Recent book acquisitions

Thinking about El Paso this early week

Thierry Frémaux’s Lumière, Le Cinema! A gorgeous film essay made of one-hundred films by Lumière, perfectly scored with music by Gabriel Fauré, sustaining the thesis of these works as aesthetic objects that contain many of the ideas that would unfold in the history of cinema. In theaters.

Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No.3, a deliciously tense, subtly sinister family drama about grief and its aftermath, with bravura performances by Barbara Auer and Paula Beer. In theaters

Julia Ducourneau’s Alpha, a visually striking, narratively uneven drama about illness, stigma and family trauma, mismarketed as body horror, interesting yet too long and without the kinetic qualities of Titane. In theaters.

the whole introduction of LYRIC LOGIC— titled "Philosophical Poetry"— is available to read via preview at @columbiaup.bsky.social 's site cup.columbia.edu/book/lyric-l...

Otro nuevo artículo mío, sobre los escritos de Alfonso Reyes en gastronomía, publicado en la revista chilena Pléyade, en el número especial “Retóricas de la incorporacion. Alimentacion, dietética y canibalismo en filosofía y teorías sociales”, editado por Valeria Campos Salvaterra.

Maria Stepanova’s Kafkaesque tale of exile, implicitly set around the time of her exile from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, doubling as an elliptical tale about lost identity. Very good as expected.

Sometimes collections of ephemeral texts feel unnecessary, but this one, which compiles a number of random oral speeches by Aira, does have a few insightful texts about his literary ideas, not for broad readers but anyone who has read him substantively will find interest in this.

I am very happy to receive The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Latin American Poetry, edited by Ben Bollig and Jorge Locane, which includes my article On the Borders of Form, on the poetry of Violeta Orozco and Robin Myers.

Assorted book arrivals

The return of Sunday homecoooking! Carne molida en chiles Guajillo y puya, arroz rojos, frijoles rojos estofados,queso, aguacates, tortilla de maíz. Accompanied with Bohemia Clara, Volcán de mi Tierra Blanco Tahona and Topo Chico.

Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, an impeccably shot, beautifully written, perfectly acted theme-and-variation trio of short films revolving around the awkwardness and silences in family relationships. In MUBI.

This kind of book is catnip to me, an essay-narrative of astounding erudition, following her great book Figuring, this time a reflection on polymaths and the foundations of modern poetry and science, with Mary Shelley, Ruth Benedict, Captain Cook, Frederick Douglass and others

The work of a master at the height of his style, showing the autofictional beyond identity and self-centering, as a vehicle for historial depth and the materiality of politics. Highly recommended.

Finally finished my third post of favorites! open.substack.com/pub/ignacios...

Continuing my love affair with Australian lit, I read this epic novel by Nobel Prize Patrick White, a masterful depiction of a group of people in a suburb, dislocated from each other and alienated from postwar modernization. Demanding, too on the nose on its Christian motifs, but excellent overall

This book is a “fictional memoir” and a first person picaresque on memory and family, keeping the affective and sentimental registers of the genre but challenging commonplaces with intelligent narrative framings. One of the best US Latinx novels of the past couple of decades. From Azflan Libre Press

Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, a surprisingly citational and quite stressful metaphysical road film, which flows rather than coalesce, masterful in its command of the affective and the sensorial, a timely formalization of the present at the verge of the apocalypse. In theaters.

The great Antonio Lobo Antunes passed away. A psychiatrist profoundly impacted by the colonial war in Angola, Lobo wrote brilliant visceral books about violence and otherness, doubling down on the legacy of modernists like Celine. expresso.pt/cultura/Livr...

Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, an aestheticized, restrained film on the moral decisions surrounding endings and aging, led by a prodigious performance by the great Toni Servillo, a film that is small and provincial, from a director who has followed his mastepiece by stumbling into his limits, in MUBI

Just discovered @isanchezprado.bsky.social’s top fiction pick of 2025 is an airport novel. Going in my carry on. open.substack.com/pub/ignacios...

Amigues en Chile: voy a estar la semana que entra con tres eventos; una charla sobre las humanidades y el derecho a la cultura en la Biblioteca Nicanor Parra de la UDP, una sobre el maíz criollo en Valparaíso y una presentación de la película La mujer murciélago en la Cineteca Nacional de Chile.

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Plane reading, a tremendous novel by Felix Nesi, a writer from West Timor, on the impact of the layers of violence by various colonizers in the lives of people in the island. A real masterwork, intriguing also to read work from a place whose literature is rarely available in English or Spanish.

Friends coming to ACLA, I am very excited to be part of the Vice-Presidential seminar “After Political Knowledge” my paper opens the seminar tomorrow at 2!

Selected film arrivals

I am happy to receive the 18th volume of the Critical Mexican Studies series at Vanderbilt UP: @emilyceleste.bsky.social Border Biomes, a contribution to understand the effects of borders on the environment and the literary and cultural representations of ecological harm caused by borderization

Sean Baker’s Sandiwara, an endearing short on the cultural labor surrounding food, set in a market in Malaysia, with a brilliant Michelle Yeoh playing many roles with elegance, from the food critic and the blogger to the cook and the local singer. In YouTube.

Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s El Diablo fuma, a sensorial, affective, observed film on five children left by their parents with a peculiar grandmother, an interesting wager for a cinema more concerned with detail and suggestion than narrative. In Mexican theaters

Ihtzi Hurtado’s ¿Quieres ser mi novia?, the new entry in the 35-year run of the creative-class romcom, a sequel actually, on a couple dealing with age difference, not as fun as the prequel, but a decent (and financially successful) popcorn film. In Mexican theaters.

Maiz de Cacao, a place owned by the Carballo family, which approaches heirloom maize from the Huasteca region of Veracruz: quesadilla de chapulín with homemade queso fresco, a tamal of pumpkin, pipián and dried shrimp (divine) and tascalate, a drink of maize and chocolate with achiote.

Mexico City, 1:30 AM. After a movie and a round of emails, a beautiful bowl of ramen. Right below my hotel, an excellent 24/7 Japanese restaurant. And cheap: this cost less than eating a bowl at Chipotle yesterday. This is one of the million reasons why I love it so deeply.

My Mexico City welcome meal, at Los Condes, the kind of tradition Mexico City taqueria that also has a fresh fruit stand. the vudú: agujas norteñas (similar to kalbi) with nopales and potatoes, quesadilla de huitlacoche, and licuado de mamey

Desde Iztapalapa para St Louis, Los Angeles Azules! With a surprise song with Ximena Sariñana! Very happy for my Chilango heart!

I finally saw the best picture nominees and this is my personal ranking: The actually great: Sentimental Value The Secret Agent Sinners The good but not their director’s best: One Battle After Another Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet The trash Marty Supreme Train Dreams F1

Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams morphs Dennis Johnson’s novelization of the fragments of memory and experience through history into an Americana-tinged allegory with whiffs of early Malick, overemphasizing fatherhood and national at the expense of the feverish and the violent. In Netflix.

Read over the past couple of days, a collection of short stories translated from Urdu, capturing India’s partition with fierceness and pain, from an author whose life was in many ways affected by it. Highly recommended, another great Archipelago book

The four excellent classical albums that accompanied my weekend writing and editing

A lovely book by one of the foremost poets of Brazil’s counterculture, a counterpoint to concretism from Tropicalia, author of poems filled with joy and playfulness. Salomāo also co-wrote one of my favorite songs, Vapor barato, and as viceminister of culture he sought to make the book a basic right

3 AM with the radio lectures on Blaise Pascal by French critic Antoine Compagnon, someone who calls himself “a child of the democratization of culture.” Intended as radio shows, it builds on Pascal’s dialectic with Montaigne to bring the epicurean spirit of the essayist back into the order of faith

Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment, an uneven but fun metamockumentary, depicting talented people swallowed alive by vampiric capitalism and the untalented leeches that control infrastructures of artistic work, plus an Alexander Skarsgard performance for the ages. In theaters.

Overnight treat, a creative memoir essay of avant-garde spirit, exploring race, aesthetics and the evolving relationship of a literary classic from the child’s encounter with a pedagogical figure to the poet reader dealing with his legacy. Superbly translated by the prolific Selma Ancira.

David Borenstein and Pasha Talankin’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a bravely filmed documentary by a teacher who shows the authoritarian takeover of curriculum and the militarization of the school, with events that will sound familiar to teachers in the US. In Kino Film Collection.

New translation of Thomas Bernhard’s early short stories. You can see his evolution from a late Finis Austriae style mediated by Dostoyevsky to the intense, compulsive voice of his transformative literary prosody. A good introduction to his work before delving into the heart of his darkness.

Good read early today, interestingly another book about the border between civilization and nature, this one in the Colombian tradition of La vorágine. Fantastic prose, good thrilling intensity.

The first truly great Mexican music album of 2026 is out, from the alt-rock band Hello Seahorse! Truly at the top of their powers, perhaps their best work so far.

UVA friends! Next week I am visiting you for two events I will be giving a talk on “The Utopia of the Humanities and the Right to Culture” on Thursday 13, and a book seminar on Taco on the 14th. I’m honored to be joined on Friday by Chef Victor Albisu of Taco Bamba fame. Registration required.

A beautiful short novel imagining Ovid in his Black Sea exile, engaging with people he sees as barbarians and adopting a feral child raised by deer. A great novel of the line between nature and culture, masterful in its work with space, narrated as a letter to the future.