El astillero

El astillero (Cátedra, 2007)

por Juan Carlos Onetti
Uruguay, 1961

"Pero la indiscutida decadencia de Larsen era, a fin de cuentas, la decadencia de sus cualidades y no un cambio de éstas" (172).

Antes de haber leído esta novela, mi admiración por el uruguayo Onetti (1909-1994) trajo su origen de un puñado de cuentos suyos ("Bienvenido, Bob", "El infierno tan temido", y "La cara de la desgracia" entre otros) de estilo tan brutal como eficaz.  Aunque todavía pienso que algunos de estos cuentos me impactaron más que El astillero, terminé las últimas páginas de la novela queriendo leer más de Onetti.  Y pronto.  El argumento, tal cual como es, tiene que ver con el regreso de un tal Larsen a la ciudad de Santa María luego de un exilio de 5 años.  Larsen, por otro nombre Juntacadáveres por haber sido otrora el proxeneta de un prostibulario en el pueblo notorio por manteniendo una cuadra de putas viejas, parece ser un hombre derrotado; al menos, todo lo que quiere ahora es de convertirse en el Gerente General de un astillero insolvente y de enamorarse con la hija loca del dueño de la empresa.  Si esto no te parece como una "lectura feliz" en cierto sentido, tienes toda la razón.  El astillero es una novela donde el ambiente fantasmal y gris vale más que la trama, y es bastante claro desde el principio que no habrá redención en cuanto a los crisis de los personajes principales.  A pesar de esto, uno de los placeres de leer Onetti es descubrir la gracia con que él cuenta la historia de un fracasado: la sinceridad y, a veces, la compasión se destacan.  Otro toque sobresaliente acá es el narrador de tercera persona que describe el deterio de Larsen desde la perspectiva de un "nosotros" de comunidad--casi como si los eventos narrados en la novela pertenecieron al tejido social de Santa María en cuanto a sus mitos y su historia.  En todo caso, si El astillero no es una novela para todo el mundo, sí es una lectura gratificante para los que les gustaría leer algo por un posible eslabón perdido entre Arlt y Faulkner.  Por extraño que parezca, fascinante.

The Shipyard [El astillero] (Serpent's Tail, 2006)

by Juan Carlos Onetti [translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor]

Uruguay, 1961

"Yet in essence Larsen's undeniable decline was the decline of what was already there, not any real change" (124).

Before having read this novel, my admiration for the Uruguayan Onetti (1909-1994) was limited to a handful of short stories of his ("Bienvenido, Bob," "El infierno tan temido," and "La cara de la desgracia" among others) as brutal as they were accomplished.  Although I still prefer a couple of those short stories to The Shipyard in terms of their overall impact on me, I finished the last few pages of the novel wanting more of Onetti.  Soon.  The plot, such as it is, has to do with the return of a man named Larsen to the city of Santa María after an exile of five years.  Larsen, nicknamed "Corpse Collector" for his stint as the one-time manager of a brothel in the town notorious for its stable of aged prostitutes, seems to be a broken man; now, all that he wants out of life is to become the Managing Director of a bankrupt shipyard and to win the hand of the shipyard owner's crazy daughter.  If this doesn't sound quite like happy reading to you, you're right.  The Shipyard is the type of novel where the grim and phantasmal atmosphere wins out over plot, and it's pretty clear from the beginning that there will be no redemption for any of the major characters' existentialist crises.  That having been said, one of the pleasures in reading Onetti is his grace in telling a loser's story with an unflinching honesty and, at times, even a sort of compassion.  Another interesting thing about this novel is the third person narrator who describes Larsen's swan song from a sort of "community perspective"--almost as if the events in the book had become a part of the fabric of local myth and history.  Not a novel for everyone by any means but a fine downer read for anyone interested in a possible missing link between Arlt and Faulkner.  Oddly compelling.  (http://www.serpentstail.com/)

