd a Maker. I think he believed man was made by the daughter of Chance and Fate, Miss Fortune.
How does all this British misanthropy, parody, satire, and humor relate to your first major book, Three Trapped Tigers?
TTT is an English book written elsewhere. It's not British and it's not short, but at least it's nasty and therefore true to life.
The word "sad" is in the Spanish title: why did you excise that hint to the reader in the translation?
In Tres tristes tigres, sadness is just a word, part of a tongue twister that means nothing. Three Sad Tigers, at best, sounds like the title of a children's book. It's not a happy book, but I tried to make it one because, with Jefferson, I feel man has a right to the pursuit of happiness.
I'm not sure, but I think Jefferson first put the word property where happiness is today.
Then like an American Proudhon, I can say that happiness is theft. I should write a sequel to TTT, in which the writer Silvestre would find the actor Arsenio Cué a fugitive from a soap opera, unkempt and unshaved. Before disappearing, Cué would parody Paul Muni's memorable last words in I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to answer Silvestre's question about how he was doing and say, "I steal."
Since you mention TTT, I would like to ask you some questions about your other books. Why have you disowned your first book, the story-cycle Asi en paz como en la guerra (1960)?
There's juvenilia in that book but also some senilia. It was mostly written when I started writing movie criticism in the mid-fifties. I have nothing against the stories. In fact, half a dozen or so may be salvageable. But it's the book itself I object to.
But why?
Because it's a book not written but collected under the perverse influence of Sartre and his idea that a writer must not only write about a moment in History (like Marx he always capitalized the word), but also comment on his writing as well. Sartre also demands that the writer include all of society. It's aesthetically hideous, a kind of social realism with a human face or a species of naturalism with a socialist conscience. Believe me, that book was collated with evil glue.
I've heard it said that you actually began writing because after you read Miguel Angel Asturias's El señor presidente (1941) you said that you could certainly do no worse than Asturias. Is that true, and, if so, where is the story?
It's true; the year was 1947, the yarn was published in the magazine Bohemia, but if you think I'm going to talk about it you're crazy.
I see, you're not only modest but discreet. Perhaps instead you'd tell me about the publication history of TTT, how it began life as a book called View of Dawn in the Tropics?
It's a simple story. The book that won the Spanish Biblioteca Breve Prize in Barcelona in 1964 was vetoed by Franco's censors. That happened while I was forcibly detained in Cuba in 1965. Then I had second thoughts about the book. I began toying with the idea of changing it and wrote what is now the final fragment, "Bachata." When I finally managed to get out of Cuba, I found out what had happened to the old manuscript. I rewrote it all then and there under the new title, which was its title before it won the prize. There was still some censoring, but there was lots of genuine rewriting.
The way you link the two, it would seem the censor was also a kind of editor.
As a matter of fact, that Spanish censor was more creative than my publisher or any of his editors. He made twenty-two cuts, mostly concerning the female bosom, his fondest obsession. Wherever I wrote "tits," he substituted "breasts." He eliminated oral indelicacies of any kind—even though such things do not abound in TTT, which is rather a chaste book about friendship rather than sex. But the censor had more than sex on his mind, especially if men were involved, so if a character went to a military academy and turned into a homosexual later on, the censor simply crossed out "military," making the academy more Platonic than Prussian. At the end of the book, the censor got really creative. The ending is a long speech by a madwoman I had copied down years before and was now using as an epilogue. The old woman talked endlessly, always repeating herself. She was a religious fanatic, damning Catholicism, the Pope, and priests. The censor cut all that and with it all that was repetitious and neorealist in the speech. The last sentence in his version, all in lowercase and without punctuation, was cant go no further. Who could ask for a better ending?
Your readers in English have TTT and the collection of vignettes from Cuban history called View of Dawn in the Tropics (1974) available to them, but they have had little opportunity to read your nonfiction. Would you comment on that other side of your writing?
Gladly. I'll begin with a book called, depending on the reader, O or Zero—O (1975) in Spanish. It's a combination of previously published pieces and some essays I wrote for the book. The one I like best is "An Innocent Pornographer." It's about Corin Tellado, a writer of cheap romantic novels—the kind called novela rosa, or rosy romance, in Spanish. She is the most widely read author writing in Spanish today and has been manufacturing a novelette a week for the past twenty-five or thirty years. I'm proud to say that I was the first person to write about her seriously and that since the time of my essay (mid-1967), she has been the subject of countless articles, interviews, even television programs. Nobody saw that the essay was written with a tongue in my rosy cheek.
Your other book of essays seems closer to your literary writing. Why is that?
Exorcismos de esti(l)o (1976) is definitely another kettle of fish. The title is obviously an homage to Raymond Queneau and, at the same time, an advertisement for itself because of its complicated asymmetry. It means many things: the exorcizing of style, exercises in summertime, even the lure of the pen—all in a send-up of Exercises de Style. This is one of my favorites among my own books and it closes the cycle begun in my collected movie reviews, Un oficio del siglo xx (1963). In Exorcismos, I expanded my experience (not experiment, a word I loathe when I see it applied to art instead of science) with Havanese, the idiom of habaneros, who might perhaps be called hablaneros or total talkers. Most of it was written while I was a cultural attaché at the Cuban embassy in Brussels (1962)—and it shows. It contains many messages from an Edmond Dantés, who read his own name as Inmundo Dantesco, the prisoner of Ifs, waiting for some Abbé Faria and passing time scratching graffiti on the filthy walls of his cell. One of the writings on the wall is a piece on Brillat-Savarin (1765–1826), the gourmet and amateur musician trapped by the French Revolution. I also like a short (one page) biography of Stalin's embalmer, a man the tyrant exiled to Siberia. I can still feel the embalmer's ghoulish glee as he ripped open the belly of the beast. For a moment I was the embalmer and Stalin had a Spanish name.
Un oficio del siglo xx is more than a collection of film reviews. After all, you write there about your own pseudonym, G. Cain, as if he were deceased. How do you understand the book?
As a novel. The prologue, the intermission, and the epilogue are biographical comments on G. Cain, the critic. The reviews, his criticism, are the corpus—that is, his body. The whole book is a rite of passage conducted over his dead body. That's what a novel is, don't you think?
If you say so. What about the title though, how would you like it translated?
I'm finicky about titles. I'd like it as ambiguous as possible. Not A Trade of the Twentieth Century but A Twentieth Century Job. This gives readers an embarrassing choice: Is it a job lot or Job or just a job? A better title might be Job's Lot, so everything would go to Cain's heirs.
I want you to talk about your literary-political writings, particularly "Bites from the Bearded Crocodile," which appeared in the London Review of Books (June 1981).
That article had to be written. Its original title was "Culture in Castro's Cuba: The Renaissance that Never Was." Let's go back in history a bit: the first time I ever attempted to write anything of a literary-political nature was in July of 1968, to answer an interview for an Argentine magazine, Primera plana, that was a combination of L'Express and Time. It caused a scandal. Just imagine: a person (me) whose parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, who wrote in his youth for Hoy, the party newspaper, who was brought up in grinding poverty, who struggled to become a writer, who became Cuba's first real film critic, the youngest editor of a high-circulation magazine, then founding editor of the most influential literary supplement in the Spanish-speaking world, who then becomes a diplomat in the Castro government, who leaves Cuba silently—and all of a sudden shouts from a London rooftop that the mighty king is a naked tyrant.
Why did you feel the time had come to speak out?
There are too many people who go around saying that despite shortcomings the revolution has at least done a great job on education and public health. This is like praising Hitler for pulling Germany out of the economic quagmire of the Weimar Republic and exactly like those damned Italian trains that always arrived on time under Mussolini. Those fellow train travelers were saying this time that culture was now a big thing in Cuba because Fidel Castro had taught everybody to read and write. What's the use of being literate if you lack the freedom to write, publish, and read what you want? The Sforzas, the Gonzagas, and of course the Medicis were upstarts and boors compared to this Cuban condottiere, this self-made patron of the arts and sciences. These were, of course, the lies of the land. The article, by the way, has been widely translated—even into Norwegian and Japanese!
The article on Cuba was a spontaneous response to a political situation, but your essay on the fate of the writers José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera under the Castro regime—a masterpiece in my opinion—is of a different nature. How does it fit in with your other writings?
With me you always have to begin with the title. "Vidas para leerlas" may be roughly translated as "Lives to be Read," but that way you lose the Plutarchian pun, because "Parallel Lives" and "Lives to be Read" sound very similar in Spanish. Understanding this play on words is essential for understanding the whole piece. Here I must refer to another Cuban writer (living in France), Severo Sarduy, a disciple of Piñera and a follower of Lezama, who wrote a book of essays on writing called Written on a Body. The notions of writing on human skin and living lives to be read are complementary and apposite for writers like Piñera and Lezama, who were very different writers, the one writing stark, naked prose and the other composing heavily ornate poems and preciously robed prose. At the same time, they were both very sensual writers, both homosexuals who suffered because of it. I wrote the lives of the poet after the poet's death, which I think is not different from writing fiction.
