2004/08/10

Recommended reading
Love of Reading's A Labor Lost For Many Now. But who knew half the nation was still reading? BY DANIEL HENNINGER, WSJ OpinionJournal.

Recent readings: Fielding, Cela, Yourcenar

Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. Washington Square Press, 1964 ed. London, 1749.
Who were the real parents of the infant that Squire Alworthy finds in his bed and rears as his own son and calls "Tom Jones"? After he ruefully expels the lad from his estate, due to the treachery of the squire's nephew & Tom's rival Blifil, will Tom regain the good Squire's favor? More urgently, how will Tom consummate his love, requited, for the lovely Sophia, despite his own low and bastardly birth and the violent opposition of Sophia's father, Alworthy's crude and simple neighbor, Squire Western? Through many rollicking adventures, including bedding & nearly bedding several other women, saving the life of a very peculiar hermit, a night's entertainment with a band of gypsies, the acquisition of comical superstitious barber-surgeon-pedant as his loyal companion, a tussle with a highwayman, a masked ball, some letters gone astray, mistaken identities, a duel and a charge of murder, and the shock of hearing that he has lain with his own mother, Tom pursues his Sophia to London. Thither she has fled her father to avoid being forced to marry Blifil -- and nearly is raped by a young lord, and then caught and reconfined first by her father (who loves her but demands she marry Blifil, because it would be good to join the two estates and thus, he believes, good for her happiness), and then by her father's old maid sister. All is finally resolved in the last pages: we learn Tom's true origins, he gets the girl & they live happily ever after, reconciled to Alworthy & Squire Western, and all the many other characters get their various just desserts.
I have never enjoyed a book more. At many moments I laughed out loud at the droll adventures. I chuckled over Fielding's wicked prologues (where he expounds upon the writer's craft, the reader's likely impatience, the obtuseness and perversity of critics, the superiority of noble & energetic spirits over dour repression, and the vagaries of fame). And finally I was amazed at the ingenious turns of plot & its ultimate resolution. 2004.6.26

Cela, José Camilo. La colmena, Clásicos Castalia. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1989.
Madrid, invierno de 1943, es una colmena donde sendos personajes siguen sus instintos y tímidos deseos, tratando de sobrevivir con algún rasgo de dignidad bajo el frío, la pobreza y la represión de los recién victoriosos franquistas. Sus vidas entrecruzan en el café "La Delicia" de la repugnante y gritona doña Rosa, el bar "Aurora" del anarquista y veterano del ejército republicano Celestino Ortiz (que puso ese nombre al bar porque es gran admirador del libro Aurora de Nietzsche, que lee como si fuera la Biblia), y la "casa de citas decente" de la Celia Vecino, viuda de Obdulio Cortés. La señorita Elvira, "buscona asidua del café de doña Rosa" (según el Índice de Personajes en esta edición) tiene un sueño/pesadilla erótica donde se masturban unos enanos mientras un terrible tigre se le lanza encima y se convierte en gato-amante). Otros momentos memorables incluyen cuando don Roque, médico, y su hija Julita se cruzan en la escalera de la casa de citas de Celia (donde a Roque los espera su querida de turno, y Julita acaba de dejar a su amante), y cada uno inventa una excusa para estar allí; la rabia y orgullo de Petrita cuando decide aceptar prostituirse para ganar dinero para curar a su novio, que está en cama con tuberculosis; la muerte de la anciana Margot, madre de el mariquita de 53 años Julián Suárez, "la fotógrafa", aparentemente estrangulada pero no se sabe por quien, y la noche que pasan "Fotógrafa" y su amante Pepe el Astilla en carcel. Entre más de cien personajes con nombre y señas, no hay uno cuya historia toma precedencia sobre las otras, pero la que se destaca un poco más (y concluye la novela) es el de Martín Marco, "un hombrecillo desmedrado, paliducho, enclenque, con lentes de pobre alambre sobre la mirada," que raras veces tiene un duro (cinco pesetas), ni tiene trabajo ni carrera, pero escribe poesías y tiene una idea vaga de ser escritor, y al final de la obra está buscado por la policía, posiblemente por haber militado en el FEU (Federación Española, o Estudiantil (?), Universitaria) durante la II República. 20040716