Juan Carlos Onetti

Oyó, ronco y débil, inconvincente, un bocinazo en el río repetido tres veces.  Se palpó de cigarillos y no tuvo fuerzas para desprender el sobretodo húmedo que lo rodeaba, seduciéndolo, con un olor triste y cobarde, un perfume de resaca y de antiquísimas lociones que le habían refregado en el pelo en salones de peluquerías que series de espejos hacían infinitos, tal vez demolidos años atrás, increíbles ya, en todo caso.  Sospechó, de golpe, lo que todos llegan a comprender, más tarde o más temprano: que era el único hombre vivo en un mundo ocupado por fantasmas, que la comunicación era imposible y ni siquiera deseable, que tanto daba la lástima como el odio, que un tolerante hastío, una participación dividida entre el respeto y la sensualidad eran lo único que podía ser exigido y convenía dar.

(El astillero, 145-146)

He could hear a ship's horn repeated three times on the river; a weak, unconvincing, rasping sound.  He felt for cigarettes, did not have the strength to undo the wet coat clinging to him, seducing him with its rank, cowardly smell, an odour of hangovers mingled with old fashioned hair lotions rubbed into his scalp in barbers' shops that parallel mirrors extended to infinity, shops probably long since demolished, certainly by now unbelievable.  He suddenly supected what everyone comes to understand sooner or later, that compassion was worth no more than hate, that a tolerant indifference, an attention divided by respect and sensuality, was all that could be asked for or be given.

(The Shipyard [translated by Nick Caistor], 94)

*For another take on Onetti, see Sarah's wonderful review of The Shipyard here.

**For a more condensed sample of prime Onetti in English, check out The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories (2000), which features a translation of "El infierno tan temido" ["Hell Most Feared"] sure to dismay bloggers whose only conception of Lat Am lit has to do with "exotic" magical realism.  In other words, pure genius!

Moo Pak

Moo Pak (Carcanet, 1994)
by Gabriel Josipovici
England, 1994

"Why should I write a book of five hundred pages when Homer has said everything I want to say in three lines?"  (Moo Pak, 53)

Truth be told, I'd been predisposed to wanting to like Gabriel Josipovici--a novelist/critic who has written on authors as far afield as Chaucer and Kafka as part of his critical body of work--ever since I learned that Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual led him to write his first and only fan letter in a lifetime devoted to literature. Moo Pak, with its 151-page single paragraph, merely sealed the deal for me.  Sort of a non-snob/post-Oulipian response to that whole My Dinner with Andre concept, all but the final few lines of this talky, talky novel unfold in a series of monologues by one Jack Toledano, would be novelist of a major work in progress.  While Toledano occasionally comes across as a bit of a blowhard when speaking about the state of modern culture, his opinions on life and literature and the aesthetics of reading and writing--faithfully related by a rather retiring walking companion of his--are usually colorful enough that you tend to forgive him for prattling on.  In any event, Josipovici does a nice job in Moo Pak bombarding the reader with metafictional allusions, philosophical tidbits, and the like without quite saturating the text with too many such references.  I also enjoyed how Josipovici pulled off the nifty sleight of hand in which Moo Pak, the novel that Toledano was endlessly discussing and "writing," slyly evolved into Moo Pak, the novel that I was holding in my hands and reading, just before the words trickled to an end.  No Life A User's Manual II or anything like that but a nice homage to the way serious business of the acts of reading and writing.

Gabriel Josipovici

If I'm not mistaken, it was this Moo Pak review from Stefanie of So Many Books that led Emily to select the novel for this month's group read.  Next month we'll be taking on a pick from Claire in the form of Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter.

Los siete locos

Los siete locos (Tolemia, 2007)
por Roberto Arlt
Argentina, 1929

Esta atmósfera de sueño y de inquietud que lo hacía circular a través de los días como un sómnambulo, la denominaba Erdosain, "la zona de la angustia".

Erdosain se imaginaba que dicha zona existía sobre el nivel de las ciudades, a dos metros de altura, y se le representaba gráficamente bajo la forma de esas regiones de salinas o desiertos que en los mapas están revelados por óvalos de puntos, tan espesos como las ovas de un arenque.

