The Tangueros Monthly Newsletter
international edition - august 2003

26


Black out

A grotesque heat-wave hits England, our colleagues said in the Times of London just the past week. Nevertheless the british subjects didn't give up their proverbial phlegm: they have merely skinned themselves, plunged into any puddle available and fed the Gloucester Zoo's tigers with a special ice-cream made with horse and pork blood. Two tastes are better than one.
On the other side of the ocean, the black out happy tradition occurred again in three East Coast states and in two provinces of Canada, dragging in fifty millions of people. The competent authorities reassure us that this time terrorism has nothing to do with it (but someone says the other time either): a lightning has struck the Mohawk 1 plant of Niagara Falls. But how else do you call an act accomplished from the supernal skies by a white bearded ex-ally with supernatural precision and primitive technology? The fact is that Usa is not able to bomb upwards yet and that civilians who are already there, perhaps by themselves, can not get killed more than that.
In short, life is different at mid-august: it's desertion time, habits are disregarded, normality is abrogated. What better circumstances for issueing the Tangueros Quarterly Review eighth number? A summer of no scruples, the Athos Pedrazzoni's watermelons, the not exclusive sunstroke, the certified health of the town pool, the erratic service of my Urban Delight rumanian deskfan, have all equally helped to the following, thrilling palimpsest.
May our fond readers accept the warmest wishes of good reading and excellent holidays coming from

The Tangueros Quarterly Review n.8
of the Tango Renaissance in Buenos Aires and vicinity

 

Elsewhere souls, really

Statistics talk clear: the eighty per cent of the books is recalled from circulation after a few months; they end up to Remainder's stores, distant warehouses and also to pulp factories. Even if this treatment was administered only to the books i might suggest, that wouldn't be good news as well. Who could be pleased if a book, even the most obnoxious, is destroyed? Gore Vidal says that success isn't enough for a writer: he also wants the other writers' failure. I think his unselfish point of view regards mostly the bestsellers or that twenty per cent i personally would like to set fire to.
This time the cruel economic process affects a book i liked and even reviewed (Elsewhere souls by Lucia Baldini and Michela Fregona - see the TQR 5). It is a photo book of great quality, both for the wonderful images by Lucia and the poetic writings by Michela, and is the best Tango book being issued in Italy in the recent years. And yet, it hasn't come even to bookstores: its stingy publisher, or maybe he is simply incompetent, put it on sale in Internet only. The Tango italian society has its portion of guilt as well. Although they have been given a soul they are far to be worth of (for this well-off people, the Tango is a hobby, a pastime, an income), the local tangueros snubbed the only book that will ever talk about them. I know that, as they said to Proust, i can not expect the insects to read Fabre, but, carajo!, they could at least watch the pictures!

Jean Fajean

 


NCTANGUEROS HOMEPAGE NEWSLETTERS JUNE 03