RMST 495/520: Long Books

POEM OF THE WEEK –

The Vampire by Efrén Rebolledo (1877–1929).

Whirling your deep and gloomy tresses pour

over your candid body like a torrent,

and on the shadowy and curling flood

I strew the fiery roses of my kisses.

As I unlock the tight rings

I feel the light chill chafing of your hand,

and a great shudder courses over me

and penetrates me to the very bone.

Your chaotic and disdainful eyes

glitter like stars when they hear the sigh

that from my vitals issues rendingly,

and you, thirsting, as I agonize,

assume the form of an implacable

black vampire battening on my burning blood.

Reflection: I read this last spring when I first picked up my copy of TSD. Then I put it down. It is revisited this semester.

ABOUT RESTROSPECTIVE

Since when I left off, Marianella and Sergio go on to take military training in China. They march with the Red Army and see Mao up-close. Finally, Luz Elena and Fausto contact them, to explain, they are ready to go back to Colombia and take up the armed revolution. Sergio goes from Peking to Paris to renew his (and Marianella) Colombian passport (cannot do so in China). He spends some days in Paris watching movies. As they leave China, David Crooks, the father of Carl Crooks, Marianella’s boyfriend, is arrested by the Red Army for espionage. He is arrested for 4 years.

When they arrive in Colombia, they find Luz Elena exploiting her bourgeoisie appearance to do clandestine work for her communist cell. Fausto does clandestine work, exploiting his Theatre-director role. They know the day is imminent, the day they will be told to join the guerrillas. And it does, Sergio meets with a secret agent when he breaks the news. He has to bring rubber boots, a hammock and two pairs of clothes (the same for Marianella). The next morning, they would take a bus, sit far apart and then arrive to a spot wherein they would be taken to the mountains (they are told there’s two other secret recruits on the bus, not to attempt recognizing anyone). Guerrilla life is hard for both from the start. They both receive nom de guerre, Sergio becomes Raul. Marianella becomes Sol. Luz Elena becomes Valentina, and Fausto is rarely mentioned in part three. The texts starts referring to them by these names.

There is General Fernando who picks on Raul. Picks (bullies him, humiliates) on him for his “bourgeoisie” upbringing (studying in China, speaking French, utilizing communal radio and depleting radio battery to listen to Opera). Moreover, General Fernando attempts to have sex with Sol (she refuses his advances, cites military law that comrades are not to “mingle”). Raul, starts getting attacked for suggesting the guerrillas’ tactics are deviating from Mao’s techniques, tactics and even ideologies. The other members reply: “We are in Colombia, not China”

Eventually Sol is transferred to another “detachment” group, there are more girls. Delusion arrives, for both. Sol starts to get sick. Raul has many accidents. While trying to cut with a machete he had no experience with, he cut his leg. A deep wound. He breaks military codes: revealing medicine locations. For someone to bring to him. Sol is disillusioned; this is nothing what her fervour ideological indoctrination had her believe. So she escapes, gets home to Medellin quite sick, with anemia. She has broken military law. While Raul experiences his own disillusionment, Valentina takes care of Sol. She decides to go back otherwise they would be looking for reprisals. For abandoning the party. When she goes back, she is fed up. Lashes at the general and is in turn shot in the back. Valentina is arrested on one of her operations. Raul recovers and does many missions, but experiences things such as a comrade, Alberto with mental health problems. He is chained to a train, then he disappears. Nobody explains to Raul anything, not even that his mom is in prison. When Sol is shot, Guillermo (a comrade) leaves the guerrillas, takes Sol to her grandparents’ house. And the grandparents help bring Valentina out of jail. She has one last trick up her sleeve, negotiate getting kids out of the welfare system. Kids that from the guerrillas’, kids abandoned by their mothers, abandoned by their father, who go up to fight in the mountain. She manages to take Sergio and Fausto from their guerrilla positions, they flight back to China. Marianella starts in Colombia, married to Guillermo. Sergio starts to study medicine, but realizes film is his passion. His dad does not approve. But an opportunity comes, Sergio is able to work with a director, translating from Mandarin to French. He takes a soft spot for Sergio, and gets him accepted in a London Film School. It stays a secret from Fausto, for he does not approve. He is enraged when Sergio is to flight to Britain, but says a bittersweet goodbye anyway. The book ends with the diegetic text’s “present-day Sergio” explaining his children’s name, Raul, for his past. Valentina (his youngest daughter) because of Luz Elena’s nom de guerre. Sol (his eldest girl) because of Marianella.

REFLECTION: This was a great book. I learned so much history! And the book has an interesting analepsis/prolepsis format. It also includes diary entries, real-life photos of the characters.