Esta zona de angustia era la consecuencia del sufrimiento de los hombres.  Y como una nube de gas venenoso se trasladaba pesadamente de un punto a otro, penetrando murallas y atrevesando los edificios, sin perder su forma plana y horizontal; angustia de dos dimensiones que guillotinando las gragantas dejaba en éstas un regusto de sollozo".
(Los siete locos, 9)

Los siete locos debe haber sido un libro horrible.  Lo menos, su tema principal--el hombre moderno en busca de sentido--ya era la materia de cliché a la hora de su publicación.  ¿Por qué es entonces que la obra de Arlt, una novela que finge ser una crónica, es considerada hoy en día como un verdadero clásico dentro de la panorama de las letras argentinas?  Para mí, la mayor parte de la respuesta tiene que ver con la desmesura total de la imaginación y la escritura de Arlt.  Después de sufrir dos golpes crueles, lo de ser denunciado por robar seiscientos pesos de su trabajo y lo de perder su esposa a otro hombre, el protagonista Remo Erdosain se reune con una sociedad secreta encabezada por hombres con apodos pintorescos como el Astrólogo y el Rufián Melancólico.  Dado que el objetivo de la sociedad secreta es de fomentar revolución en el hemisferio financiándolo por la instalación de una serie de próstibulos, no será una sorpresa encontrar que este proyecto demente es digno del título del libro.  Sin embargo, Arlt parece completamente serio en cuanto a la angustia existencial de Erdosain (véase la cita arriba) y en cuanto al retrato sórdido de los bajos fondos bonaerenses donde los cafishios y las putas sifilíticas se destacan.  Porque Arlt está igualmente cómodo describiendo el plan de los locos de usar gasas asfixiantes y el bacílo asiático para cumplir su misión, sería entendible si uno sospechaba que Los siete locos es demasiado escandaloso para algunos lectores; no obstante, los que evitan la lectura de esta novela no aprovecharán algunos de los mejores discursos disparatados desde los días de Don Quijote.  ¡Un rarísimo libro pero un libro de puta madre, te digo!

The Seven Madmen [Los siete locos] (Serpent's Tail, 1998)

by Roberto Arlt [translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor)

Argentina, 1929

The name Erdosain gave to this mood of dreams and disquiet that led him to roam like a sleepwalker through the days was "the anguish zone."

He imagined this zone floating above cities, about two metres in the air, and pictured it graphically like an area of salt flats or deserts that are shown on maps by tiny dots, as dense as herring roe.

This anguish zone was the product of mankind's suffering.  It slid from one place to the next like a cloud of poison gas, seeping through walls, passing straight through buildings, without ever losing its flat horizontal shape; a two-dimensional anguish that left an after-taste of tears in throats it sliced like a guillotine.  (The Seven Madmen, translated by Nick Caistor, 5-6)

The Seven Madmen should have been a horrible book.  At the very least, its main theme--modern man's search for meaning--was already the stuff of cliché at the time of its publication.  So why is the work, a novel that tries to pass itself off as a chronicle,  now considered a classic within the panorama of Argentinean letters?  For me, a large part of the answer has to do with the unfettered nature of Arlt's imagination and writing.  After suffering the cruel double whammy of being turned in for stealing 600 pesos from his job and then losing his wife to another man, protagonist Remo Erdosain joins a secret society headed by men with colorful nicknames like the Astrologer and the Melancholy Thug.  Given that the goal of the secret society is to foment revolution in the hemisphere with income generated by the installation of a chain of brothels, it will probably come as no surprise that this harebrained scheme certainly lives up to the book's title.  However, Arlt seems dead serious when describing Erdosain's existentialist angst (see passage above) and the sordid Buenos Aires underworld in which pimps and syphilitic whores vie for the reader's attention.  That he's equally on message describing the madmen's plan to use asphyxiating gases and the Asian flu bacillus to accomplish their aims may make The Seven Madmen seem too over the top for some to enjoy, but skip it and you'll miss some of the greatest crackpot speeches in Spanish language literature since the days of Don Quixote.  A fucked-up classic, I kid you not!  (http://www.serpentstail.com/)

Roberto Arlt

-¿Y a usted le resulta lógico pensar que una sociedad revolucionaria se base en la explotación del vicio de la mujer?

