Drinking mate
I began drinking mate six years ago, on my first trip to Argentina, and liked it immediately, even though many find it rather bitter. The picture, Mate, in which the woman drinks from the gourd while two gauchos… Read More
Montaigne and the acceptance of uncertainty
The essay, we are being told, is back. An editorial in The Guardian on 5 May celebrates the alleged event and announces a new specialist publisher, Notting Hill Editions, which has released a range of cloth-covered hardbacks, ranging… Read More
Thoughts of Che in Rosario
There’s no point in being sentimental about these things, I realize. Music that, when it first appears, seems to say something new, gets murdered with repetition, besides being absorbed into the great maw of consumer culture. I remember… Read More
Mood Music
I find it incredible that Manu Chao is used as hotel lobby music in the Ibis Hotel, Montevideo (a stone’s throw from the American Embassy). Manu, who stands for everything that a global hotel chain opposes – the… Read More
Scattergun Rant
This extraordinarily helpful poster can be found, not in a hospital or a school, but in the men’s washroom in the MALBA museum in Buenos Aires. I applaud the administrators of this institution for their interest in my… Read More
A visit to the islands and ‘mal del sauce’
No sooner had I finished writing yesterday’s blog, than I walked into the hotel dining room (earlier than usual, as I had planned an excursion) and the first person I see is Coetzee himself, sitting in the corner… Read More
J.M. Coetzee in Buenos Aires
Coetzee came to Buenos Aires to deliver the final reading of the festival last night. I am not really authorized to write at length about Coetzee, having only read two of his novels, which I found admirable, and… Read More
Cándido Lopez
A walk down to the Museo de Bellas Artes here in Buenos Aires and a discovery that leaves a deep mark of weirdness on the Blanco brain. Cándido Lopez (1840-1902) was an Argentinian painter who took part in… Read More
The last hundred days
Within weeks of publication Patrick McGuinness’s debut novel, The Last Hundred Days found itself on the Man Booker long list, and deservedly so, although it failed to make the shortlist on the 5th September. Whatever. Set in… Read More
Dissolving
It’s always an education to read in unusual locations. The organizers of FILBA appear to be steering me towards a socially engaged role that I am not normally associated with back in the UK. But that’s fine… Read More
Villa Miseria
In immaculate contrast to yesterday’s trip to the rarefied air of Villa Ocampo, today I visited a slum (or a Villa Miseria) to the south of the city in the barrio of Barracas 21/24. It is an… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- The configuration of confusionI came to consciousness the other morning from a waking dream in which I had woken (in my dream) into an unfamiliar world, surrounded by strangers in a kind of ante-room, with thick velvet curtains and a single... Read More
- A day in the high PyreneesAutumn on its way, the equinox a week off, we head inland, to Setcases, and up towards the great bulk of Gra de Fajol, an angry giant guarding the head of the Ter valley. Ulldeter means Eye of... Read More
- The untimely departure of Javier MaríasSad news this week of the death of Javier Marías, for me the most complete novelist of his generation. His trilogy of novels, Your Face Tomorrow, is one of the finest things I’ve ever read. Astonishing that he... Read More
- Dues serralades(English version below) Com a foraster, he intentat entendre l’Albera, la manera com es connecten els camins, i malgrat la qualitat decebedora dels mapes disponibles, he arribat a entendre la topografia del paisatge dels voltants de Rabós. He... Read More
- The Black Mountains and the human brainThere are days when the cloud cover is so dense and hangs so low that earth and sky are within hand’s reach of each other. We are all familiar with that sense of atmospheric density and its emotional... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
Ricardo Blanco's Blog 