Quarterly Review

It's been a while since I've updated this blog with capsule reviews of books that I've read which might be of interest to the few and proud which read this blog, so time to update with books read from mid-February to the end of March. Some of these books I reviewed over at wotmania, so I'll be providing links to those reviews.

Roberto Arlt, El jorobadito

Arlt was one of Argentina's most reknowned writers during the first third of the twentieth century. Known as much for his polemical writings and activities as for anything else, Arlt lived hard and fast, dying in his early 40s in 1942. After publishing two novels, he turned more and more toward short fiction and theater writing.

El jorobadito (The Little Hunchback) is a collection of stories that feature outlandish characters. Oftentimes, the stories are bizarre in setting, the motivations are often dark, but yet there is a sense of morbid fascination with the grostesque that underlays each of the stories collected here. Arlt is often held up as being influential in the sense that a William Burroughs is influential in the US, for being a rebel with a cause and an ax to grind, and this collection will serve as a fine introduction to his work. Highly recommended for people who are fluent in Spanish and who wish to read an excellent collection of short fiction.

Rafael Ramírez, La Mara

This is a tale of the Mara Salvatruchas, especially the MS-13, a gang which originated in the streets of LA from those salvadoreños who had suffered from the violence of the death squads that sprung out of the civil war of the 1980s. This gang, known for their tattoes of teardrops for each killing committed, their use of the machete, and their embracement of La vida loca (how Ricky Martin has managed to survive for so long is a story for another time), now numbers in the tens of thousands, with an estimated 20 to 30 thousand members in the United States alone and double that number in Central America and other parts of the world. Ramírez's novel is a tale of some of those caught up in La vida loca.

As a novel, the story is told through a variety of viewpoints, from those just joining the gangs and those who live in fear of those who use symbols such as the alacrán (scorpion). The novel is narrative in tone, with the various points of view being used in a manner to build up what has developed in previous chapters. Ramírez does an excellent job with the characterizations and in illustrating just how potent of a threat the MS-13 is to the maintenance of order along the borders of the Central American countries and also along the US-Mexico border. It is a tragic tale, as La vida loca is not just crazy, but oftentimes very short, and I was saddened as I read tales of youth left with such little hope as they progressed into the world of the black teardrops. Although the shifting scenes might be confusing to some (especially if Spanish is not their native language, as I quickly discovered), the overall power of the scenes make La Mara a story well worth reading, if only to learn more about what is possibly the most dangerous and vicious gang in the world today.

Mario Vargas Llosa, El Paraíso en la otra esquina

Vargas Llosa has had a long and successful writing career. Associated with the Boom movement of the 1960s in South America, Vargas Llosa has gone on to publish classics such as La casa verde (1963), Conversación en la Catedral (1969), Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1972), La guerra del fin del mundo (1981), and La fiesta del Chivo (2000). His latest novel, El Paraíso en la otra esquina (2003), fits well with this impressive literary corpus.

The novel is actually two stories. The first is set around the end of the 19th century and deals with the painter Paul Gaugin and his quest to discover his Muse in sensuality. The second deals with Paul's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, and her struggle for women's rights and equality in a Paris of the mid-19th century that was anything but conducive for such a struggle. Vargas Llosa alternates these two in chapters, with a series of similar hopes, aspirations, and ultimately 'defeat.' As I read this story, I kept being struck by the title and how for each character, 'Paradise' was within their grasp, just lurking around the corner, waiting to be taken and possessed. As such, it was a perfect metaphor for the aspirations of the 19th century, that time of Owenites, of the Shakers, and ultimately of the Paris Commune and the Second International. A time of hopes and dreams that our more cynical late 20th/early 21st century societies would scorn for being hopelessly naïve, the 19th century was as much of a character here as was Paul or Flora.

El Paraíso en la otra esquina has its flaws, though. The alternating chapter system often makes for a mess and this was indeed the case at times. Also, it seemed that on occasion, Vargas Llosa made too much of a connection between Paul and Flora, to the detriment of both of their unique visions. But these are minor issues, not enough to dissuade me from recommending others to pick this up either in the original Spanish or in translation form.

Edmundo Paz Soldán, La materia del deseo

Paz Soldán is a Bolivian-born Latin American Literature professor at Cornell University. He is one of the founders of the mid-1990s South American literary movement called McOndo, which aims to have hyperrealistic narratives, full of the ambiguous affects of globalization, to become as much of a symbol of their South America, as the realismo mágico of the Boom Generation of García Márquez, Córtazar, Vargas Llosa, and Fuentes. La materia del deseo is a prime example of this new movements aims.

The story appears to have the veneer of an autobiography, as the main character, Pedro, is a Bolivian-born professor in the United States who is fascinated and haunted by his late father's work on a book called Berkeley. Struggling with a relationship with a student, Ashley, Pedro leaves for Bolivia to search for clues as to what his father, who was a Leftist leader assassinated by a previous Bolivian dictatorship, was doing when he wrote Berkeley and why that work has affected his own life.