It is heavily narrative. The text explores themes of ideals, and betrayals, particularly believing in an ideology (no matter what “side” it manifests on) so strong, even when following it has done harm to one’s life. The author’s notes explains the paradox: all accounts in this novel are true, taken from long conversations, archives, memoirs. Yet it is a fictional novel because of its form. Hence the novel’s epigraph, taken from a biography on Joseph Conrad.

“For, according to our view of the thing, a novel should be the biography of a man or of an affair, and a biography whether of a man or of an affair should be a novel.” – Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance

This text provides rich history of Latin American. I really enjoyed it.

(Note: I don’t have page numbers this week because I am using the Apple Books ebook version which changes its page numbers  based on the size of the app window)

I cheated a little bit and finished The Shadow of the Wind just before I finished The Savage Detectives, so I think the distance between then and this blog post has allowed me to take a step back from the initial “woah” of it all.

I will say, that after complaining about how repetitive most of the book was, this ending section picked up considerably. We finally find Carax (hiding in plain sight?), have a scandal that I didn’t see coming (Penélope’s incestual pregnancy), figure out what happened with Carax’s missing/destroyed books (an author committing suicide by setting fire to his creation/legacy?), and find Daniel some closure (first concluding the mystery of Carax and then continuing on the legacy of the family bookstore alongside his son, Julián.)

Luckily for us readers, Carax doesn’t lose his mysterious vibes just because we now know his life story. When Daniel is lying in his clinic bed, he sees Carax one last time, knowing it was a farewell and telling him to take one of his pens and start writing again. Upon waking, Bea and the nurse on duty tell him that nobody has come to visit him, least of all Carax, and yet the pen had disappeared from its case. At the very end of the book, we see that Carax has dedicated his final book: “For my friend Daniel, who gave me back my voice and my pen.” What is real and what is imagined? Who is Carax?

Another thing I would like to highlight is how much the prose improved in the final chapters. For most of the novel, it has felt like genre fiction. It was a book telling a story. These last couple of chapters have had a bit of a tone shift, where the writing seems to be more artful, the prose elevated. Maybe this was because there was a lot more existential reflection than the everyday discussions we had been seeing previously.

After Daniel’s “death” in the ambulance (his heart stopping for over a minute), he reflected a lot on life, and I feel like the descriptions were more vivid than previously written: “I remember that Fermin looked white and thin, like the backbone of a fish. They told me that the blood running through my veins was his, that I’d lost all mine, and that my friend had been spending days stuffing himself with meat sandwiches in the hospital’s canteen to breed more red blood corpuscles, in case I should need them. Perhaps that explains why I felt wiser and less like Daniel.”

I think that, all in all, this was a good book. It would not be at the top of my list of recommendations, but if you were in a cabin without wifi and no other books to read, it would be a pleasant enough way to pass the time. My concluding thoughts are that this book was longer than it needed to be, and the twists and turns (outside of Penélope being a half-sister) were predictable and didn’t bring me much of anything as a reader (not intrigue, joy, food for thought, or depth). It was a good concept and has allowed me to consider long-book-themes like pacing and endings, but at the end of the day was mediocre. I’ll rate it a 3/5.

I’ve noticed recently that I don’t really know the best way to start off a blog post, assuming that a best way even exists. When I was about to start typing I was going to write something like “Well folks, we’ve finally reached the end of 2666!“, and then I took a moment and looked at like my last three blog posts and they all started in a similar fashion. So… instead of thinking of a better way to start off this blog post, I just decided to start it by commenting on my poor starts to blog posts, making an even worse start to a blog post… Anyways, yes, here we are, the end of 2666, concluding with The Part About Archimboldi, whom we haven’t heard about since the first Part, The Part About The Critics. I have so many initial thoughts about my reading that I’d like to share, but first as with all my blog posts on 2666, I’ll have to start with a brief (and sort of “scuffed”) summary (luckily for you guys, this will be my last one you’ll have to read). Similarly to The Part About The Crimes, The Part About Archimboldi spans well over 200 pages, however, I feel like lots more actually happens as it doesn’t follow that repetitive pattern of detailing the femicides in Santa Teresa. Anyways, let’s just dive right in!

