Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross

"'Kristin, my dearest love,' begged Erlend in despair.  'Oh, Kristin, I know I've come to you much too late...'

Again a tremor passed over his wife's face.

'It's not too late,' she said, her voice low and harsh.  She stared down at her son, who lay in a swoon in her arms.  'Our last child is already in the ground, and now it's Lavrans's turn.  Gaute has been banished by the Church, and our other sons...  But the two of us still own much that can be ruined, Erlend!'"  (Kristin Lavransdatter, p. 973)

Kristin Lavransdatter (Penguin Classics, 2005)

by Sigrid Undset (translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally)

Norway, 1920-22

While I must have spent hundreds of Kristin Lavransdatter's 1124 pages trying to figure out whether inept storyteller Sigrid Undset was a bigger embarrassment to Scandinavian culture than lame-o pretentious pop star Bjork, I've decided to try to shy away from personal attacks now that Undset's historical fiction Beaches has finally reached its long drawn out tear-jerker of a conclusion.  Still, what exactly have I taken from this experience?  First, for all the people who seem to want to fawn over her for merely having created a birth-to-death portrait of a fictional woman with "realistic" flaws, Undset strikes me as an extraordinarily lazy writer.  Probably because she's so bad at dialogue, she spends endless amounts of time laboriously filling the reader in on what each character thinks and what each person looks like.  Very boring.  Second, Undset apparently never met a contrived situation she didn't like--in the key reunion between Kristin and Erlend in the passage above and in Kristin's final saintly acts when the Black Death comes to her convent, I was actually moved to laughter by Undset's cheap, Spielbergian theatrics.  No sense of subtlety whatsoever.  And even though The Cross was probably a slightly less annoying reading experience for me than either The Wreath or The Wife, I'm tempted to suggest that some of that sense of "improvement" was only noticeable due to the fact that the preceding books in the trilogy set the bar so low.  In short, a tedious and manipulative story unimaginatively told.  Refund! (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

Sigrid "Woe is Me" Undset

Non-Satanic Devil's Advocates

I'll link other Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross readalong posts below as soon as I can get to them, but thanks to everybody who read along with Emily and me and/or visited the various readalong blogs to join in on the discussions.  It was a lot of fun despite the novel in question!  If you've read the trilogy, please let me what you think of it--and if you haven't, please be aware that a certain online bookseller giant's website (let's call it Big Mythological Warrior Gal.com for the moment since this isn't one of those whorish book blogs that tries to pimp books for money) is actually full of raves of KL along the likes of the following:  "The saga covers every human emotion and possibility that can occur to a human being."  OK, I stand corrected!  I wasn't bored to death by Undset after all!!  Psyche!!!

Emily (Evening All Afternoon)
Amy (New Century Reading)
Claire (kiss a cloud)
Gavin (Page247)
Jill (Rhapsody in Books)
Sarah (what we have here is a failure to communicate)
Softdrink (Fizzy Thoughts)
Valerie (Life Is a Patchwork Quilt)

La Virgen de los Sicarios

La Virgen de los Sicarios (Punto de Lectura, 2006)

por Fernando Vallejo

México, 1994

Luego de leer la nefasta segunda parte de la telenovela en prosa que se llama Kristin Lavransdatter (Noruega, 1920-22), me era grato poder leer la sumamente atrevida La Virgen de los Sicarios de Fernando Vallejo.  Una especie de jeremiada contra la violencia colombiana ambientada en los '90, esta novela breve sigue en los pasos del narrador, otro Fernando, recién llegado a su ciudad natal de Medellín después de una ausencia de muchos años en el extranjero.  Enamorándose con un teenager de arrabal que trabaja como sicario, o asesino a sueldo, el cincuentón Fernando cuenta su historia de amor con Alexis mientras que lanza denuncia tras denuncia contra sus prójimos, el gobierno y Dios durante sus recorridos a lo largo de la ciudad.  Mientras tanto, el joven Alexis sigue asesinando a docenas de víctimas con toda la impunidad de un Ángel Éxterminador: casi si fuera cumpliendo las esperanzas de Fernando, que se limita a la violencia verbal como el buen gramático que lo es.  Aunque el punto de vista del narrador es nihilista en sumo grado, me gustaron su retrato del caos urbano (lo cual me pareció fidedigno) y el poder desenfrenado de su lenguaje (de hecho, la novela se lee como un Trópico de Cáncer dedicado a la rabia).  No sé si el autor sea tan misantrópico como su tocayo, pero el realismo y el pesimiso de este librazo probablemente se deben al hecho de que Vallejo mismo creció en Medellín antes de mudarse a México para siempre.  Un éxito vituperioso.  (http://www.puntodelectura.com/)
*
Our Lady of the Assassins [La Virgen de los Sicarios] (Serpent's Tail, 2001)
by Fernando Vallejo (translated from the Spanish by Paul Hammond)
Mexico, 1994

After suffering through the dreadful second part of that soap opera in prose known as Kristin Lavransdatter (Norway, 1920-22), it was completely gratifying for me to be able to read Fernando Vallejo's daring Our Lady of the Assassins next.  A sort of jeremiad against Colombian violence set in that country in the '90s, this novella follows in the footsteps of its narrator, another Fernando, who has recently returned to his hometown of Medellín after an absence of many years spent abroad.  Having fallen for a neighborhood teenager who works as a sicario, or an assassin for hire, the 50-something Fernando recounts his doomed love affair with Alexis while launching one diatribe after another against his fellow man, the government, and God during the lovers' walks throughout the city.  Meanwhile, the young Alexis continues killing dozens of victims with all the impunity of an exterminating angel--almost as if he were fulfilling the wishes of Fernando, who tends to limit himself to verbal violence like the good grammarian he is.  Although the narrator's point of view is nihilistic in the extreme, I enjoyed both his portrayal of the urban chaos (very credible, it would seem) and the unrestrained power of his language (imagine a Tropic of Cancer devoted to and consumed with its own wrath).  And while I don't know if the author's as misanthropic as his literary namesake, the heightened realism and the pessismism of this work probably owe a lot to the fact that Vallejo himself grew up in Medellín before moving to Mexico for good.  A vituperative knockout.   (www.serpentstail.com)