There are no swarms of butterflies or levitating priests in this tale. It is equal parts mystery thriller and psychological narrative, with flavors of a bicultural conflict between native and adopted lands. The story flows well, the character of Pedro is interesting, and the conclusion is solid. If anything, the story suffers from a relative lack of focus on the relationship between Pedro and Ashley, but on the whole, this work will serve as an excellent primer into the differences between the McOndoists and the Boom Generation while also highlighting what the Young Turks have to offer to this globalizing world. Hopefully this story will be translated into English for American audiences.

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

I'm just going to link to the wotmania review I did for it a couple of weeks ago.

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

This was another review that I originally did at wotmania, so here's the link to that review.

Gabriela Mistral, Selección poetica de Gabriela Mistral

This was an excellent collection sampler of many of Mistral's most famous poem cycles. While I could devote pages to discussing and analyzing the poems included in this 190 page collection, I will just note that the opening section, which deals with a hymn of sorts to the Americas, is evocative of some of Walt Whitman's finest poetry, although Mistral's style is quite different from Whitman's free verse. The Sun of America is the best poem in this collection and it just describes so well the similarities and differences between the various lands within the Americas. I would recommend it to those who enjoy Latin American poetry, but I would also note that I consider Rubén Darío and Mistral's Chilean compatriot, Pablo Neruda, to be even better than Mistral.

Clara Sánchez, Últimas noticias del paraíso

Últimas noticias del paraíso won the Premio Alfaguara in 2000. It is a combination of many stories into one, complete whole: a quest of knowledge, an exploration of contemporary urban life, a Bildungsroman, and the hope that so many of us have in what we call 'paradise.' Fran is an adolescent boy growing up in a world that is in turns exciting and confusing. The novel details Fran's progression during his teenage years in a first-person narrative that will remind the reader of his/her daily struggles during those teenage years just to make it through to the end of the day. Sánchez just does this with a sympathetic voice that makes us hope with Fran and to be crushed with him. This work well deserved the Alfaguara and I can only hope that it will be translated into English in the near future, as it is well worth the read.

Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian Novel

I reviewed this novel over at wotmania.

Elena Poniatowska, La piel del cielo

Poniatowska won the 2001 Premio Alfaguara for this novel of an astronomer and his struggle during the 20th century to improve Mexico's scientific reputation. This novel of the astronomer Lorenzo de Tena begins with a simple question: ¿allá atrás se acaba el mundo? (What's after the end of the world? is a very rough translation). From pondering that question and questioning his mother and later others around him, Lorenzo began a lifetime of struggling against perceived wrongs, tilting against the windmills of bureaucracies and political forces to achieve his vocational goals, even at the cost of certain friendships and loves. La piel del cielo is a powerful read, one in which the character of Lorenzo stands out without succumbing to the temptations of becoming a cardboard characterization, which so often happens when the main narrative voice is such a unique person. He is not perfect, but he is also indomitable, which makes reading this novel a thought-provoking read.

Anonymous, The Poem of El Cid (bilingual edition)

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, commonly known as El Cid, was a fascinating historical character who lived in the last half of the 11th century in Spain. A Castilian by birth, El Cid was controversial enough to have been exiled twice by Castilian King Alfonso VI in the 1080s and 1090s and who ended up fighting for both the Christians and the Moors during many of the most famous battles of the Reconquista. His exploits became semi-legendary and by the early 13th century, they were collected into poetic/song form in Old Castilian. The book I read is a dual-language edition of this poem.

The work is an epic of the time, so there are many repetitive phrases used to remind the listening audience of the heroic exploits of that knight who 'in a good hour was born'. It was interesting to read the Old Castilian next to the modern English translation, as there is a rhythm and form to that original which simply could not be captured in English poetic forms, thus the prose translation being chosen instead. The story revolves around El Cid's second exile in 1091 and how he conquered Valencia from the Moors. There is jealousy from his enemies in the court of Castile and friendship from unexpected places. There are the heroic slayings of tens of thousands and sumptuous feasts. It is a true epic and a treasure to read. And unlike most other epic heroes, El Cid is characterized by his humility and faith over his prowess on the battlefield. Truly a remarkable read.

Sarah Monette, Mélusine

Another book that I reviewed first at wotmania.

Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio is an intelligently written historical/suspense novel. Told in three voices from critical times in the history of Provence, the book interweaves themes and notes how time and character motivations might just repeat themselves. I do not want to reveal too much of the plot specifics as there might be readers here who will want to read this book, but I can say that from Roman nobleman who became a saintly bishop during the last days of Roman control over Provence in the 470s to a poet in the Avignon region during the 1340s outbreak of the Black Death to a French historian researching the lives and writings of the other two while the Germans are threatening France during 1940, there is a common thread in a commentary over a forgotten manuscript called The Dream of Scipio.

