Literature & Culture

The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, by Taylor Branch
(Simon & Schuster, 29 September 2009, 720 pp.)
Undereden grades: A-

Taylor Branch’s highly readable new memoir/history of the Clinton presidency is a marvel of modern presidential research. This is a hybrid work made possible by President Clinton’s obsessive desire to record his immediate thoughts as his throughout his presidency, both in order to aid in the writing of his memoirs and in interest of accuracy. Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian (Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63), is a friend of Clinton’s from their days working on the ill-fated presidential campaign of George McGovern in Austin, TX. Clinton – impressed with Branch’s historical breadth – asked his old friend to preside over secret taping sessions as often as a presidential schedule allows.

It turns out that Clinton’s diligence (and Branch’s availability to come down from his home in Baltimore to the White House at any hour, without warning, at any hour), against all odds and despite incredible time constraints on the POTUS, paid off – to the tune of 79 recorded sessions during his two terms. This is nothing short of a miracle.

Branch’s account is based on his memory of the sessions, which he dictated/recorded immediately after on his drive back to Baltimore from Washington. So there is much paraphrasing and occasionally some “I cannot recall exactly the President’s extensive detailed explanation on the negotiations between Barak and Arafat.” His memory, however, through his dictation, is amazingly precise.

Through Branch’s  memory we walk through the White House as Clinton lived it, not in retrospect or even as the media was covering him at the time. Although he does fume about the press’s vendetta against as well as the right wing’s intense desire to upend his presidency, most of his ruminations are actually balanced and honest reflections of the events of the day. The former president is brilliant and detailed in his analysis, and Branch’s tidbits of daily White House happenings (Clinton’s severe allergies and the comings and goings of Chelsea and Hillary) add color to a presidency with non-wonkish detail – while still be substantive on policy and issues.

This book is a treasure for those who want to quickly get a sense of 90s politics. Disregard the seemingly long length. Of the 720 pages, 550 are actually written text – the rest being index. The format is simple. A chapter for each set of sessions. As you move from

From his meetings with world leaders to his fights with legislators – a fascinating read.

World leaders: After several meetings with Jiang Zenim of China that can easily be called “strained”, Zenim finally lost patience with Clinton’s constant demands on human rights and freedoms:

“Look,” Jiang told him. “It’s wonderful that you have all this freedom, and all this money, but what do you do with it? You have 33,000 homicides by guns. Your cities are uninhabitable. Your schools don’t work. You have rampant drug use, and you can’t control your population. Who is to say that your freedom is worth it?”

Republican legislators: On shutting down the government in 1995: “Clinton was not sure he could thwart them (the Republicans trying to shut down the government), but he claimed one certainty: he would have been eviscerated for advocating anything remotely so irresponsible.”

The book is worth the read for Clinton’s memories of President Yeltsin of Russia alone.

Highly recommended – highly enjoyable.

Literature & Culture
Wolf Hall: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel
(Henry Hold & Co., 1st American Edition, 13 October 2009, 560 pp.)
Undereden grades: A-

After winning the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2009, Wolf Hall became a must-read for all literary and history buffs alike – if it wasn’t that already. There is already talk of Mantel following up the (now) best-seller with what would amount to “Cromwell Vol. II, the Downfall.” Why she did not include it all in one volume in the first place is a mystery.

Wolf Hall follows Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son who rose from the lowest of births to become the legal spearhead for the English reformation. His silencing of Thomas More and direction of Parliament made it possible for King Henry VIII to separate himself and England from the Pope (mockingly referred to as “the bishop of Rome” by Henry’s court) and divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry was enamored (bewitched?) with Anne Boleyn, who’s game of playing hard to get was instrumental in his decision to split with Rome.

All this is the long way of explaining that Mantel has written an exciting book about the mechanization’s of the last King Henry’s extremely volatile Court. Cromwell is a master – and in this retelling of the the English reformation and Anne Boleyn’s rise to fame – he is something else altogether: human, compassionate and (gasp) funny! This Cromwell is not a schemer so much as a clever man striving to do the best for his master – and if the spoils come his way, if rewards come his way, so be it. And financial rewards do come his way.

The insanity of Henry VIII’s court surely makes this account of 1520′s & 1530′s England more pleasurable to read – there have been many accounts of “the Boleyn years” in recent pop-culture – but Cromwell himself is a character worth reading on his own. His family, his history, his very modern way of thinking in the very backward late middle ages. Mante’s 1530′s somehow read as if it was the 1990′s, just substitute barges on the Thames for the Underground.

