CHRONIC: wing chair
haute couture and moles bulimic
By Manuel RODRIGUEZ RIVERO
long time I wanted to refer to the editorial Elba, one of the most interesting publishing projects have emerged in recent months in a sector where many new proposals by entrepreneurs who swim against the tide. Upstream means in this context, against the grain of mainstream every day clone of the more uniform and not off (except comforting and few surprises) programming publishing of large groups.
But the crisis and palpable (just ask those experienced booksellers) expenditure restraint in the purchase of books. Elba is a good example of this willingness to distinguish imagination, but without histrionics, as a product of expected developments in the tables. In the half year that has already been publishing be noted as a hallmark of niche and demanding, and perhaps therefore not compatible with a market maelstrom engulfing bulimic with anxiety and return what does not assimilate instantly. Good translations, texts care, decent and functional decks, if not just typographical, are all elements that pose an obvious wink to the reader that, although immersed in digital, so loves the aesthetics of book always like that family sensations, the faint sound of the pages be passed, for example-that accompany the slow reading. Even some of the books are published uncut, so that the reader has to separate the pages to read, an anachronistic prolonged operation in the physical sense of uncovering inherent in any reading. Elba published short works: basically literary memoirs and texts by and about artists, understood the term in its broadest sense. A few weeks ago I read with advantage the small selection of letters on art, 1916-1956, Marcel Duchamp, which is manifested particularly spontaneous iconoclastic vision of what is now quotes a "work of art." But today I want to recommend especially Yves Letters, which includes the Pierre Bergé wrote, as a final goodbye to his partner and lover, Yves Saint-Laurent, after the death in June 2008. Bergé, a businessman, billionaire, socialist, activist homosexual and conspicuous patron and art collector, he met Yves Saint-Laurent in 1958, shortly after her breakup with the painter Bernard Buffet, who, in turn, had fallen in love - and against all odds, the singer, model and writer (and later his muse) Annabel Schwob. When they met, Saint-Laurent worked as a stylist at Dior and had already been noted in the competitive world of haute couture. That meeting started a passionate love affair and a fruitful professional partnership that lasted half a century. Bergé was the architect of the economic and managerial career of his mistress, raised money to start his own firm, all projects funded and allowed him to devote himself exclusively to the creation. These letters to those who could not read are the moving testimony of that love and loneliness and tear that struck down Bergé, who have experienced them all separated lovers whom death: "As much as I try to live as if nothing had happened (...) there is nothing to do: offend again and again with your absence. " A beautiful book, passionate worship, and farewell is at the same time, the elegiac review of a fascinating life together.
Sector
My mole at the XXII National Congress of Booksellers, held these last days in Las Palmas Gran Canaria with little media coverage (is not sought it or could not get it?), I have been informed that in the opening session, my dear Director General of the book (so) surprised the audience with a speech that sounded to many Farewell and that, almost, almost, the only thing missing was the request that the last one out turn off the light. It is, I reiterate my eficacísimos talpids, exhausted from digging their underground galleries tortuous ideological sector, which the evergreen Don Rogelio, who has survived (for now) to three ministers, several crisis (politically) and even the seismic bombing of Benghazi, no longer enjoys the confidence of Leon and fierce defender of presidential, but perhaps overwhelmed by the pessimism of the surveys, see near the end of his mandate. It would be wrong: you still have probably a year, enough time to meet in his office to publishers and booksellers and put the finishing gold to its difficult management, upon which the parties reach agreement on one aspect which I find troubling. Turns out, no one expected it, in the Congress of my beloved booksellers (long life with both analog and digital!) Presented a new bibliographic database (can ojearla in www.todostuslibros.com) which provides information about and a half million titles, as well as the actual availability (in the libraries associated with CEGAL, the highest body representing the profession) of more than half a million of them. The base, public use and free delivery offer any more, as the top 100 bestselling books in the associated libraries. In any case, is a byproduct todostuslibros.com for all public CEGAL In Red, the basis for internal use by booksellers. As you know, my (also) beloved editors have achieved this socialist government privatization and management of the ISBN (the query might not be free) and also are very happy with Dilva, a management platform and bibliographical information "taken all professionals in the book chain, and feeds the data provided by publishers who wish to do so. So, if you still add, at this time in cyberspace there are four databases and bibliographical different but no that good and all more or less "in process." Hence it is desirable that both sides could agree and will join efforts to achieve the best possible, not forgetting the readers / consumers (who are the ones who feed them and which, incidentally, are an essential part of " book chain ") also deserve to have their fill of free information (although there are other commercial reasons which are restricted use). Look, sometimes I think the players in this sector live with the same lack of communication that those neighbors that share a hallway in an apartment complex and known only from the other what they hear muffled through the walls. On better communication in this sector will rise to it deserves. Moreover, my insatiable and bulimic moles (all but one of readers of Le Carré) told me that in the galleries drilled at night in the basement of the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus got blind (even more) of worms. Congratulations.
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