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Week Twelve: Parallels in Augualusa’s “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”

    For my penultimate blog post, I found myself reading Agualusa’s text closely to find overlap on the various themes found across the course readings. Memory is something which we looked closely at in all the readings—the certainty of events, and the unreliable narration which so often leads to the label of fiction for the stories. Can events inspired from the author’s experience indeed be called fiction, or instead embellished reality? “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers,” through use of false memory and dreams which can be interpreted and picked-apart by the most aspiring Freudian, serves as a fitting bookend to this central question. 

    Memory is a tricky thing. While it may be a chronicling of events, if one is of the belief that one’s own reality shapes their perception, there is no way to avoid a skewed perspective. This reaches its climax when political matters are at hand. Angolan independence is what the plot of the book revolves around, yet the main character Daniel Benchimol is not involved in these events, left to dream of revolutionary rapture instead of spearheading tangible change. When he finds a camera on the beach filled with photos of a woman he does not know, he quickly falls in love—he struggles with the concept of what is real and what is a mere illusion of happiness. 

    A defiance of convention is the best way to view this phenomenon. Memory in the book is best viewed as a past story within the present story, serving as a break from convention. Through these flashbacks, the author shows how narratives of the romance world are affected by outside influence, and indeed toys with the very label itself. What is the Romance World other than an umbrella term to describe a set of common motifs found across the texts, memory among them? 

    As the professor notes in the final lecture, it is simplistic to identify the authors of the Romance World as all working together to form a mosaic of culture. It is better to view the label as a shining of the spotlight on literature less-known outside their borders—the “cult classics,” as Western readers might say. Agualusa’s “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers,” our last read for the semester, fits into this focused category. By sharing the central theme of memory and unreliable narration as other readings, it is both made unique in its setting and plot while also conforming to the standards of what we refer to as the Romance World. 

My final question is: Is the Romance World a catch-all term, or a tangible force in literature?

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Week Ten: A Recollection of Advancement in Bolano’s “Amulet”

    Roberto Bolano’s “Amulet” is a unique tale which, in its focus on character development in a time of political violence, makes a more potent statement about human perseverance. The perspective is the student Lacouture hiding in the bathroom of UNAM from the army coming to crush the student protest movement. On the surface, it appears to be the most common tale of Latin America: one involving injustice and suppression of the masses. Yet in the creative choice to tell the tale almost completely through memory, one can draw a parallel between many of the other texts covered in this course. 

    A scene which struck me was, curiously, one set in the present. While in the bathroom stall, a soldier enters and Lacouture is forced to raise her legs. She compares the instinctive act to “as if [she] was about to give birth,” before adding, “in a sense, in effect, I was preparing to deliver something and to be delivered myself” (pg. 29). The deliverance she speaks of can only be viewed as being the sole witness to military occupation. In this way, she sees her survival as giving birth to an even more meaningful movement than the one being crushed. Furthermore, her description of being delivered can either be viewed as a live figurehead, or dead martyr.

    This political undertone felt under duress encompasses most of the book. Equally prevalent is the usage of hallucination–wherein poetic metaphors often describe a growing movement— to escape harsh reality. One example is when Lacouture believes she is being wheeled into a hospital. When asking in a frantic tone if she is pregnant, the doctor responds, “No, ma’am, we’re just taking you to attend the birth of History” (pg. 152).

    By placing an emphasis on memory as a spearhead for revolution, “Amulet” shares its structure with other texts from the Romance World. Although many are not overtly political, there is something to be said for what the defiance of literary convention and structure—whether through a use of memory or a discarding of plot altogether—truly captures. Perhaps some authors seek to make progress by shocking readers with a flagrant decrying of social norms where others are simply trying something new in their medium. Like all great art, I find the interpretation of message is often up to the spectator. 

   Overall, I enjoyed reading “Amulet.” I was left pondering: does simply surviving a traumatic event start a collective movement? Or does one need to become a sole figurehead, or a martyr if necessary, to rally the masses?

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