25.07.2014 - 13:13
A place is its people. In the case of Mary Ann Newman, this phrase’s meaning is even more acute, because she is linked to the presence of Catalan culture in New York City. The work that this Catalanist, translator, and literature professor has done has been key, to a point in which one cannot follow the history of the presence of Catalan culture in New York City without citing her repeatedly, both in a personal sphere as well as an academic and cultural one, over the last three decades.
Mary Ann Newman was born in New York City at the beginning of the 50’s and studied literature at New York University (NYU). She came into contact with Catalonia through Hispanic studies. The first time she visited Barcelona, in 1972, she city took hold of her. It was still the gray Barcelona under Franco, but it was ready to explode.
Some time later, Newman once again arrived at the França train station and bought a copy of the first issue of the Avui newspaper, on April 23, 1976, and discovered Sant Jordi Day. Between 1980 and 1981, she lived a year in the “underground” Barcelona, in an apartment on Cendra street, in the middle of the red-light district, which had belonged to David Rosenthal, the man who translated “Tirant lo blanc” into English. The February 23, 1981 attempted coup d’éstat occurred during this period.
Through the diplomat Senén Florensa, who she had met at NYU, Newman began to cultivate a series of friendships which helped her get to know the country, from Valls to Tarragona and in Sitges, through snail fests and paellas. Then comes Xavier Rubert de Ventós and the Empordà region, with an entirely new set of influencers. And later Jaume Vallcorba and Quim Monzó.
Mary Ann Newman explains that she learned Catalan on the streets of Barcelona, but she studied it for real in New York, teaching it to her American friends, studying the lessons from Alan Yates’ “Teach Yourself Catalan”. She won a Fulbright for her doctoral thesis on Eugeni d’Ors. Quite the character, Mary Ann Newman.
What made you choose Eugeni d’Ors as the subject of your doctoral thesis?
I wanted to work on some aspect of Catalan literature. At that time, Eugeni d’Ors was not looked upon very favorably—well, he still isn’t—and I figured I would dispatch him as well. But I discovered the book “Oceanografia del tedi” [Oceanography of Tedium] in the New York Public Library and I realized that Eugeni d’Ors was a fantastic writer! And I was curious to know how he had produced a jewel like that one.
At that point, you already knew the editor Jaume Vallcorba and his group at Quadrens Crema?
I began my thesis in 1978. That year I met Xavier Rubert de Ventós who was a founding member of NYU’s Institute of Humanities. A while later, when I was living in Barcelona, Xavier Rubert introduced me to Jaume Vallcorba, telling me that he was a young editor who knew a lot about Eugeni d’Ors and he thought it would be very interesting for an American to write a thesis on the 19th century writer. Vallcorba introduced me to Quim Monzó one day at the Goblins, the bar below Vallcorba’s apartment.
Your personal and professional ties with Catalonia were not all related to Eugeni d’Ors. Through NYU, you had a very active role in the first Barcelona-New York Chair.
That was great. It lasted three years, from 1983 to 1986 and it was an exchange program between NYU and the University of Barcelona. I was still a doctoral student. The counterpart to dean Badia i Margarit at NYU was John Brademas, the president of NYU, who specialized in the anarchist movement in Catalonia and Andalusia. I managed the day to day details of the Chair and defined the program. We had Martí de Riquer to explain “Tirant lo blanc”, Anthony Bonner to speak about Ramon Llull, Lluís Izquierdo talking about Catalan literature, Manuel de Solà Morales and Maria Rubert de Ventós to do a semester on city planning, Mary Nash to explain the history of women in Catalonia, Eugènia Balcells and Barbara Held to perform a “happening” of postcards and flutes… It was a splendid program. And through my hands passed some thirty Catalan students, one of whom was Robert Lubar, who is today a patron of the Fundació Miró de Barcelona and one of the world’s great Miró experts. And he taught Jordana Mendelson and Míriam Basilio who continue to pass on Catalan Art History in New York. Chairs give sense of continuity, which is so necessary for a culture.
Seen with perspective, and even though it only lasted three years, it seems like the Barcelona-New York Chair was significant. Both for spreading Catalan culture in New York and the rest of the United States as well as for giving visibility to a whole group of Catalan intellectuals.
Of course, it was a foundation. I believe it was miraculous: in 1983, President Pujol, who had been elected President of the Catalan Government in 1980 was received by NYU because at that moment the Chair was the only cultural institution with Catalan roots in New York. It hadn’t been long since, in 1978, the North American Catalan Society had been formed. It was a very interesting time. There was activity.
