-Roommate Ben points me to whopper virgins.
I was reminded of the film Fitzcarraldo by Werner Hertzog, about an intrepid European businessman who seeks to build an operahouse in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Undeterred by hostile natives and environments, Fitzcarraldo carries on with his plan with a fanatical zeal. The image of the helicopter lifting the specially-made broiler in a net reminded me of the scene where Fitzcarraldo oversees the throng of natives he has employed, dragging his 32-ton steamboat over a mountain. The broiler scene was like a cheapened version of that -- but instead of opera, we're giving them shitty food.
Toward the end of the commercial, I found the "symphonic" music playing in the background as an oddly moving (and disquieting) extension of the director's desire to document a kind of "culinary culture" (these are his words) and "profound new human experience" (my words) -- a kind of culture "sharing" with the Other while, of course, ignoring the possibility that the Other might already have one, that is, a culture. At first I felt amused, then immensely sad. There's something tragic about this: this world we live in, where everyone has eaten a burger.
On a side note, although I have no additional inclination to eat a Whopper (or Big Mac, for that matter), my feelings toward Burger King, I think, have shifted slightly in the positive.
-I'm nearing the 500 page mark of The Savage Detectives by Chilean author Roberto Bolano. I have to say: it's probably the most beautiful and moving book I've ever read. I hope the ending doesn't disappoint me.
Eyeshot has a new piece of his up, a powerful, lyric essay entitled "The Beach". It's currently the only English translation for it. Next week's issue of The New Yorker will also feature freshly translated material of his as well, a short story, which, if it's anything like the last one published there ("Clara"), will be amazing.
Sometimes I wouldn’t even go out shopping because I was scared of coming back and finding her dead, but as the days went by my fears gradually faded, and I realized (or perhaps conveniently convinced myself) that Clara wasn’t going to take her life; she wasn’t going to throw herself off the balcony of her apartment—she wasn’t going to do anything.
UPDATE (12/15/08): Link to Bolano's new story "Meeting with Enrique Lihn" in The New Yorker.