Fernando Vallejo

"Saliendo de conocer la iglesia de Robledo (un galponcito desangelado en donde a duras penas se para mi Dios), decidimos seguir pendiente arriba en busca de un mirador en la montaña para divisar a Medellín, para apreciarlo en su conjunto con la objetividad que da la distancia, sin predisposiciones ni amores.  A mano izquierda subiendo, en una finquita vieja, un rodadero con un platanar seco, abandonado, leíase el siguiente anuncio en mayúsculas torcidas y desflecadas, como para cartel de Drácula: SE PROHÍBE ARROJAR CADÁVERES.  ¿Se prohíbe?  ¿Y esos gallinazos qué?  ¿Qué era entonces ese ir y venir de aves negras, brincando, aleteando, picoteando, patrasiándose para sacarle mejor las tripas al muerto?  Como un niño travieso, haga de cuenta usted, jalándole la cuerda a un payasito de cuerda que ya no hará más payasadas en esta vida.  ¿El cadáver de quién?  ¡Y yo qué sé!  Nosotros no lo matamos.  De un hijo de su mamá.  Cuando pasábamos ya estaba ahí, y en plena fiesta los gallinazos e invitando más.  Lo tostaron y ahí lo tiraron violando el anuncio, de donde se deduce que: mientras más se prohibe menos se cumple.  Sería en vida una bellecita?  ¿O un 'man' malevolo?  'Man' aquí significa como en inglés, hombre.  Nuestros manes, pues, no son los espíritus protectores.  Por el contrario, son humanos e hideputas, como dijo Don Quijote".  (La Virgen de los Sicarios, p. 47)

"Coming out of the church in Robledo for the first time (a soulless little shed in which God prospers with great difficulty), we decided to continue up the slope in search of a vantage point on the mountain to see Medellín from, and to admire it as a single entity with the objectivity distance lends, with neither prejudice nor love.  On the left going up, on an old property, a steep bit of hillside with a withered, abandoned banana grove on it, you could read the following notice in crooked and half erased capital letters, like on a Dracula poster: THE DUMPING OF BODIES IS FORBIDDEN.  Forbidden?  What about those turkey buzzards over there?  What was all that toing and froing then of big black birds, hopping about, flapping their wings, pecking, bracing themselves in order to hoick out the dead man's guts more easily?  Like a naughty child, mark you, tugging the string of a little marionette who won't be doing any more clowning in this life.  Whose corpse was it?  How should I know!  We weren't the ones who killed him.  Some mother's son.  When we passed by he was already there, with the buzzards having a great time and inviting others to come join the party.  They did for him and they tossed him there in violation of the notice, from which one deduces that the more one forbids, the less one achieves.  Had he been a hunk in life?  Or a bad man?  Our manes, whether it means men or dead souls, are not protective spirits.  On the contrary, they're humans and whoresons, as Don Quixote said."  (Our Lady of the Assassins, pp. 46-47 [translated by Paul Hammond])

Senselessness

Senselessness [Insensatez] (New Directions, 2008)
by Horacio Castellanos Moya (translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver)
Guatemala and Mexico, 2004

As I grudgingly make my way through the entertainment no man's land that is the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy (update post later in the week), I'm happy to report that a novel about fucking genocide of all things has provided quite the welcome distraction.  In this short but incendiary novel, an unnamed narrator from an unnamed Latin American country is hired to be the copy editor in yet another unnamed Lat Am country for the latter land's 1,100 page human rights report on military atrocities committed against its indigenous population (although the particular countries are never mentioned, internal clues tip us off to the fact that the narrator's a refugee from El Salvador working in Guatemala before Bishop Gerardi's assassination). While polishing the report, the horrors of the testimony ("I am not complete in the mind" admits one man who has watched his wife and four children be hacked to death by machetes [1-2]; "There in Izote the brains they were thrown about, smashed with logs they spilled them" says another survivor [51]) and the narrator's own personal demons (alcoholism, drug dependency, womanizing, unspecified "personal problems") combine to haunt the character to the point that he's gradually turned into a raving paranoiac wreck in fear for his own life.  Rightly or wrongly. What follows is both predictable and unpredictable in more or less equal measure, an outcome I attribute more to the challenge of confronting genocide through fiction than the novelist's own chops as a writer.  For if the trajectory of the novel was telegraphed a little too far in advance for my tastes and its first person tone was too over the top for its own good on occasion, Castellanos Moya's prose in general throughout and a brutally ironic ending still seemed worthy of his grim subject matter.  Put that in your historical fiction pipe and smoke it, ladies.  (http://www.ndpublishing.com/)

Horacio Castellanos Moya

Note: I read this book in translation because I couldn't find the original Spanish version of Insensatez at my university library or local foreign language bookstore.  For more on Castellanos Moya's own background and writing, check out this profile here and a piece he did on his friend Bolaño Inc. here.