Pears interweaves their stories in such a way as to highlight certain temptations that each faced at critical moments. When should one succumb to pressure and when should one hold fast to principles? Does the good of one group outweigh the good of another? How should one deal with barbarism? These are some of the questions raised during the reading of this novel and Pears does an excellent job of addressing them. For those that enjoy books set in historical times but which also contain timeless quandries, The Dream of Scipio is a book that should be read as soon as possible.

José Saramago, Las intermitencias de la muerte

Still another book that I reviewed at wotmania.

Dan Simmons, Olympos

Recently reviewed here at wotmania.

Each Time, We Know Less

Sabremos cada vez menos qué es un ser humano. - Libro de las previsiones

This quote, which can be roughly translated as "We will know less and less what is a human being," is found in the epigraph to José Saramago's latest work, Las intermitencias de la muerte. Very fitting that I come across this quote today, as I've been struggling a bit to put to words my thoughts on something that troubles me a bit as an occasional reviewer/commentator.

A source of my recent trouble might be found in reading some of the feedback posted on Locus Online in regards to the recent New York Times column regarding science fiction. While I agreed with much of what the majority of the people there were saying, a part of me couldn't help but flinch, wondering who's version, who's definition of what constitutes 'science fiction' was attempting to dominate there. Then this weekend I read the link to Norman Spinrad's column, "On Books," that is part of the April/May issue of Asimov's. In it, he devotes a considerable amount of time delineating what is 'science fiction,' as opposed to 'SF' or 'sci-fi' or 'speculative fiction.' While many of his points were interesting, there just this sense of unease that crept over me as I read on. And then earlier today, when doing my semi-weekly read of Matthew Cheney's blog, I read his most recent column on 'Nonrealist Fiction.' Now I'll need a bit more time to process just how I feel about some of his arguments, but there was something in Cheney's post that touches upon a topic near and dear to my heart, that of relationships between the Reader (and by extension, human beings) and the Text.

In some senses, what I am writing now, what I've created (and of course whatever you have created or the person down the street or that imagined person at the antipodes has created) is a fiction. It is a construct, something that has a meaning and form that depends upon human interpretations. As a construct, this fiction (and let's go ahead and start using other terms to describe this, say 'real' and 'non-real') is subjective in and of itself, that it depends in large part upon what its Creator, its Author, wants to convey, but also on what its Recipient, its Reader wants this fiction to be. It is a communication process, one which depends in large part upon the ability of the Creator to affect the Recipient and also how the Recipient chooses to process what the Creator has established. It is a ying-yang relationship to some extent, but with an inherent instability due to the dynamics of that communication between the Creator/Recipient.

Times change. Languages alter, fall out of use. New ideas, new forms of 'what is to be' come into vogue, then are dumped into the dustbins of 'history.' Perceptions of the world changes and 'order' can mean something completely different to one generation as 'suffer' or 'quit' meant to people of another generation. 'Education' used to refer to the process of 'bringing up,' or of training someone in how to interpret the world around them. Of course, this has changed greatly over the years, as we've gone more and more away from the Greco-Roman template to a model of child rearing/training that focuses more on 'practical' applications, with a concentration on how or what things are and not so much of a focus as to why things are as they are (or not are). In this shift, many of our transmission signals have become garbled.

Thus we can have a full-fledged (and often entertaining) debates as to what constitutes 'realism' versus 'nonrealism'; what is 'science fiction' as opposed to those other forms that I listed above. But we don't tend to have as much paper (or electronic) ink devoted to the issues of why this and not that when we discuss a work of fiction. Before some point out (correctly) that there are still plenty of authors, in a variety of fields, that address issues of 'why,' I would like to take the time to note that I am referring here to how the Reader/Recipients process what they have consumed from perviewing what the Author/Creator has brought into being.

How many times have some of us gone to an internet site and read commentaries that concentrate so much on the 'what' aspects of a fiction (the plot, the characters, the scenes) and 'how' they affected that particular reader? Or how about seeing commentaries about a work that seem to be so directed as toward illuminating that Reader's point of view that the voice of the Author has been lost in translation? This has happened to me on a very frequent basis.

Now I could cite quite a few websites devoted to the 'discussion' of 'fantasy' or 'SF' (or however else you want to define what it is that's being read), but for brevity's sake, I will not and will allow you, the Reader of this fiction of mine, to go forth to your own favorite site or blog or whatnot and discover whatever you may for yourself. I just will state here, however, that it has been my experience that the 'discussions' are so centered around that particular person's vantage point that I sometimes wonder if there has been any attempt to listen to what the author has to say. One egregious example would be that of 'Classics,' in particular William Shakespeare. Countless are the times that I see comments to the effect that Shakespeare is 'overrated,' or that 'he just didn't know how to write.' While part of me wants to dismiss such statements out of hand, there is something to be said about them. Like it or not, they demonstrate a very real concern of many in regards to the loss of efficacy when one reads (or better yet in my opinion, sees performed) Shakespeare. Somewhere in the march of the centuries and the many subtle or drastic changes in the English language, a connection was weakened or even lost in some cases. The world-view of 400 years ago is not that of today and the plays of Shakespeare's which appealed to both the elites and the common folk of his day are now more and more losing their direct hold on the average person's mind and sentiments. This is not to say that Shakespeare is any less or more important today as compared to 1606, but only to serve as an illustration for the fragile nature of the communication that we Readers have with our Authors. Maybe instead of 'we will know less and less what is a human being,' it will be 'less and less what the Author wants to say to us.'

