{"id":1385,"date":"2013-03-11T14:45:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T21:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2013-03-11T14:46:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T21:46:54","slug":"notebook-on-cities-and-culture-s3e15-the-mexican-reality-with-diego-rabasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1385","title":{"rendered":"Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E15: The Mexican Reality with Diego Rabasa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1386\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" title=\"diegorabasa\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/diegorabasa.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"280\" \/>Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City&#8217;s Colonia Roma with Diego Rabasa, co-founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sextopiso.com\/\">Sexto Piso<\/a> press. They discuss why this might make for the most exciting moment in Mexican, or even Spanish-language, literature; Mexico&#8217;s past era of invincible intellectual giants, from whose shadow writers now emerge; these writers&#8217; response to their country&#8217;s &#8220;total social meltdown&#8221;; how Mexico City got more secure as Mexico itself got less secure, a process that has by now made Mexico City the safest place in the country; his dull but well-off childhood in a PRI family, his university studies of engineering, and his subsequent discovery of literature, culture, and books; what Juan Rulfo revealed to him about his country; Sexto Piso&#8217;s early mission to translate foreign writers, and its publication at first of hardly any Mexican writers; who, given Mexico&#8217;s high illiteracy, supports Mexico City&#8217;s cool bookstores; the correct pronunciation of &#8220;Donceles&#8221;, the finest street for used books; Sexto Piso&#8217;s presence in Spain, a much more conservative literary market; the upside and downside of taking government funding; the importance of throwing parties unlike the standard dull publishing cocktail affairs; having, as a publisher, to cover for only semi-professional booksellers and journalists; what to read to best understand the Mexican reality; how Mexico City became a &#8220;completely different place&#8221; from where he grew up, with its citizens now &#8220;getting the city back&#8221;; the enduring need to keep an eye on the politicians even as arts movements offer encouragement; and how he gets his mind off the corruption by reading Bruce Chatwin.<\/p>\n<p>Download the interview from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/colinmarshall.libsyn.com\/s3e15-the-mexican-reality-with-diego-rabasa\"><em>Notebook on Cities and Culture<\/em>\u2019s feed<\/a> or on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/notebook-on-cities-culture\/id266539442\">iTunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City&#8217;s Colonia Roma with Diego Rabasa, co-founder of Sexto Piso press. They discuss why this might make for the most exciting moment in Mexican, or even Spanish-language, literature; Mexico&#8217;s past era of invincible intellectual giants, from whose shadow writers now emerge; these writers&#8217; response to their country&#8217;s &#8220;total social [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mexico-city","category-notebook-on-cities-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1385"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1388,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions\/1388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}