La guerra del fin del mundo

La guerra del fin del mundo (Punto de Lectura, 2007)
por Mario Vargas Llosa
Perú, 1981

Uno de mis blogueros favoritos me dijo recientemente que La guerra del fin del mundo le gustó tanto que no quería terminar el libro: ¡es por eso que decidió volver a leer la novela desde la mitad cuando solo le faltaban 30 páginas para el final!  Mientras que no reaccioné de la misma manera, comprendo cómo él se sintió.  Aunque La fiesta del chivo de Vargas Llosa probablemente es más vistoso que La guerra del fin del mundo en cuanto a los artilugios de narrar (los narradores multiples, los juegos de tiempo, etcétera), me gustó este libro más por su historia misma: una ficción épica sobre la guerra de Canudos, un hecho histórico donde la nueva República de Brasil sojuzgó una rebelión milenaria en el pueblo de Canudos, estado de Bahía, en los años 1896 y 1897.  Para explicar cómo me atrapó esta historia, debo notar que la materia que Vargas Llosa eligió para narrar no tenía que ver con una guerra cualquiera.  Los rebeldes, la mayoría de quiénes eran análfabetos, fueron una gente distinta a causa de su pobreza extrema y su devoción fanatica a un tal Antônio Conselheiro (abajo): un místico errante que creyó que el nuevo gobierno republicano era una amenaza al cristianismo, un gobierno compuesto de esclavistas, y los secuaces del Anticristo.  Inexplicablemente, la mezcla surrealista de ex bandidos, personas marginalizadas, y ascetas religiosas que siguieron al "Consejero" se defendieron contra el ejército brasileño en cuatro batallas de creciente violencia: batallas luchadas con matices apocalíptcos por un lado y con prejuicios de clase por el otro lado.  Mientras que el desenlace nunca está en duda dado nuestro conocimiento de los eventos históricos, Vargas Llosa tiene tanta destreza narrativa que este mundo lejano se describe con un brío casi cinematagráfico durante las 921 páginas del libro.

One of my favorite bloggers recently told me that he loved The War of the End of the World (La guerra del fin del mundo) so much that he didn't want it to come to an end--a point he proved by stopping 30 pages short of the finish line only to read it again from about the middle of the book on!  While I didn't have quite that extreme a reaction, I understand the sentiment.  Although Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat (La fiesta del Chivo) is probably flashier than The War of the End of the World in regards to its use of storytelling tricks (multiple first-person narrators, temporal perspectives, etc.), I enjoyed this work more for its story itself: an epic fictionalization of the young Brazilian republic's brutal putdown of a millenarian revolt in Canudos in the state of Bahía in 1896-1897.  To help explain the novel's grip on my imagination, I should note that this wasn't just any war that Vargas Llosa took on for his subject matter. The besieged, mostly-illiterate villagers who squared off against the government were a people apart both for their extreme poverty and their fanatic devotion to one Antônio Conselheiro (below), an itinerant mystic who viewed the new republican government as a threat to Christianity, as promoters of a return to slavery, and as agents of the Antichrist.  Against all odds, the surreal mix of ex-bandits, social outcasts, and religious ascetics that surrounded "the Counselor" stood up against the army in four increasingly violent confrontations waged with apocalyptic overtones on the one side and extreme class prejudices on the other.  While the outcome's never really in doubt thanks to our knowledge of how the historical events unfolded,Vargas Llosa's storytelling gifts are such that he manages to bring this strange, distant world alive with almost cinematic verve throughout the 921 pages of his book.

Un rodeo bibliográfico.  Aunque la historia de Vargas Llosa me impresionó mucho (mi única queja formal es una escena innecesaria hacia la final que tiene que ver con una violación), me gustaría parar por un minuto para mencionar Os Sertões de Euclides da Cunha del año 1902: un clásico brasileño de no ficción (traducido en español como Los sertones: Campaña de Canudos y en inglés como Rebellion in the Backlands) que fue la fuente principal de la novela del peruano.  Si no es necesario saber algo de Los sertones para disfrutar la lectura de La guerra del fin del mundo, ya sospecho que cada uno complementaría el otro para los que se interesaría hacer una lectura comparada sobre el tema.  El poco que he leído de Da Cunha hasta este punto da una introducción a la geografía y la gente de Canudos de manera espesa y minuciosa, y el brasileño mismo tiene una presencia vestigial en La guerra del fin del mundo como un personaje (un periodista miope sin nombre que acompaña al ejército durante las dos expediciones finales contra los del sertón).  Desgraciadamente, la prosa de Vargas Llosa era tan emocionante que no podía acabar con la lectura de Los sertones antes de escribir esta entrada.

A bibliographical detour.  While Vargas Llosa's storytelling wowed me (my only serious complaint was the introduction of a rape scene late in the novel that seemed complete unnecessary), I'd like to pause for a moment here to mention Euclides Da Cunha's 1902 Os Sertões: a Brazilian nonfiction classic (translated in English as Rebellion in the Backlands and in Spanish as Los sertones: Campaña de Canudos) that was the Peruvian's primary source for his novel. While it's not necessary to know anything about Rebellion in the Backlands to enjoy The War of the End of the World, I suspect that each book would complement the other for anyone interested in doing some comparative reading on the subject.  The little that I've read of Da Cunha so far provides a dense, meticulous introduction to the geography and the people of Canudos that's almost completely missing from Vargas Llosa's version of the events, and the Brazilian himself has a sort of vestigial presence in The War of the End of the World in the form of the character, an unnamed nearsighted journalist, who accompanies the army on the last two expeditions against the backlanders.  Unfortunately, I was so carried away by Vargas Llosa's prose that I was unable to complete my side-by-reading of Rebellion in the Backlands in time for this post.

Porque ambos la historia detrás de La guerra del fin del mundo y el personaje del periodista me fascinaron, probablemente no será sorpresa que la intersección entre la realidad y la representación de la realidad es uno de los temas fundamentales de la obra de Vargas Llosa.  O, como dice un personaje al hablar de los rumores de la guerra de Canudos: "La fantasía inventada...es más verosímil que la historia real" (468).  Y aunque el periodista es un símbolo perfecto con respecto a esto (¿es digno de confianza el testigo de un personaje que pasa mucho tiempo en la batalla final asustado como un niño e incapaz de ver a causa de la pérdida de sus lenteojos?), esto es sólo una parte de una matriz genial que también incluye las técnicas épicas dentro de su esquema de narrar.  Entre un elenco de personajes memorables (el ex esclavo João Grande, un anarquista escocés llamado Galileo Gall, el feroz João Abade--un ex asesino anteriormente conocido como João Satán antes de conocerse con el Consejero), uno de mis personajes preferidos es un enano tubercular que canta los cantares de gesta de los troveros portugueses sobre materia del ciclo carolingio.  Si es sorprendente descubrir la presencia de una chanson de geste sobre Roberto el Diablo en una obra que tiene que ver con una guerra civil en Brasil a finales del siglo XIX, es sólo un ejemplo más de la maestría narrativa de Vargas Llosa en La guerra del fin del mundo.  Magnífico.

Since both the history behind The War of the End of the World and the journalist character fascinated me, it probably won't come as a suprise to find out that the intersection between reality and the representation of reality is one of the great themes of Vargas Llosa's work.  Or, as one character puts it when discussing some of the rumors about the war, "the invented fantasy...is more credible than the true story" (468).  And although the journalist is a perfect symbol of this myopic tension (how reliable is his testimony given the fact that he spends much of the final battle cowering in fear and unable to see after the loss of his glasses?), this is just part of a rich matrix that also integrates epic storytelling techniques within a realistic framework.  Among a colorful cast of characters (the ex-slave Big João, a Scottish anarchist named Galileo Gall, the fierce Abbot João--a reformed killer once known as Satan João before falling under the Counselor's sway), one of my favorites is a tubercular circus dwarf who survives by singing the Carolingian-themed epics of Portuguese jongleurs.  That a chanson de geste about Robert the Devil would have anything at all to do with a civil war in late 19th-century Brazil may surprise you; however, it's just another stirring example of Vargas Llosa's storytelling artistry in The War of the End of the World. Superb.

(http://www.puntodelectura.com/)

Mario Vargas Llosa en 1981 (foto: Alicia Benavides)

Otros caminos a Canudos

Mario, Quaderno Ribadabia, #1 y #2

Gracias a Ever por recomendarme este libro con tanto entusiasmo y a Mario por prestarme la imagen de la novela con la tapa amarilla y por otra ayuda archivesca.//Thanks to Ever for recommending this book to me with such enthusiasm and to Mario for lending me the photo of the novel with the yellow cover and for other archival assistance.

Season of Migration to the North

Season of Migration to the North [Mahsim al-Hijra ila ash-Shamal] (NYRB Classics, 2009)
by Tayeb Salih (translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies)
Sudan, 1966

"It was, gentlemen, after a long absence--seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe--that I returned to my people. I learnt much and much passed me by--but that's another story." (Season of Migration to the North, 3)

Some postcolonial punk recalled this book from me less than a week after I'd checked it out from the library, but he/she might have actually done me a favor by forcing me to read it sooner than I'd intended. Sort of a reverse Heart of Darkness, Season of Migration to the North is a superb short novel that wowed me with its bravura storytelling and its odd, somewhat feverish air. The journey begins when the unnamed narrator returns to his quiet village on the banks of the Nile after spending seven years studying English poetry abroad. One night during a drinking bout, the narrator is astonished when he hears an enigmatic newcomer from Khartoum himself reciting World War I verses in a perfect English accent. How did two British-educated Sudanese intellectuals wind up in the same desolate wadi? And what does the mysterious newcomer have to hide hanging out here in the sticks? The two questions that obsess the narrator begin to take on a haunting quality when Mustafa Sa'eed, the man from Khartoum, confesses to having killed a white woman in Britain and having caused others to commit suicide over him after leaving them abandoned in his romantic wake. Bizarre? Yes. But Salih (1929-2009) is such a master of narrative that both the trajectory of the plot, essentially composed of two equally compelling and intersecting storylines set decades apart in time, and the behavior of the characters practically demand your attention. As befits a work that at least one major critics' group has anointed as the best Arabic novel of the 20th century, Season of Migration to the North of course offers much more than just a gripping plot and an iconic character, Mustafa Sa'eed, who vanishes one day only to linger on as a sort of phantom of memory that torments the narrator with his very presence. The novel is studded with surprising images--the octogenarian grandfather whose unique smell "is a combination of the smell of the large mausoleum in the cemetery and the smell of an infant child" (61), the drought that prompts the narrator to complain that "such land brings forth nothing but prophets" (90). It's also insistently and at times defiantly oral in nature, as when Mustafa Sa'eed repeatedly mumbles "my store of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible" (30, 34) and "the train carried me to Victoria Station and to the world of Jean Morris" (26, 27, 29) when explaining his techniques for sexual conquest and the mad love affair that would bring him face to face with the British justice system. Salih's poetic qualities notwithstanding, the work is probably most famous for offering its readers a look at the Empire from the point of view of the other side of the table--an "Arab-African" POV (33) in which colonialism is characterized as both a sexual battlefield and an infectious germ that poisons both the oppressor and the oppressed. While I'll leave those rather complicated topics for somebody with more time on their hands to try and suss out, suffice it to say that Season of Migration to the North was as much of a revelation to me as Walser's grand Jakob von Gunten was back in July. Outstanding. (http://www.nyrb.com/)

Tayeb Salih

"Season of Migration to the North isn't the first book in which a writer of color has decided to 'write back' to the empire, of course. Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between (1965), Camara Laye's The Radiance of the King (1954), and Aimé Césaire's A Tempest (1969), for instance, can all be seen as attempts to subvert European colonial discourse. But Season of Migration to the North is unique among these books in that it is written in the author's native language, rather than the colonial one. Indeed, Salih stands out among African writers of his generation for his insistence on continuing to use Arabic in spite of having lived the majority of his life outside the Sudan. ('It's a matter of principle,' he once told an interviewer.)" (Laila Lalami, "Introduction" to Season of Migration to the North, xiv-xv)

The Story of Zahra

The Story of Zahra [Hikayat Zahra] (Quartet Books, 1986)
by Hanan al-Shaykh (translated from the Arabic by Peter Ford "with the author's cooperation")
Lebanon, 1980

"We had grown used to the idea of a cease-fire at the beginning. We did not dare to think or believe that fighting meant war any more than a cease-fire meant peace." (The Story of Zahra, 106)

I'm not sure why exactly, but I'd half expected that I wasn't going to like this work very much. I was wrong. Oft cited as a classic of contemporary Arabic literature and an important work in international women's studies courses, Zahra pursues its troubled, mentally-disturbed title character from a dysfunctional home in southern Lebanon, on to Africa for a failed marriage, and back to Beirut where she suffers through the ravages of the Lebanese Civil War. Multiple narrators close to Zahra recount their interactions with the character, and Zahra herself bookends the accounts with her own pre-war memories of electroshock therapy and a harrowing account of her wartime "romance" with a rooftop sniper. While al-Shaykh does a tremendous job at bringing the horrors of war home with descriptions of the daily bombings in Beirut, she's equally adept at evoking the profound sense of interior trauma suffered by Zahra (note: I loved the fragmentary nature of the narrative--both the multiple points of view and Zahra's own instability as a witness--for reinforcing these feelings of disconnect). Throughout, one senses that the real horrors for the character aren't the war itself but rather the non-war sources of her own feelings of displacement and exile: the undiagnosed mental health issues that plague her, various abuses at the hands of men, her complicated responses to her own sexuality, and her role as an individual suffering within the stifling, patriarchal culture in which she was raised. That being said, for all the things I admired about the work, for all the interesting things it has to say about colonialism, gender relations and the like, the one thing I didn't care for was a rather big one: the ending. In fact, I'd probably have to read it again before deciding whether it was overly simplistic from a thematic standpoint or an unavoidably logical conclusion to everything that came before it. Bummer. (Quartet Books, London)

Hanan al-Shaykh

The Story of Zahra was self-published when it first came out because it was deemed too hot to handle by regional publishers. For a recent newspaper piece from Hanan al-Shaykh on her mother's life,

see "I Am Too Young to Marry" from The Guardian UK here.

This is my fifth book read for this year's Orbis Terrarum Challenge.
Next up: W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (Germany), Mario Vargas Llosa's La guerra del fin del mundo [The War of the End of the World], or ??? (???).

Another perspective: E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends)

Bartleby y compañía

Bartleby y compañía (Anagrama, 2001)
por Enrique Vila-Matas
España, 2000

"Nunca tuve suerte con las mujeres, soporto con resignación una penosa joroba, todos mis familiares más cercanos han muerto, soy un pobre solitario que trabaja en una oficina pavorosa. Por lo demás, soy feliz. Hoy más que nunca porque empiezo --8 de julio de 1999-- este diario que va a ser al mismo tiempo un cuaderno de notas a pie de página que comentarán un texto invisible y que espero que demuestren mi solvencia como rastreador de bartlebys". (Bartleby y compañía, 11)

Bartleby y compañía, llamado así por el personaje de Melville cuyo mantra de "preferiría no hacerlo" es la razón de ser de este libro, ofrece una divertida indagación de un tema bastante raro: el sinnúmero de autores que han dado la espalda a la literatura por renunciar a la escritura. Aunque todos los sospechosos de siempre (Rimbaud, Rulfo, Salinger) tienen sus momentos bajo el microscopio de metaficción del narrador jorobado, hay sorpresas agradables en abundancia en cuanto a los que, como Jacques Vaché, no son autores ("Vaché, paradigma del artista sin obras; está en todas las enciclopedias habiendo escrito tan sólo unas pocas cartas a André Breton y nada más" [74]) y a los que, como Paranoico Pérez, son entes ficticios de otros autores ("Paranoico Pérez no ha conseguido escribir nunca ningún libro, porque cada vez que tenía una idea para uno y se disponía a hacerlo, Saramago lo escribía antes que él. Paranoico Pérez ha acabo trastornado. Su caso es una variante interesante del síndrome de Bartleby" [135]). Mientras que pienso que Vila-Matas podría haber eligido escribir esta obra como una recopilación de ensayos literarios en vez de esta especie de antinovela al estilo de Borges y J. Rodolfo Wilcock, me imagino que su elección del género le dió la libertad máxima para parodiar el único territorio desconocido de la novela al amanecer del milenio nuevo: lo que su narrador clasifica como "la literatura del No" [12]. ¡Qué bien!