The Part About Archimboldi begins with the introduction of Hans Reiter (the real name of our mysterious Archimboldi), who was first mentioned in The Part About The Critics when our critics were on the trail for Archimboldi in Mexico and came across the name “Hans Reiter” in a hotel’s records. Hans Reiter, born in Prussia to a one-legged father and one-eyed mother, is a pretty tall and interesting child who likes to swim and is kind of obsessed over this book Animals and Plants of the European Coastal Region. Later when Hans is 10, his parents have a daughter named Lotte whom Hans adores. Hans quits school and works some odd jobs but eventually works with his mother in a house belonging to a baron. He befriends the baron’s nephew, Hugo Halder, and remarks upon the baron’s daughter, Baroness Von Zumpe, who brings home many friends for parties (she’s actually quite important so keep her in mind for later). Hans is later drafted to fight in World War II and a whole bunch of things happen including: staying at a castle with some generals and Baroness Von Zumpe (no, this isn’t the later I was talking about, keep waiting), meeting a strange girl kind of in love with him (Ingeborg Bauer, also important later) when he was on a brief leave looking for Hugo Halder, finding the hiding place and reading papers of this guy Boris Abramovich Ansky (stories within stories abundant here!), nearly dying several times, coming across one of the generals from earlier crucified and naked, and finally returning to Germany and surrendering to some American soldiers. Oh, and one more thing to note, in Ansky’s notebook he reads about “the Italian painter Arcimboldo, Giuseppe or Joseph or Josepho or Josephus Arcimboldo or Arcimboldi or Arcimboldus” which perhaps inspires his pseudonym Benno von Archimboldi later (729). In the prisoner-of-war-camp, Hans meets a man named Zeller (actually Leo Sammer) who was in charge of “disposing” a group of Jews… Zeller is found dead one morning (strangled, specifically). Hans is later allowed to leave the camp and goes to Cologne where he works at a bar. He meets Ingeborg Bauer again and they begin a pretty happy, romantic relationship. Hans confesses to her that he was the one who had killed Zeller and worries about the police coming after him one day, though Ingeborg doesn’t mind. It should be noted that throughout this Part Ingeborg suffers from some sicknesses and at one point she’s even told she has only two or three months to live, but she miraculously recovers (she eventually does die but we’ll cross that bridge in a moment). Ingeborg works at a seamstress shop and Hans begins to write his first book after renting a typewriter under his new pseudonym, Benno von Archimboldi. They’re pretty poor at the time and Hans sends the copies of his manuscript (of which he only has two, the original and typed carbon copy) to a few publishing houses, one of which belongs to Mr. Bubis!

Now let’s pause for a moment. You might be wondering “Who is Mr. Bubis?” Well, in my very first blog post on 2666, before writing the summary, I said “I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible without missing any important details, but I’m sure I’ll miss a few and there will also most likely be some details that I will have left out thinking they were unimportant now, but realize that they were very important later.” Now just like the book, my blog posts have even come full circle in a sense. In The Part About The Critics, the critics do actually take a visit to Mrs. Bubis’ publishing house (Mr. Bubis had passed away by then) in hopes of getting into contact with Archimboldi. They were actually somewhat successful in the sense that they even got to speak with Mrs. Bubis, but I deemed this unimportant and didn’t include it in my summary because it didn’t result in any leads to Archimboldi. Maybe this isn’t actually an important detail, but it’s at least a relevant detail that I have to pay the price of bringing up now. Anyhoo, Mr. Bubis takes great interest in Hans’, or as he knows him, Archimboldi’s book and agrees to publish his work. Hans goes to Hamburg to meet Mr. Bubis and sign the contract. Then, in what I would consider a pretty funny series of events, Mr. Bubis presses Hans on his fake name “Benno von Archimboldi” to which Hans insists is his real name and wants to just leave with his manuscript. Mr. Bubis still wants to publish him, fake name or not, and wants him to meet his wife, Mrs. Bubis. Now you can stop the waiting because guess who Mrs. Bubis is? That’s right! Baroness Von Zumpe! Hans and Baroness Von Zumpe talk privately and catch up on their lives since their last encounter. They end up making love and continue to do so many times when they meet in the future. But anyways, Hans’ book does get published by Mr. Bubis, he returns to Cologne, writes many more books which receive only a little success, but by no means complete failures (Mr. Bubis also remains very resolute to keep publishing Hans’ books and even sends Hans advanced sums larger than he probably deserved). Ingeborg suffers from a pulmonary condition and she does eventually die now, but not before travelling around Europe with Hans. Although, Mrs. Bubis or Baroness Von Zumpe (I’ll be using Hans/Archimboldi and Mrs. Bubis/Baroness Von Zumpe interchangeably from now on) finds out from some villagers that she had allegedly died from drowning (not really an important detail so don’t put on your detective hat or anything, I just added it for fun, my blog, my rules). Archimboldi’s books begin to gain more success and popularity but he goes radio silent for four years. After those four years, Mr. Bubis receives another manuscript from Archimboldi, Mrs. Bubis visits Archimboldi again, Archimboldi visits Mr. Bubis, Archimboldi sends a few more manuscripts to Mr. Bubis, Mr. Bubis dies, Mrs. Bubis takes over the publishing house continuing to publish Archimboldi’s books, and Mrs. Bubis becomes the sole person Archimboldi contacts, only sporadically though.