The pun is your trademark, but why use it when you are being serious?
That's just the point. Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play. Puns, you see, are words whose meaning depends on play; it's the player who calls the shots. A great player, Lewis Carroll, saw that, but being a reverend he put the words in Humpty Dumpty's mouth. The question about language is not who is right or wrong but, in the old Hegelian scheme, who is the master and who the slave? Puns are my freedom and my control.
Since you pun in so many of your titles, I suppose we'd better go back to them: please explain why you say your titles are the essence of your work.
The title always comes first, to me and to the reader. I've written many stories and articles just by doggedly following the title. Sometimes I use a working title, sometimes I find a title suitable for a given subject. Take my most recent novel, La Habana para un infante difunto (1979). It had a different title when I began: Las confesiones de agosto, a clever allusion to confession and to Saint Augustine's Confessions. I had begun writing the book in August, so that was included as well. Then one day I heard a title, La Habana para un infante difunto, just like that, the same way Saint Augustine heard the voice in the garden. With the new title in mind, I rewrote the whole book.
So you believe in inspiration?
Let's call it embullo, a Cuban word that means easy eagerness, a particularly gracious way of climbing on the bandwagons of the mind. I write every time the Holy Ghost whispers some sweet something in my ear. Of course I also write to meet deadlines, but that's not really writing. Sometimes it comes just because I sit down at the typewriter.
Speaking of inspiration, and a prolonged one at that, La Habana para un infante difunto is almost eight hundred pages long and yet it has outsold all your other books. Why?
Filth, my dear Mac Adam, filth. It is the first truly erotic book written in Spanish—a language and a literature that recoils in horror at living filth. That's what made it a best seller. My first big book, TTT, is about friendship, and La Habana is about love, the biography of a single-minded character's search for the tamed screw. But in both books disillusion outlasts love. In TTT, friendship breeds betrayal, and in La Habana, before the flowers of sex fade, sex fades.
The link between the two books seems to be a very Spanish, very baroque idea, desengaño, the moment when the scales of earthly illusion—friendship, the joys of the flesh—fall away and the protagonist sees both the abyss and salvation before him. Would you say you are part of the neobaroque movement that is so important in Spanish-American and particularly Cuban writing in our times?
Certain writers, Borges and José Lezama Lima, have used a complex style it was convenient to call baroque. Other Cuban writers, Severo Sarduy and Alejo Carpentier, have both written about baroque and neobaroque and written in a baroque style. My themes may coincide with the baroque, but they are much more universal than you make them out to be. After all, the main theme of La Habana is not simply love but the pursuit of happiness across the empty space of loneliness. One of the more outrageous scenes is one a critic has called an "Ode to Masturbation." It isn't merely the sight of a human worm mating with his other end, but love in solitary confinement. This paean to onanism, with all due respect to Genet and Proust, takes place in a bathroom that is bare, small, and putrid. A cell or dungeon where the loving self conquers reclusion in the Devil's Island of the body and the mind that we call poverty.
That last word might give the unsuspecting reader the impression that you write in a realist or naturalist style.
That's a coy decoy. But after all, betrayal is the name of the game in TTT: betrayal of life through language and literature. The ultimate betrayal is in translation, of literature and of language, of life. So why not betray the reader's expectations as well?
I just can't seem to dissociate these ideas from a baroque vision of the world.
I'll go this far with you: La Habana is my own version of the Don Juan myth, beginning with the protagonist's complete innocence and ending in his complete guilt, which comes from his knowledge of the antagonist. Like my characters in TTT, these in La Habana are look-alikes, mirror images, ego and alter ego. I've given the narrator many of my own traits. For example (remember, my mother brought me to a movie when I was twenty-nine days old), the narrator ends up in a movie, inside a big woman. Not in her womb, but down her vagina. The final phrase of the book—"Here's where we came in"—could mean that this is just one more movie or just one more woman. But only a few pages earlier, the now amniotic memoirist remembers that Virgilio Piñera told him a similar story as a dirty joke. It's curious that Virgilio, the Cuban poet, was a pederast, frightened by women, with a horror of the vagina. Curiouser and curiouser! I had published this ending years earlier (it was the first section of the book I wrote) with the title Facilis Descensus Averni, a line I stole from Virgil, also a pederast, who dreaded chasms and considered them to be the moral faults of Mother Earth. May we leave, on that note, the baroque barouche?
Yes sir. Perhaps you'd talk about your work-in-progress.
It looks more like a work in regress to me. I confess with chagrin that I've been working on the same project since 1968 and even earlier. It's a long, long book called Cuerpos divinos, which for once you can translate into English without playing hide-and-seek with the reader, as Divine Bodies. This project, which by now seems too vast ever to be completed, has changed form many times, but it has not changed subject. Once more, as in TTT and in La Habana, it is Havana, this time the city and what happened to it between March 13, 1957, and a week in October, 1962.
Why such precise dates?
March 13, 1957 was the day the Presidential Palace, in the heart of Old Havana, was attacked by anti-Communist terrorists. It was a suicide mission carried out at three o'clock in the afternoon, doomed, as the terrorists knew, to failure. And yet, they almost killed Batista, they almost seized power in the capital, while Fidel Castro and his small band of guerrillas were a thousand miles away in Oriente Province. Had they won, Cuban history would have been totally different. And by implication, the present and future history of the Caribbean.
And the second date?
That's the time of the so-called Missile Crisis. Kennedy confirmed Castro's regime—for a second time: the first was in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when he unwittingly made Castro legitimate. During the Missile Crisis he seemed to know what he was doing. After that, Castro became a totalitarian tyrant and that was the end of Cuba as a free country. That was also the end of Havana as a carefree city. And that's where my book ends.
It sounds like the literary reconstruction of a historical period some critics denounced TTT for not being.
It's just the opposite. The book evokes only Havana, specifically La Rampa, a street, not really a street, three blocks where El Vedado, which I call the Forbidden City, meets Havana. It's a street that goes down to the sea in a ramplike incline. I write almost exclusively about that street that never sleeps—in my books that is.
Is it like Damon Runyon's Broadway?
It is, but where Damon Runyon had only parody and repartee, I have parody and paronomasia. The main character in my books, especially this one, is language. The prime task, the objective of my writing is to make the word an object. Not to convey thought, but to eliminate thought with words. Not sound, but words loose upon the world. In any case, Cuerpos divinos is not only anti-Runyon but anti-Thomas as well.
Thomas who?
Lord Thomas, Hugh Thomas—the British historian who has written the best history of Cuba to date. It's a pity he begins with the British seizure of Havana in 1762. But fortunately he ends his book in 1962, just as I do. Cuerpos divinos and Hugh Thomas's history show how the novel and history-writing converge and diverge. History is to politicians what posterity is to artists, and all politicians, Fidel Castro included, aspire to the condition of history. The difference is that the writer's posterity can be instant posterity, also known as success—a book that is read. But no politician would ever accept the idea that his posterity is a mere book called History.
Surely you believe in immortality, a niche in that book called literary history?
I don't believe in immortality, either of the body or of the written word, my corpus. Remember, when we talk about those immortal writers, like Homer, we are not talking about the writers but their writing. Dead men don't write. Dead writers don't last. Homer exists as a continuous process of rewriting called reading and translation.
And Cuerpos divinos is about the difference between history for writers and politicians?
It simply points out the difference between speech and speeches. By the way, Cuerpos divinos has become three books plus a settlement of accounts called Separata, in which three characters, one of them a mulatto midget, talk and talk and talk. Most of the writing is done by the midget, a peculiar sort of writer who has never written a line and who cannot because he cannot really speak.
That's one paradox too many for me.
The midget is very verbal and loquacious, even garrulous. But he, as one of my characters in TTT remarks, tries to turn Spanish into a dead language. He speaks in English, and because his English is not very good, he keeps on making puns and jokes. He is condemned, not to silence but to speaking gibberish. That is the language of Babel, which is what Havana once was, Babelonia, where we spoke in tongues.
Why haven't you finished it?
My life keeps getting in the way. I started it in 1968, as I said, but in 1969, I had to stop to write a screenplay, entitled Vanishing Point. So I went to Hollywood in 1970. In Hollywood, under orders from Richard Zanuck (the man who was Jaws), I wrote a screenplay based on a dime spy novel called The Salzburg Connection that was never made into a film. (The title was, though, under another name, with another plot.) But I earned more money than I had ever seen in my life. In 1971, I went back to the book, but because Vanishing Point was such a success Joseph Losey engaged me to write a screenplay of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. I ended up in the loony bin, a.k.a. a bedlam in London. From there, under the power of eighteen electroshocks that practically eradicated what I use most to write (except for my typewriter)—I mean my memory—I went into clinical depression, an insidious illness that has lasted for years. It still lasts—so I must take life with a pinch of lithium salt. In the meantime, subsidized by my points (i.e. shares) in Vanishing Point, I managed to complete, rewrite, or compose a few books. And then I went back to Cuerpos divinos, which I again interrupted to write La Habana para un infante difunto. I thought it would take only a few months, but it took me three years and two different versions.
Do you really mean that writing the screenplay for Under the Volcano drove you mad?
Let's say it was the final stage of a process. I was writing (this was 1971) Cuerpos divinos when my agent at the time (he must remain anonymous because he's a powerful Hollywood producer now) casually asked me if I knew of a book called Volcano. I said I had heard of it when it was still called Under the Volcano. "So you know the book?" "Sure." I lied because at the time I still hadn't read the book. He then advised me to get on a plane and go to Rome to talk to Joe Losey. "He needs a fresh script." I was about to leave for Rome when my agent gave me one last piece of advice: "Take the book with you, willya?" I took his advice and the book and read it on the plane. I was so enthralled, so taken by it, so much into the character of Consul Firmin, that we went mad together. This didn't happen in the plane but back in London, while I wrote the script—a word I have tended to pronounce ever since as this "creep." If I feel suicidal, I call it simply this "crypt."
Douglas Day, Lowry's biographer, says your script is superior to the novel.
Douglas Day is kind to me and unkind to Malcolm Lowry. Under the Volcano is one of the truly tragic novels of this century and at moments it may be compared to the best tragic writing of Tolstoy or Dickens. For my money, Lowry's novel belongs in the same class with a few of Faulkner's books and with The Death of Virgil. Lowry has an advantage over both Faulkner and Broch in that he is easier to read. It's a pity Losey couldn't make the picture because he is that rare bird, a film director who is cultured and, more important, intelligent.
We've talked a good deal now about your writing and your fascination with spoken language, especially that of Havana, and with the act of writing, the continuous flow you spin into books. Embedded in your talk about talking there are two other kinds of discourse: images (including pictures and movies) and sound (especially popular music). Could we talk about your life now in terms of those other aspects?
The three are inseparable, but let's try to emphasize images and music this time. As I said earlier, my mother brought me to the movies when I was twenty-nine days old. As a child I watched anything and everything that moved. And even things that didn't move—the funnies. Incidentally, it was the comic strips that bridged the gap between pictures and words for me because I learned to read by deciphering the words in the little balloons.
What could you have seen in your Cuban hometown?
I saw serials with Ken Maynard, Johnny MacBrown, and my favorite cowboy star, Buck Jones. I wept when he died in the Coconut Grove fire in 1941. According to legend, he died trying to save a chorine. According to the press he burned because he was too drunk to move. Like John Ford in the movie The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance, my memory printed only the legend. I even remember Kermit Maynard, Ken's brother. You name me any 1930s movie, serial, short, or cartoon and I'll tell you all about it. In Gibara, my hometown, my uncle was the projectionist, so I got in free. In Havana, where we moved in 1941, there were other possibilities. All of that is in TTT and La Habana.
Were the close-up kisses the source of your erotic impulses?
The only kind of movie I wasn't keen on were love movies. Kissing time was yawning time for me. I still don't care much for romantic movies. Give me a motion picture and you give me emotion.
Did you listen to radio serials?
We were too poor to own a radio until well into the forties, but I would listen to the neighbors', both in Gibara and Havana. With the exception of Tarzan, all my favorite programs were Cuban, even The Spirit, and Raffles, which borrowed freely from the comic strips and the novel of the same title. But those were in the forties. In the late thirties, my favorite programs were "The Red Serpent," with a Chinese detective, and "The Mad Monk," a take-off on "The Shadow," not on Monk Lewis.
So the radio provided another link, words: spoken words, sound effects, and, of course, music.
I was a real radio ham. Some of my parodies of radio programs reappear in TTT. And it was radio that led me to love classical music, because Cuban programs could use commercial recordings as background music without paying for them. My early passions were both visual and aural, in the form of movies and comic strips or radio serials and popular music.
That popular music is simultaneously a kind of background to your novels and a code to which your characters allude.
Especially the narrative music, the son (beat) and the bolero, which is a Cuban song with a faint rhythm base. I still remember those old songs that talked about the marimba, the musical instrument, as wood blocks that could sing with the voice of a woman. Or even better, a bolero in praise of some dark lady's eyes in whose shadows you could see palm trees drunk with the wine of sunshine. Good grief! The only reason I didn't become a composer is that I can't carry a tune.
Did you ever do any drawing?
When I was about ten, I would draw all the planes that appeared in the Smilin' Jack strip and I still remember a particularly elaborate hydroplane that earned me praise from my granduncle. I was fairly good at drawing and as an adolescent in Havana I thought I might become some kind of Cuban painter. That illusion turned to disillusion (engaño vs. desengaño) when my younger brother, who was only twelve at the time, showed me who was going to be the painter in the family.
Was it then, when you were a teenager, that you began to write?
I did write a radio play at that time and even taped it on a very cheap, primitive wire recorder. It was modeled on The Spirit, the American comic strip, not the radio serial. A homage to Will Eisner, it wasn't all that bad. As a matter of fact, I became an amateur radio actor for a while, playing on a Sunday radio program sponsored by a Catholic association. I wrote some of the plays myself: they were all saints' lives. I took the parts of Arabs, Orientals, and heretics and took my acting style not from Peter Lorre, as you might have thought, but from Jesús Alvariño, a great Cuban radio personality who played Tamakún, a prince who was an Oriental adventurer and an amateur detective. Alvariño became chief of programming for Cuba's biggest radio station, and it was to him I delivered my first "professional" writing, a pilot for a radio program based on the Sherlock Holmes story "The Speckled Band." He rejected it flat and saved me from becoming a radio scriptwriter.
Did you only write screenplays later, as an adult?
When I was about twenty, around 1949, I wrote a story in the form of a screenplay. It was based on the folklore of my Oriental hometown, Gibara, and it was even published. The title, oddly enough, was "The Howling." A horror piece, naturally.
What was your first real screenplay?
The one I wrote in London in the summer of 1966. It was never shot. I wrote it in English, but the title was El Máximo. Over the past few years there has been a vogue for novels on South American tyrants among my Spanish-American colleagues, but most of those books turn out to be trite versions of the Spaniard Ramón del Valle Inclán's brilliant Tirano Banderas (1926). I wrote this script about a Caribbean dictator who flees to Ibiza (as Batista fled to Madeira) and there reproduces his presidential palace, complete with bodyguards, honor guards, and receptions attended only by scruffy islanders. I based the story on the life of the late Trujillo, the bloody ridiculous dictator of the Dominican Republic, but my title contained an oblique reference to a still active Cuban bleeding tyrant. The producer got cold feet, of course. I would like to rewrite that script someday because it was funny, but perhaps not funny enough. It had too many paper gags—jokes that work well on paper but fall flat on the screen. When I started writing screenplays, I had to learn that no matter how good your dialogue looks on the page, it sounds different when spoken by actors. It seems unreal because of course it is. Dialogue in fiction is always written to be read in silence. The page is the limit. Dialogue on stage and on the screen is meant to be spoken. The voice is the limit. Dickens discovered this when he started reading his books in front of audiences.
Could you tell some more about that 1970 trip to Hollywood?
In Hollywood I felt like a visitor from outer space. When I checked into the Chateau Marmont Hotel, I called my agent. Before I could recite my full name, his secretary asked me if I were Hungarian. First I said no, but when I thought about how many Hungarians had triumphed in Hollywood—Michael Curtiz, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi—I said I was from Buda but no pest. The secretary just giggled. That was my welcome to Hollywood. What I did mostly was to explore Raymond Chandler's territory. You know, I hope, that one of the models for TTT is The Long Goodbye.
Did you have any experiences there like those we associate with Fitzgerald or Faulkner, those high-pressure story conferences?
I never attended a story conference. The Chandler, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner days were long gone when I arrived. Mine was truly a pleasant stay—all expenses paid. The only thing like a story conference that happened to me took place when I met Richard Zanuck. He asked me what the title Vanishing Point meant, and I told him all about linear perspective and the end of a man as a convergence of life lines. He thanked me and that was that. The only suggestion came from Big Boss Darryl Zanuck himself. I was flattered and surprised that the eighty-year-old man would even bother to read the script. I wrote in what he suggested, a small, connective scene, but my director never shot it. At the end of that year, the old man kicked his son out of the studio and came back. In Hollywood, old pros die with their kicking boots on.
Was your director axed by Zanuck the elder?
He succumbed to his own lack of talent.
Is the translation of your script into visual images in Vanishing Point the same sort of displacement you describe in noting the difference between written and spoken dialogue?
What the spectator sees on the screen is the mirror image of my screenplay. Vanishing Point is my script as seen on the white mirror of the screen, in De Luxe color, at an aspect ratio of 1:85, running at twenty-four frames per second, in stereo sound—much more than I ever wrote or could write. That's a movie. I just wrote the screenplay. Thanks to John Alonzo, a cinematographer of genius, my screenplay is now a piece of Americana, a cult film, and a very successful movie. I wrote a motion picture about a man with a problem in a car. My director made a movie about a man in a car with problems. Cars in the film are actors and the movie may be taken as a paean to cars or to death by car. By the way, I don't drive.