"'El arte es una estupidez', dijo Jacques Vaché, y se mató, eligió la vía rápida para convertirse en artista del silencio. En este libro no va a haber mucho espacio para bartlebys suicidas, no me interesan demasiado, pues pienso que en la muerte por propia mano faltan los matices, las sutiles invenciones de otros artistas --el juego, a fin de cuentas, siempre más imaginativo que el disparo en la sien-- cuando les llega la hora de justificar su silencio" (74). (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/)

Vila-Matas #1

*
Bartleby & Co. (New Directions, 2004)
by Enrique Vila-Matas (translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Dunne)
Spain, 2000

"I never had much luck with women. I have a pitiful hump, which I am resigned to. All my closest relatives are dead. I am a poor recluse working in a ghastly office. Apart from that, I am happy. Today most of all because, on this day 8 July 1999, I have begun this diary that is also going to be a book of footnotes commenting on an invisible text, which I hope will prove my reliability as a tracker of Bartlebys." (Bartleby & Co., 1)

Taking its name from the Melville character whose "I would prefer not to" mantra provides this book's reason for being and nothingness, Bartleby & Co. offers up a sly, endlessly entertaining look at the astonishing number of authors who have turned their backs on literature by giving up writing. While all the usual suspects (Rimbaud, Rulfo, Salinger) have their moment in the hunchbacked narrator's arch metafictional sun, surprises abound to the extent that you're just as likely to encounter a reference to a non-writer like Jacques Vaché ("Vaché, paradigm of the artist without works; he is listed in all the encyclopedias, though he wrote only a few letters to André Breton and nothing else" [68]) as you are to come across a story about a story about the fictional character who dreamed that Saramago was stealing all his ideas telepathically ["Paranoid Pérez never managed to write a single book because, each time he had an idea for one and resolved to do something about it, Saramago would write it before him. Paranoid Pérez ended up going round the bend. His case is an interesting variant of Bartleby's syndrome" [131]). Although I suspect that Vila-Matas could have just as easily chosen to write this Jorge Luis Borges and J. Rodolfo Wilcock-inspired "anti-novel" as a series of literary essays instead, his selection of this particular format prob. allowed him maximum freedom to spoof the medium's only uncharted road at the dawn of the new milennium: what his narrator refers to as "the literature of the No" [2]. Too funny!

"'Art is a stupidity,' said Jacques Vaché, and then he killed himself, choosing the quick way to become an artist of silence. There won't be much room in this book for suicide Bartlebys, I'm not too interested in them, since I think taking one's own life lacks the nuances, the subtle inventions of other artists--the game, in short, which is always more imaginative than a shot in the head--when called on to justify their silence" (68). (http://www.ndpublishing.com/)

"Vila-Matas" #1

Historia personal del "boom"

Historia personal del "boom" (Alfaguara, 2007)
por José Donoso
España, 1972 y 1987

Este libro es tan bueno que no hay palabras para describirlo. Aunque es mucho más que un anecdotario sobre aquella década de los años sesenta cuando Latinoamérica se convertió en uno de los epicentros del universo literario gracias a los éxitos de los autores del boom (Cortázar, Fuentes, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, etcétera), la Historia personal de Donoso está llena de golosinas riquisímas sobre todas las figuras más destacadas de la época: la sesión de espiritimiso a la casa de las sobrinas de José Hernández, donde Jorge Luis Borges recitó estrofas de Martín Fierro durante un intento de "comunicar" con el muerto poeta gauchesco (43-44); las indignidades de la pobreza sufrió por Mario Vargas Llosa en Londres, donde el novelista lo pasó el tiempo escribiendo Conversación en La Catedral y "cazando las ratas que infestaban el piso" (70-71); una fiesta a la casa de Carlos Fuentes en México donde, entre los otros invitados, Gabriel García Márquez y Juan Rulfo mezclaron con varios extranjeros y starlets "del cine azteca" (112-114), etcétera, etc. Aunque Donoso naturalmente hace un esfuerzo por definir el "boom" en cuanto a sus límites temporales y en cuanto a los nombres que pudieran pertenecer a una lista de "miembros" del grupo, él insiste que lo que más le interesa es el acto de presentar su óptica personal acerca de todo lo que pasó durante aquellos años emocionantes. Por consiguiente, su libro tiene que ver con lo que significa ser escritor y con el amor de la literatura más que nada. Dos apéndices, uno escrito por la mujer de Donoso ("El 'boom' domestico") y otro escrito por Donoso mismo ("Diez años después") más tarde, ofrecen perspectivas distintas pero igualmente valiosas sobre las vidas hogareñas de todas las figuras mencionadas. En otras palabras, ¡una lectura interesantísima! (http://www.alfaguara.com/)
*
I can't say enough good things about this book. While it's more than just a collection of anecdotes about that decade in the '60s when Latin America became one of the epicenters of the literary universe thanks to the successes of the so-called "Boom" writers (i.e. Cortázar, Fuentes, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, etc.), Donoso's Personal History is still full of all kinds of juicy tidbits about the Boom era's stars: the séance at the house of José Hernández' nieces where Jorge Luis Borges recited lines from the poem Martín Fierro during an attempt to "communicate with" the dead gaucho poet (43-44); the indignities of poverty suffered by Mario Vargas Llosa in London that saw the young novelist "hunting rats that infested the apartment" while trying to put the finishing touches on Conversation in the Cathedral (70-71); a party at Carlos Fuentes' house in Mexico City where Gabriel García Márquez and Juan Rulfo, among the other invited guests, mingled with various foreigners and starlets "of Mexican cinema" (112-114), etc., etc. Although Donoso naturally makes some efforts to provide a framework for the Boom both in time and with a list of authors that might be said to belong to the group, he insists that he's more interested in presenting his personal views on all the exciting things that transpired at that time rather than arriving at a clinical definition per se. Because of this, his book is much more about talking shop about the writing life and celebrating the love of literature than anything else. Two appendices, one written by Donoso's wife ("The Domestic Boom") and the other written by Donoso himself ("10 Years Later") later on, offer different but equally worthwhile perspectives on the family lives of all the writers mentioned. In other words, an incredibly interesting read! (http://www.alfaguara.com/)

