Happy first night of Passover, Good Friday, and Ramadan Mubarak to all who celebrate. And a warm welcome as well, of course, to our comrades who do not.

Julio Cortázar is my favorite Spanish-language author, so I'm making today's mega about him. If you'd like to share something random with the class, please feel free to make a mega in the future!

Anyway...

Cortázar is an Argentinian writer, and according to Wikipedia, "He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity."

So that's pretty cool. He was particularly active in the 50s and 60s.

In general, what I really like about Cortázar's writing is the clarity and purposefulness with which he writes. He neither condescends to the reader, nor seems to go out of his way to try and impress. He is certainly clever in his writing and it's by no means simplistic, but it feels like every literary flourish has genuine purpose. And contrary to what my Spanish literature professor said, I maintain that his story about getting trapped in a sweater is simple, funny, and not some bizarre allegory for a penis. Sometimes a sweater is just a sweater. (My professor was sort of obsessed with seeing phallic and/or sexual imagery, motifs, and innuendo in everything we read.)

I think his works sadly lose a lot in translation, as with many Spanish-language authors, particularly from that era. But maybe I'm just a fuckin hipster?

I'm still planning to do a mega on sleep, btw, but it has gotten postponed.

If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here to reserve a spot! :xinternet:

Resources for Organizing your workplace/community :sabo:

Resources for Palestine :palestine-heart:

Buy coffee and learn more about the Zapatistas in Chiapas here :EZLN:

Here are some resources on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :USSR:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube :og-hex-bear:

Queer stuff? Come talk in the New weekly queer thread :sicko-queer:

Monthly Neurodiverse Megathread and Monthly ND Venting Thread :Care-Comrade:

  • HAHA_BIDEN_IS_SENILE [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    you can’t just call everyone on the internet a fed

    I didn't call you a fed, I didn't even kinda suggest it, you just kinda sounded like someone who was terminally online. But you do understand why posting on a "leftist" website "you lost and you're fucked" and then instantly responding with "I'm not part of the FBI" would make me incredibly suspicious of you.

    neoliberalism holds us in an iron grip

    I don't know how you can see dollar hegemony collapsing and an Amazon union forming within a month of each other and say that this system isn't in terminal rot.

    you will keep losing. you can keep having faith in them, and you will keep being disappointed. there is NO hope in the west

    I'm not disappointed in the first place. Like you said, we live in the most propagandized country on the planet. We're not perpetrators, we're victims and the whole point of my first post was that, despite that, without me trying to angle shit in that direction, there is genuine desire against our enemies. My optimism comes through actual participation in labor and the experiences I've shared with my coworkers and other people who have to work for a living. I don't expect them to be socialists just because Bernie ran, but they're on the right track and that's all I want from them until the collapse of these institutions allow for a left to form without being geeked (which, hey, again, look at those supply lines, look at who has all the diesel and fertilizer, we're not talking decades here). They don't work for me, I work for them.

    people are absolutely not going to start stringing up their landlords, give me a break.

    yeah no fucking duh the mom with three kids isn't gonna buy a glock, cowboy up and do mao shit. And if they did it right now, it wouldn't make things better. But they want to and no matter how you try to spin that, that's a W. You can say it doesn't matter but there's popular support for what we want to accomplish.

    And again, why are you here? Never wanted to touch that, huh? We're just a bunch of larping losers anyways, there's no point doing anything outside of keeping your head down anyways. What was your post trying to accomplish? Telling people to "get real, disengage, this is never gonna work and whatever victories we do get are pointless" is actively detrimental and if your post is sincere you should be fucking ashamed.

    • riley
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • HAHA_BIDEN_IS_SENILE [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        dude I don't know what to tell you, you just sound like a cop or someone who doesn't want to be responsible for not doing shit, like nothing you posted was even kinda right and I feel bad for having wasted time on you in the first place

        I started out with hope and wanting to change things, but I learned enough to realize that there is no hope, so now I’m just trying to learn for my own satisfaction. it’s fun.

        well if you actually did learn a goddamn thing you wouldn't be posting the dogshit you did

        idk, I like being around leftists, and I like learning about this stuff. it’s, as you said, a hobby. I would like to understand the world.

        if you're just gonna post detached and blatantly wrong shit, we don't like you, fuck off

        • riley
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator