The Stalin Front

The Stalin Front [Die Stalinorgel] (NYRB Classics, 2004)
by Gert Ledig [translated from the German by Michael Hofmann]
Germany, 1955

This week I took some time off from War and Peace, a "war novel" that I've really been enjoying so far, to spend a couple of days with The Stalin Front, a war novel that I didn't really enjoy at all.  I don't blame that on Gert Ledig, though.  Since the army veteran's brooding, brutal work (originally titled Die Stalinorgel [The Stalin Organ] in honor of the German name for the Russian multiple rocket launcher known to the enemy troops as the Katyusha) primarily seems concerned with transmitting the message that war is hell to a postwar German audience that I'm guessing could hardly have had the time to forget about such a thing so soon, I think that any lack of enjoyment of the novel is probably proof that the writer succeeded all too well at what he'd intended.  In any event, fuck, how's one supposed to effectively evaluate the artistry of a work so unflinchingly dedicated to representing the carnage of war in such a graphic, almost pornographic fashion?  For whatever it's worth then, The Stalin Front, said to have been based on the novelist's own war experiences on the Eastern Front during World War II, takes place in a mercifully short span of time and pages as a small number of doomed German and Russian troops wait to square off against each other in a battle that doesn't seem to carry all that much strategic significance for either side.  Other than the fact that the characters' options seem to be limited to those of fighting down to the last bullet for no real purpose, fleeing, surrendering, taking their own lives, or unfairly taking a countryman's life to save their own, why do I say that the men are doomed?  Well, one of them, the Sergeant, after just having received instructions from the Captain, is introduced with the laconic aside: "He didn't realize he was simultaneously taking orders from fate" (2). Elsewhere, the Runner, who has unsuccessfully sought to escape the war after realizing how hopeless things are and wilfully disobeying orders that might see him punished by death, gasps in horror after accidentally knocking over a stack of corpses that have been used as a protective wall in a bunker.  "'Don't worry about it,' said the NCO.  'The Almighty must approve, do you think He'd allow it otherwise?'  He awkwardly lit a cigarette.  The 'Almighty' sounded unpleasantly cynical" (64).  Later in the novel, we are told that "the master of the hill was Death" (158).  I could go on, of course, but for better or for worse I've decided to spare you some of the more gruesome examples of Ledig's prose which would have made describing the work so much easier.  Suffice it to say instead that, on a surface level, the language itself is violent and choppy with short sentences that alternate between generating an aura of adrenaline and chaos and sucking all the air out of the room.  Par for the course for what was a powerful but often alienating read.

Gert Ledig (1921-1999)

I read The Stalin Front, the November selection for Caroline's Literature and War Readalong 2012, both for that event and as part of my long-overdue participation in Caroline's and Lizzy's German Literature Month 2012.  I look forward to seeing what sort of reception this bleak and uncompromising novel receives from the other readalongers, and I'll link to Caroline's round-up post as soon as it becomes available (update: done!).  In the meantime, you can take a look at what Rise of in lieu of a field guide thought about the work when he reviewed it a full two years ago here.

El mismo mar de todos los veranos

El mismo mar de todos los veranos (Editorial Anagrama, 2008)
por Esther Tusquets
España, 1978

El mismo mar de todos los veranos, novela mencionada en la lista de Ignacio Echevarría sobre Los libros esenciales de la literatura en español: narrativa de 1950 a nuestros días y a menudo elogiada por su subjetividad femenina, me ha decepcionado muchísimo.  ¿Lo fundamental del problema?  La narradora sin nombre es tan pesada que, a pesar de tener algunos momentos muy llamativos, la obra también tiene momentos de lo.más.aburrido.  En serio.  La narradora, dicho sea de paso, es una española de unos cuarenta años que, abandonada por su marido durante algún tiempo y en medio de una crisis emocional aparentemente perpetua, empieza una aventura amorosa con una estudiante colombiana más joven.  Después de mil peripecias al principio de la relación, la pareja lesbiana parecen encontrar una medida de felicidad durante su mes juntas hasta que la angustia llega en la figura del marido que ha vuelto a casa.  ¿Será un final feliz para las dos amantes o no?  Aunque no voy a decir más sobre el argumento, supongo que debo aclarar que, para mí, El mismo mar de todos los veranos era una lectura frustrante más que una lectura malísima o algo por el estilo.  Una oportunidad perdida, ¿viste?  Tusquets salió ganando cuando el sinnúmero de monólogos interiores hizo hincapié en la depresión y la opresión de la protagonista frente al ambiente sofocante de su existencia marital.  A veces también me gustaron el ritmo de su prosa y su lenguaje mismo:  "aquellos besos tristes como el grito de los pájaros marinos perdidos lejos del mar en las tardes de tormenta, como el golpeteo desolado de las olas contra los peñascos", por ejemplo, es un buen ejemplo de su lado poético (125).  Al mismo tiempo, Tusquets me perdió cuando esos monólogos interiores fueron monótonos en sumo grado con tan frecuencia.  Además, había una sobredosis de referencias a cuentos de hadas y a la mitología que demostró una falta de sutileza completa.  Qué lástima.