Yourcenar, Marguerite. Memorias de Adriano. Translated by Julio Cortázar. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1999.
Viejo emperador, moribundo, cuenta su vida y filosofía a su sucesor escogido, Marco Aurelio, en esta larguísima carta. Nacido en España y criado por su abuelo cerril y medio mago, Marulino, el joven Adriano hace brillante carrera militar contra las tribus germanas y luego en Dacia. Nombrado gobernador de Palestina por el emperador Trajano, prevé el desastre cuando éste, ya viejo, emprende campaña para conquistar Asia y realizar un viejo sueño inspirado en las historias sobre Alejandro Magno. En su lecho de muerte Trajano finalmente adopta a Adriano como hijo y sucesor cuando éste ya tiene 42 años. A diferencia de Trajano, el nuevo emperador negocia la paz cuando puede con las naciones vecinas y pretende extender la justicia y el orden a través del imperio para que Roma dure aún cuando en un future dejase de basarse en Roma (la ciudad); en sus últimos años (se enferma antes de llegar a 60) desgraciadamente no puede evitar una guerra terrible contra los celotes judíos que termina con la casi total destrucción de Jerusalén. Adriano también cuenta de sus amores, especialmente con el griego Antinóo, una suerte de joven fauno rústico, que se suicida a los 20 años en un acto de sacrificio por amor al emperador Adriano. La guerra en Palestina y la muerte de Antinóo, a quien Adriano convierte en dios y en cuyo nombre funda una ciudad, son las grandes tragedias en un gobierno mayormente de paz y fortalecimiento del orden y economía imperiales que ha durado 18 años. Hay pasajes descriptivos lindísimos (de España, Alejandría, Roma), observaciones filosóficas intrigantes, y episodios dramáticos, pero el interés del libro en total reside en su retrato de la vida de élites en este período; Adriano mismo no llega a ser un personaje tan cautivante como el Claudio de "Yo Claudius" de Robert Graves. 2004/08/06

Delibes, Miguel. La hoja roja, Biblioteca Básica Salvat de Libros RTV. ?: Salvat Editores, S.A. con la colaboración de Alianza Editorial, S.A., 19??
Un anciano que sólo espera la terminación de su vida encuentra una jóven que no sabe cómo empezar la suya. La Desi es más bruta que la pila de un pozo (como le dice una amiga) cuando llega de su pueblo y empieza a trabajar como criada del viejo Eloy, que repite continuamente que le "ha salido la hoja roja" (del librito de papel de fumar, que advierte que sólo quedan cinco hojas), y el decir de un amigo de juventud de que la jubilación es la antesala de la muerte (y que ese amigo se había ido hace más de 20 años sin guardar antesala). El viejo, tímido toda su vida de 70 años, hace esfuerzos por reconectarse con antiguos compañeros de trabajo (53 años en aseo urbano), del club de fotografía, y cuando éstos lo rechazan, finalmente con su hijo en Madrid, donde ve que es un estorbo. La Desi, que se considera vieja porque solera a los 20 años, hace todo lo posible por comprometer a casarse un chico de su pueblo an bruto y hasta más cerril que ella, cuando éste llega a la ciudad para la mili (servicio militar); pero el chico ("el Picaza") sólo quiere aprovechar de ella (para que el lavado de ropa y las relaciones sexuales, que ella no concede) y finalmente comete una locura tan grave (degüella a una mujer en la calle porque le mentaba la madre porque él le había tirado una rata muerta a la cara) que termina en un calabozo militar, haciendo añicos las ilusiones de la chica. Al final el viejo Eloy y la Desi aceptan que se necesitan mutuamente, y él le propone el matrimonio.
Escenas memorables: nochebuena, cuando el viejo le manda a la chica a comprar una botella de clarete, se emborrachan (con muy poco) y empiezan a cantar y hasta bailar (torpemente) las canciones de boda que la Desi recuerda de su pueblo; Eloy en el cementerio, después del entierro de su último amigo de juventud, Isaías, lee las lápidas de otros y recuerda las muchas historias de esas personas que las lápidas no cuentan; el bochorno del viejo cuando visita al hijo en Madrid y no puede hacer ni que el hijo se sonría ni que la nuera le diga "padre"; Eloy llevando a la chica al cine por primera vez en la vida de la joven. Todo ocurre en 1955 en un Valladolid donde nada cambia, salvo que en lugar de un rey (Desi ni siquiera sabe que significa "rey") hay un Franco en los titulares que Desi, bajo la tutela paciente de Eloy, se esfuerza por leer. Libro muy sentimental, con un conmovedor retrato de la vejez y otro de la bruteza obstinada de la vida de pueblo, que hace más comprensible los delirios de los analfabetos aferrados a sus creencias ya sea en el Talibán o en otras partes. 2004.08.09