At the beginning of the 80s, you also came into contact with Quim Monzó, who was in New York, and you became his translator.
Yes, we became good friends. There were also many Catalan artists: Miralda, Muntadas, Francesc Torres, Eugènia Balcells… And with Perico Pastor, who together with Quim wrote articles about art for the weekly paper El Món. They reflected on—and criticized—the explosion of postmodern movement in New York.
It was a very, very bubbly, countercultural time in New York.
It was the first years of the Reagan era, but we were still living the tail end of the libertarian movements of the 60s and 70s. It was also a moment in which New York was failing economically, it was a harsh city. But I lived that era with passion, not with fear.
Have you ever been afraid?
Never (ha ha ha).
Monzó dedicated his novel “Benzina” [“Gasoline”, Open Letter Books], that he wrote in New York, to you.
At that time, I was working as a translator. And I translated three stories from “Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux i Maury” [“O’Clock“] and I sent them to a literary agent who fell in love with them. But in fact Monzó was writing “Gasoline” at that point and the publisher preferred a novel over a collection of short stories (this obsession of publishers who say that novels sell better). And we made a presentation package, I made a sample translation, and they signed us up. But in the end, they chose the short story collection and I translated all of “Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux i Maury” with the title “O’Clock” and they published it. It wasn’t until twenty years later that the translation of “Benzina”, with the title “Gasoline“, was published.
At that point had many Catalans passed through your door?
Well look, Ventura Pons, who was doing theater then, came with Joaquim Cardona to work with Monzó on producing “Tres boleros” (“The Torch Song Trilogy”), And Ventura and Quim Cardona stayed at my house, which wasn’t far from Monzó’s.
So this custom began of people related to the arts staying in your apartment in New York City?
I don’t remember when it became a custom, but many people have come to stay. One time, Marta Mata, Pilar Figueres and two more Rosa Sensat teachers were staying, in addition to Àlex Susanna and Guillem Jordi Graells, all at the same time. Another time, when Quim Monzó and Ventura Pons came to do “El Tango de Dom Joan”, I had Jordi Beltran, Xavier Montanyà, Xavier Sardà and Domènec Reixach. I have fond memories of those visits.
One of the most interesting facts about your career is how you have come into contact with such a diverse section of Catalan society. And that gives you a very broad perspective.
Yes, one could talk about several paths: that of Senén Florensa, of Xavier Rubert de Ventós, of Quim Monzó… And afterwards, all of those people went through the Chair at NYU as well. There were a lot of people who came to my apartment. In fact, I’d love for anyone who ever came to my house to write me something about it. Because when other people tell me about what they remember, I discover many different things.
Has the publication of Catalan books in English always been as difficult as it is now?
Monzó’s first book was proposed and published without a lot of trouble. And it received a review in the New York Times. But afterwards, many years went by without any other translations. Now, the quantity of books that are starting to be translated from Catalan and published by US publishers is more significant. It’s a good time. The grants from the Institut Ramon Llull have also helped a good deal. This April, “The Gray Notebook” was published. This edition is a landmark, because it came from a small, but very prestigious, publisher, New York Review Books, which has a very important collection. And it has gotten a lot of press, and good reviews. The problem for translated Catalan literature is that you always have a tiny number of books, from very different periods that are published twenty years after they came out originally. It’s very difficult for even motivated readers who are not specialists to get a feel for Catalan literature. Of course, there is now a larger body of translated work and there are people who read this work, and that will be very important.
In this context, it would be great to have a Catalan Center like the one you began in 2007 and which you maintained until the budget cuts from the Catalan Government and the priorities of the director of the Institut Ramon Llull, Vicenç Villatoro, closed it in 2011.
The Catalan Center was something like the Catalan Studies program of the Barcelona-New York Chair at NYU: it was a safe place for sharing Catalan culture in New York. For example, when Jaume Cabré’s “Viatge d’hivern” was published, they invited him to do a class through the Coromines Chair in Chicago. But obviously, if Jaume Cabré was coming to the US he had to make a stop at the Catalan Center. And for any other illustrious Catalan who came to New York, the Catalan Center was an obvious stop. With relatively little money, we had all of NYU at our disposal and in fact, the whole city, because the university allowed us to hold events outside as well. It was a perfect springboard, a good launching pad. The Catalan Center had certain visibility and recognition.
Another loss.
It was a loss, yes. In addition, at that moment, it seemed like Catalan subjects had achieved a solid presence in academia. There was a chair at Brown University, Enric Bou and a professor at Harvard, Brad Epps, and Sharon Feldman at the University of Richmond, the Coromines Chair at Chicago and Joan Ramon Resina at Stanford. But afterwards, we discovered that it was still a very fragile panorama: when Enric Bou decided to go to Venice, Brown’s hispanic studies program didn’t necessarily have to continue with Catalan. And at Harvard or Stanford either. Catalan Studies programs continue to depend on the efforts of individuals. That’s why with this new project, the Farragut Fund, after about ten years, once we have a strong foundation, I would like to start looking for serious funds in order to sponsor university chairs.
Chairs for Catalan language and literature?
Chairs of various areas in important universities: a chair for Catalan literature, another for Catalan art history, one for the history of Catalonia. A chair costs two million dollars. But it guarantees the continuity of Catalan Studies in the United States, the preparation of doctoral students, of new generations. It’s very important to create structure and continuity.
There is another person who has been fundamental to your relationship with Catalonia. Pasqual Maragall.
Oh yes! To start with, because he founded the Barcelona-New York Chair. We met through that project. But we became friends the year that he spent between Rome and New York City. While he was in New York, I took care of his papers. I learned so much with him. Pasqual came after being the Mayor of the Olympics but in addition, that year, he was also the president of the Committee of European Regions. In New York he started up two projects: a big congress called “A World of Cities” which was about cities, regions, and nations. And after a seminar on devolution in Spain and in Europe, the return of power to local government. Pasqual was at a brilliant moment in his career, reflecting on what he had achieved as mayor, and also reading and studying. And I took all of that in and it was a great learning experience. So that when he ran for the presidency of the Catalan Government, I went to Barcelona to volunteer in order to support him and I ended up working in the campaign. And I shadowed him, as they say, during the electoral campaign. It was risky, because I had never worked on a campaign before, but it was fascinating, a big privilege.
You were Maragall’s shadow during the electoral campaign?
Mostly, to make sure he arrived on time to all of his commitments. Sometimes to give him messages that came from the campaign, sometimes to analyze situations. And I made sure that everything was organized. I remember that sometimes we didn’t properly estimate the time and I redid his agenda, or warned that we would be arriving 20 minutes late. But I was also a newbie, and sometimes the more experienced people had to save me. For me it was an amazing experience learning how a campaign works from the inside. And also a disappointment. I remember that we went to Alcover, and an older man, a volunteer, who went from door to door, came to me to say that he was very worried because he hadn’t received any materials. In some respects, the PSC machinery boycotted Pasqual Maragall’s campaign to a certain degree. It was the era of “Ciutadans pel Canvi” [Citizens for Change] who tried to reform and modernize the party, or at least the atmosphere of the party.
When Pasqual Maragall became the president of the Catalan Government, the tripartit’s first mandate, he offered you a job, right?
He suggested that I work side by side with Margarita Obiols in the area of international relations. But I asked him to reconsider, because I preferred to stay involved with culture, which is my field, through the Institut Ramon Llull, where I thought I could be useful. I accepted the job of institutional coordinator. Through this position, I identified a series of international opportunities with the United States: in 2006 Lincoln Center did a retrospective of Catalan cinema, and in 2007 there was a big exhibition of Catalan art at the Metropolitan, “Barcelona and Modernity”. I had all my antenna pointed toward the US and I knew the people involved with those projects. I started to collaborate with those institutions from the Institut Ramon Llull. From here came the possibility of creating a Catalan Center tied to New York University. And the University, through the Center for European Mediterranean Studies, facilitated the project as much as it could.
What is your conclusion about the Catalan Center?
The list of institutions with which we collaborated was long. Remember that in 1980, with the restoration of the Generalitat, the people interested in Catalan culture in the United States were “exquisite” people (opera lovers and fans of Montserrat Caballé, Miró lovers, architecture lovers). Twenty years later, a series of important things had happened: the Olympic Games, which put the city of Barcelona at the pinnacle, and later on, gastronomy, when Ferran Adrià was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. That was also a turning point. Soccer, with Barça, which is always the main dish, was resisted by the US but with the last World Cup and the Guardiola era, it also came front and center. Currently, the economic crisis and the relationship between Catalonia and Spain have made it so that American media has begun to differentiate Catalonia from Spain. The Spain-Catalonia state crisis is a front page issue. There’s a new article every other day in the Wall Street Journal, and in the New York Times, too. The sovereignty process is recognized and attracts attention. It worries some but others maintain neutrality while staying informed. There is no negative reaction. The people who read the papers know what’s going on.