Still, one wonders why Mantel finishes with the ultimate peak of success of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. It is clear, from the reading of history if not Mantel’s text, that Anne is on the way out – and that Cromwell is heading for the Tower himself as a guest, not as an interviewer. So why not finish in 1540 instead of 1535?

A mystery. Also a mystery is how mesmerizing Mantel’s tale centered on Cromwell’s rise is. While not necessarily a masterpiece, like most Booker Prize winners – definitely worth the read, especially for those interested in history and definitive/pivotal historical characters.

Literature & Culture

The Informers, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
(Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean)
(Riverhead, 30 Jul. 2009, 368 pp.)
(originally published in 2004 as Los Informantes)
Undereden grades: B+

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, 35, Columbian, and a rising star in the resurgent Latin American literary world (read: Roberto Bolaño), weaves a vivid, tragic tale of betrayal set in both past and present Columbia. Gabriel Santoro, 30ish, writes a book about his father’s best friend, a German émigré, Sara Guterman.

Enter the world of Columbia in the early 1940s, with the War raging on the other side of the Atlantic – another war was being raged internally within the German exile community. Columbia was, like many other South America nations, a haven for Germans of all political stripes and religions to flee Nazism if necessary. However, the Columbian government’s close ties to FDR’s United States and its rewarding of ferreting out of any sort of dissident behavior left immense pressure on its population to “denounce” anyone who might have sympathetic views towards the Nazis. Often times these denunciations were exaggerations or outright fabrications, with the motive behind the secret disclosures murky at best.

It is in this murky sub-reality where this novel walks its fine line between Columbia WWII era and 1990s Columbia – and Vasquez does well to set the mood with dark, detailed vignettes that almost make it seem as if both time periods, a half century apart, exist in the same era.

The Informers, as it were, is Santoro’s second book – an extension of the first investigation of immigrant Sara Guterman to her friend (Santoro’s father), who is implicated in an act of treachery both vague and unforgivable committed fifty years earlier.

The novel loops through time to investigate the narrator’s father’s transgressions, the lives he took down with his betrayals (for seemingly no reward), and the gradual progression from vehemently denying and hiding one’s past to attempting to reconcile and understand one’s past.

These are characters who struggle with the meaning of memory, with the truth of time, who say things like:

“I was and maybe still am such a terrible thing: a memory forbidden from admitting that it remembers.”

or:

“How is it that the things that happened to us happened?”

And on lying – both:

“The best way to correct a lie was by insisting on it, not by telling the truth.”

and:

“Everyone tells lies. The worst thing is that we don’t notice. That’s what should never happen. Liars should be infallible.”

The writing throughout is compelling and engrossing, as Santoro interviews his father’s friend Sara about the past, and gleams insight into Columbia’s place in the world, the wreckage of the German psyche before and after WWII, and the strange bedfellows made by ambition, regret, and rebirth as life moves slowly forward (and backward).

Literature & Culture

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper, 3 Nov. 2009, 528 pp.)
Undereden grades: A-

“The most important part of the story is the piece of it you don’t know,” says Violet Brown, quoting her boss, the author Harrison Shepard. None too subtly, this bit of wisdom is repeated throughout Kingsolver’s beautiful, funny, and angering novel. Beat over the reader’s head, in fact, most often with a reminder that this is what “the Lacuna” is: the missing piece to the story or to any puzzle.

Violet is Kingsolver’s vessel for telling the story of Harrison Shepard, born in 1916 on the outskirts of D.C. to a government “bean-counter” and a fiery Mexican woman, Salomé, who is unabashedly a gold-digger. Her relationships are nothing more than a search for material comfort, and William, as she calls her son, is along for the ride. When his bean-counter father doesn’t pull enough weight, Salomé runs off to an island not far from Mexico City with an aspiring oil magnate.

What follows is a compilation of Harrison’s Shepard’s journals and letters, as compiled by Violet. It is made clear, quite early, that Harrison will become a man of some renown, and the hint is that there will also be something of tragedy and scandal along the way. Violet also makes it clear that she has taken it into her own hands to put together Shepard’s writings, quite probably against his wishes.