Wind and towers

Have you ever wondered why farmers and herders along the Mediterranean coast never built their homes on the highest points with the greatest views? The wind. It blows with gale force here in Meseta Alta, where some good friends from the States have lent us their house this August. It rattles the doors and wooden shutters, but if we close everything we asphyxiate. It is a sere wind, pulling the water out of the air and out of your mouth and body. It drives the flies to seek refuge in the house, and they buzz around berserkly, seeking what moisture they can get from your lips or the sweat on your arms. This morning when I wanted to hang up some laundry, I had to struggle to get the sheets on the line at all, pinning them in 6 or 8 places in close series. Still they flew and flapped and wrapped around themselves on the line, one of them catching on a cactus several feet away until I moved it just out of reach. It took me several minutes to hang up everything, and by the time I had the last T-shirt up, the sheets were sucked dry by the wind.

Foreigners who expect the elements to obey them do build on the high points for the views. The foreigners who built half a cooperative on this mesa, and half in the village of Agua Amarga down below, in 1968 were American pacifists who wanted quiet retirement homes, and their leader built this house on the highest point on this, the highest mesa around except for the one holding up the lighthouse just behind us, and oriented the house to catch the breezes from both sides, poniente (from the west) and levante (from the east). Some breezes. Either he had picked an exceptionally meteorologically quiet year, or else he had never been here in mid August before he made his plans.

In olden times, only the lords who built stone castles and look-out towers would perch them on the high points, and mostly the castles have resisted the centuries of wind. Or at least, their stone parts have, or in the worst of cases, impressive chunks of their ramparts. On Sunday we drove into the interior, through the mountains past mountain town of Níjar, famous for its ceramics from the local clayey soil, and on to the higher more precariously perched village of Lucainena de las Torres, where until the Civil War they mined the iron that traveled down a narrow gauge railroad all the long way to an embarcadero – a loading dock – next to Agua Amarga. After a stop in the tiny plaza, which was more like a shelf carved out of the mountain, we went on and from the road could see one of the old towers, looming above on the mountain ridge, that gave the village its name.

Our real destination was Tabernas, more mountains of other stone – here shiny black, there rust brown or even red, glistening white silicate, cut dramatically by ancient rivers that once must have been torrents but now are deep, dry scars filled with yellow brush, green foliage and a newcomer, cactus originally from Mexico. The nopal has done especially well in the dry deserts of Almería, where it has been renamed “chumbera” and the people no doubt imagine it is a native plant. They don’t seem to be aware that the bright yellow and red fruit, chumbos to them, nopales to Mexicans, prickly pear to us, are edible.

Tabernas is best known for its fake “Hollywood” villages, where hundreds of westerns have been filmed, included dozens by Sergio Leone. One of them is featured in the hilarious movie “800 Balas” that we saw last year – when a group of players who stage Wild West shoot-outs for tourists are threatened with eviction, their leader, an old actor who claims to have worked with the great Clint Eastwood, gets them to load their old six-shooters and Winchesters with real bullets (they have enough cash on hand for 800), and they fight off the police, the army and Guardia Civil while a little boy joins the troupe and gets a lesson in sex from the cast’s bar girl. Great fun, but after that, we thought we’d seen enough of the fake Wild West. We were more attracted by the “Arab castle” (as it is labeled) up on the highest point above the real (not the Wild West smulacra) town of Tabernas. It’s very impressive from below. You would think the Moors might still be up there, ready to hurl rocks and buckets of flaming oil from trébuchets and fire arrows against their attackers. But after a long dusty climb, we found there was nothing there but the shell of its ancient walls. Splendid views, though. And plenty of wind.

2004/08/09

Writers against the silence
The challenge to the Bush/Ashcroft Kulturkampf by 15 of our best known writers at Cooper Union got big play in EL PAIS on Sunday. Meanwhile, I share this, from Sophia Niarchos, who writes that it was "My favorite reading at the PEN event last night" -- yet another sign of the vigor of writerly protest. Sophia adds, "we should read poetry every day!" And "Though seeing it in writing is better than not experiencing it at all, the reading of it (staccato, fast-paced, out of breath!) made it extraordinary!"

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waitingfor a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waitingfor the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waitingfor the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waitingfor the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering awayof all governments
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to be stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waitingfor the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waitingfor a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waitingFor the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waitingfor the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waitingfor the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waitingfor the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waitingfor Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waitingfor Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waitingto get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waitingfor the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Sophia A. Niarchos