José Donoso

Biografía (desde la cubierta)/Biography (from the inside cover)

Nació en Santiago, Chile, en 1924. Estudió en la Universidad de Chile y luego en Princeton, Estados Unidos. Entre 1967 y 1981 vivió en España, donde escribió algunas de sus novelas más importantes y se consolidó como una figura central del boom latinoamericano. Tras su regreso a Chile en 1981, dirigió por varios años un taller literario que jugó un rol fundamental en la gestación de la "nueva narrativa chilena". Entre otras distinciones, obtuvo el Premio de la Crítica en España, el Premio Mondello en Italia y el Premio Roger Caillois en Francia. En 1995 fue condecorado con la Gran Cruz del Mérito Civil, otorgada por el Consejo de Ministros de España. José Donoso murió en Santiago de Chile, en diciembre de 1996.//José Donoso was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1924. He studied at the University of Chile and then at Princeton University in the United States. He lived in Spain between 1967 and 1981, where he wrote some of his most important novels and consolidated himself as a central figure in the Latin American "Boom." After his return to Chile in 1981, he conducted a literary workshop for several years that played a fundamental role in the birth of the "new Chilean narrative." Among other distinctions, he received the Critics' Prize in Spain, the Mondello Prize in Italy and the Roger Caillois Prize in France. In 1995 he was decorated with the Great Cross of Civil Merit awarded by Spain's cabinet. José Donoso died in Santiago de Chile in December of 1996 [my translation].

Note: I haven't seen the U.S. version of it myself, but apparently there's a 1977 translation of Historia personal del "boom" available under the title The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History (translated by Gregory Kolovakos for Columbia University Press). It'd be worth checking out for sure, but you wouldn't want to miss the two "epilogues" from the Spanish edition either.

Las batallas en el desierto

Las batallas en el desierto (Era libro de bolsillo, 2007)
por José Emilio Pacheco
México, 1981

"Miré la avenida Álvaro Obregón y me dije: Voy a guardar intacto el recuerdo de este instante porque todo lo que existe ahora mismo nunca volverá a ser igual. Un día lo veré como la más remota prehistoria. Voy a conservarlo entero porque hoy me enamoré de Mariana. ¿Qué va a pasar? No pasará nada. Es imposible que algo suceda. ¿Qué haré? ¿Cambiarme de escuela para no ver a Jim y por tanto no ver a Mariana? ¿Buscar a una niña de mi edad? Pero a mi edad nadie puede buscar a ninguna niña. Lo único que puede es enamorarse en secreto, en silencio, como yo de Mariana. Enamorarse sabiendo que todo está perdido y no hay ninguna esperanza". --Las batallas en el desierto, p. 31

Hermosísima novela corta sobre el primer enamoramiento del narrador, Carlitos, y la fragilidad de la memoria. Relacionando los recuerdos de su juventud como un "niño de la colonia Roma" en México, D.F. (14) con todas las transformaciones del país en aquel entonces en los años 40 y 50, el adulto Carlos regresa al "paraíso perdido" del pasado en la época cuando México ya era en la antesala de modernización. La prosa de Pacheco es engañosamente sencilla, pero él tiene un estilo impecable y la conciencia de un poeta en cuanto a lo que significa estar enfermo de amor. El resultado es una especie de bildungsroman a la mexicana que critica varios aspectos de la sociedad mexicana con un tono agridulce y elegíaco. Una obra sumamente conmovedora.
*
Battles in the Desert (Era paperback, 2007)
by José Emilio Pacheco
Mexico, 1981

"I looked at the avenida Álvaro Obregón and told myself: I'm going to maintain the memory of this moment intact because everything that's existed until now will never be the same. One day I'll see it as the most remote prehistory. I'm going to preserve the instant in its entirety because I fell in love with Mariana today. What's going to happen? Nothing will happen. It's impossible that anything will come of this. What will I do? Change schools so I don't see Jim and therefore don't see Mariana? Look for a girl my own age? But at my age, nobody can look for any girl. The only thing that you can do is to fall in love in secret, in silence, as I have with Mariana. To fall in love knowing that everything's lost and that there's no hope whatsoever." --Battles in the Desert, p. 31

Beautiful, beautiful novella about narrator Carlitos' first time falling in love and the fragility of memory. Relating his childhood memories as "a kid in the barrio Roma section of Mexico City" (14) to all the transformations that were going on in the country at that time in the 1940s and '50s, the adult Carlos returns to the "paradise lost" of the past when Mexico was still on the brink of modernization. Pacheco's prose is deceptively simple, but he has an impeccable style and a poet's feel for what it means to be lovesick. The result is a kind of bittersweet Mexican bildungsroman that criticizes various aspects of Mexican society with an elegiac tone. A very moving work.

José Emilio Pacheco

Próxima parada en el subte de Orbis Terrarum:

Gran Bretaña (Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon), Líbano (Hanan Al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahra), o ??? (???).