As his journals (and this novel) progress, we find Harrison in some most improbable positions. At age sixteen he returns to the U.S. to attempt to live with his father, who promptly ships him off to a military school just outside of D.C. Here he witnesses the revolt and eventual government crack-down of the “Bonus Army” in Washington in 1932. Later, back in Mexico, he comes under the employ of the famous painter Diego Rivera, both as a plaster maker and eventually as a cook and general house-servant. Eventually, Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo’s befriends Harrison and nicknames him Insólito, for his witty and subtle back talk that initially infuriates Frida, but eventually endears him to her and makes him a fixture in the household.

(“But honestly, XARrizZON! It sounds like strangling. What kind of name is that?”
“It was a president, señora.”
“Of what? Some place where they don’t have any oxygen?”
“Of the United States.”
“As I said.”)

By the late thirties, Shepard has been writing his journals, and also working on a novel about Cortés vs. the Aztecs: the 1500s – which he envisions as a human retelling of the story, through the eyes of the soldiers on both sides, not the leaders. Frida helps to convince him that he is indeed a writer, and not just a keeper of a meaningless daily journal.

Encouragement also comes in the unlikeliest of forms: the Fourth International. Anyone familiar with the history of Rivera and Kahlo will already know that as great believers in the world communist revolution, they welcomed Leon Trotsky to their home(s) just outside of Mexico City for his final years. Here is where the novel really picks up its pace and imagination. Trotsky’s entry into Shepard’s life is pivotal, as he drafts him as a typist and translator, where he eventually makes his mark and impresses the exiled Bolshevik and leader of the anti-Stalinist Fourth International. Trotsky even encourages Shepard to finish his novel when he catches him working on it.

The fascinating prose that Kingsolver, via Shepard, weaves in this section is magical. The catch with Shepard is he knows nothing from politics, and does not seem to grasp the danger or implications of simple words. He is a believer in an almost childish sense of the victory of common sense – hard to imagine for someone with such a warped childhood – but, in a sense, not so hard to imagine because in some ways he has never grown up. He is shocked when a translation of his ends up on the front page of the New York Times the following morning, for all the world to see. He wonders if he had mixed up Trotsky’s spanish one word could change from renege to reborn and the whole meaning would have been changed without Trotsky’s knowledge.

The characters in this novel all come alive, even if the narrators never do (Violet and Shepard). Trotsky is funny and human, Rivera mysterious and imperious, and Kahlo truly magnetic and energizing. And they are all normal, if strange, human beings – nothing out of a history book – which is part of what makes reading The Lacuna so much fun.

This is all recorded dutifully in his notebooks, as transcribed by Violet. But there always seems to be something missing – that “Lacuna” again. As the book enters its final phase, with Shepard moving to North Carolina and becoming a famous author in the “better dead than red” late-forties anti-communist craze, it becomes obvious that these missing pieces are meant to be missing. (Mentioning that J. Edgar Hoover and the G-Men and even the junior Senator from Wisconsin Joseph McCarthy will eventually make appearances cannot be giving too much away, given the previously related circumstances and time frame). Unfortunately, the public fills in the gaps, whether you are Trotsky in hiding in Mexico or Shepard in hiding in Asheville, NC – both churning out missives for the masses, but it is never enough – the masses and their newspapers need more, so they make it up, using inference as fact.

The Lacuna is ultimately a novel about the misunderstood. And I am sure that even if Kingsolver is not satisfied with this review, she will be satisfied that if I have indeed misunderstood her intent with this novel, I will be, at the very least, indeed proving her point exactly.

Barça: The American Cule (Núm Soci: 145925)
When did it really begin? Was it with the 2-6 in the Bernabeu in April?

When did we actually know? Was it when Iniesta became San Andres de Stamford Bridge?

When Messi went mid-air backwards falling away to magically float it over Van Der Saar’s head in Rome?

When Messi single-handedly dismantled Osasuna as a late substitution, slipping and sliding through the Pamplona rainstorm?

Those are just a few memories that come to mind. That’s just to start.

But really it began in 2008, on 5 June 2008, when Pep Guardiola signed on as coach. Everything stemmed from that decision. Laporta and Txiki could have gone with Mourinho, probably the safe choice. But there was a difference between the safe choice and the obvious choice, and Guardiola was the obvious choice. The natural choice. He had led a stumbling Barça B into the Segunda B after the side, while endlessly producing promising players for the senior club, had failed for years to succeed as a cohesive unit, continuously lacking identity – the players seemingly waiting for the call up, indifferent to Barça B’s success. Guardiola changed that rapidly – and the cohesiveness that he provided for Barça B was exactly what Rijkaard’s squad needed.

