This match was judged by Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this,<\/a> and download<\/a> the bracket.<\/em><\/p>\n Mexico vs. Croatia<\/b><\/p>\n A few years back, during a drunken Christmas party at a Danish newspaper, I asked a colleague how she developed her opinions as a movie critic. She did not have an academic background in film, and yet there she was, at a national paper, reviewing movies every week. I decided to adopt the movie critic\u2019s honorable method in this piece for World Cup of Literature, Mexico vs. Croatia. Furthermore, I have subjected the two competing novels, Faces in the Crowd<\/em> by Valeria Luiselli, and Baba Yaga Laid an Egg<\/em> by Dubravka Ugresic, to reading in several diverse environments in exciting New York City, including a local coffee shop in Bushwick, a local bar in Bushwick, and my bed (also in Bushwick). I highly doubt that any reader will find this carefully thought-out method to be anything but utterly agreeable.<\/p>\n New York City Subway<\/b><\/p>\n It almost seems unfair; Faces in the Crowd<\/em> actually depicts a NYC<\/span> subway car on its cover. Its short, poetic prose, served to the reader as connected vignettes, is a match made in heaven for a ride on the L train, infested with hipsters either listening to “Heaven Knows I\u2019m Miserable Now” by The Smiths on their iPhones, or talking loudly to their twenty-something friends about failed Tinder dates. You don\u2019t need an attention span to read Faces in the Crowd.<\/em> You could even consider displacing it on one of those orange plastic seats, to see if the book actually starts reading itself for you. <\/p>\n Baba Yaga<\/em>, on the other hand, is an outright hassle to get through on the subway. The literary style is dense; it\u2019s difficult to stay focused in the midst of the IT\u2019S SHOWTIME<\/span> boys breakdancing on the poles, the occasional evangelist, the Alicia Keys wannabe, and whoever else demands my attention in the subway car. <\/p>\n I really shouldn\u2019t be allowed to read good literature. They should give literary licenses to responsible adults only.<\/p>\n GOAL<\/span> TO MEXICO<\/span> Local Bushwick Coffee Shop<\/b><\/p>\n Three mornings a week, I buy a breakfast bagel and a coffee from a Colombian sunbeam of a woman. She greets me with the words, \u201cmorning sweetie, what can I get for you,\u201d forever in the midst of entertaining the rest of the coffee shop with tales from her home country. The day I bring in my World Cup of Literature titles to read, she speaks fondly of her single-parent upbringing while taking my order.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother used to beat me with a belt. Taught me not to make the same mistake twice, oh no,\u201d she says, and laughs. I laugh too.<\/p>\n \u201cI bet your mother never beat you,\u201d she says to me, and I tell her she is right. Then we laugh again.<\/p>\n This morning I find myself in awe of Baba Yaga<\/em>. Ugresic\u2019s nightmarishly truthful depiction of a mother-daughter relationship through the first eighty pages of the book puts words to situations that I\u2019ve become only too familiar with, ever since my mother\u2019s illness transformed her into a Baba Yaga when I was twenty. Ugresic is clearly a literary master unworthy of my judgment, and oops, what\u2019s that piece of information I overlooked on the cover? \u201cNominated for the Man Booker International Prize.\u201d<\/p>\n GOAL<\/span> TO CROATIA<\/span>. Riverside Park<\/b><\/p>\n The sun is burning my Scandinavian scalp, while my blond mane is drenching the forehead and neck in sweat. I buy 3-dollar water from a cart in the park and curse the smirking salesman for just about three minutes in my head, a minute per dollar, I guess. It\u2019s gross out, and I don\u2019t feel like dealing with the heaviness of Baba Yaga<\/em>\u2019s 327 pages. I find a bench in the shade, try to read a few pages, but must admit defeat. Once again, I pull out Faces in the Crowd.<\/em> It\u2019s easy to get back into, it\u2019s the guilty pleasure of having sex with your ex—it\u2019s effortless:<\/p>\n Milk, diaper, vomiting and regurgitation, cough, snot, and abundant dribble. The cycles now are short, repetitive, and imperative. It\u2019s impossible to try to write. The baby looks at me from her high chair: sometimes with resentment, sometimes with admiration. Maybe with love, if we are indeed able to love at that age. She produces sounds that will have a hard time adapting themselves to Spanish, when she learns to speak it. Closed vowels, guttural opinions. She speaks a bit like the characters in a Lars von Trier movie.