Would you ever do another screenplay?
Sure. Not for the glory but certainly for the money. I'd like to do Conrad's Nostromo because it's the best of Conrad's novels and because I'm in the perfect position to make a good script of it. I even talk English with a Polish accent.
What about film reviews? After your brilliant reviews in Un oficio del siglo xx and the equally stunning essays on Welles, Huston, Hitchcock, Minelli, Ford, and Hawks in Arcadia todas las noches (1978), it seems a shame that you would give up film criticism.
Flattery will lead this interview nowhere, you know. Early in 1960, I realized I couldn't go on reviewing films in Havana because the Eastern-bloc films they were showing were beyond criticism. In fact they were beneath contempt even. So when Carteles, the magazine where I had started writing film reviews was closed down (in June of that year), I decided my time was up. Besides, I was beginning to burn out as a reviewer. I was no longer capable of going to the movies just for fun because I had to be a critic all the time.
You felt you were intellectualizing too much?
Are you kidding? I just got tired of being a critic. But I understand what you mean because I have always been a staunch defender of Hollywood against charges of commercialism and vulgarity. Hollywood is commercial and vulgar—and a purveyor of popular entertainment. And I refuse to make distinctions betwen high and low culture, between art and pop art. Movies are for people to enjoy. Films, to make a distinction, are for snobs and pretentious critics. I don't like films: you can have Godard, Antonioni, Bergman, Bertolucci, and all the German auteurs. Give me the directors I wrote about in Arcadia todas las noches, and if you can't, give me Spielberg, De Palma, Romero, or Scorsese—even Blake Edwards now.
What? Do you actually like Julie Andrews as a sex symbol?
She's as appetizing as a eunuch in drag, but I like the comedies her husband has been turning out. Well, perhaps not Victor/Victoria so much, but SOB is such a ruthless comedy about Hollywood that if Blake Edwards were to make one about Washington, Bob Hope would be playing the White House—and not as a stand-up comedian.
I'd like to return to literature if I may. Ever since Borges shared the Formentor Prize with Beckett in 1961, Latin American literature has been the dominant force in the Spanish-speaking world. Do you feel you owe anything to your Latin American elders?
First let me say that I despise the term "Latin America." Better call us Mongrelia. We are mongrels, a messy mix of white, black, and Indian. Second, aside from the elements I absorbed from the culture I grew up in I owe nothing to those "elders" you mention, especially if they wrote in Spanish.
What are you talking about?
Well, Borges, an elder I admire, writes in Borgese, a private dialect composed of quaint and formal English that condescends to employ Spanish words with Anglo-Saxon syntax. I owe him a lot, but I owe nothing to his Spanish.
Do you owe your—I hate to say it—Latin American contemporaries anything?
Not even money. For me there's Borges and the rest. They are the rest, a silent majority for me because I can't hear a word they're writing.
But you are a part of the boom of the Latin American novel of the sixties!
Like hell! They were only a sonic boom, a wake. But since you press me, I confess I have a debt with Carlos Fuentes.
What is it? A theme—Fuentes's interest in film?
I met Carlos in Mexico City in 1959. He entered my field of vision waving a hand and smiling as he crossed a screening room. It happened at Producciones Barbachano Ponce. I was there with Manuel Barbachano and Luis Buñuel, whose only claim to fame then was Los olvidados (an utterly forgettable film). We were watching rushes of Buñuel's latest picture, Nazarin, which he made for Barbachano. Watching your rushes in private can be very boring so we were keeping Buñuel company. Suddenly the door opened and in came Carlos with a small metallic object in his hand. I thought it was a derringer, but he rubbed his face with it! His smile turned into a grimace as he stretched the skin on his jowl and rolled up his eyes. Carlos was much more entertaining than Nazarin. Actually, he was shaving. I had never seen a cordless razor before and I couldn't wait to buy one. Back in Cuba, I used it thinking, "If Carlos could only see me now." That's my debt to Carlos Fuentes.
That's your debt?
That's it. But it's a lot more than my debt to Cortázar, who didn't have to shave at all when I met him. Vargas Llosa wore sideburns in those days and shaved with a cutthroat razor. And García Márquez had a mustache when I met him in Havana back in 1961. I met Donoso, the only true gentleman of the bunch, in London in 1970. Too late for the two of us. You see, he had the longest beard I ever saw, and I wore a goatee. Barababoom!
Don't you think you're being a little bitchy?
Yes, because I don't want to get lost in the crowd. We all write on our own, and I want to be read on my own. Feeling better now?
I think we've exhausted that topic. Perhaps exile might be our last subject. Here in the United States we've seen a tidal wave of Cuban exiles pour onto our shores in recent years. How did you leave Cuba?
By plane. I was a lucky exile, unlike those who left on the Freedom Flotilla. I left on a Cubana flight with my two daughters (by my first marriage), a Raymond Chandler novel, and little else. The tickets came compliments of the Cuban government. The man who is now number three in the regime, who had known me since I was a boy and who fancies himself a literary critic, figured it would be better all around if I left in good standing. He probably thought the rigors of capitalism or the cold climate would drive me home.
Were you sad to leave Cuba and Havana for good?
I left that pitiful place feeling pity. Actually I was grinning like Paul Muni when he escaped from the chain gang.
Your writing is full of nostalgia. TTT even has an epigraph, taken from Alice in Wonderland about imagining the light of a candle after the candle is blown out. Don't you ever feel homesick?
Show me a man who longs for jail and I'll show you a warden on his day off, spent at the zoo, of course. I had become, to use the regime's metaphor, a gusano, a worm. That was Fidel Castro's invention, although Goebbels really had the copyright when he referred, in 1933, to Jews as Ungeziefer (vermin). I was no Gregor Samsa; I was leaving Kafkaland behind, so I took my metamorphosis in stride.
Thinking now about the total phenomenon of Cuban exile, how do you understand the Mariel phenomenon?
An event without precedent in the history of diplomacy. In less than seventy-two hours eleven thousand people took refuge in the Peruvian embassy in Havana. Mariel took place so that Fidel Castro could cover up his own blunder, his having removed the Cuban guards from around the Peruvian embassy.
So it was a coup de théâtre?
Yes, with the greatest producer making everyone play his part. Some, like the novelist Reinaldo Arenas, were expelled because they were known homosexuals—there are no gays allowed in clean-cut Communist Cuba—but others had to swear they were pederasts, prostitutes, or parasites to be let out.
Are you friendly with these recent exiles, like Arenas?
I have the most cordial relationship with several. Carlos Franqui, the former editor of Revolución, is an old friend. He showed me I could be a writer. Reinaldo Arenas is a new friend who shares my passion for writing. Heberto Padilla I've known for many years and is another good friend.
Padilla is a rather special case in the history of Latin American and Cuban literature.
Around 1970, Padilla said a lot of ugly things about me and others in print, so I retorted. He had written them under pressure from the Cuban police, who viewed him with distrust. Later he was jailed, tortured, and forced to make a public confession, now famous, in which he denounced a few friends in Cuba and abroad, me included. He also confessed some minor literary crimes—like writing a couple of mildly critical poems the Security Police deemed subversive—and abominated himself and his wife Belkis, also a poet. Fascist states like Cuba just don't like dissidents, real and potential. Padilla was about to become a historical enemy. Homosexuals, it seems, are natural dissidents, strangers in a Communist paradise.
Would you say that you all constitute a Cuban "Lost Generation"?
I don't think even the Lost Generation was a real generation. They were never lost, only drunk. All I can talk about is the writers, painters, and musicians who gathered around Lunes, the Monday literary supplement to the newspaper Revolución, a cultural wonder created by Carlos Franqui that became the most popular and powerful paper in Cuban history.
Was Lunes as successful?
We were a knockout, in more senses than one. Imagine a literary weekly that prints a quarter of a million copies, in a country in revolution, distributed along with the official newspaper. There were some really talented people working on Lunes: Virgilio Piñera, then almost sixty, was the oldest and Severo Sarduy, at twenty, was the youngest. In between there were Oscar Hurtado (his last name means "stolen" and he was a bit of a plagiarist); Walterio Carbonell, a Paris-educated, black Marxist ideologue; José Baragano, a surrealist poet (deceased); Padilla; Pablo Armando Fernández, who returned from New York to take part in Lunes, as had Padilla. There was Raúl Martínez, an abstract painter who did our covers and layout; Natalio Galán, a composer and music critic who now lives in New Orleans. Calvert Casey, who learned his art of literary economy from Virgilio Piñera. Antón Arrufat, today back in precarious favor after being persecuted with Padilla. José Triana, the dramatist, who now lives in Paris. What a cast! But we chose the wrong production, of course. Mind you, Revolución gave me my only chance to be a war correspondent.
When was that?
At what you call the Bay of Pigs and what the Cubans call Playa Girón.
Would you care to talk about it?