Guardiola indicated from the start that he would not be the lenient, hands-off trusting philosopher that Rijkaard was. Immediately dismissed were Ronaldinho and Deco, both of whom had legendary party habits that were something of an open secret within the Barça community. No matter they were the leaders of the 2006 Champion’s League winning side – Guardiola was looking for a team, not stars. Solid rocks, not galacticos. Xavi’s, Iniesta’s, Puyol’s of the world. Puyol was already recognized among the FIFA annual top XI all-stars, but Xavi and Iniesta were just growing in stature. He bet on La Masia, not on midfielders that were rumored to come in from the outside or were already on the team (Deco, Lampard, Ballack, etc.) – (and this before we even knew what he had planned for Sergio Busquets!)

Eighteen months later Xavi and Iniesta would be in FIFA’s top 5 players of the world. Who would have thought? Guardiola, for one.

Also myself, and many of my friends and colleagues watching from here in New Jersey. Though I had seen Xavi and Iniesta grow and develop in my years living in Barcelona (most of 2000-2007), it was when I moved back to the U.S. when things for the two of them really took off.

For years I felt that Iniesta and Xavi were criminally underrated by the Barcelona faithful. They were appreciated, but always fell under the shadow of the Ronnie’s, Deco’s and Henry’s of the squad. When Barça won the Champions League in 2006, injuries to Marquez and Motta left little Iniesta playing the defensive midfield/pivot spot – INIESTA! Are you kidding? Against AC Milan! Pivote!

When you are living in the States, and you don’t hear the talk, the rumors, and the constant white noise babble of the prensa, what you tend to notice first and foremost is the play on the pitch. (This is why we hated Henry for the first year and a half – because he was horrible.) And Iniesta and Xavi stood out. With Iniesta it was his versatility that stood out, playing every position of the front six, alternating/rotating around the pitch with alarming ease. Xavi, with the smooth, domineering attitude of a neurosurgeon, dominated possession of every game – sometimes grabbing a pass in the midfield with three-four defenders surrounding and hacking him, and then calmly rotating around in that little Xavi-esque 360 turn, and passing with his right foot to a wide-open Iniesta, Alves, or Messi breaking through.

But I digress – one could go on and on – and I shall go on and on as the new year begins and we discover if Guardiola can continue (or is willing to continue) managing and producing greatness in tandem. The point I was trying to make is that the promotion of Guardiola was the start of it all. Guardiola took three specific steps that led to six titles:

1) He put his trust not in the signing of big names, but in the cantera. Not only did he confide in Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol & co., but he had big plans for Pedrito (excuse me, Pedro) and Busquets; basically left it to Bojan to go after the Copa del Rey; and in eight short months made the returning Pique into, as the American commentator on GolTV joked after his goal made it six against Madrid in the Bernabeu in April, a contender for the Balon de Oro.

2) Those signings that he did make were used to fill specific holes. Keita and Dani Alves are perfect examples of NOT doing what Real Madrid tends to do: signing for signings sake, and not for the team’s sake.

3) Which brings us to the third and most important demand Guardiola made of his team: that they live, breathe, and exist as one cohesive unit. All parts were to be interdependent, no privileges were to be extended to a select few. The team was to start its day together and finish its day together. This was to be a TEAM, not a collection of individuals.

All of these developments: the rise of Xavi and Iniesta, Guardiola’s insistence on using the Barça youth system and targeted signings, to tap talent rather than fishing with big money for big names, and demanding that even with a team full of superstars the team comes before the individual – all of these developments were probably, I think, easier to understand when viewed from afar. From New York of all places. Because when you are a cule on American shores there are literally a handful of people in your life that you regularly speak to (and perhaps .01% of the population in general) that can talk Barça with any intelligence whatsoever. You can read the Spanish press and Soccernet.com and excellent websites such as Penyes Blaugrana, but really you are sharing ideas with five-ten people rather than an entire city (as when I lived in Barcelona). So what stays with you is the play on the field…

And now I leave you with my top 5 favorite moments of the 2009 Barça year:

5) Messi. In general. The principle of Messi. The essence of Messi. The sheer pleasure of watching him. Due to the fact that most Champions League games air on the East Coast of the U.S. at 1445h in the middle of the afternoon and towards the end of our working day in the energy industry, many games I am forced to view in the office. Picture an office full of American Football loving, typical Ameircans – generally ignorant to the world of “soccer.” They have a vague notion of the English Premiership as a profitable enterprise, perhaps have seen Beckham bend it, know that Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona exist, saw Zidane’s head-butt, Ronaldinho’s teeth and Hawaiian salute, and Christiano Ronaldo’s fashion poses – but they had no respect until they saw Messi darting across the screen. That is truly a satisfying moment – when a group of American brokers are stunned into dumbfounded respect for a sporting God such as Leo Messi – because this is something that does not happen. “Trev,” a co-worker said to me, “how does he even think of that? How is that even possible?” He was commenting on Messi’s goal against Estudiantes to win the Club Mundialito in Abu Dhabi – the diving, er, “chest-er”. That was the last goal of the year, but it was about the thirtieth time he had asked me the same question in 2009. A level of respect Americans rarely show for “the beautiful game.”

4) Pedrito in the Desert: At my parents’ house, during the Christmas season, watching that game – as ever – with my brother. It seems to good to be true. That Cule Guilt. That fear. Can’t win everything. They are too tired. Long year, 2009. I was complaining and complaining – how could they come so far and play so poorly in the final. Well they played well in the second half, but the first half was incredibly poor – and the goal reminiscent of the goals given up to Rubin Kazan in Camp Nou – just lack of attention and focus. But then the ball is swung in and Pique races across the top of the box to get a head on it and ther is Pedrito, in perfect position as ever, for a light, graceful touch of the ball, which seemed to float and hang in the air forever before nestling ever so gently into the back of the net. Pure brilliance. Lifted in the final moments again (see below). My family wondering why my brother and I are screaming – screams of joy and shock. Messi sealed the game twenty minutes later, but it was the Pedrito goal that was the moment.

3) Champs League Final in Manhattan: Lilly O’Brien’s Pub two blocks from the World Trade Center. Not much to say here. Nerves. Especially for the first ten minutes. Ronaldo was on fire. But then we settled in. And our first attack it’s Xavi, Iniesta and Eto’o and he scored a golazo and then it was over. Then it was the beautiful game. Wayne Rooney said after the game, and I’m paraphrasing, “we were scared to lose the ball, because then we wouldn’t get it back again for ten to fifteen minutes.” Manchester United, scared. Barça fans, for once, comfortable – and enjoying our second Champions League victory in three years. Man U fans in Manhattan, not so much enjoying anything. Humbled is the word, I believe.

2) The Barcelona Trip: November 2009 – In September I decided I needed a vacation. So when tickets went on sale for Barça-Madrid I was in the office at 4am buying the tickets. And I threw in buying some tickets for Barça-Inter as well. It was to be an epic trip – one that this space does not leave room for a full recounting – but to say that membership has its privileges would not be an understatement (Núm Soc 145925). For brevity’s sake, a quick summary of the two games. The better of the two was the match against Inter. I later watched the game on television and it did not have the same feel as being there in the stadium – which is an obvious statement, and not that you can ever get the feel of what is actually happening from watching on the TV – but there was something different for the Inter game. And the sense of immediacy and importance to the game, combined with Barça’s perilous position in its group and the return of the always ready to play the villain Mourinho…Let us just say the air was MELTING with anticipation. And this was the best Barça that we had seen all year. Perhaps better even then the team that dismantled the strong Manchester United in the Champions League final back in May in Rome. It was a humbling. Pique started off with a play designed on the playground, escaping for a goal (one step closer to the Balon de Oro!). But it was the second goal – with Iniesta, to Xavi, through three players to an Alves who had been running since Iniesta had the ball, crossing to Pedrito for the finish! Magnificence. Barça futbol at its best! The stadium was still buzzing in the second half. Domination and humiliation: “Mourinho, vete al teatro!” The Madrid game was tough – Real played tough, and if not for Ibra’s intervention, almost deserved a victory. But Barça rode out the storm, controlled the midfield down a man for 30 minutes after the unfortunate folly of Busquets, and came away the stronger side overall. Not the greatest game – but after Tuesday’s effort against Inter, combined with a victory in my first SuperClasico experienced at Camp Nou – overall an immensely rewarding trip after two and half years of watching games on the television in the the ofice and in bars among indifferent co-workers and patrons! I will be first in line to buy tickets to the Bernabau for the final if…let us not count any chickens…