Now we’re almost done the summary portion of this blog post, with about 30 pages to go, we switch to Lotte’s perspective, Hans’ sister. Note that they have lost contact with each other and the last time Hans visited his family was sometime after the war. We start with a bit about her childhood, a bit about her time during the war, and then her dating and eventually marrying Werner Haas! Haas? That sounds familiar. Indeed! Lotte and Werner Haas’ child is Klaus Haas from The Part About The Crimes. Klaus is a bit of a problem child and he later moves to America and loses contact with his parents. Werner Haas dies of heart disease but Lotte later receives a telegram form Santa Teresa informing her that Klaus had been imprisoned. Then Lotte visits her son multiple times in prison over a few years with his case being postponed, found guilty, and then appealed, still pending another retrial. Lotte grows older and of course, weaker, so her travels to Mexico are a lot more strenuous. Then one time, in a hurry at an airport bookshop, Lotte buys a book by Benno Von Archimboldi about “a one-legged father and a one-eyed mother and their two children, a boy who liked to swim and a girl who followed her brother to the cliffs” (887). Upon rereading certain parts about the family in the book, Lotte becomes confident that Benno von Archimboldi is in fact her brother, Hans. She calls the publishing house and gets into contact with Mrs. Bubis. Lotte tells Mrs. Bubis that she’s Bennno Von Archimboldi’s sister, or Hans Rieter’s sister, and Mrs. Bubis takes note of Lotte’s address. Three months later, Hans finally visits his sister at her place and they talk for a while. In a kind of heartwarming moment Hans “touched his books with the tips of his fingers. There were all different kinds of editions: hardcover, paperback, pocket-size” (perhaps Bolaño also had a moment like this in his life) (891). Lotte mentions her son and she says “Will you take care of it all?” to her brother a couple of times. Finally, and I mean finally for real this time, in the last three pages, we have Hans talking to this guy Alexander Furst Puckler who in classic Bolaño fashion goes on about the history surrounding the Furst Puckler ice cream (or as we know it, classic Neopolitan ice cream), right before Hans is about to leave for Mexico.

Wow, that was a long summary! And you know what, I still felt like I left out a lot of shorter stories within this Part, the shorter stories that I’ve grown much accustomed to reading The Savage Detectives and 2666, I would even say I’ve grown fond of them. Now here’s the fun part! The part where I ramble endlessly on my initial thoughts… For starters, I will say this was probably my favourite Part among the five Parts, maybe it’s just recency bias, but it felt like I was really immersed in Archimboldi’s entire life. Also, compared to The Part About The Crimes, even though quite a large portion of this Part was during World War II, overall the actual story was a lot more lighthearted and maybe even “happy” at times, although don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, especially during Zeller’s story. Speaking of Zeller’s story, at one point he says:

“I still had more than one hundred Jews and everyone was exhausted, my policemen, my volunteers, and the Polish boys. What to do? The work was too much for us. Man wasn’t made to bear some tasks for very long, I said to myself as I contemplated the horizon from my office window, striped in pink and a cloacal murk. It was too much for me, anyway. I was doing my best, but I couldn’t stand it. Nor could my policemen. Fifteen, all right. Thirty, fine. But when one reaches fifty the stomach turns and the head spins and the restless nights and nightmares begin.” (765-766)

I immediately thought of the parallels to The Part About The Crimes with just the sheer number of femicides and how we were kind of made it to feel numb to it. Okay, let’s move on from that topic though! I became really aware of Bolaño’s love for super long sentences, I was already aware before, but I felt like he used them significantly more (I noted down pages 681-682, 779-781, 806, 820-821 in the Picador edition). I forget the context but I think I recall last class the Professor said something like “can you really fill the void?” (I think it had to do with our discussion on what’s outside the window) so it was kind of cool to see a part that kind of answer it here:

“‘What for?’ asked Hans Reiter.
‘To fill a void.’
‘Voids can’t be filled,’ said Hans Reiter.” (657)

One of the generals from earlier was described to be “nearly a foot long” when erect or half erect which reminded me of Alberto in The Savage Detectives (691). I guess that’s just some crude humor from Bolaño. Anyhow, in my blog on The Part About The Crimes, I briefly mentioned how Bolaño isn’t writing a classic “whodunit” story, funnily enough, there’s a portion in this part that mentions these very same “whodunits”:

“I’m talking about English whodunits,’ said the old woman, ‘those addictive English whodunits that infected the American whodunits first and then the French and German and Swiss.”
“‘And what mistake is that?’ I asked.
“‘An article of faith,’ said the old woman, ‘an assumption you can sum up in one
word: the killer always returns to the scene of the crime.’ (777)

Nothing more to add there, just thought it was funny. Moving on to something perhaps more “important”, there are a couple times where I think Bolaño is using Archimboldi’s story as a writer to mirror his own or at least tell something about his life as a writer. Maybe the time when Archimboldi first struggles to find success, or maybe when Archimboldi finds much success only later in his life, but here’s a part about fame that really stuck out to me:

“Until that moment Archimboldi had never thought about fame. Hitler was famous. Goring was famous. The people he loved or remembered fondly weren’t famous, they just satisfied certain needs. Doblin was his consolation. Ansky was his strength. Ingeborg was his joy. The disappeared Hugo Halder was lightheartedness and fun. His sister, about whom he had no news, was his own innocence. Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was reductive. Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame was inevitably diminished. Fame’s message was unadorned. Fame and literature were irreconcilable enemies.” (801-802)

It seems like Bolaño’s trying to share with us his feelings on the fame from his books and maybe when he lists those people he’s listing significant people from his life. I don’t really know though. I feel like I’ll never truly understand Bolaño. But isn’t that actually one of the points he’s trying to make?? Bear with me for a second. The critics in Part I studied Archimboldi’s work more than anyone else in the world to no end and were hopeless in finding him and knowing who he actually was. Yet Archimboldi’s sister, Lotte, read that one book (The King of the Forest) and recognized her brother in a moment’s time. What I’m trying to point out here is that we can study Bolaño’s work forever but can we ever truly know him? Certainly not as much as simply his friends and family! I really don’t know! Let’s just transition that to my discussion question for this week: “After having finished reading your self-selected book, do you think you understand your author more?” I feel like I understand Bolaño more, yet there’s so much I don’t understand and even if I studied him for an eternity I still wouldn’t. There’s just something about his writing… Sorry Bolaño haters, but I’m indeed a fan! 2666‘s conclusion isn’t some neat and tidy wrap-up just like The Savage Detectives, there are still some unanswered questions, there are still some loose ends (looking at you The Part About The Crimes). But that’s the beauty of it! I think I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog post more about not expecting all those answers and coming to that realization. What I loved most about the conclusion of 2666, The Part About Archimboldi is how it tied things back together all the way back to The Part About The Critics, even though we don’t get any typical resolution. In a sense, we do get answers, but we’re left with even more questions… Some would hate that, I loved it!

Now, originally I would have actually liked to end this blog post on the actual last pages of 2666 which was a “Note to the first edition” containing a couple insights and notes from Bolaño which I think would interest you all (as well as the explanation for the publication of 2666 as a whole or five separate novels). However, this blog post would then exceed 3000 words! So, I’ll be saving that for my concluding blog post next week… look forward to that. Until then, that’ll be it from me this week!

P.S. This week I’ve been suffering from a fever but hopefully that didn’t translate into my blog post to make it even more confusing than usual…

After that firing-squad-spoiler incident in class, I would realize that what I thought was the death of Colonel Aureliano Buendía was in fact not his death. When I had put down One Hundred Years of Solitude, he was shouting at the firing squad: “Bastards! Long live the Liberal Party!” The chapter ends there. Anyone would think that that’s the end of him, right?

I wish I finished the book this week so I could also talk about endings, but I just got past the halfway point. The book opens with the famous passage about the said Colonel Aureliano. His dad, the founder of their village Macondo, had a passion for science and inventions. Back then, Gypsies often visited their town — one of their few contacts with the outside world — bringing spectacular objects like flying carpets and ice. Aureliano would learn to make little fish out of gold coins, and devoted himself to this craft until his wife is accidentally killed by his sister. He would leave and return as a Colonel fighting for the Liberal Party, become cruel and relentless, start many vain, bloody wars, escape death several times, refusing the slightest reconciliation with the Conservatives. And one day, he seems to get tired and goes back home to make gold fish all day.“He had fought so many wars not out of idealism, as everyone had thought, nor had he renounced a certain victory because of fatigue, as everyone had thought, but he had won and lost for the same reason, pure and sinful pride.” The fire in his eyes would light one more time, when the banana company comes into Macondo and one of their security guards cuts a kid to pieces for spilling a drink on him. The colonel swears he’d wage war against the “fucking gringos”, which leads to his 16 sons being murdered.

If I had to point out a common thread throughout the three books I read, it would be their discussion of idealism. Young men declare war (real or metaphorical) against established order, and the author reveals that it was always an illusion. What’s a war worth fighting? Bolaño would say it’s for whatever cause that lures you into devoting your youth or life to it, be it poetry or politics. Vargas Llosa would say it’s the silent resistance against the real world that gives you every reason to choose the easiest, most assured life. But what García Márquez would say, I’m not sure, maybe he’d say war is a world to escape to, where the exercice of power and the loyalty of your soldiers makes you forget your total lack of emotional ties in the real world.

The narrator of the story is omniscient and does not seem to favour any character, or rather he pities everyone. Every character has tragic reasons for their strange behavior.Almost completely cut off from the world, they do not even seem to be subject to any natural laws. Their world seems to be governed by doom. The narrator would describe mythical events without any intention of explaining them: the insomnia and amnesia that arrived with two children, Rebeca eating dirt, Remedio’s power to make any man who sees her face narcoleptic. They are like cautionary tales but we’re not sure what we’re being warned against.

One of my favourite passages was the brief comment on the relationship between art and the public. When film was introduced in Macondo, people felt tricked when they saw an actor who died and for whom they had wept come back to life in a subsequent film. “The mayor explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience,” and the audience “decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings”. I do not think that García Márquez is accusing the villagers of Macondo for the inability to appreciate artistic forms and catharsis, rather I think he believes that it is important to have emotional ties in the real world, and these villagers are lucky because they do not need a film to be able to weep.

What are your thoughts on this passage about the relationship between art and audience? How much do machines of illusions (film, tv) or books, merit our emotional outbursts, or what do you think García Márquez is trying to tell us through this passage?

We have finally reached the end of both long books that we read for this class. There was a noticeable difference in how I felt upon completion of each of these novels. I found the ending of The Savage Detectivesto be underwhelming (see previous blog post), while I found the ending of Les guerriers de l’hiver to be depressing.

Simo Häyhä gets shot in the mouth with the explosive ammunition that the Soviet military was using, which leads to part of his cheek and jaw being blown off. As a result, he has to undergo twenty-six operations over a fourteen-month period. But he survives. He lost some of his friends during battle. And his family’s farm happens to be located in a part of Finland that was annexed by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, as part of the peace deal that commander-in-chief Mannerheim signed. At one point during the war, Simo wished that a bullet would hit him that would put an end to the misery that he has been experiencing during this violent conflict. He didn’t even want to live anymore. Yet at the end, he did survive.

One of the most interesting parts at the end of the book was an italicized section of a chapter which was a summary of the report by the doctor that operated on his face. Norek did a lot of research for the writing of this novel, which included reading many primary sources about the war, including a copy of the report by this doctor. The bullet going through Simo’s cheek was described by Norek in such horrific detail, while the report that followed was intriguing and left readers with hope for the sniper who shot and killed 542 Soviet soldiers during the 98-day war. When I researched information about Simo online, I found out that he lived to the age of 96. He is considered a hero in Finland. Finnish children learn about him in History class. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, there was no mention of the Winter War in official history books. Therefore, Soviet school children were never taught about this violent part of their history, mostly due to the shame of not having succeeded in annexing all of Finland, which was the original intent of the Soviet Union. On top of that, the USSR only reported the death of 350 of their own soldiers, when in reality, there were close to 400,000 casualties as a result of this conflict. They were also in violation of the Saint-Petersburg Declaration, which prohibited the use of explosive ammunition, such as the bullet that hit Simo in the mouth and blew off part of his face. And even once the peace deal was signed and the war was set to end a day later, the Soviet military were still ordered to attack and kill as many Finnish soldiers as they could.

The ending left me feeling depressed about human nature and the state of the world. Why do we kill each other for money, fame, territory or power? What is wrong with humanity?

I don’t have other words to share about how I felt about the ending, as I just finished reading the novel about two hours ago and I feel a strong sense of hopelessness about the state of the world.

I am losing hope.

Questions for the class: Which of the two novels that you read for this class did you prefer reading? In your opinion, did one have a more impactful ending than the other?

Bonus question: What is wrong with humanity?

My final post on Les Misérables!

Last week, I got to see Les Misérables at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre! Both Jon and one of my friends had told me that it was hard to follow, so as the curtains fell, I locked in. Happily, I found that the first three quarters were almost exactly like the book! It was satisfying to watch scenes that I had read unfold across the stage. Some elements were changed – Fantine is a character forced to work as a prostitute to support her daughter. In the book, she snaps and attacks a man after he throws a snowball at her as she trudges down a snowy street. In the play, she refuses to be bought by a cruel man, which results in her imprisonment. Both of these create a victim in different ways: as someone to heartlessly abuse on the street and as someone punished for trying to preserve her dignity.

Unfortunately, once I got past the part I’d read…I was lost. Why were they fighting? Honestly, that was my main question. There was a giant barricade onstage as characters defended it from…I did not know who.

Okay, after finishing up the book, I understand the story now! It was a reversal of watching the first three quarters of the musical – now as I read the images from the stage are what I imagine in my mind. So, the fighting was Marius’s (a young man who reminds me a little of a benevolent Garcia Madero) friends’ political uprising, harkening back to the Révolution française (“It’s ’93 all over again!” many characters exclaim in despair). Meanwhile, Marius pines for Cosette (Fantine’s daughter!) while her adoptive father Jean tries to keep them apart – “That man” he calls Marius angrily.

The most poignant scene for me both in the book and the show was the death of (nearly) indestructible Inspector Javert, who hunted ex-convict Jean across the country and decades. In another example of forgiveness, Jean rescues Javert from the hold of the insurgents. When later Javert captures Jean for what seems like the dozenth time, Jean pleads with him to be released – caught between his extreme morals and the debt he owes Jean, Javert lets him go. This decision breaks him, and he throws himself off of a bridge. On stage, through the magic of set and lighting, this was a remarkable scene – Javert seemed to fall in slow motion to his death. It was beautiful; it was also satisfying.

Next, Marius and Cosette are permitted to marry, however, after Jean reveals his criminal past to Marius, the new husband restricts his wife from seeing her adoptive father, leading to an isolated life in his old age. We see once again – and saw onstage represented by a greying and depressed Jean – how actions from our past, if interpreted as criminal by the law, can haunt us still, even decades after their occurence. Happily, there is a moment of…what’s that word, when Marius, Cosette, the ghost of Fantine and Jean reconcile. Jean Valjean passes away, and we see him finally escape his actions through forgiveness and in death.

I really enjoyed this book, and I am grateful that this class gave me the opportunity to read it!

A final note on long books and cultural longevity in looking at Les Misérables and another adaptation of a book, It (2017). I think the musical is what most people my age think of when you say the title, and I would like to hear your thoughts on how adaptations impact cultural longevity and renewal.

I finally watched It this weekend instead of doing homework. Which is funny – I feel like the movie just came out, but that was almost 10 years ago! Yikes! Another adaptation, I read the book, which came out in 1986, in 2018 or so, I guess jumping on the movie’s popularity? Anyway, something I don’t love about myself is my memory – I find it hard to recall books and movies that I’ve consumed even recently. The Savage Detectives, with its non-linear plotlines, was really hard for me to remember when I had to pick it back up again. However, as I was watching the movie, I felt myself telling my parter “That wasn’t in the book!” “In the book Patrick murdered his brother” and “There’s gonna be something down the drain!” I was so surprised at how much I remembered from a book I’d read almost 10 years ago; it had really stuck with me. The movie didn’t feel as impactful, which made me reflect on the strengths of a long book over a movie: so many details, tensions and contexts were left out, leaving it a good movie but feeling so surface-level compared to the book.

Are there any adaptations that you think surpass the source material? I think it depends on if the movie is meant as a remake of the book, or to stand as its own, and which one remains most popular. For some examples I think of Gone with the Wind, which I think remains just as well-known as a book and as a movie, and Midnight Cowboy (1969), my favourite movie, which far surpassed its book’s success, and, I feel, is a better rendition of the story. I think in the case of Les Misérables, the musical is perhaps more accessible to people today – it is shorter to consume, the songs can be hummed, and certain aspects, such as Fantine’s story, have been tweaked for modern audiences.

It’s done. It’s finally done… I don’t have to read more… for a few days at least. Now comes the haunting part of writing an essay, which in all honesty, even if I have done it so many times before, it stills feels daunting. Something about an unrelenting, childhood induced, won’t let me even start perfectionism… How did Enriquez write so much? Now that I think about it, the act of writing a long book is, by itself, more impresive than the story or the language itself. How can someone write so much? I struggle to come up with 400 words to say in these blogs, and I think whoever reads my entries (hi Jon) can tell that when I start writing, most of the time, I have no idea what’s going to come up next.

Back to Enriquez so I don’t get scolded in the comments for not bringing up the book. I truly wonder how she wrote such a long book. There is so much content in it, but, somehow, it doesn’t feel “crowded”. Every single word, every single scene seems to serve a purpose, seems to fit into a grander scheme, whatever that scheme is I do not know. But even the short chapters, those that read like intermission, no more than 10 pages or so, fit and inform the reader into the world and characters Enriquez is building in her novel.