Why not? On the night of April 18, 1961, I went down to the editorial offices of Revolución to volunteer to be a war correspondent and pick up my ID card. I didn't have to go, but I was curious and held the mistaken belief that war is good for writers. It was an adventure. Anyway, Carlos Franqui had a problem: too many war correspondents and only one war. He even had foreign correspondents. While I was there, I also found out about the international situation. One of the Prensa Latina people was down there and we asked him how things were going on the international front. He said everything was shipshape except for a spot of trouble in New York. It seemed the fellow in charge of the agency in Manhattan had left town in such a hurry that he hadn't even bothered to lock the office door. We asked him who that was. "Oh nobody, just a Columbian journalist, of no importance, named García Márquez."
You're joking.
No. Anyway, I left and headed for the front at about three o'clock in the morning, driving my Austin-Metropolitan convertible. The Bahía de Cochinos goes inland (as bays will) to form the Cienaga de Zapata—Zapata Swamps (not named for Marlon Brando's look-alike)—and you reach it by driving east along the Central Highway across Havana and through Matanzas Province, looking for the Jaguey Grande road that you hit at the end of the province, where Matanzas meets Las Villas Province and the swamps. President Kennedy chose the landing spot, apparently for humanitarian reasons. The original site on Eisenhower's landing plans was near Trinidad, a small colonial city decaying in isolation at the foot of the Escambray Mountains, where there had been peasant uprisings against Castro since 1960. The landing place was a strip of sand between the swamp and the Caribbean.
You drove out there alone?
No. Walterio Carbonell, the brilliant Cuban Marxist who was a lawyer and once the leader of the Young Communist League, was with me. Carbonell was expelled from the Party in 1953 after he sent a telegram to Fidel Castro, a friend from university days, but then in Batista's prison. The telegram simply congratulated Castro for surviving the Moncada Barracks attack, but Carbonell sent it right to the jail and signed it. The Party was terrified Batista might link them to the plot, so out he went. Fausto Canel, a young film director and Revolución's movie critic, and a very young writer and tv critic (also my former brother-in-law) named Luis Aguero were also in the car.
The Austin sounds more like a Greyhound.
Well, we were all underdeveloped. At dawn, still on Central Highway, we were detained for more than an hour by traffic—not all of it war correspondents. There were hundreds of trucks, tanks, jeeps, even motorcycles jamming the narrow highway. I remember thinking that a single enemy plane could have blown the convoy sky high—and us along with it! Fortunately the inefficiency of our army was matched by an absolute lack of contingency-planning by the enemy: Cubans at war. We skirted around Treasure Pond and headed for Jaguey, which looked like a border town in the Old West, with people peering through half-closed windows at war as if it were a showdown. At the end of the town the road was blocked by two jeeps and four soldiers. Only when I waved my ID card—which Franqui had concocted the night before with the printers—did they let us pass. There was no more traffic, only a solitary, very forbidding road to war. We all looked back. To go on might mean death, but to go back would mean a loss of face. We chose war. Near the coast we met a group of very young soldiers, mere children, jumping up and down and shouting "Dia-lang! Dia-lang!" They weren't Cuban Vietcong, but uncouth youths trying to say "Díaz Lanz." They thought they had caught Díaz Lanz, the former head of Castro's air force, who was (and is) a defector in the U.S. But Díaz Lanz never came. They had found a U.S. Army camouflage parachute, whose former owner was probably drowned in the swamp or devoured by the infamous alligators of Zapata. We went on to the beach, Playa Larga, where the first landing took place. It looked like a Bacardi commercial: There was nothing on the beach except what God created and the tracks where the enemy had placed their heavy artillery. There was not a single weapon to be seen.
You mean they took everything back off?
There were no bodies, no blood, no empty shells, no weapons of any kind. Maybe they practiced retreating too much and advancing too little. The only enemy we could see was about four miles offshore—several American warships. They looked like big gray rocks made of solid lead. Reversing the shot, I tried to imagine what they might see through their binoculars: four tiny civilians (the tallest only five-feet-seven) standing around a tiny British sports car painted white, parked on the very spot where their invading surrogates had been such a short time before. We must have been a bizarre or sorry sight! I was the only one dressed in something vaguely military: my milicia uniform—olive green trousers, blue mesclilla shirt, and black beret and boots. Fausto had on a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, as did Aguero. Walterio Carbonell was wearing a pinstriped black double-breasted one hundred percent wool suit he bought at Aquascutum in London. He did take off his vest and dress shirt and replaced them with a yellow Lacoste—a concession to the climate. Then, problems John Wayne never had—my car wouldn't start. But an army jeep came by and in it was an old friend of mine from journalism school, Angel Guerra, a good name (Angel of War) for a very martial-looking lieutenant. He offered us a lift to war, just like that.
Was there really a front? Were you far from it?
Not very far, but what mattered was fear: fear of not getting to the war and fear of getting too much into it. On the side of the road there were two cows grazing peaceably, as we sped by on a two-lane blacktop highway recently built for tourists. Then we stopped near a house and a dark, heavy man in fatigues, sweating and dirty, came up to us gesturing and shouting like mad: "Are you in command here?" He was talking to me. All I could reply was, "Come on man, I come from Havana." Then Angel jumped out of the jeep and calmed the hysterical sergeant down. The sergeant went back into the din and confusion and I got scared. Bombs started falling and I ran for cover in the shack by the road. All hell broke loose and I found I was blasted down (I know it sounds illogical) to the floor. There I was "biting the dust"—the house had a dirt floor. Punishment came from above, a clap of thunder and a pair of boots.
What boots?
A pair of boots with feet in them, all connected to legs and the whole thing pressing against my head and shoulders. I looked up and saw who it was: a young black soldier trying to dig a foxhole with his bare hands and fear for a spade. I decided it was better to be killed by a bullet than let this young Othello make me into an urbane Turk and smite me thus, strangling me like an uncircumcised dog of war. I went out and found Angel calmly smoking. He told me never to go into a house during a bombing raid because pilots always attack what they can see—houses for example. I headed for a sheltering tree where I found César Leante, another minuteman from Revolución. I asked him how far we were from the front and he told me we were at the front. I was suddenly Fabrizio del Dongo at Waterloo without knowing it. Fausto joined us and I woke up Luis Aguero, who was having a rather improbable nap, to tell him we were pulling out. Suddenly they were shelling our rear! We found out that the shelling was the product of Núñez Jiménez: he was a geographer Castro had made head of the Agrarian Reform Office. He was a nature lover now turned into an artillery officer. He wasn't so hot with a howitzer, because the shells were landing away from the beach—and on our way out. We were confused—so was everyone else—but we jumped on a truck leaving the war zone. We reached the newspaper late that night and found that the war was over.
What about the others?
There was a major crackdown after the Bay of Pigs. A documentary, P.M., shot by my brother Sabá, was seized and banned by the Censorship Board. Lunes protested and was suppressed. Then Franqui was made to take a trip to Europe and was later fired as editor of Revolución. I was sent as cultural attaché to Belgium. Carbonell was named ambassador to Tunisia and got in trouble when he accidentally ran down a Tunisian Jew. He happened to be with a buxom blond French girl at the time and the Cuban Communists turned the event into a scandal. He was recalled and came home to write a brilliant, truly Marxist essay that demonstrated that Cuban literature had a slave culture for background. For this he ran afoul of the Stalinist literary commissars. Then he got into even more trouble by explaining to a delegation of French writers invited by the Cuban government that there was no freedom of speech in Cuba and telling all about P.M. and Lunes. He was called to the Writers' Union to recant, but delivered a scathing speech instead. He was expelled from the union, of course, lost his job and made destitute. Then he tried to form a Black Power movement in Cuba: that got him four years at hard labor.
And the others?
Fausto married a French girl, left Cuba, and is now a (divorced) Frenchman, working in Spain as a film director. Luis Aguero tried to leave through the Writers' Union, but ended up in the slammer for two years. César Leante became a socialist success. He was Cuba's cultural attaché in Paris, then a successful novelist in Havana, and later a high official in the Ministry of Culture. In 1981, he was sent to East Berlin. The plane stopped in Madrid and César asked the security man aboard permission to stretch his legs. Permission granted. He stretched them all the way to immigration to ask for asylum!
No other happy endings?
Well, when I got back home that night, I expected a hero's welcome from my consort Miriam Gómez. All she did was banish me to the bath to remove all the soot that had turned me into a kind of Cuban Al Jolson. Then we went to bed.
Now, after you left Cuba, when you lived in Spain and later in London, how did you live?
As I've always lived: by my wits, which is the lowest form of wit and not, as Addison says, the pun. I was not permitted to work—either for pay or for free—at all when I first got to England. But a clever lawyer told me that writing was not working. I agreed then and I still do. He meant that I could concoct stories, articles, screenplays—whatever—and that these would constitute a product I would manufacture and sell.
Surely you were shocked at the idea of not being allowed to earn a living.
Not really. You see, I've always had friends. I merely lived on the charity of my closest ones. Two Cuban writers in exile, Juan Arcocha and Calvert Casey (who later killed himself in Rome) lent me money through my French publisher at that time, Gallimard, to create for the Home Office the illusion I was receiving income from abroad. Later I wrote for Mundo Nuevo, the most important Spanish-language literary magazine of the late sixties, which was then edited by Emir Rodríguez Monegal (who now teaches at Yale) in Paris. He is a dear friend. I entered the jungle of exile when I was barely thirty-six and officially left it at fifty, when I became a subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Now, I'm the only English writer who writes in Spanish.
