“Among the authors he condemned to the flames were obvious targets like Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold and Stephan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. But others were less understandable: why should they burn Emil and the detectives, for instance, or Bambi, simply because their authors, Eric Kästner and Felix Salten respectively, were deemed unacceptable?”
The devil’s disciples; the lives and times of Hitler’s inner circle
ANTHONY READ
Pimlico, 2004
923 págs.
“Now, I’ve always heard that one of the most important things in life is to be confortable in one’s own skin. Well, I may have come to the not illogical conclusion that the more skin you have, the more confort you’ll feel! Presumably you’ve heard of making a mountain out of a molehill? Well, that one fussy molehill was now this eternally black-clad mountain. And, if my alleged resemblance to Elton John turns out to be a problem for anyone out there, all I can really say (politely and in a sing-song voice) is “blow my big bovine, tiny dancer cock!” Or you could just skip the whole thing – your choice”.
Shockaholic
CARRIE FISHER
Simon & Schuster, 2011
156 págs.
El departamento de teorías alucinantes; tiras cómicas de ciencia
Tom Gauld
Salamandra Graphic
160 págs.
“Kien read and re-read the letter. His hands trembled, tears blurred his eyes. Can was no more. The military police had found his rotten corpse. Only his skeleton was complete, like that of a frog thrown into a mudpatch. Crows had pecked away Can’s face; his mouth was full of mud and rotting leaves.
‘That damned turncoat, he really stank,’ said the military policeman who had buried Can.
His eye-sockets were hollow, like trenches. in that short time moss and slime had already grown over him. The MP had gagged, spitting at the memory.
No one spoke of Can again. No one bothered to find out why he had died, whether he was killed, or had just exhausted himself in the jungle, or whether he’d committed suicide. No one accused him, either.
The name, age and image of someone who’d been every bit as brave under fire as his comrades, who had set a fine example, suddenly disappeared without trace.
Except within the mind of Kien. Can’s image haunted him every night, returning during the night to whisper to him by his hammock, repeating the final, gloomy lines he’d spoken by the stream. The whisper would turn to a suffocating gasp, like the sound of water blocking the throat of a drowning man.
‘…my soul swims away from my body…’
Kien recalled Can’s voice. And each time Kien knelt in prayer before the platoon’s altar to the war martyrs Kien would whisper a word for Can’s soul, the soul of a mate who had died in humiliation, uncared for and misunderstood, even by Kien”.
The sorrow of war
BAO NINH
Vintage Classics 1998 (originalmente publicado por Martin Secker & Warburg, 1993. Publicado en España como El dolor de la guerra, Ediciones B, 2005)
227 págs.
Versión inglesa de Frank Palmos, de la traducción original del autor.
Pedazo de flyer autoexplicativo. Tal elenco de frrrreaks no se veía desde La revancha de los novatos II. Una charla a tres manos entre tres grandes guiquis de la cultura pop, con la colaboración de editor y traductor. Solo falta Charlie (no habrá sesión de espiritismo, no teman).
Me apetece mucho esto, porque además de ser ultrafan del libro y de la historia, voy a compartir mesa con dos caballeros que me chiflan, en lo humano y cultural.
Es, ya lo ven ahí arriba, el miércoles 22 de mayo a las 19h, en La Central de la calle Mallorca. Les invito a venir. Sí, a todos ustedes.
Esto lo escribí hace poco a modo de despiece extra para una entrevista de Anna Abella con Thomas Weber, autor de De Adolf a Hitler. Es una selección de libros para saber más sobre el tipo aquel enajenado del bigote chocante.
A este tipo de artículos podríamos englobarlos en la serie «Sacándole partido a lo de haber sido de niño un ULTRANERD hepatítico».
Bendito Atraso 