Ana María Moix (a la izquierda), Ana María Matute, y Esther Tusquets (a la derecha) en la casa de Matute en Sitges, 1970.

Boquitas pintadas

Boquitas pintadas (Debolsillo, 2009)
por Manuel Puig
Argentina, 1969

"Todo lo que empieza como comedia acaba como tragedia".

(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes)
 

Boquitas pintadas, la impresionante segunda novela de Manuel Puig, es una especie de homenaje y parodia de una telenovela cargada de muerte, una novela epistolar a la antigua, y un folletín que empieza como comedia y acaba como tragedia.  Según mi punto de vista más bien pesimista, es un valioso ejemplar de la llamada "literatura argentina de la pesada" de que habló Roberto Bolaño en Entre paréntesis.  Vamos a lo esencial.  Juan Carlos Etchepare, un mujeriego guapo sino tuberculoso, es el centro de atención dentro de la novela, dando besos y escupiendo sangre mientras que él corre tras las faldas en la Argentina de los 30 y de los 40.  No obstante, las noticias de su muerte a la edad de 29 años hacen estallar una reacción en cadena melodramática en cual sus ex amantes y sus íntimos amigos se convierten en las estrellas de sus propios hilos argumentales desdichados.  Historietas de amor.  Historietas de fracaso.  Historietas de amores fracasados.  Aunque la trayectoria emocional de la novela es más y más deprimente hasta el final, Puig proporciona un mecanismo de escape a los lectores con la vivacidad de su prosa.  Lo que sigue son tres ejemplos de la manera asombrosa de narrar de Puig en una novela que se destaca a causa de la riqueza de sus narradores y sus estilos narrativos.  En las páginas 116-119, hay una secuencia onírica que se relata a través de una lista de "Imágenes y palabras que pasaron por la mente de Juan Carlos mientras dormía".  En las páginas 130-131, un narrador sin nombre nos dice a) lo que hizo Nélida Enriqueta Fernández, la otrora novia de Juan Carlos, en el día 27 de enero de 1938, y b) comparte con nosotros las respuestas a las preguntas "¿Cuál era en ese momento su mayor deso?" y "¿Cuál era en ese momento su temor más grande?"; en las páginas 131-137, por medio de una repetición hábil que ocurre en varios momentos a lo largo de la novela, el narrador nos dice lo mismo acerca de Juan Carlos y cuatro otros personajes en los esbozos en miniatura sinópticos que siguen.  Por último, en las páginas 205-210, una mujer se confesa antes de un cura en una escena en cual lagunas dentro de frases y trucos de puntuación idiosincráticos llaman la atención al hecho de que sólo un lado del "diálogo" se escucha.  El punto de todo esto, en el evento que no esté claro todavía, es que Puig era un grosso en lo que refiere al estilo y a la estética.  Y además, pienso que Bolaño probablemente tomó prestado un par de peculiaridades estilísticas del tipo.



Heartbreak Tango (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010)

by Manuel Puig [translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine]

Argentina, 1969

 

"Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy."

(Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives)