There Are Other Worlds

Chances are, most of the people reading this article will have pale skin. A great many will speak English as their first language or will have been taught the language from middle childhood. Perhaps a bare majority or a large plurality will have grown up hearing of this thing called 'the American Dream.' Possibly, those reading this will never have experienced abject poverty, living their lives in a comfortable bourgeois setting. Likely, these elements will make for a common experience among those who read this blog, those who purchase and read 'fantasy' novels, those who participate in forums devoted to such literature on the web.

But not everyone falls in that category. Quiza, hable usted español. Si yo hubiera escrito éste artículo sobre el imperialismo de los 'gringos' o 'yanquis' y como autores como Gabriel García Márquez o Alejo Carpentier escribieron cuentos utilizando ese condición malo para contar cuentos de la esperanza y la desesperación, algunos no aceptarían que estos cuentos puedan ser fantasías. After all, for some, 'fantasies' must follow certain conventions and preferably exist somewhere safe away, protected against the intrusions of our world. A great many people with whom I've conversed over the years at wotmania and elsewhere have expressed this desire for their 'fantasies' to be separate from real-world concerns, concerns such as racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, the inequal distribution of resources, or how we humans appear to conceive the world.

The genesis of this article comes from reading last month an essay by Pam Noles titled appropriately enough as "Shame." Her article exposes a raw nerve for a great many readers of speculative fiction - that of the 'other.' In this case, it is the 'other' reader, the reader who is not White, the reader who is not male, the reader who is not Anglo or who comes from the bourgeois background into which a great many of us have been privileged to have been born. Her story is that of the quest many have to find characters that they can relate to in the readily-available fictions that many of us pass around and recommend to the people around us.

Noles quotes Ursula Le Guin and her reaction to the casting of a virtually all-White cast for the TV adaptation of Earthsea:

"I think it is possible that a good many readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, maybe don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being 'colorblind.' Nobody else does."
— Commentary on Slate, Dec. 16, 2004.

I will let that comment sink in for a bit.

There is a lot of truth to that comment, a truth, which like so many goes quietly in us and through us without leaving much of a trace. Many of us have a common world-view, a conceptualization of matters in such a way that revolves around the experiences that members of that particular society will share in common. However, this often leads to a sense of cultural myopia, the failure to conceptualize in its entirety the experiences that other groups will have. For example, taking the García Márquez example I cited above, why can't there be an intimate connection between the imagination and the 'real' world? Why cannot there be fantasies that tie in our hopes, our despairs, our dreams in such a fashion as to be both stories of imagination and of how we relate to this world around us?

Of course, a great many authors already do this, both within and outside the Anglo-American tradition. But yet the perception of what constitutes a 'fantasy' seems to revolve in the popular consciousness of this Anglo-American tradition almost solely around the twin axes of Tolkienian secondary-world stories and mythological tales of faires and sprites and other creatures drawn from Western fairytales and legends (and I'll hold off here talking about legenda). But what about those other stories, stories in which there is not that comfortable divide between the 'real' and the 'imagined'? How does one classify a story such as Ben Okri's The Famished Road? As a fable, as 'magic realism,' or as something else?

I suppose for some, if a boy is seeing 'spirits', it must be a 'fantasy,' but how is that to be received by the reader? After all, The Famished Road is a tale that touches upon the very real miseries of life for a great many in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. It is not a 'safe' story to read, as the reader will encounter a great many examples of unfairness and cruelty in the guise of characters such as the nameless Landlord or the political parties that seek to manipulate and to terrorize the villagers. In a sense, it is very 'real' and therefore likely will be rejected by some readers for that aspect, just as others will likely reject it for having 'spirits' and other creatures of dubious origin. It is their choice, I suppose.

And now, back to the Le Guin quote. I might take a lot of heat for this, but as Kurt Vonnegut said in Slaughterhouse-Five, so it goes. I think Le Guin has put her finger on a very interesting point, not just about the characters to be found within the story, but also on the readers interacting with the story. The world in which we live is not a whitebread one; differences often go much more than skin-deep. It is a naïve presumption to make that people can blend together into one 'colorblind' society. After all, whose vision of that society would triumph? Are our visions of the future really any different from the days of Kipling writing about the "White Man's Burden"? It is an open-ended and debatable question. But I will close by saying just this one little thing:

There are other worlds than this.

I hope to discover and to appreciate some of them for what they are and how they can influence me.