El Rufián frunció los labios.  Luego, mirando de reojo a Erdosain, se explicó:

-Lo que usted dice no tiene sentido.  La sociedad actual se basa en la explotación capitalista, a las fundiciones de hierro de Avellaneda, a los frigoríficos y a las fábricas de vidrio, manufacturas de fósforos y de tabaco.  -Reía desagradablemente al decir estas cosas-.  Nosotros, los hombres del ambiente, tenemos a una, a dos mujeres; ellos, los industriales, a una multitud de seres humanos.  ¿Cómo hay que llamarles a esos hombres?  ¿Y quién es más desalmado, el dueño de un prostíbulo o la sociedad de accionistas de una empresa?  Y sin ir más lejos, ¿no le exigían a usted que fuera honrado con un sueldo de cien pesos y llevando diez mil en la cartera?

(Los siete locos, 37-38)

*

"But does it seem logical to you to base a revolutionary society on the exploitation of women through vice?"

The Thug curled his lip.  Then, shooting Erdosain a sideways glance, he replied:

"You're talking nonsense.  Our present-day society is based on the exploitation of men, women and children.  If you want to see what capitalist exploitation is really like, go take a look at the steelworks in Avellaneda, the meat-packing plants, the glassworks, or the match or tobacco factories."  He snickered unpleasantly as he said this.  "Those of us who run girls have one or two of them, but industrialists control a whole mass of human beings.  What would be the best name for them?  And who is more heartless, a brothel owner or the shareholders of a large company?  To look no further, didn't they expect you to be honest on a wage of 100 pesos while you were carting around 10,000 in your wallet?

(The Seven Madmen, translated by Nick Caistor, 40)

*Haz clic aquí para el post de Leox sobre Los siete locos en Devolución y préstamo el año pasado*

**Click here for Amateur Reader's recent Wuthering Expectations post on The Seven Madmen**

Petals of Blood

Petals of Blood (Penguin, 2005)

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Kenya, 1977

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan novelist, playwright, and current UC Irvine professor (English and Comp Lit) who, unlike crybaby adult YA fans in the book review blogosphere, has truly suffered for his art.  Imprisoned for a year after publishing the politically-charged Petals of Blood, a novel about disillusionment and social upheaval in post-independence Kenya, in 1977 and then the victim of violence on his first return home in 2004, he's been forced to lived much of his adult life in exile for fear of attacks upon his life in his native country.  Other key works of his include the novels The River Between (1965), Devil on the Cross (1982), and Wizard of the Crow (2006) and the postcolonial studies primers Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) and Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993).  I mention all this biographical info here at length because, more than with any other novel I've read of late, Petals of Blood seems to have a uniquely intense relationship with its author's homeland.  Ostensibly a police procedural having to do with the death of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery in Ilmorog, a remote backwater far from Nairobi, Thiongo's text takes the stories of the four main suspects and flowers into a thorny, sprawling narrative that's part history, part prison memoir, and part marxist jeremiad in tone.  Along the way, the reader is treated to a view of the post-Mau Mau rebellion Kenyan cultural and political landscape that's often angry and almost always confrontational in terms of the relationship of Africa to the West (to be sure, it's also critical of the black power structure in Kenya and in particular of the failures of the post-independence government towards its own people).  While I felt that Thiong'o occasionally tried to cover too much ground for his narrative's own good, I never felt that he was preachy and I enjoyed the choral effect brought about by his use of multiple narrators.  The novel's examination of feminism within its specific storytelling context was another strong suit--but a depressing one at that ("If you have a cunt--excuse my language, but it seems the curse of Adam's Eve on those who are born with it--if you are born with this hole, instead of it being a source of pride, you are doomed to either marrying someone or else become a whore.  You eat or are eaten," complains the main female character at one point [347-348]).  A solid and at times bracing story that doubles as an indictment of the legacies of colonialism told from the point of view of the oppressed rather than the oppressors for a change.  (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

