En España se ha reeditado Facsímil, de Alejandro Zambra bajo el sello de Anagrama, un libro basado en la Prueba de Aptitud Verbal, aplicada en Chile desde 1967 hasta 2002. Por esta razón el libro es ante todo un artefacto que le impone necesariamente al lector parámetros y un sistema de respuestas, y que el propio autor ha calificado de “corrosivo y duro” durante su presentación vía Facebook recientemente.
Aquí algunas citas de dicha presentación gracias Culto:
“A mí me interesa mucho cómo este libro ha sido leído, y esa es una de las preguntas que esta nueva edición actualiza, me parece muy bacán imaginar lo imposible de imaginar, esa es la gracia de echar algo a rodar, porque el libro lo publicas porque sientes que ya no te pertenece, que vaya solo”.
“Hubo críticas súper malas al libro, también me interesó eso. No son cosas que yo conteste en ningún caso. Sí me gusta entender qué está haciendo el libro en su circulación, en particular un libro como Facsímil que no ponía de buen humor a los editores que lo recibían”.
“El libro tiene que entrar a ser resistido y querido, eso es lo que a mí me interesa, entonces tampoco lo pongo en un lugar muy fijo. También esta cosa divertida de no recordarlo bien, algo que costó tantas horas, trabajé tanto en el libro, lo mostré mucho. Si siguiera la moda de poner agradecimientos al final, tendría como 50 páginas más, porque fueron muchos los que incluso resolvieron la prueba, jugando”.
Shiny! RBML recently acquired a facsimile of the Oxford Menologion – a mid-14th century prayerbook possibly from Thessaloniki. The text has a pictorial calendar of the saints for the full year, which are illustrated in 103 full-page miniatures and 2 texts in Greek.
This needs to exist online, somewhere. Lt Volkov, Capt Ivor, and Cassander, characters from Facsimile, by @corvidfeathers and me!
AAA dysfunction officer trio <3 god I am still so in love with how stark and beautiful this!!
a little snippet of wartime Captain Ivor POV to go with it:
Your patrol reaches the ruins at twilight. On the horizon, the last glow of the sun is fading, turning the crumbling wall and the twisted trees into a shadowbox of strange shapes.
Once it had been a small town, but as the lines of the war shifted and changed and the Chimaerans pushed inward, it was caught in the crossfire of the mortars and the mageflame and devoured. You’ve never known it as anything other than ruins; a landmark by which to navigate the torn earth.
You advance cautiously, all your senses straining to hear underneath the whistle of the wind. Beside you, Lieutenant Volkov glances back at the other, scanning for stragglers.
At the edge of the ruins, the crumpled chassis of a plane lies abandoned. It’s wingless and scorched, but you can still make out the curl of a design painted on its side in red paint; the curl of a wing and feathers, a reaching beak.
“Not a Vikare,” you murmur.
“Raskan,” Volkov says. “There’s no one in the cockpit. Maybe the poor bastard escaped.”
The earth around the plane is pitted and torn.
Some of it is from mortar blasts, but there are other marks, long, deep furrows, wide across as your arm. Clawmarks.
“Didn’t look like this when we passed this way before,” Lieutenant Volkov murmurs. “They’re putting one of those things through its paces.”
You nod. “Matches with what the boys on the south edge saw.” There had been rumors of an abomination prowling the horizon; the glint of a monstrous, golden form in the morning light. Officially, it was only a rumor; but few could miss the fact the Flying Corps’ dawn patrol had been doubled in size, or that some morning far fewer of them reappeared.
With signs like these, it was only a matter of time. The Chimaerans were raising a monster.
“A dragon,” one of the men behind you murmurs, and the whisper travels through the patrol.
We got mail today! A facsimile of Giovanni Leardo’s 1442 Mapa Mundi is being added to the collection. If it looks familiar (check out our profile picture!), it’s becauee the oldest map in our collection is Leardo’s 1452 Mapa Mundi.
The 1442 map is held in Verona, Italy, & is the earliest of the three known Leardo works. His second map was made in 1448 & our map is the latest of the maps.
The green book that comes with the facsimile is the Letter of Prester John. The book is said to have inspired exploration in the centuries following its publication, making it a good companion piece for the map.