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Lars, so Luiselli naturally scores with me right there, on a sweaty bench in Riverside Park. I think of an old boyfriend who took me to see Antichrist<\/em> in the movie theatre. He was really into soccer. <\/p>\n GOAL<\/span> TO MEXICO<\/span> In Bed In Bushwick<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cIs that about Baba Yaga?\u201d my new friend asks, as we lie down to read on my bed, belly first.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, kind of,\u201d I say. We look like book seals, although that\u2019s not a thing.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s that witch who eats children, right! Is that book going to win?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know, it\u2019s kind of a masterpiece, but it\u2019s also kind of hard to get through. I think I like this one better,\u201d I say, and tap the cover of Faces in the Crowd.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWell, I think this one should win!\u201d he says, and pushes Baba Yaga<\/em> closer to me. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are playing on Spotify as I begin reading. I was going to put on The Smiths, but decided we were not quite there yet.<\/p>\n I discover that the second section of the book is much sillier than the first; the humor is kind of adorable. I especially enjoy the scene where an elderly woman, Beba, is getting a massage from the young Mevlo:<\/p>\n Beba didn\u2019t know what to say. As far as she could judge, the young man was fine in every way. More than fine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cThis thing of mine stands up like a flagpole, but what\u2019s the use, love, when I\u2019m cold as an icicle? It\u2019s as much use to me as a cripple\u2019s withered leg. You can do what you like with it, tap it as much as you like, it just echoes as though it was hollow.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cHang on, what are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cMy willy, love, you must have noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cNo,\u201d lied Beba.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I tell my new friend that Baba Yaga<\/em> is pretty great. I also tell him that he has a huge cock. <\/p>\n We met on Tinder.<\/p>\n GOAL<\/span> TO CROATIA<\/span> Local Bushwick Bar<\/b><\/p>\n I\u2019m ordering a completely legitimate Tuesday counter-drink, hair of the dog. A counter-Bacardi rum and coke; it has to be exactly the same as the night before, or it won\u2019t help. At this point, there is no point in denying the obvious, I tell the bartender, as Brazil fails to shine against Mexico on the TV behind him.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t feel like reading Baba Yaga<\/em> right now. I feel like reading Faces in the Crowd.<\/em> There, I said it.<\/p>\n GOAL<\/span> TO MEXICO<\/span> ——<\/p>\n Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen is an Editor-at-Large for<\/em> Asymptote, and the Editor-in-Chief for<\/em> Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. She is currently pursuing an MFA<\/span> in Creative Writing at Columbia University, majoring in Fiction and Literary Translation.<\/em><\/p>\n ——<\/p>\n This match was judged by Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this, and download the bracket. Mexico vs. Croatia A few years back, during a drunken Christmas party at a Danish newspaper, I asked a colleague how she developed her opinions as a movie critic. She did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[25476,56766,2186,15336,56286,56756,1646,56276],"class_list":["post-298306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-baba-yaga-laid-an-egg","tag-christina-macsweeney","tag-dubravka-ugresic","tag-ellen-elias-bursac","tag-faces-in-the-crowd","tag-katrine-ogaard-jensen","tag-review","tag-valeria-luiselli"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317416,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298306\/revisions\/317416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cPiece of cake!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cI just think of the movie as a soccer match, making up the score as I watch it. When I leave the theatre, I ask myself: How was the game?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n(Mexico 1 \u2013 Croatia 0)<\/p>\n
\n(Mexico 1 \u2013 Croatia 1)<\/p>\n\n
\n(Mexico 2 \u2013 Croatia 1)<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n(Mexico 2 \u2013 Croatia 2)<\/p>\n
\n(Mexico 3 \u2013 Croatia 2)<\/p>\n