"Indeed, he thought now, things could never really be the same even in viewing that past of his people, the past he had tried to grapple with in Siriana, and at Ilmorog school.  Which past was one talking about?  Of Ndemi and the creators from Malindi to Songhai; from the cape of storms, to the Mediterranean Sea?  The past of a broken civilization, retarded growth, black people scattered over the globe to feed the ever-demanding god of profit that the lawyer talked about?  The past of houses burnt and destroyed and diseases pumped into a continent?  Or was it the past of L'Ouverture, Turner, Chaka, Abdulla, Koitalel, Ole Masai, Kimathi, Mathenge and others?  Was it of chiefs who sold the others, of the ones who carried Livingstone and Stanley on their backs, deluded into believing that a service to a white man was really a service to God?  The past of Kinyanjui, Mumia, Lenana, Chui, Jerrod, Nderi wa Riera?  Africa, after all, did not have one but several pasts which were in perpetual struggle.  Images pressed on images." 

(Petals of Blood, 255) 

Miramar

Miramar (Anchor Books, 1993)

by Naguib Mahfouz [translated from the Arabic by Fatma Moussa Mahmoud]
Egypt, 1967

"Alexandria.  At last.  Alexandria, Lady of the Dew.  Bloom of white nimbus.  Bosom of radiance, wet with sky water.  Core of nostalgia steeped in honey and tears.

The massive old building confronts me once again.  How could I fail to recognize it?  I have always known it.  And yet it regards me as if we had shared no past.  Walls paintless from the damp, it commands and dominates the tongue of land, planted with palms and leafy acacias, that protrudes out into the Mediterranean to a point where in season you can hear shotguns cracking incessantly.

My poor stooped body cannot stand up to the potent young breeze out here.  Not anymore.

Mariana, my dear Mariana, let us hope you're still where we could always find you.  You must be.  There's not much time left; the world is changing fast and my weak eyes under their thinning white brows can no longer comprehend what they see.

Alexandria, I am here."

(Miramar, pp. 1-2)

I've been wanting to read Naguib Mahfouz's 1956-57 Cairo Trilogy for quite some time.  However, having already been burned by Nobel Prize-winning melodrama in Sigrid Undset's utterly exasperating Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, I must admit that I've been a little leery of the blurbs on the back of Mahfouz's books describing his penchant for combining "deep emotions" with "soap opera."  The 1967 Miramar, a much shorter novel at only 181 pages, thus became my introduction to the author.  Man, what a complete delight!  Four narrators (all from different walks of Egyptian life) take a revolving door approach to the storytelling here, describing the various paths that led each to a fateful stay as a boarder at the Miramar pension in Alexandria.  While much of the drama hinges on the younger boarders' pursuit of a beautiful cleaning lady named Zohra and the death--apparently by foul play--of one of the characters that ensues, Mahfouz uses the pretext of these intersecting lives as a launch pad to touch on the successes and failures of the Egyptian revolution and to specifically question the nature of male/female and city/country relations in the era (it's probably no accident that while the owner of the Miramar and Zohra are both female, it's the males alone who have the "speaking roles").  In any event, I loved the way the novel tackles such weighty issues in such casual, seemingly conversational tones.  Also loved the way that the octogenarian Amer Wagdi's poetic embrace of the city of Alexandria (see his apostrophe above) blends an old man's nostalgia with an awareness of the reality of changing times.  Don't know if all of Mahfouz manages to combine this blend of local flavor, intense historico-political introspection, and man of the street poetry/lyricism, but I'm now more eager than ever to immerse myself in the 1,500 page world of the Cairo Trilogy, soap opera or not!

