{"id":3895,"date":"2009-05-05T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3895"},"modified":"2009-05-05T08:00:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T12:00:20","slug":"cinc0-fer-de-mayo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cinc0-fer-de-mayo","title":{"rendered":"Cinc0-fer de Mayo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of “Drink Corona (or whatever Mexican beer<\/a> you choose) Day,” I thought I’d go find some well-regarded Mexican authors whom I’ve never read a word of. Only having thought up this idea this morning, I decided to dive into the “canonical appendixes” of Harold Bloom’s Western Canon<\/a>\"\", since the lists of authors and books are broken up by nationality.<\/p>\n

Except for Latin America, which is lumped together. So I had to spend a few minutes checking out the nationality of all the authors he listed, only to discover that he only has two Mexican authors on his list and I’ve actually read a book by one of them (Aura<\/a>\"\", by Carlos Fuentes)! Grr!<\/p>\n

Bloom’s list did manage to yield a Mexican 0-fer author for me: Octavio Paz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the sake of bulking up this post, here’s the full list of Bloom’s canonical authors of Latin America (in the sequence he lists them), with 0-fer annotations:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Rub\u00c3\u00a9n Dar\u00c3\u00ado (Nicaragua): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  2. Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina): I’ve even read his long novel!<\/li>\n
  3. Alejo Carpentier (Cuba): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  4. Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  5. Severo Sarduy (Cuba): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  6. Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba): 0-fer. Haven’t even seen that movie about him<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  7. Pablo Neruda (Chile): We read one of his poems at our wedding.<\/li>\n
  8. Nicol\u00c3\u00a1s Guill\u00c3\u00a9n (Cuba): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  9. Octavio Paz (Mexico): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  10. C\u00c3\u00a9sar Vallejo (Peru): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  11. Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  12. Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Lezama Lima (Cuba): 0-fer (but his wife is awesome<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  13. Julio Cort\u00c3\u00a1zar (Argentina): I tried reading Hopscotch<\/a>\"\", but didn’t get far.<\/li>\n
  14. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia): Read One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/a>\"\" and some short stories<\/li>\n
  15. Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru): 0-fer<\/li>\n
  16. Carlos Fuentes (Mexico): The aforementioned Aura<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  17. Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil): Wh0-fer?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Looks like Bloom really digs Cuban writers, huh? Now go get messed up on Tecate!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In honor of “Drink Corona (or whatever Mexican beer you choose) Day,” I thought I’d go find some well-regarded Mexican authors whom I’ve never read a word of. Only having thought up this idea this morning, I decided to dive into the “canonical appendixes” of Harold Bloom’s Western Canon, since the lists of authors and … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Cinc0-fer de Mayo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[568,4],"tags":[679,592,681,680],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-0-fer","category-literature","tag-carlos-fuentes","tag-harold-bloom","tag-jose-lima","tag-octavio-paz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-10P","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3597,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-94","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":0},"title":"0-fer-94","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a copy of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon that I take down from the shelf every year or so. I like to look through its four appendices and check off the \"canonical\" books that I've read. There are 37 pages of these lists, broken down into four Vico-esque\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1573225142","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bea-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":1},"title":"BEA 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"June 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing \"that paltry, pitiful sum\" of $9.99. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag: At a panel of authors speaking mainly to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3813,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-pulitzer-edition","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":2},"title":"0-fer of the week: Pulitzer edition","author":"Gil","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Evidently, this year's Pulitzer Awards come out soon. In fact, they may've been awarded already. I'm not really sure, because I don't give a crap about awards. But, so, hey, I came across a link to this AbeBooks list of the Top 10 Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novels, and guess what?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a= 0679766529","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3935,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-20th-century-edition","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":3},"title":"0-fer 20th century edition","author":"Gil","date":"June 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Because I'm not some commie pinko, I don't listen to NPR. So I don't know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century. He organized the list in terms of \"how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3668,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wednesday-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":4},"title":"Wednesday 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"You may not have realized it, dear reader, but I've actually been adhering to a somewhat regular schedule with some of this blog's features. Monday is What It Is day, Tuesday's are for Lost in the Supermarket, Wednesday is 0-fer day, and Friday brings us Unrequired Reading! (Since Friends went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3616,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/7-rooms-of-bloom","url_meta":{"origin":3895,"position":5},"title":"7 Rooms of Bloom!","author":"Gil","date":"March 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"[UPDATE: In 2016, I recorded a conversation with Harold Bloom for The Virtual Memories Show! I also recorded episodes with his friends and colleagues John Crowley, Sandy McClatchy and Langdon Hammer.] So, wait: I never told you about the time I called Harold Bloom? Geez! I've been blogging 6 years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3896,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions\/3896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}