February in the Lands of Magical Realism

So far this February, I've been caught up in the realms of magical realism, which might not be all that surprising to those of you who frequent this blog. Below are my reviews to my two most recent reads... plus a little more.

The Narrows
By Alexander Irvine, Del Ray 2005

Irvine approaches all his stories as quasi-mythic retellings of specific historical contexts, a somewhat specific version of magical realism. In this case, the story is set in World War II Detroit, specifically the war effort as put forth by the industries of Henry Ford. The twist to this story is the question... “What if folk magic worked?” We see a world striving to harness all the mechanical, physical, and esoteric resources at hand to win this second, great war. Enter the main protagonist, Jared Cleaves, who works on the assembly line of a top secret federal war effort project that is secreted in a Ford manufacturing complex. Jared is part of a team that creates Golems through the cabbalistic magic of an old Rabbi.

The story itself is an interesting retelling of the war effort for those at home. Jared has been several times denied military service because of an old injury to his hand, which left it partially lame. However, Jared, and the other workers on the Golem line, known as the Frankenline, have all been chosen for their poor paying jobs because of certain sensitivities they all posses. Jared is a depressive sort, feeling sorry for himself that he has a poor paying job, has been turned down for service, has a marriage that is slowly falling apart, a wife who actually makes a recognized difference for the war, and he’s plagued by dreams of a Red Dwarf, Nain Rouge, which is said to omen the destruction of Detroit, as it has in the past. The problem for Jared is that people are starting to take interest in him, and what he sees, including a nazi spy, his supervisor, a shape-changing Indian Shaman, and a very specialized Government Department, the Office of Esoteric Investigation (OEI).

The primary focus of the story is the internal struggle of Jared in the context of being a father, a husband, and a person on the wrong side of a secret. In such, the story is well-executed. Irvine imbues the hidden elements of Detroit, and the war, with a straightforwardness and ingenuity that allows it to work. It is both a recognizable portrayal of 1940s Detroit, and it is a story of the secret history of that Detroit. This world is interesting, and it makes a certain amount of sense. The story is told from Jared’s limited PoV, so this is also somewhat of a suspense mystery story as Jared tries to manage his way through plots and espionage.

As with other Alexander Irvine novels, this book has some flaws, which seem to be a different set in each novel. For this one, the primary complaint that I have is that the ending seems awfully rushed. The book is a great length, at about 330 pages, but it has the feel that another 20 pages wouldn’t have hurt. The Narrows has a very good build toward a climax. The final 10 pages, while trying to reflect the general chaos of the climax, does fall short of complete. There are too many holes in the action and the implications of what happens during the climatic scenes.

The Narrows is a well-told story, and the limited perspective and the flawed, but compelling, primary character makes for a satisfying read. It might not be a perfect novel, but the story is engaging, the world and setting have a tangible reality that is really quite impressive, and the characters are compelling. While the ending suffers in comparison to the rest of the novel, my overall impression of the novel is a positive one.

The Narrows by Alexander Irvine

___________________

Perfect Circle
by Sean Stewart
Published by Small Beer Press - 2004

Perfect Circle is not a standard fantasy, fantasy novel. There are no swords. There is no discernable magic. The story is set in current day Texas, Houstan in fact. However, Perfect Circle is a blend of magical realism and suspense that translates into a page-turning, pleasure to read.

William (Dead) Kennedy, DK to family, is a 32 year-old, divorced, father of a teenaged girl, an aging rebel, who is out of work yet again. Will sees ghosts, and he's beginning to see them all over the place, especially dead family. The novel begins with Will getting a call from a distant cousin with a problem... he's got a dead girl in his garage. Dead in the ghost variety. With the offer of money to get rid of the ghost, Will grudingly agrees to help his cousin.

The ensuing plot revolves around the repeated statement... Some people are haunted for a reason. The novel is about family legacy, mistakes, redemption, love, loss and pulling yourself together. One of Stewart's great achievements is that he manages to make the black-and-white ghosts as dynamic and integral to the shape of the story as the rest of his living characters.

Stewart is a very talented writer. He strings together images and sensory decriptions, inter-weaving believable dialogue, humor, suspense, and intrigue. The results are engrossing and entertaining. Perfect Circle comes in at roughly 270 pages, which is the perfect length for this story. The pacing is balanced and the plot is full, and it brings a complete conclusion, though not a completely tied up one of course.

One of the aspects that surprised me the most when I was reading the novel was how it could be both suspenseful and down right hilarious at the same time. Stewart does a deft job balancing both aspects.

Being somewhat slim, for a current speculative fiction, helps the novel in the fact that the story doesn't weave through a lot of extraneous material. One aspect that does take a little getting used to is the fact that story is told in a reflective manner, the single PoV moves back and forth between about 28 years of the William's life. The challenge is to pull together the character and his background from the seemingly random scenes and history. It's somewhat of a mosaic affect, but the results are well worth the style.