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

Word Portraits

"Amer Wagdi rambles on about the glory of his own past, deeds for which his own conscience must serve, alas, as the only witness; the old wreck wants to convince us that he was formerly a hero.  So no one is commonplace in this damned world.  And everyone sings the praises of the Revolution.  Even Tolba Marzuq.  So do I.  Take care, I say to myself.  Sarhan is an opportunist and Mansour is probably an informer.  Even the ancient scribbler...who knows?  Madame herself is probably required to keep her eyes open in the service of security."  (Hosny Allam speaking, 62-63)

"At breakfast I was introduced to the other guests.  What a weird assortment!  But I needed a pastime, and if I could get the better of my introversion, I thought, I could find some companionship here.  Why not?  But let's not even think about Amer Wagdi and Tolba Marzuq; they belong to a dying generation.  Then, I wondered, what about Sarhan or Hosny?  In Sarhan's eyes there was a native compatibility.  He seemed sympathetic, in spite of his awful voice.  But what were his interests?  By contrast, Hosny simply got on my nerves--that was at least my first impression of him.  He was arrogantly taciturn and reserved and I didn't like his massive build, his big haughty head, or the way he sat enthroned, sprawling in his chair like a lord, but a lord without any real sovereignty or substance.  I presumed he'd feel at conversational ease only with someone he knew to be even more stupid and trifling than himself.  He who deserts his monastery, I reminded myself, must be content with the company of the profane.  And as usual my introversion got the better of me.  They will say...  They will think..."  (Mansour Bahy speaking, 92-93)

"At breakfast I am introduced to two strange old men.  One of them, Amer Wagdi, is so old he's an actual mummy, but he's a merry old fellow.  They say he's an ex-journalist.  The other is Tolba Marzuq, whose name sounds vaguely familiar.  He's under sequestration.  I don't know what brings him to the pension, but I'm keenly interested in him from the start; anything out of the ordinary is interesting, a criminal, a madman, someone under a sentence or under sequestration.  He keeps his eyes on his cup, avoiding my looks.  Out of caution, I wonder, or pride?  I stare at him with mixed feelings, a sense of triumph over his class mixed with pity for his individual plight.  But I'm strangely alarmed at the thought of the state confiscating property.  After all, it could happen to anyone."  (Sarhan al-Beheiry speaking, 139-140)

Arabic Literature Mini-Cycle

While I'd envisioned myself reading much more African literature and a bit more Arabic literature in translation this year back when I was daydreaming about my year-long reading projects in January, I've done about as good a job at that so far as I have at "community outreach" to the vocal but apparently über-fragile YA blogging community.  My bad.  To get things moving in the right direction, I've decided to embark on an Arabic literature mini-cycle this month to include a reading of Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar (Egypt, 1967), Nawal El Saadawi's God Dies by the Nile (Egypt, 1974), and Tayeb Salih's The Wedding of Zein (Sudan, 1969).  I actually just finished the short Mahfouz novel tonight (a complete delight that now has me primed to take on his expansive Cairo Trilogy later on in the year), but I'm really looking forward to the El Sadaawi book based on its rep as an Arabic women's studies classic and to Salih's The Wedding of Zein (a packaging of the title novella and two short stories) since his Season of Migration to the North was one of my best of the year candidates for 2009.  In other African news, I'm also in the middle of Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiongo's 1978 Petals of Blood and quite enjoying that as well.  Finally, on a related note to all this, I came across this absolutely ace resource for Arabic lit recommendations the day after I made my reading choices for the mini-cycle--and strongly suggest you take a look at it if you're interested in checking out some authors from this language and/or regions.  Other titles on deck this month: Roberto Arlt's Los siete locos, Dante's Inferno, Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad, and  Gabriel Josipovici's Moo Pak (this last work = Emily's pick for our shared read discussion set to take place on 6/25: please join us if you can!).  Will see how many I can get to after only finishing two books all of last month.