Author photograph by Jerry Bauer.


text:
EVIC Easter Egg
Does anyone know if we can access the EVIC Easter Egg information on our vehicles. I can do this on my 09 Challenger and saw how to do it on the 11 Challenger by holding the up arrow for 5-10 seconds followed immediately by the down arrow. I tried it on the Cherokee with no luck. Has anyone figure this out yet?
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
What do you mean by "easter egg"? Does your Challenger have hidden functionality on its evic?
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
I am not sure of the Chrysler product, but for instance for my GM car, I have additional menues and diagnostic info ( temps, voltages etc, pressures). It is not quite an easter egg, but more of a dignostic mode.
I am interested to find the answer as well.
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
I would think that, because the WK2 development started during the DC days, some of the Mercedes style easter eggs might be built into the software. My older Mercedes has some pretty cool features hidden behind some goofy sets of button pushes, key turns and pedal stomps.
If anyone finds some Jeep easter eggs, please post them up.
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
Any word there has to be some
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
the current engine/trans monitoring is pretty comprehensive, i'm not sure what else you could hack into for more data.
whats odd, is there is no volts display in EVIC.
Re: EVIC Easter Egg
Looking for the Performance data like the SRT8 has. I know the lower model chargers and challengers have them built in but you have to access them a special way.
Just seeing if they were built in to ours thats all
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text:
Air Conditioner Condenser to FAU Wiring ?
Hey all...first time poster here...I was an electrician in my past life but have never touched HVAC before. Just bought a home and I have some equipment that's acting up.
I have a Rheem Classic Series Super Quiet 80 and an air conditioner outside, don't know the model top of my head and I'm at work right now...but there are two wires that go from the FAU to the condensor...anybody know what those are for...like where to land them? Is there a typical color scheme or?
I have Y,G,W,C,R hookup on the FAU.
Thanks in advance for the help!! :thumbup::thumbsup:
what's a FAU? focred air unit?
we call that a furnace.:thumbsup:
the AC wires go to Y and C on the furnace board. why are they disconnected now? may want to make sure there is no short to ground on them B4 hooking them up or U will blow a fuse on the FAU board. probably the previous owner disconnected them because there is a problem with the AC
Well...since this IS an internet forum and the hope is that others can learn from our mistakes...I will confess my sins, like a dumbass, I disconnected the other wires thinking they were "extra" or abandoned wires...and did not take notice of where they were hooked up previously. Soon thereafter I realized what I had done and wanted to seek some advice before randomly hooking them up again! Previously the AC did work.
Lesson I thought I had already learned long ago...take a photo of what you are working on before you take it apart or make a diagram.
Thanks for the help and the quick response...I hope my Nest still works with these new wires added...maybe it will self destruct.:whistling2:
Oh...does polarity matter...between the Y&C?
You know Max?
Max no diference
No polarity involved.:no:
Ahhh...yes...this is because it's 24V AC...I see now :eek::thumbsup:
Thanks Yuri!!!
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text:
Note : Your Quotation Request will be directed to MACOM.
The MABA-010268-CT4160 from MACOM is a Balun with Frequency 5 to 1200 MHz, Impedance Ratio (Num) 1:1, Insertion Loss 1.2 dB. More details for MABA-010268-CT4160 can be seen below.
1:1 Transmission Line Transformer from 45 to 1200 MHz
You can now find similar products from multiple companies on everything RF.


text: As its creator, Eldorado, stated recently, "It's baaaack!" Yet again, it's time for that early summer, no football crazy lull to instead be filled with friendly recognition of our fellow posters. With 19 awards up for grabs, let's look back upon the past twelve months and showcase the best of the best among us during that time. Here are the rules: Ø You cannot nominate yourself. Self-nominations shall be invalidated. Ø You can nominate a maximum of three posters per category only. Four or more nominations placed by an individual poster within any given category shall invalidate all submitted and shall not be tabulated along with other posters' nominations. Ø General forum guidelines shall be strictly enforced. For a list of guidelines, click here For an overall list of the awards, please check out the Awards Talk thread. Here's this year's awards schedule: Ø Nominations: all categories (Monday, June 21 through Friday, June 25) Ø Nominee tabulation: all categories (Saturday, June 26) Ø Awards voting: all categories (Sunday, June 27 through Thursday, July 1) Ø Winner announcements: all categories (Friday, July 2) Additional info: Ø Each award's category will be represented by its own thread. In other words, 19 threads shall be open for nominations beginning June 21. Likewise, all 19 threads for nominations shall be closed by 8 pm on June 25. The same process will be repeated for the voting on awards. Ø General discussion about nominees, the awards, etc., shall be solely restricted to the Awards Talk thread. All threads created by posters both within or outside of the Cowboyszone Awards Forum shall be merged to the Awards Talk thread. No exceptions allowed. Ø The top three vote-getters in each nominee category shall be eligible for voting per award. Polls shall be included in the award voting threads to decide the winners. Should ties develop between nominees, additional finalists will be added to the voting process. Example: 20 forum members nominate Poster #1 for Award X, 15 forum members nominee Poster #2 and finally 10 forum members nominee Posters #3 #4 & #5. In this instance, there would be five finalists for the award instead of only three. Ø Polling for nominees shall be kept confidential. Have fun everyone and good luck!


text:
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble steroid hormone precursor that contributes to the maintenance of normal levels of calcium and phosphorus in the bloodstream.
Strictly speaking, it is not a vitamin since human skin can manufacture it, but it is referred to as one for historical reasons.
It is often known as calciferol.


text:
Home Search
NFC - search results
If you're not happy with the results, please do another search
Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Has Camera and NFC
When you look at the current crop of smartwatches on the market today, they're relatively basic in terms of functionality. The rumored Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, on the other hand, looks like it's going to get loaded with features that almost take it to smartphone territory.
Motorola Skip NFC Accessory Will Make Logging in Easier For You – And Potential...
Motorola's Skip NFC-based tag will allow you to get to Moto X's homescreen without the need for typing in the passcode.
Microsoft Develops NFC Alternative, Uses Microphone and Speaker
It looks like the researchers over at Microsoft have come up with a pretty cool alternative to NFC, which they call Dhwani. Developed by Microsoft India, the system utilizes sound to transmit data. Even better, there is no special hardware required to make it work.
Use Your NFC Smartphone to Replace Your Hyundai Car Keys
Many people have replaced their Starbucks cards, for example, with a mobile app that offers even more functionality. You might already be using NFC on your smartphone to replace some credit cards, but what if you could replace your car keys too? Hyundai wants to make that happen.
iPhone 5S could Arrive in More Colors and with NFC Support, Says Analyst
While the iPhone 6 is probably a long ways away, the same might not be true for an iPhone 5 update, known as the iPhone 5S. According to Jeffries analyst Peter Misek, the phone is coming in June and will offer hardware updates including NFC and an improved camera.
Windows Phone 8's NFC Features Will Allow Limited Cross-Platform Communication with Android
Starting with Windows Phone 8 devices, NFC will now come into play on Microsoft's newest mobile platform. While this isn't that surprising, it is interesting to know that the tap+send features in Windows Phone 8 will actually work just fine between WP8 devices and Android phones.
NFC Hack Allows Free Rides On The Subway
Want to ride on the subway for free? While there is no such thing as a 'free ride' in life, there is a free ride on the subway when you use an NFC hack. Obviously this is completely illegal, but researchers have no discovered that contactless fare cards in New Jersey and San Francisco transit systems can be hacked using a special Android application and NFC technology.
Apple Patent Suggest Sliding Virtual Cards to Confirm NFC Payments?
Rumors suggest that NFC could be in the works for the new iPhone. While the limited space and rumored design of the so-called iPhone 5 might not allow for it, one thing does seem clear- Apple is interested in NFC. If not now, perhaps in the iPhone 5S or whatever they decide to call it?
New Photos Suggest NFC is On Its Way to the New iPhone
When it comes to upcoming products, few have more excitement or speculation surrounding them then the iPhone does. We've seen batteries, faceplates and just about everything imaginable for the new iPhone so far- yet here comes yet another leak, this time including what might be an NFC chip.
The World's First NFC Keyboard is Here
For the most part, NFC has been used for things like mobile payments, though a few unique uses exist out there. Now comes probably one of the strangest yet coolest uses for NFC ever, quick connecting to a keyboard.
NFC-Enabled iTravel App Patented by Apple for iPhone 5
One of the newest patents awarded to Apple is something called iTravel, which is an NFC-based transportation check-in system.
Rumor: Could iPhone 5 Have NFC Technology?
Rumors continue to pop up now and then about the upcoming iPhone, even though its more than likely at this point that such a device isn't coming until later this year, probably around October. One such new rumor has to do with with near field communication (NFC).