1) San Andres del Stamford Bridge: I was in Mulligan’s, a bar in Hoboken, NJ, where my office is located just across the river from Manhattan. The bar’s owner is a Chelsea fan, and it was, as usual, filled with Chelsea fans – about 50-60 strong in a fairly small bar. This is a big crowd for mid-afternoon, mid-week. My brother and I wore Barça jerseys, and there were perhaps two others supporting the azulgrana. Surrounded by Chelsea fans we were, and suffering we did. I may be an American, pero sufro como un Catalan, un cule Catalan. I was ready to give up when Essien drove it home in the first half. After all, Chelsea had already been satisfied with playing ten in the box in Camp Nou on the ida, so now that they had the lead they were going to pack it in. And pack it in they did. I was ready to pack it in as well. My brother, faithful as ever, never gave up. And his patience was rewarded, and Xavi across to Dani Alves, a cross picked out by Terry but only cleared across to Eto’o, who lost it while atempting to get it to Messi at the corner of the box but then won it and deflected it to the latter, and Messi saw Ini and there it was – Iniesta takes a step back and tees it up and it is perfection. Silence in the bar and my brother and I hugging and jumping up and down and suddenly we see what magic is – and the personal pleasure in seeing Iniesta making it to the top of European football (he would play and star in the final in Rome, even though he was hurt) was the highlight of a year of heady highlights. Better than the final in Rome. Only half way through the calendar year, but it was the best – jumping up and down with my brother in a bar in Hoboken, NJ – Iniesta sliding in his neon-yellow tee-shirt and Guardiola clearly crazed. The best.

Literature

For the first time in history, or at least in Amazon.com’s history, e-books designed for the Amazon Kindle e-reader outsold physical, or “real” books. While Amazon, as is its habit, is not releasing exact numbers or details, the momentous occasion occured on Christmas Day.

While I am an avid user of the Kindle device, and a huge fan of Amazon’s work on developing the availability of all sorts of cross-generational material for the Kindle, these releases have become tiresome. Never are there numbers to back up the claims. How many units the Kindle has actually moved is still a mystery. All we have is a press release stating: “On Christmas Day customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books.”

That’s it? Amazon should release some figures so followers of the e-reader trend, and those concerned with the future of publishing, have a better idea of where the future of the written word is heading.

Generalities

UnderEden.com is now up and running, finally replacing the defunct TrevorEmmitt.com. And with the first post, let me take a moment to breakdown what we will concentrate on with this blog/website:

Generalities – As Reid Genauer once said: “Standing on the edge of creation.” This is where we stand, UnderEden, and the Generalities will focus, however briefly, on what is new and noteworthy on this blog.

Barça: The American Cule is a blog, co-published with Penyes Blaugrana, detailing the daily/weekly happenings of the world’s top futbol/soccer club from an American point of view. I am a member of FC Barcelona (Num Soci: 145925), and having lived in Barcelona for six and a half years, with the constant press flow and unending information on Barça, it is strange to live on the other side of the Atlantic, where the futbol is thrown not kicked. Having said that – I can see every Barça match on television, I can read Sport, El Mundo Deportivo and La Vanguardia. I subscribe to El Pais on my Kindle. The only thing I am missing is the cafe chatter, what the boys are saying in the bar – and that tense feeling in the air throughout the city when there is a big match imminent. There will be previews and reviews of all the big matches, as well as dispatches from Camp Nou when I manage to make it over (as I did for the Barça-Inter and Barça-Madrid matches in November 2009). Everything FC Barcelona, from the POV of an American Cule in New York.

Literature & Culture – I attempt to read two to three books a week, and here on UnderEden those books will be reviewed and discussed. This space will be for what we’re reading, what you’re reading, and what must be read. Along with sites such as InfiniteSummer.org, the goal is to read as much as possible, to share as much as possible, and to have as much feedback as possible. Anything is fair game, but UnderEden tends to focus on contempary literary, and not genre-oriented, fiction. As for non-fiction: historical, political, current and ancient, is what goes. As 2010 moves forward I will attempt to comment on, and/or review, every book that I read – and at the same time, slowly chip away at commentary I have on books read in 2009. As you can tell, I have a Kindle, will read.

Política – Quick reviews and links to important political developments. I will attempt to hold to a minimum my own Musings, and let the experts do the talking. But I make no promises.

Energy & Commodities – My current profession is working as a manager/broker for a global energy & commodities brokerage firm. In this space I will eventually provide a daily breakdown of what is what in the commodities markets. Including commentary from top industry professionals and “on the desk” notes with what traders and brokers are seeing on the inside.