Note: I chose this 68-page novella to represent Mexican literature for both the Exploration: Latin American Reading Challenge and the Orbis Terrarum 2009 bilingual mini-challenge. New Directions put out an English translation of the work in 1987, but I'm not sure whether it's still in print or not. The rough translations above are mine--sorry for any harm done to the original text's meaning or phrasing.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (Oxford University Press hardcover, 1997)
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa)
Brazil, 1881

"For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn't place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch." --The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, p. 7

Like Machado de Assis' equally entertaining Dom Casmurro, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is a fake autobiography--written with "a playful pen and melancholy ink" (5)--concerned with events that take place in the late 19th century Brazil of its one-time upper crust protagonist. It's also a tragicomic send-up of the man of letters revealing the mysteries of life through literature, the twist here being that its voluble narrator, dead of pneumonia at the age of 64, inexplicably chose to launch his writing career from the other side of eternity. Chapter 1, "The Author's Demise," covers many of the essential autobiographical details, but elsewhere in his book of life Brás Cubas recounts his ill-starred love affairs and failed political ambitions with great panache, an unbridled wit, and a generous dollop of pessimism. He has a poetic way with words ("I was holding the binoculars of the imagination," he quips in a typical moment [100]), but he also knows when to take a breather when necessary (chapter 139, "How I Didn't Get to Be Minister of States," has no words at all, only telling ellipses). In short, he's almost everything you could want in a narrator except that he knows things about the modern reader that you might not want to hear. A great jab in the eye of conventional fiction/memoir writing marred only by some of the worst proofreading (typos every few pages) I've ever seen in a university press book. (http://www.oup.com/)

"I'm beginning to regret this book. Not that it bores me, I have nothing to do and, really, putting together a few meager chapters for that other world is always a task that distracts me from eternity a little. But the book is tedious, it has the smell of the grave about it; it has a certain cadaveric contraction about it, a serious fault, insignificant to boot because the main defect of this book is you, reader. You're in a hurry to grow old and the book moves slowly. You love direct and continuous narration, a regular and fluid style, and this book and my style are like drunkards, they stagger left and right, they walk and stop, mumble, yell, cackle, shake their fists at the sky, stumble and fall...

And they do fall! Miserable leaves of my cypress of death, you shall fall like any others, beautiful and brilliant as you are. And, if I had eyes, I would shed a nostalgic tear for you. This is the great advantage of death, which if it leaves no mouth with which to laugh, neither does it leave eyes with which to weep... You shall fall." --The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, p. 111

Machado de Assis: For more on "Brazil's most important novelist," a grandson of freed slaves, see Marc Bain's "Speak, Memory" in Newsweek here.

Next port of call on the Orbis Terrarum Challenge 2009: Canada (Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin), Cuba (José Lezama Lima, Paradiso), or ??? (???).

Orbis Terrarum 2009 Challenge

While I like reading about reading challenges way more than I like participating in them, I have some good news about my absolute favorite challenge of them all. Bethany of the book-crazy B&b ex libris blog is hosting the Orbis Terrarum Challenge again this year, a 10-month extravaganza dedicated to reading "10 different books, written by 10 different authors, from 10 different countries" beginning March 1st. Although the so-called rules thankfully haven't changed all that much from the 2008 version of the challenge, Bethany has livened things up by adding optional bilingual, film, poetry, and short story mini-challenges for those who are interested. You can check out the blog's dedicated page post here to sign up for the challenge yourself or here if you just want to keep up with all the updates throughout the year. In the meantime, a few of the things I'm looking forward to reading/watching for this year's challenge are listed below. I'll link all my other OT 2009 Challenge reviews here once things get going in March. ¡Hasta pronto!

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina): a likely candidate for double duty in the poetry and short story mini-challenges.

Margaret Mazzantini, Non ti muovere (Italy, 2001): I'm going to try to read this romanzo in Italian for the bilingual mini-challenge, but unfortunately my Italian is basically limited to food and wine vocabulary and a few other helpful words like "aiuto"!

Carlos Saura, Cría cuervos (Spain, 1976): One of my favorite movies of all time, this was recently released in a deluxe US DVD edition from Criterion. A natural for the film mini-challenge.

Click here to jump to my OT list from last year.

1) BRAZIL: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (review)
2) MEXICO: José Emilio Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto [Battles in the Desert] (review)
3) CHILE: José Donoso, Historia personal del "boom" [The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History] (review)
4) SPAIN: Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañía [Bartleby & Co.] (review)
5) LEBANON: Hanan al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahra (review)
6) SUDAN: Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North (review)
7) PERU: Mario Vargas Llosa, La guerra del fin del mundo [The War of the End of the World] (review)
8) NORWAY: Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter (links forthcoming)
9) HONDURAS: Horacio Moya Castellanos, Senselessness [Insensatez] (review)
10) COLOMBIA: Fernando Vallejo, La Virgen de los Sicarios [Our Lady of the Assassins] (review)

1) MÉXICO: José Emilio Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto (reseña)
2) CHILE: José Donoso, Historia general del "boom" (reseña)
3) ESPAÑA: Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compañía (reseña)
4) PERU: Mario Vargas Llosa, La guerra del fin del mundo (reseña)
5) COLOMBIA: Fernado Vallejo, La Virgen de los Sicarios (reseña)

1) GERMANY: Werner Herzog, My Best Fiend [Mein liebster Feind] (review)
2) DENMARK: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr (review)
3) FRANCE: Jean-Pierre Melville, Le Deuxième Souffle (review)

1) ???