Samsung Introduces New NFC Sticker System For NFC-Equipped Smartphones
NFC technology is becoming more and more commonplace in today's smartphones, but the truth is that outside of mobile payment systems such as Google Wallet, they aren't really being put to full use. This could all change thanks to a new Samsung technology called TecTiles, which essentially are little packs of five stickers for $14.99 that are programmable and can be swiped by your NFC-equipped phone.
Sony's Xperia Sola with Floating Touch and NFC
Today Sony officially unveiled its latest Android smartphone, the Xperia Sola.
SIM Card Integrates NFC Connectivity
Part of the reason why NFC hasn't quite taken off in the mainstream is that the average consumer may not have an NFC-enabled smartphone. The SIMply NFC-Revolution fixes that by offering a SIM card that has the whole NFC business built into it.
BlackBerry Tag with NFC adds "Bump" to Berries
Well, the same kind of idea is now heading to a Berry near you, because Research in Motion has announced the upcoming BlackBerry Tag app for its smartphone devices.
NFC Payments at Apple Store Hint Toward NFC iPhone 5?
Looks like the rumors keep flip-flopping back and forth on this issue. Will the next iPhone (whether it's called the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S) have NFC or won't it? The newest reports are pushing us in the direction of yes.
BlackBerry Bold Smartphones get NFC, OS7 and Touchscreen
If you were just to look at the new BlackBerry Bold 9900 and Bold 9930, you probably wouldn't think much of them. They look a heck of a lot like existing Bold phones, except that they happen to be a fair bit thinner at 10.5mm. However, it's the stuff under the hood that'll have RIM fans interested.
Angry Birds Magic Forces You to Find Nokia NFC Friends
Last week we caught wind that Rovio was going to unveil a new game called Angry Birds Magic at WIMA this week. The kicker is that the new version of the game made use of NFC in some creative way. As it turns out, it's not all that creative.
Rovio to Introduce Angry Birds Magic with NFC at WIMA
Weee. Oink, oink, oink. Few games in recent memory have captured the same kind of mass market hysteria as Angry Birds. It started on the iPhone, but the franchise quickly expanded to all kinds of other platforms. So, what's next for Rovio? NFC, it seems.
Sprint To Compete Against Isis: NFC In 2011, Google Bank?
NFC capable devices are ramping up and soon you will be able to wave your mobile at a teller to complete a purchase of goods. Sprint, the third largest wireless carrier in the US, has told Bloomberg they plan to beat AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to the NFC game by launching as early as this year.
Google Partners with MasterCard, Citigroup to Develop NFC Payment Scheme
The Google Nexus S has a near field communications (NFC) chip in it, so you know that Google is interested in pursuing this technology for a variety of purposes. The most obvious application is mobile payments and it looks like the search engine has just made its next big move on this front, buddying up with MasterCard and Citigroup to make it happen.
No NFC for Apple iPhone 5, Wait for iPhone 6
The boys and girls at Research in Motion are dedicated to bringing NFC technology to every new BlackBerry, but it looks like their counterparts in Cupertino aren't nearly as enthusiastic. Based on a report from UK paper The Independent, Apple is not going to include NFC in its iPhone 5.
VeriFone To Bring NFC Payments From Pipe Dream To Mainstream
Payment solutions company VeriFone is announcing it will make the push towards smartphone-based NFC as a widely-accepted method of payment, and that the technology will be incorporated as standard into their next line of point-of-sale devices.
Moving Forward: All BlackBerry Devices to Sport NFC Tech
Even though the new payment system at Starbucks is based on a barcode scanner, near field communications (NFC) will really represent the future of mobile payment. And RIM wants to be all over this thing.
NFC to go viral with the Nexus S, iPad 2 and iPhone 5
You know how Starbucks is starting to accept mobile payments via barcode? They decided not to use NFC because of lack of adoption at this point. But that may soon be changing, because both the upcoming iPhone 5 and the iPad 2 could be rocking near field communications.
Starbucks mobile payments roll out with barcodes, not NFC
The next time you order a trenta-sized iced mocha frapp, you won't need to whip out your wallet. You'll just need to flash your iPhone at the barista.
First look: BlackBerry Curve Apollo with 7.2Mbps HSPA, NFC
On my part, it can sometimes be quite challenging to get excited about entry-level to mid-tier smartphones. They usually get hand-me-down parts from their higher end counterparts and that seems like what is happening with the Curve line once again with the next-generation "Apollo" BlackBerry Curve.
Jim Balsillie guarantees NFC enroute to BlackBerry
Near field communications technology isn't exactly new, but it's catching all sorts of traction in the mobile phone arena. When asked about NFC, Balsillie boldly said that the company would "be fools" not to include NFC in a future BlackBerry smartphone.
Video: Apple iPhone 4G to Feature RFID-Based NFC
The first Apple iPhone introduced us to the platform and brought touchscreen handsets to the forefront. The iPhone 3G stepped it up with the...
ImCoSys has Linux Smartphone with Skinplex NFC
As if you haven't already heard of every possible feature you can find on a PDA phone already, ImCoSys of Switzerland is set to...
Nokia Launches NFC Shell for Seamless Mobile Payments
Nokia has announced a new product for secure mobile payments and ticketing, being dubbed as the world's first Near Field Communications (NFC) product for...
Best Waterproof and Firm Cameras in 2017
Its summertime in some parts of the world and it's that time of the year again for hikers, bikers and outdoor enthusiasts to take...
You Can Now Use PayPal to Purchase through Android Pay
PayPal and Android Pay are partnering to let users use their PayPal account like they would regularly use Android Pay. You'll soon be able...
Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss Just Stepped into the Android World through an Announcement...
Android has created a standard for mobile technology and has penetrated the scene of the fashion world. Not only has android developed and innovated...
Huawei P9's Common Problems and How to Solve Them
Cell Phones have played a vital role in our daily lives. It has sustained our personal needs in maintaining a bond through constant communication....
The Google Jamboard: Why It's Worth Buying
Google has been around and has served a lot for its users. The company started in 1998 and is now the leading search engine...
What Do We Know about the Upcoming Moto G5 and G5 Plus?
Lenovo, the new masters of the fifth generation of the Moto series after replacing Motorola, will be launching its new phones in an event...
Biometrics on a New Level: Humanyze Creates a Badge that Monitor an Employee's Activities
In this fast-paced world, we are usually fueled with our drive to sustain our living. A lot of things can happen during working hours...
Google's Android Wear 2.0 Joins Forces with LG's Watch Sport and Watch Style Smart...
LG, which stands for "Life is Good", is a south Korean manufacturer that started with home appliances and now has ventured into the mobile...
Facebook Now Has a Physical Key to Protect Your Account from Being Hacked
If you are concerned of your Facebook account security (which I think all of us are), this is a good news for you; Facebook...
Self-Heating Balaclava Can Help Athletes and Others in Cold Weather and Prevent Chest Infections
Very seldom do you see ordinary people go about their day wearing balaclavas on winter days. But for many, Balaclavas carry connotations of athletes...
Meet Nextbit Robin – The First Cloud Based Android Smartphone
Long gone are those days when the smartphone market was just dominated by a few big names. Today, the smartphone industry has become a...
Everything You Need to Know About Samsung Pay
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UK Welcomes the Official Launch Of Apple Pay- Review and Highlights!
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Initial Impressions of the Futuristic Looking Super-Secure Turing Phone
We all know that data around us is increasing every second. In fact, by the time you are done reading this sentence, data around...
Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet Review: A Great Upgrade to The Z2
It's quite evident from the devices that Sony has unveiled in the recent years that the company has become quite mature and experimental. No...
LG G4 Beat- Review, Spec, Highlights, Video!
In the diverse market of global smartphones, LG has presented the latest version of G4 device flagship for a special segment of users! Following...
Google I/O 2015- Day 1 and Announcements!
The keynote day for Google I/O conference 2015 was geared with the excitement of much-awaited announcements- the world was waiting, and Google was ready...
Samsung S6 Features and Design Review (Video)
Samsung's latest heartthrob 'Galaxy S6' and 'S6 Edge' is finally becoming a dream come true as it soon hits the market! Attractive, stylish and...


text:
Would you like to save as your currency permanently or for this visit only?
G Hua Hin Resort & Mall
250/201, Soi 94 Phetchkasem Road, Hua Hin
0.4 km from
Friendly staff Comfortable bed Both swimming pools Good satellite channels WiFi good Modern well fitted rooms in good decorative state Clean, comfortable, functional 4 star hotel with some 5 star touches Covered secure parking Main road proximity a little noisy All pool view rooms and balconies directly overlooked by those in the opposite wing
It was clean and close to the beach. It was in a group of hotels, restaurants and coffee shops, close to restaurants, the night market, a movie theatre and two malls. It was quiet and restful. The room and bathroom were large. The room could hold 4. The mattress was very firm. I could feel every spring. The air-con blew directly on the beds. I had to turn it off for the night. There were no three prong outlets for my computer.


text:
What was your best-ever holiday?