So, to sum it all up. If you see the novel on a shelf somewhere, I highly recommend that you pick it up and give it a read. Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

I was captured by how both authors were able to harness the gritty feel of a specific real world locality, time and place, and were able to push beyond the boundries of common perception. The true treasure of Magical Realism, well done MR, is the stories' ability to carry the reader beyond the known while still maintain all the edges of real world experience and feel. While, Stewart and Irvine are working at different levels of skill, both achieve a level of tangibility in the novels reviewed, that make them both successful.

What do you find are the challenges of reading magicial realism? What are the challenges of switching between magical realism and other speculative fiction genres?

José Saramago: Un hombre no duplicado?

Recently, I've been finding myself recommending José Saramago to readers at various forums, urging them to consider his body of work and occasionally mentioning (knowing this to be a double-edged sword with some) that he won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. I just thought that I would briefly write about some of the reasons why I've been urging readers to try Saramago, not to mention explain why I classify Saramago among the greats of 'speculative fiction' rather than just leaving his name safely esconsed within the oddly separated 'Literature' section of a bookstore.

I have read Saramago's works in both English and Spanish translation (his native language being Portuguese, with translations into Spanish being handled by Saramago's wife, Pilar del Río) and thematically, there is a lot that will alternately appeal to and repel the unsuspecting reader. A great many of his stories revolve not just around 'what if' situations, but 'why not' scenarios as well. One example would be the controversial 1989 novel, El Evangelio según Jesucristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ). In this novel, Saramago explores the possibility of a Christ being not just fully human and divine but fully human and divine in a way that includes a bit of resentment toward God the Father and a more sympathetic version of the Temptation than what is contained in traditional Christian accounts.

Another example of his fertile mind at word can be found in the 1995 masterpiece, Ensayo sobre la ceguera (Blindness). Imagine a whole nation losing its way, its sight...literally. A word filled only with a white blindness and human stumbling. What would such a world be like? How would the people change? Are there allegories for our world, for our understanding of what is transpiring? What ultimately becomes 'real' and what is consigned to the realm of the 'irrational' in a world without sight? Saramago here challenges the reader to consider this as the tale moves on and more and more people lose their sight and perhaps, themselves.

A third novel of his that I enjoyed was La caverna (The Cave), published in 2001. This is a more straightforward tale, one dealing with a Wal-Mart-like shopping/commercial center called simply The Center and how its rapaciousness affects the lives of a simple potter and his family. Yet within this tale, there is a mystery, a symbolism that is more than just a simple allegory. For the title refers to another, more famous cave that has been hypothesized and argued for millenia...

And the last novel of his that I've read is 2003's El hombre duplicado (The Duplicated Man). It is on the surface a relatively simple tale of a doppelgänger and one man's quest to meet his duplicate, but as tends to be the case with Saramago's stories, there is a wealth of speculation and doubt that bubbles under the surface. The conclusions reached are interesting, the impact rather disturbing to this reader, who enjoyed this book greatly.

But these brief paragraphs only speak of the surface features of Saramago's work; they do not address the originality contained within each page. Saramago does something very risky with his prose, something which I believe was done in part to match what is transpiring within the text: He abandons almost completely typical sentence/paragraph/punctuation style, favoring instead page-long sentences with a myriad numbers of clauses to substitute for sentences. Oftentimes, the paragraph breaks represent complete changes in thought and there are no quotation marks or emdashes to represent dialogue; all is found contained within a labyrinthine forest of commas. But yet oddly, this does not ruin the pace of the reading at all - no, the punctuational/syntaxical structure serves to focus the reader's attention on the text at hand, lending indeed an added sense of 'otherness' to the tale being consumed.

It is for this originality and how it plays out within his tales that I consider Saramago to be one of the greatest living novelists. How odd that this 83 year-old author did not become famous until his 60s. But yet there is a vitality there that belies the author's age, leading to works that I believe will be timeless and challenging for as long as one human being harbors doubts about the hows and whys of this quaint universe around us. Hopefully, there will be others who will try to challenge themselves and their readers' perspectives of themselves and the universe(s) around them the way Saramago bends and warps all around him.

For an interesting interview (translated into English over his latest novel, Las intermitencias de la muerte), go to this link to read more.

Mid-February Capsule Reviews

The month so far has brought some more excellent reading, again split almost equally between English and Spanish-language works, and both inside and outside the traditional spec fic realm. So with that in mind, time to review in brief the books I've read through last night:

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day; naked - Sedaris is a hilarious commentator for NPR, commenting on the weird and the wacky of everyday American life. In these two books of his (both Christmas gifts from a dear friend of mine), he explores various aspects of his own life, from childhood lisping problems to his parents' interactions with their children (the chapters in naked about his older sister's first menstration and the mom discovering this porn book that he had found in the woods are particularly revealing) to coming to grips with his homosexuality. The stories are in turns hilarious, delightly mean-spirited, and for the most part convey a sense of bemused wonder at just how silly a mundane life can be. The writing is clear and to the point, with a dry wit that makes the intersection of the Silly and the Boringly Serious all that more fun to read.

