dimecres, 27 de novembre del 2013

XX Premi Vent de Port (Tremp)

Reunit el dia 17 de novembre, el jurat de la 20ª edició del Premi Vent de Port, compost per Vicenç Llorca, Jordi Mir, Ada Castells, Carles Castell i Joan Carretero, després d’examinar la totalitat dels contes presentats a la convocatòria d’enguany, acorda classificar com a finalistes els treballs següents:


AUTOR
TÍTOL
PROCEDÈNCIA
Marc Aguilar i Coris L’espera Celrà
Marta Amigo i Olmos Àngels (alats) Santa Coloma de Cervelló
Carme Andrade Platero Absència Reus
Mercè Bagaria Mellado Al sud Barcelona
Sebastià Bennassar Llobera Pluja Palma de Mallorca
Jesús Bernat Agut La cançó Almassora
Josep Casals i Arbós La mirada ametllada Prades
Sandra Comas Anglada Blue Moon Puigcerdà
Josep Lluís Laguarta Ullod Sortir del sistema Gironella
Jordi Masó Rahola L’àlbum fotogràfic de Frèderic Parés Granollers
Daniel Moretones Otero Creuem els dits Barcelona
Joan Pinyol Colom Llibertat, Igualtat, Fraternitat Capellades
Arnau Queralt i Bassa Dolç adéu sota les aigües Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana
Marta Rollan Font Cant de Sinera Barcelona
Jordi Serra Mayoral Mal de ronyons Palafrugell
Jaume Tarrida Ortiz Un Sant Cristo Gros Barcelona
Aleix Tura Vecino L’estela del tall Mollet del Vallès
Xavier Vallès Casanova No m’espereu a sopar Badalona
Josep Manel Vidal Juan Cafè i canyella L’Alcúdia de Crespins

I atorga per majoria el premi a l’obra “Magranes” d’Albert Garriga i Pujol, de Molins de Rei.

dimarts, 26 de novembre del 2013

Cathedral de Raymond Carver (1983)

"That evening at Bud and Olla's was special. I knew it was special. That evening I felt good about almost everything in my life. I couldn't wait to be alone with Fran to talk to her about what I was feeling. I made a wish that evening. Sitting there at the table, I closed my eyes for a minute and thought hard. What I wished for was that I'd never forget or otherwise let go of that evening. That's one wish of mine that came true. And it was bad luck for me that it did. But, of course, I couldn't know that then.
"What are you thinking about, Jack?" Bud said to me.
"I'm just thinking," I said. I grinned at him.
"A penny," Olla said.
I just grinned some more and shook my head" (pàg. 25)

"They ate rolls and drank coffee. Ann was suddenly hungry, and the rolls were warm and sweet. She ate three of them, which pleased the baker. Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he'd worked over. Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning. He had a necessary trade. He was a baker. He was glad he wasn't a florist. It was better to be feeding people. This was a better smell anytime than flowers.
"Smell this," the baker said, breaking open a dark loaf. "It's a heavy bread, but rich." They smelled it, then he had them taste it. It had the taste of molasses and coarse grains. They listened to him. They ate what they could. They swallowed the dark bread. It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light. They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving." (pàg. 88)

"But even as he said this, he began to feel afraid of the night that was coming. He began to fear the moment he would begin to make his preparations for bed and what might happen afterward. That time was hours away, but already he was afraid. What if, in the middle of the night, he accidentally turned onto his right side, and the weight of his head pressing into the pillow were to seal the wax again into the dark canals of his ear? What if he woke up then, unable to hear, the ceiling inches from his head?" (pàg. 123)

"J.P. says she put her hands on her hips and looked him over. Then she found a business card in the front seat of her truck. She gave it to him. She said, "Call this number after ten tonight. We can talk. I have to go now." She put the top hat on and then took it off. She looked at J.P. once more. She must have liked what she saw, because this time she grinned. He told her there was a smudge near her mouth. Then she got into her truck, tooted the horn, and drove away.
"Then what?" I say. "Don't stop now, J.P."
I was interested. But I would have listened if he'd been going on about how one day he'd decided to start pitching horseshoes." (pàg. 132)

[Full text] 

dimecres, 6 de novembre del 2013

Ask the dust de John Fante (1939)

"The lean days, blue skies with never a cloud, a sea of blue day after day, the sun floating through it. The days of plenty--plenty of worries, plenty of oranges. Eat them in bed, eat them for lunch, push them down for dinner. Oranges, five cents a dozen. Sunshine in the sky, sun juice in my stomach" (pàg. 23)

"“I’d love to read it!” she said, and she sat erect, rigid with eagerness. I threw myself on the bed, buried my face in the pillow, and the little girl read my story with a soft sweet voice that had me weeping at the first hundred words. It was like a dream, the voice of an angel filling the room, and in a little while she was sobbing too, interrupting her reading now and then with gulps and chokes, and protesting. “I can’t read anymore,” she would say, “I can’t.” And I would turn over and beseech her: “But you’ve got to, Judy. Oh, you got to!”" (pàg. 61)

"Dear Sammy,
That little whore was here tonight; you know, Sammy, the little Greaser dame with a wonderful figure and a mind for a moron. She presented me with certain alleged writings purportedly written by yourself. Furthermore she stated the man with the scythe is about to mow you under. Under ordinary circumstances I would call this a tragic situation. But having read the bile your manuscripts contain, let me speak for the world at large and say at once that your departure is everybody's good fortune. You can't write, Sammy, I suggest you concentrate on the business of putting your idiotic soul in order these last days before you leave a world that sighs with relief at your departure. I wish I could honestly say that I hate to see you go. I wish too that, like myself, you could endow posterity with something like a monument to your days upon this earth. But since this is so obviously impossible, let me urge you to be without bitterness in your final days. Destiny has indeed been unkind to you. Like the rest of the world, I suppose you too are glad that in a short time all will be finished, and the ink spot you have splattered will never be examined from a larger view. I speak for all sensible, civilized men when I urge you to burn this mass of literary manure and thereafter stay away from pen and ink. If you have a typewriter, the same holds true; because even the typing in this manuscript is a disgrace. If, however, you persist in your pitiful desire to write, by all means send me the pap you compose. I found at least you are amusing. Not deliberately, of course." (pàg. 142)

"When it was all gone, the dream of floating toward bursting stars, and the flesh returned to hold my blood in its prosaic channels, when the room returned, the dirty sordid room, the vacant meaningless ceiling, the weary wasted world, I felt nothing but the old sense of guilt, the sense of crime and violation, the sin of destruction.” (pàg. 173)