Boquitas pintadas, the impressive second novel from Manuel Puig that's unfortunately only available in English under the cheesy moniker of Heartbreak Tango, is a sort of half-homage/half send-up of a death-laden soap opera, an old school epistolary novel, and a newspaper serial that begins as comedy and ends as tragedy.  From my rather pessimistic point of view, it's an all too worthy example of the so-called Argentinean literature of doom that Roberto Bolaño talks about in Between Parentheses.  Let's cut to the chase, though, shall we?  Juan Carlos Etchepare, a handsome womanizer suffering from an advanced stage of tuberculosis, is the nominal center of attention within the novel, exchanging kisses and coughing up blood while furiously chasing skirts in 1930s and 1940s Argentina.  However, the news of his death at the ripe old age of 29 sets off a melodramatic chain reaction of memories about the character in which his ex-lovers and other intimates become the stars of their own no less unhappy mini-dramas.  Love stories.  Stories about life's failures.  Stories about their failures in love.  Although the novel's emotional trajectory steadily gets more and more depressing until the very end, Puig manages to provide an escape valve of sorts for his readers via the sheer vitality of his prose.  Here are just three examples of how the guy racked up style points galore with me in a novel that offers up a kitchen sink's worth of narrators and narrative formats.  On pages 116-119,* there's a dream sequence conveyed through a list under the heading "Imágenes y palabras que pasaron por la mente de Juan Carlos mientras dormía" ["Images and Words That Passed through Juan Carlos' Mind While He Was Sleeping"].  On pages 130-131, an unnamed narrator tells us a) what Nélida Enriqueta Fernández, the one-time girlfriend of Juan Carlos, did on the day of January 27, 1938, and b) shares the answer to the questions "¿Cuál era en ese momento su mayor deseo?" ["What was her greatest wish at that moment in time?"] and "¿Cuál era en ese momento su temor más grande?" ["What was her greatest fear at that moment in time?"]; on pages 131-137, through a clever repetition pattern used at various points throughout the novel, the narrator tells us the same thing about Juan Carlos and four other characters in the ensuing synoptic vignettes.  Finally, on pages 205-210, a female character makes a confession to a priest in which lacunae within the sentences and idiosyncratic punctuation tricks I won't try to replicate here draw attention to the fact that only the woman's part in the "dialogue" is being transcribed.  The point, in case it's not yet clear, is that Puig was an arresting stylist with many tricks up his narrative sleeve.  What's more, I think that Bolaño probably picked up a couple of good tricks off the guy.

*All page references pertain to the Spanish language edition of the novel.



Manuel Puig (1932-1990)

Bleak House

Bleak House (Oxford University Press, 2008)
by Charles Dickens
England, 1852-53

With apologies to any/all book blog contrarians out there ardently rooting for me to make it through yet another year without ever once cracking the spine of a lemming-friendly Victorian novel, I finally caved and sat down with my first Dickens chunkster since right about the dawn of the gaslight era.  What's more, I actually enjoyed it, guv'ner!  Whatever fuddy-duddy prose and overt Spielbergian sentimentality I was worried about encountering ahead of time, Bleak House gave me 914 pages worth of juicy reasons (mystery, plot twists, spontaneous combustion!) to suspect that maybe I--and not the legions of easily-satisfied Victorian fanboys and fangirls I often think of as my blogging nemeses--was the one who had gotten things all wrong for a change.  A nice surprise: tone and atmosphere.  In a novel in which an unending and not particularly interesting court case thankfully provides a convenient alibi for Dickens to offer up a cross section of London society and embed it in what's at once a love story and a page-turner of a thriller and a powerful denunciation of greed and poverty, I think it's fair to say that the guy just about nailed it in terms of the mixture of irony and gravitas on display.  This winning tone, when coupled with humorous but presumably spot-on observations like "smoke, which is the London ivy" (142), made the atmosphere come alive for me in ways that even Dickens' apparently well-deserved reputation for characterization and description hadn't adequately prepared me for.  An even better surprise: the dual narrators.  Given the size of the canvas and the complexity of the detail laid down in sooty pen and ink within its pages, I have to attribute much of Bleak House's narrative charm and sophistication to its unlikely tag team of Esther Summerson, the likable first person narrator, and the mercurial third person narrator who delivers all the omniscient goods.  Esther, a beacon of goodness, provides the light personal touch and the hope for a happy ending.  The unnamed narrator?  Well, let's just say that he often wields the hammer.  Which brings me to what, in a really weird way, was the most pleasant surprise of all: Dickens, like God, doesn't hesitate to kill off some of his finest, most sympathetic characters without warning here--whether they are deserving or undeserving of such a fate in the reader's eyes.  Why is that a good thing as far as the novel's concerned?  1) The ensuing unpredictability.  2) You're forced to become invested in what happens to the characters on a personal level.  3) Dickens, unlike God, does some of his finest work when addressing the death of innocents.  As just one example, here's the non-Esther narrator chillingly addressing the reader directly after one poor wretch has just been snuffed out while reciting the Lord's Prayer: "Dead, your Majesty.  Dead, my lords and gentlemen.  Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order.  Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts.  And dying thus around us, every day" (677).  Not a happy moment to be sure.  However, exactly the sort of moment that makes me realize I've underestimated Dickens for years.  My bad.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

 

Thanks to Himadri and Tom for persuading me via assorted blog posts that I should give Dickens--and in particular Bleak House--another try after years of lack of interest in the guy.  For more on the author elsewhere, please check out the "Dickens in December" event hosted by our pal Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat and her pal Delia of Postcards from Asia.