Tag Archives: time

Week 12 – Agualusa, “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”

I liked this book, the intertwining storylines of politics, romance, and dreams made it an interesting read. While the dreaming and romantic narratives provided interesting psychological thought and emotional elements, the commentary on the political tension was my favorite element of this book.

I enjoyed that the dream narrative was not imposed upon by Freud’s psychoanalysis of dreams; it was refreshing to read about dreams without the narrative of the subconscious as the dominating discourse on the purpose of dreams. I liked the story of dreams as purposeful and symbolic; “Unfortunately, people have stopped seeing the value of dreams. We need to restore dreams to their practical vocation”, “dreams relate to our own personal emotional experience” (pg 109). It was insightful to read and made me consider the dream world as a separate reality that has ambiguous ties with our real lives. The way that Hossi appears in strangers’ dreams wearing a purple coat suggests that dreams are not just a neurological process, but a world that we all step into. 

The comments made about the dictatorship and conflict in Angola were important considerations about the nature of violence and conflict in a society. These lines, “The dictatorship is growing in the shade of your silent complicity” (pg 116), “Here in Angola the honest people are in prison, and the crooks are in charge” (pg 141), “This country is divided into people who can insist on their rights and those who don’t have rights at all” (pg 144) reflect the powerful process of oppression and how inequality persists when the powerful groups in society maintain dominance and silence those who fight it. For example, Daniel’s daughter Karinguiri demonstrates the way that the government silences and punishes people who challenge the system in place. The narrator emphasizes pacifism, “All wars imprison us. That thing you call a war of liberation was the origin of the civil war” (pg 31) and “What you get through violence remains poisoned by violence” (pg 32). By condoning the violence in Angola, the story seems to work as a critique of the tense social conditions in the country after the liberation from Portuguese control. Furthermore, the line, ““Fucking whites” Gato complained. “They steal from us for five hundred years and even after they’ve fucked off, driven out by gun and blow, they’re still trying to kill us”” (pg 28) also importantly emphasizes the harmful and lasting impact of colonialism, even once it is ‘gone’, violence and conflict continues to persist. 

“I tried explaining to him that we mustn’t confuse the government with the country. Criticizing mistakes made by the government wasn’t the same as insulting Angola and Angolans. On the contrary, I criticized the government’s errors because I dreamed of a better country” (pg 6). Daniel is fired as a journalist because he wants to criticize the government and the structural violence that oppresses Angolans. In this way, do you think the incorporation of dreams into this story offers an opportunity for censorship, or does it maybe offer a suggestion of utopia and dreaming of a better reality? How do you view these different storylines working together?

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Week 10 – Bolano, Amulet

Another book with a stream of consciousness about memories … I am sensing a theme here. 

As Auxilio hides in the university bathroom for 12 days, she reflects on different memories and experiences, transporting the reader to a different world than the reality of her sitting in the bathroom stall as the army invades the university. The line, “As if I had died and was viewing the years from an unaccustomed vantage point” (pg 32) reminded me of the Shrouded Woman and how she reflected on her life after she died. Obviously, our narrator is still alive, but as she faces uncertainty and is found by the soldiers, she is sent into survival mode. In the narrator’s case, survival mode is found in literature, the book by Pedro Garfías in particular.

The story begins by preparing us for a “horror story” (pg 1), even though “it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller (pg1). This line sets up the suspense in the book. I was prepared to read about something horrific, and while the descriptions of the soldiers coming to look for her while she was in the stalls were stressful, Auxilio lives up to her statement that this book won’t appear to be horrific. As the teller of the story, Auxilio downplays the horror, for example when she is discussing López Azcarate’s suicide, she describes the news of it as “exhilarating, as if reality were whispering in your ear: I can still do great things; I can still take you by surprise, you silly girl, you and everyone else; I can still move heaven and earth for love” (pg 19). I suppose as the “mother of Mexican poetry” (pg 1), this view is expected; finding the profound meanings behind dark realities seems poetic to me. 

Time appears to be an abstract concept in this book. It took me until the end of the novel to realize that she was in the bathroom the whole time. I was shocked when I read that it was “more than fifteen days” (pg 172). It seems to be a story about the past, present, and future all at the same time, and at most points I was not sure which one of these we were in. What is not abstract however is the context. This is a book about Latin America, Mexico City in particular, and the tense political climate, which the narrator specifically references throughout, disguised by Auxilio’s reflections. She describes the “Latin American nightmare: being unable to find your weapon” (pg 67), and how “now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song” (pg 13). She emphasizes the critique of Latin American political unrest in the 1960s, poignantly paying tribute to the victims of the tragic Tlatelolco massacre in 1968. 

The narrator also makes reference to influential writers and figures on pages 159 – 161, making prophetic claims about them for a distant future, which I think emphasizes the immortalization of art and its influence. “Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear” (pg 159). This line reflects the story’s message that literature and poetry are timeless, it exists in the past, present, and future, just in different forms.

My question for this week, is do you think the memories are real or hallucinations?                     

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