Rubén Darío, Azul.../Cantos de la vida y esperanza - This is an omnibus collection of some of Darío's best known works. This Central American poet started to write just before Walt Whitman died, and in many senses, Darío is one of the few poets that can challenge Whitman's status as being one of the best and most inventive poets of the free verse style to ever grace the Western Hemisphere. The stories within the poems range from the Classical to the Sublime, with more than a little political commentary thrown in (the poem directed toward Theodore Roosevelt is most revealing about the attitudes that a great many south of the Río Grande had toward the encroaching power of the United States during the first decades of the 20th century). There is a sense of vitality evident here, especially in some of the poems toward the end of Cantos, and certainly Darío will be a poet that I will re-read quite a bit in the coming years, as he just dazzles at time with the clarity of his verse.

Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find - Years before, when I read Kelly Link's first collection, Stranger Things Happen, I remember thinking that I had read a short form author that had a similar emotive appeal to me. After I picked up this story collection while waiting for George R.R. Martin to sign my book at the November 8th booksigning in Nashville, I realized that it was something connected to O'Connor's work (as I had to read a couple of her other short stories in a College Lit class, back in 1992-1993). As I read on in this collection, I was just left being stunned by the conclusions. Whether it be the Misfit and his ultimate choice in the title story or the 4 year-old child of neglected parents and the aftermath of his forced Baptism by a travelling minister to a skeptic confronted with an earnest Bible salesman or the story of a hard-working Polish immigrant on a Southern farm that was the most damning of them all, each of the stories here contained a power, a message of Redemption or Hell that was contained in the choices the characters would make. Just as the conclusions of Link's stories tied together event and choice, so does O'Connor's tales. It is a real pity that she died in her early forties back in the 1960s, as she just might be one of the best short form writers that the modern times have ever seen. Truly a book that crosses genres back and forth with ease, one that will move most any....and possibly just leaving them feeling crushed, drained, or ecstatic for days afterwards.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Capitán Alatriste - Pérez-Reverte has often been compared to Alexandre Dumas (peré) for the swashbuckling passion that his tales have, the intricate plots within plots, and the fast-paced action. It is a comparison that the author has never shied away from, even going so far as having one of his works being titled in English The Club Dumas. In Capitán Alatriste, Pérez-Reverte introduces the eponymous lead character, a veteran of the Flanders Campaigns of the early 17th century. Europe is engaged in the Thirty Years' War and Spain, France, and England are involved in their own court intrigues, as the heir to the English Throne, Charles I, is searching for a wife... In this backdrop, Alatriste and crew take over the D'Artagnan/Muskateer roles and interject themselves into this labyrinthine tale. To tell more would probably irritate those who hold 'spoilers' to be sacrosanct, so suffice it to say that if you enjoyed Dumas's tales, you'll likely enjoy Pérez-Reverte's. However, if you get fed up with subplots within subplots and the 19th century-style of narrative storytelling, then this book might not be for you. However, being a Dumas fan, I enjoyed this one quite a lot and certainly will be buying the other tales that are out in Spanish. And yes, this book is also available in English translation as Captain Alatriste and was just released a year ago.

Isabel Allende, Paula - This was a difficult book for me to read. Not because it was poorly-written, because it wasn't, but because the book was developed out of the writings that Allende did while her daughter Paula was in a coma due to porphyria (from which she later died). In this book, Allende talks in both the then-present and the past, deciding that if her daughter were to awake and had forgotten her upbringing, that she would relate to her, in book form if necessary, the history of the Allendes and the power that the spirits have had in shaping the lives of Granny, Allende's mother, and Allende herself. Important events such as the rise and fall of her uncle Salvador Allende's UP party, the Pinochet dictatorship and Allende's exile, the passions and the cruelties of a love grown cold - all of these and more are narrated in a style that reads as much like a dream as it does a memoir narrative. Although I had to read this slower than usual when reading in Spanish (and there is an English translation available for this as well), it was well worth the read, especially for the ending which contains quite a bit of hope. If you've read and enjoyed Allende's works, then this will be a book well worth reading.

Manuel Puig, El beso de la mujer araña - Available in English in book (and movie/play) form as The Kiss of the Spider Woman, this story was a play off of more ancient themes of love and friendship being formed by the unlikeliest of people. In this case, the two unlikelies are Molina, a homosexual and a dreamer, and Valentín, a revolutionary who regrets having left a woman for the Cause. Both sentenced to six-month terms in a Buenos Aires jail, the two begin talking and it is the dialogue contained within that possesses a power that moves the story in ways both predictable and surprising, as each of the two begins to take on aspects of the other. Puig did an excellent job with the characterizations and using a minimum of detail in Part I to make the reader focus on the characters and this pays off in spades in Part II. Some of the subject matter might not be appealing to younger readers or for certain others, but on the whole, I would recommend this book for most to read.

Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before - For some unknown reason (perhaps it was hearing too many people saying that they didn't enjoy this book as much as The Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum), I delayed reading this book for years, despite having read and enjoyed each of Eco's other four full-length novels released in English. That is a shame, because in some ways, The Island of the Day Before is at least as important as the others. Perhaps the nature of the tale, revolving around 17th century notions of how the universe was constructed and its meanings, was a stumbling block for many, but I found it to hold an extra appeal based precisely on that construction (sometimes, being a cultural history major has its advantages!). The story of Roberto and the abandoned ship and the search for the mythical Islands of Solomon, not to mention the race to develop the reliable concept of Longitude, read like a fevered dream, but a dream that approaches the 'reality' of the times more than that of our technical world. I believe Eco did a good job in highlighting these differences in viewing the world and this certainly was not a 'weak' book by any stretch. However, due to the difficulty of processing these images, this might not be the most-accessible work of Eco's for others to read.


And in a few weeks, I'll post more on the late February readings. Let me know if there are any thoughts/questions/etc. that you might have about these books.

Eoin Colfer Interview

So after a week of emailing his agent, I managed to arrange the interview with one of the most popular fantasy writers for young adults. And here it is, for you all to see.

Enjoy.

Q: Who or what was your biggest influence in deciding to become a writer after years of teaching? Have you been planning it since the day when you started writing plays, or did it come all of a sudden? Why did you become a writer?

I had been for a long time, since I was a boy. While the other kids were out playing sports or climbing trees, I was inside writing plays and drawing comics. It was always a hobby for me until I hit thirty and realised that I had not written the book I had always planned to eventually write. I was living in Africa at the time and so had inspiration going on all around me. These surroundings and my advancing years spurred me on to put fingers to keys and write Benny & Omar, my first book for young adults.

Q: Your Artemis Fowl books made you famous in a really short time. How, if did, it affected your family life?

There was very little effect on my relationships within the family. I have been married for fourteen years and I have had the same friends for over two decades, so things just continued on as normal there. Obviously financially, things are different now. I don't worry about money so much anymore, which is a great relief. But I did not go crazy, we still live in the same house and I don't drive a Ferrari.

Q: A lot of reviewers compare your Artemis Fowl series with Harry Potter. How do you feel being compared to the writer of the most popular series at the moment? Which writer's book of the present you enjoy reading the most?

I think the HP comparisons are inevitable. Harry is the most famous boy in the world no writer can escape the comparisons. Luckily I usually come off okay, so I am happy to be compared with the most successful series ever. At the moment I am back with the classics. I am stuck into A Scanner Darkly. Dick is still the boss.

Q: Is there significance to the fact that so many of your redeemed characters - Mulch, and Artemis himself - have an innate ability - or a marked inability - to recognize and produce the humorous moment? Mulch is extremely funny, Artemis is - well, he's funny, but it's not his natural MO. And not just these two - Meg, even Mona... Is humor the way to goodness?

Humor is a trademark of mine, everything from slapstick to sarcasm. I just can't help putting it in. I really tried with the Wish List to write a scary book- but as soon as an opportunity to clown around presented itself, i couldn't help taking it. And I do believe that a person with a sense of humor can't be all bad.

Q: Mulch, Belch... why do our professional thieves sound like after - lunch events? How do you think up the names – are some based on real characters from your life?.

I like to have fun with names. It is a great advantage of fantasy fiction that you can make up names that would not be acceptable in straight fiction. The name can be used to establish the characters, which I think 'Mulch' does quite nicely.

Q: How long will Artemis Fowl stay with us? Do you plan writing more books about this super hero, or will you write another series about the similar plot and characters?

I think Artemis will last for 6 books in total. When the end comes, I hope to have established a new series already, so that the transition will be painless.

Q: Seeing that nowadays a lot of movies are based on books, (Narnia, Harry Potter, LoTR… can we expect some of your works on the big screens? If yes, when?

Miramax/Disney have bought the rights to Artemis, so I hope they will start shooting sometime in 2006. So fingers crossed we will see the movie in 2007.

Q: When and where do you write? Do you have a writing routine, or do you write only when you have inspiration? How do you come up with your ideas?

I try to put in a full day of work every day. If inspiration is not striking, then I generally have a lot of editing to do. When I am finished that, I generally find that my brain has kicked into gear and I have some fresh ideas.


Q: Have you been thinking about working with some other authors? If yes, who with?

I am working with English Writer Andrew Donkin on a comic book adaptation of Artemis. I am very excited about this, as I have always been a big comic fan.

Q: The last question is the traditional question of the OF: If you owned monkeys, how many would you own, and what would you name them?

Ah yes, the monkey question. I was wondering when this would come up. If I had two monkeys, I would call them McCloud and Ramirez after two of the characters in Highlander, one of my favorite movies.


Thank you again for this interview you did for wotmania.com. We all wish you the best of luck with your work and look forward to reading your forthcoming books.