On The Melancholy of Resistance

[Originally published in Sacred Tresspasses: January 22, 2016] By Andrés Hax 1. I had the good fortune of reading László Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance in a state of almost complete ignorance about the author and his works. Some time ago, through a route of links and clicks that I disremember, I came across a video interview with the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, whom I also did not know. Apart from being an exceptional interview, Tarr mesmerized me: his underbite;Read more

50 Years of Reading Cormac McCarthy

This piece was published in the blog Sacred Trespasses on December 22, 2015 (Photo by Lisa Graves) To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Cormac McCarthy’s debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, we invited several writers to discuss their experiences of reading the author’s work. The following conversation, conducted via e-mail, includes commentary from Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, Weatherford Award-wining poet and Tennessee native Jesse Graves, and the Buenos Aires-based writer Andrés Hax. —Kevin RabalaisRead more

In Praise of James Salter

[Originally published in Sacred Trespasses, November 27, 2015] In celebration of the life and work of James Salter—and to mark the publication of Conversations with James Salter, released this week by the University Press of Mississippi—Andrés Hax offers a remembrance. *** Accolades and reverent appraisals of James Salter abound. Perhaps my best contribution—and homage—to Salter would be to record a few specific observations from the morning and afternoon that I was with him, on June 4, 2014, for an interviewRead more