Sundays with El Pais, continued
When I lived in Spain, my Sunday joy was a cover-to-cover, leisurely walk through El Pais, one of Spain's national newspapers. I waxed poetic about it here one luxurious Sunday in Salamanca.
I still try to spend part of every Sunday with El Pais, although these days we meet online. I like to read the international news section, which covers the world with a depth and a breadth even my preferred American paper, the NewYork Times, doesn't match. But I spend most of my El Pais time these days in the culture section. There I read the kind of lengthy, lyrical and literate pieces --about books and writers and poets and photographers and musicians and artists and languages - that made my Spanish Sundays such a treat. More than once an essay discovered during a Sunday El Pais outing has sent me running to Amazon in search of an English language author, or poet or book. I've learned of the death of an American jazz great only through the pages of El Pais more than once as well, alongside rich retrospective articles and essays about the artist's work.
Most recently, the pages of El Pais have helped me plan an upcoming trip to the home base of my "other newspaper", the Times. The New York Public Library, my Spanish paper let me know, is hosting "Back Tomorrow", an exhibit of Lorca's New York photos, notes, letters and drawings --even the passport that brought him to New York. Also on exhibit is the original manuscript of Poet in New York that had been missing for many years, a manuscript Lorca left on his friend and publisher's desk in Madrid in 1936, with a note that he would be "back tomorrow". He never returned, and the book was published posthumously after his death at the hands of a group of fascists in Granada.
I am most excited about a letter he wrote to his sisters on an autumn birch leaf he had picked up in Vermont. I remember writing letters to a cousin on autumn leaves, though I doubt they matched Lorca's.
I visit the exhibit tomorrow afternoon, for a long overdue artist's date with me, myself and, of course, yo. Talk amongst yourselves (all three of you, yes, all three of you, Di, Laura, Alex) and I will report on the Lorca exhibit on my return.
The El Pais article that brought me word of the exhibit is here.
I still try to spend part of every Sunday with El Pais, although these days we meet online. I like to read the international news section, which covers the world with a depth and a breadth even my preferred American paper, the NewYork Times, doesn't match. But I spend most of my El Pais time these days in the culture section. There I read the kind of lengthy, lyrical and literate pieces --about books and writers and poets and photographers and musicians and artists and languages - that made my Spanish Sundays such a treat. More than once an essay discovered during a Sunday El Pais outing has sent me running to Amazon in search of an English language author, or poet or book. I've learned of the death of an American jazz great only through the pages of El Pais more than once as well, alongside rich retrospective articles and essays about the artist's work.
Most recently, the pages of El Pais have helped me plan an upcoming trip to the home base of my "other newspaper", the Times. The New York Public Library, my Spanish paper let me know, is hosting "Back Tomorrow", an exhibit of Lorca's New York photos, notes, letters and drawings --even the passport that brought him to New York. Also on exhibit is the original manuscript of Poet in New York that had been missing for many years, a manuscript Lorca left on his friend and publisher's desk in Madrid in 1936, with a note that he would be "back tomorrow". He never returned, and the book was published posthumously after his death at the hands of a group of fascists in Granada.
I am most excited about a letter he wrote to his sisters on an autumn birch leaf he had picked up in Vermont. I remember writing letters to a cousin on autumn leaves, though I doubt they matched Lorca's.
I visit the exhibit tomorrow afternoon, for a long overdue artist's date with me, myself and, of course, yo. Talk amongst yourselves (all three of you, yes, all three of you, Di, Laura, Alex) and I will report on the Lorca exhibit on my return.
The El Pais article that brought me word of the exhibit is here.
posted by Erin at
3:20 AM
2 Comments:
Hi, Dear WW. I'm so happy to see posts here. I haven't checked in AGES! Oh, NO!!
Got lots of excuses, no reasons other than poor time management. :)
Will catch up very soon!
By
Kate, at 2:13 AM
Thank you for this loving tribute to El Pais which I can relate to a thousand percent. Not to the specific El Pais, which I have only read occasionally, but to the broader family of well written, well researched substantive European newspapers that have not "drunk the kool aid" That plagues American newspapers, namely that you you expand readership by lowering the standard to the attention and language capability of children. I too am an avid reader of the New York Times, but there is no question that the European cousins of El Pais - the Financial Times, Le Monde, etc are in a different class. I suspect the higher quality of writing is more a function of the demand placed on the newspaper by its readers than the mere whim of its editors.
I applaud you for being able to navigate with fluency El Pais - I admit that even after living in Central America for six years and having pretty good conversational Spanish I found El Pais a stretch for my linguistic capability. The boomerang effect that you describe of reading in European newspapers about events in the U.S. that do not make it into print, is one that I have observed many times, whereas conversely the treatment of international events, art, literature found in U.S. newspapers are invariably predictable and skimming the surface, save for the occasional rare gem. Thank you for reminding me to pick up a copy of El Pais when we are in Spain in a week. I have now one more reason to look forward to this trip thanks to you!!
Ben
By
Greenglobaltrek, at 5:05 PM
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