Do I think some stuff could be cut? Sure. But it would be a different book. The feelings it would aspire would change, the characters would no be read the same way. A long book has to be long to stay true to itself, but there is no real necessity for a long or short book. I think Enriquez could’ve made this book a trilogy, three separate 250 page long books. But in doing so the reading experience would change.

I wonder how Enriquez first organized her writing. Did she already know everything that was going to happen in the book? Which sections did she write first? Did she have a detailed plan or a vague idea of the events and how the characters would react in this creepy, scary world she created. Maybe she, like myself, started writing one day for her long books class about a different long novel, maybe she wrote about Bolaño and had to air out the night terrors that come from reading the Savage Detectives. Maybe Enriquez, like I just did, had no idea what to write about and ended with an amazing, fascinating, fun, horrific (in the good way) long book that I am glad I got to read.

When I began reading Our Share of Night, the world surrounding Juan, the narrator of the first chapter, wasn’t clear to me. In the opening pages, I came to believe that Juan’s experience was shaped by clinical depression — the darkness that sometimes enveloped his body, a darkness that reminded me, perhaps, of episodes of post-traumatic stress: “many of the important things in his life had happened in a hospital bed, amid pain, anesthesia, and fear” (31). Page after page, Juan’s deformed darkness, a boundless darkness, found a boundary in the golden claws of the being, of the “repulsive god” (656) that inhabits him and that at the same time becomes the legacy he leaves to his son, Gaspar; a legacy he simultaneously avoids passing on, a legacy of pain, of madness. Legacy, a possession you haven’t bought—Juan knows this, and he is also aware of the mark it will leave on Gaspar, just as the god of darkness does when he runs his golden claws over the bodies of his chosen ones.

This semester we’ve read two long books, something that’s evident in the printed book, unlike with the digital version. In any case, for me, the number of pages doesn’t determine my decision to read, nor is it a factor that influences whether I continue with a novel or not. No! It has been more the bonds, the connection that I manage to establish with the book, with the narrated universe and the characters,  that leads me to keep reading, or to pause, take a break, and continue my reading. My reading experience, shaped by snippets of time, and products of popular culture like Mafalda, Condorito, the occasional read on visual arts, some picture books, comedy shows, and popular music programs on the radio, remain with me today, and even though I try to hide it, it is part of what I have inherited as a reader. A reader who knows she has much left to read. A reader, sitting under a glass ceiling, who tries to understand, comprehend, and analyze literature as an art form—one that affects people, that affects me.

Reading “Our Share of Night” by Mariana Enriquez has been a delightful experience. Reading this book has allowed me to enjoy a story that builds a world I could lose myself in—moonless yet illuminated night forests, empty houses, ostentatious mansions, cemeteries, hotels, temples. Spaces inhabited by Juan, Gaspar, Rosario, Mercedes… Florence, and all the madness and power of the Reyes Bradford family, the Order, and their gods. In these worlds, in these characters, repulsion took shape in the language Enriquez uses. Because in this work, language and the word—which take shape in the characters—can be felt on the skin, they can be heard, they scratch, they can be felt in the stomach. And this has been one of the aspects I’ve enjoyed most about the book: feeling the word. In some passages, I’ve experienced the revulsion and disgust that Gaspar felt when touching the mysterious gift his father, Juan, gave him:

“Sus dedos en la caja tocaron lo que, pensó, eran bichos secos […]. Juntó tres en la palma de la mano y se agachó para mirarlas mejor a la luz del televisor. Entonces se dio cuenta de que, lo que al primer tacto le parecieron patitas, eran pelos.  […] Eran pelos, sí. Pestañas. Tenía en la palma de la mano párpados secos, con sus respectivas pestañas.” (228).

“Our Share of Night” is a novel told through four voices: Juan, Dr. Bradford, Gaspar, Rosario, and Olga Gallardo—the voice of a chronicle narrated from outside the circle of the order and the Reyes Bradford family. A chronicle that revisits the events of chapter two while also foreshadowing the ending: “the suffocating sensation of his nightmares in which he cannot scream or walk, the dreams in which he is certain that the house he cannot escape is occupied by something hiding” (513–14).

The ending is narrated from the perspective of Gaspar, a young man who has now discovered the legacy bequeathed to him by both his father, Juan, and his mother, Rosario. In addition to being a chapter in which he reconnects with his heritage, this chapter—much like Rosario’s—serves as a space for Gaspar’s reflection, as he gradually discovers his place within the order and comes to understand what defines him.  

I read the last ten pages of the final chapter a couple of times. On the first reading, I enjoyed seeing how the ending unfolded; on the second reading, however, I felt that the horror of the previous chapters had become less pronounced—or perhaps I had simply come to see it as the norm in “Our Share of Night”. Regarding the end of the book, how did you experience the ending of the book you were reading?