When I was 12, my whole family - older brother, younger sister, parents and I - went to the US for three weeks. We hired a people carrier, started in San Francisco and then drove up and down the whole coast. It was such an adventure: we saw some amazing places and had some great times. The only problem with the trip was that we all squeezed into hotel rooms together some nights, and my dad turned out to be a champion snorer! In the end we had to persuade them to get us kids a second room, despite the extra cost.
What do you like doing on holiday?
A lie-in and a lot of lounging around. My parents aren't beach types, but I'm the opposite, I love lying around by the pool, chilling out. My parents are the sort of people who think that white-water rafting is a quiet day.
Where are you going this year?
I'm off to Canada with my parents and younger sister, Isabel, who's 15. It might be the last time I go away en famille like this. But I've never been to Canada and I really fancy it. And getting a free trip to somewhere warm is good, too, if I'm honest. (adventurecompany.co.ukhas action family holidays to Canada.)
Any tips for parents on holiday?
Do less! Relax more! Another teensy bit of advice I'd give my mum is to steer clear of those shorts, given her pale legs. And she really mustn't go on telling my sister and I to wear sun hats like she did when we were five and six.
Who would your perfect holiday companions be?
I have loved going away with my mum and dad, but if I could go anywhere with anyone, it would be to the Maldives with my boyfriend and all my mates. I love the idea of a beach holiday in a luxurious location and it wouldn't matter that there isn't much night life if I had all my mates with me - the whole holiday would be one long party. With a lot of lie-ins, of course!


text:
Harsin named new basketball coach at Hilhi
Former JV coach Sara Harsin will take over varsity duties next season
Hillsboro is handing over the reins of its girls basketball program to Sara Harsin. After spending the past year as the Spartans junior varsity head coach and following the retirement of Lloyd Suiter, Harsin was hired for the position on April 8.
Im really excited about it, Harsin said. The kids are great. Im just really looking forward to building onto a program that has gotten off on a positive foot and then adding to it.
A 2002 Forest Grove graduate, Harsin coached previously at her alma mater for three years and at Banks while she was a student teacher. She was a three-sport athlete in basketball, soccer and softball in high school, and she played basketball in college at Pacific.
Harsin is in her fourth year at nearby South Meadows Middle School, which feeds into Hilhi. She is a math teacher and department coordinator at the school.
Even in this last year, I had kids that I had in middle school, so I saw them as seventh-graders, eighth-graders, and then as freshmen. There were a couple of them, Harsin said. So that was definitely a positive. I know the kids, they know my expectations. I know them, I know the families. Its a really good situation to be going into right now.
Harsin working at South Meadows was also significant to Hilhi athletic director Steve Drake.
In education now, theres fewer and fewer people that are getting involved in teaching and coaching because of the time commitment, so this is a win-win for us that we are able to hire an experienced coach, Drake said.
Seven seniors were on the 2012-13 roster for the Spartans, who went 11-15 overall, finished eighth in the Pacific Conference (2-12), and lost to Oregon City in the first round of the Class 6A state playoffs after knocking off Grant in the play-in round.
Hilhi is expected to return Lauren Lykins, a first team all-conference selection at guard this past season, for her senior year.
Harsin also is excited about the Spartans incoming freshman class that she described as committed and whom she knows through their attendance at South Meadows. And she is committed to building a youth program of players who are enthusiastic about playing for Hilhi once they reach high school and who come in with a competitive mindset.
We have to really, really build that positive foundation at that level, Harsin noted.
And though the basketball season does not get underway until the fall, Harsin is already getting to work. Earlier this week, she had designs on finalizing the teams summer schedule within a week, and she plans to get open gyms going, likely starting next week.
She made it very clear that, I want to be a Spartan, I want to teach here at Hilhi if I get that opportunity, I want to coach here. This is a long-term thing, and Im committed to being the best coach I can be, Drake said.
Fifth doubles match added as tiebreaker in NWOC tennis
Northwest Oregon Conference tennis is trying a new look this season thanks to the addition of a fifth doubles match in varsity contests.
The rationale behind the change standard procedure in Oregon high school tennis is to stage four singles matches and four doubles matches was two-fold, Sherwood athletic director Randy Ramp said.
The additional doubles match provides an easy way to break ties, Ramp said, and it also gives more players the chance to play at the varsity level.
Currently, team winners of 4-4 matches are determined first by the number of sets won and then by the number of games, if the sets criterion is also a tie. That can make for a lot of counting and a cumbersome way to determine a winner.
But teams are not penalized because of a lack of players. If a squad cannot field a fifth doubles team, said Ramp, only four doubles matches are played and standard tiebreak procedures are used.
I dont have to worry about it, Liberty girls coach Dan Snyder said. I dont have to worry about counting sets, I dont have to worry about counting games. You play nine matches, and whoever wins five, wins.
The Falcons picked up a 5-4 win at Parkrose on April 9.
Free wheelchair tennis camp coming up in Beaverton
The Northwest Wheelchair Tennis Association is staging its second annual Wheelchair Tennis Camp for Kids on Saturday. All kids with mobility impairments are encouraged to register for the free camp, which will take place from 9 a.m.to 2 p.m. at the Tualatin Hills Tennis Center in Beaverton.
David Wagner, a gold and silver medalist in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, will participate in the camp. Wagner and two other tennis pros will conduct skill-building activities.
The camp is the first event of a six-week tennis skill-building course that will conclude with a Juniors Mini-Jamboree/Tournament on June 15.
For more information, go to nwwheelchairtennis.org.


text:
Text of Gov. Christie's comments on gay marriage
Text of statement delivered Tuesday by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on gay marriage:
This issue that our state is exploring — whether or not to redefine hundreds of years of societal and religious traditions — should not be decided by 121 people in the State House in Trenton.
The fact is we're discussing huge change and I believe we need to approach this not only in a thoughtful way, not in a rushed way, but also in a way where we're able to get the most input that we can from the public.
So, if New Jersey is seriously looking to overturn hundreds of years of societal, legal and religious tradition, we need to give the issue the weight that it merits.
So, I think that this is not an issue that should rest solely in my hands, in the hands of the Senate President, or in the hands of the Speaker or the other 118 members of the Legislature.
Let's let the people of New Jersey decide what is right for the state.
Let's put the question of same-sex marriage on the ballot this fall, in the hands of the people, at the time where the most people will be voting, in the presidential election year.
I support giving New Jerseyans the ability to give voice to their support or their opposition to this issue.
We have an opportunity now to take away political maneuvering and political advantage and the inherent issues that existed the last time this issue was before the Legislature when it failed.
Let's make sure that political maneuvering is not what judges this, and let's make sure this is not just someone trying to have fun and create a campaign issue. It's too serious — the institution of marriage is too serious to be treated like a political football.
So, my message to the Legislature — and this is simple — and I'm doing it today because today is the first day they're beginning to consider it. Let's stop treating this like a political football and let's let the people of New Jersey decide.
That way those who are in favor, those who are opposed, will have the opportunity to make their case over the next nine months to the people of New Jersey. And then, in the year when the most people will be voting, we get a decision. And the people decide whether or not they believe same-sex marriage should exist in this State or not.
I would certainly be willing to be governed by the decision of the people this State, especially in a year that the most people will be voting in the State.
And I would hope that the Legislature would be willing to trust the people, the way I'm willing to trust the people.
This issue is too big and too consequential not to trust the people who will be governed ultimately by any change in law or maintenance of the current law.
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text:
"Hannah Montana" wins box office Super Bowl
By Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney's 3-D movie "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert" topped movie box offices, raking in $29 million for the biggest opening over a normally slow Super Bowl weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
With professional football's championship game dominating the entertainment landscape, the 3-D movie of Cyrus' (aka Hannah Montana) 2007 singing tour brought teenage girls streaming into theaters with their parents, said Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group.
"We're looking at this and realizing we made a little piece of movie history," Zoradi said. "This has been a family movie, and we've had lots of parents exiting theaters saying, 'thank you because we couldn't get into any of her concerts."'
Supernatural thriller "The Eye," starring Jessica Alba, took the No. 2 slot at U.S. and Canadian box offices with a $13 million weekend. The No. 3 movie was romantic comedy "27 Dresses" with $8.4 million, according to industry tracker Media By Numbers.
Rounding out the top five were teen pregnancy comedy "Juno" at No. 4 with a weekend haul of $7.5 million, bringing its total ticket sales to $110 million. In the No. 5 position was last week's champ, action adventure "Meet the Spartans," with $7.1 million for the weekend and $28 million overall.
Cyrus, the teenage daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, portrays the title character of Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel cable TV program of the same name. Hannah leads a typical teenage life by day, but has a secret singing career on weekends. The show is a hit with young viewers.
The concert movie's No. 1 performance was even more important in Hollywood for several reasons. Continued...


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Mothers with an immense passion for young pussies are on the prowl for fresh female flesh! Watch tons of hi-res incest photos and videos exposing group lesbian passions of mothers seducing own young daughters.
Rating: 4.0/5 (76 votes cast)
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