Blood and sound

José Carlos Somoza's The Athenian Murders is turning out to be a detective novel of wit. A whodunit forged in pale fire. Caustic humor in the same mold as Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans by Luis Fernando Verissimo.

I picked it up yesterday after finishing The Savage Detectives, that book of monologues of hyper poets in a mock-up detective novel. I knew for some time that Bolaño has read and praised the work of Somoza. I'm a third into the book and it's becoming clear to me why this recommendation is a good one.

Somoza, born in 1959 in Cuba, is a writer from Spain. He is a psychiatrist by profession before becoming a full-time writer. The Athenian Murders, translated from Spanish by Sonia Soto, is his first novel to come out in English. The book was originally published as La caverna de las ideas (Alfaguara, 2000). The title should translate as "The Cave of Ideas", which, considering the milieu of the novel, is an apt title. The novel is set in ancient Greece, in the time of Plato and his school, the Academy. Plato's allegory of the cave is a philosophical sound that issues from it, bouncing and reverberating in its pages.

It's quite possible the English publisher wanted to market Somoza as a crime writer. (His second translated novel, The Art of Murder, was originally called Clara y la penumbra!) Nothing wrong with that except that it murders, in a manner of speaking, the self-referential elements of the story whenever the title itself was mentioned in the text, via footnotes. Yes, there are footnotes, it's that kind of book. The notes are provided by the fictional translator of the actual text (his supposed translation) that we are reading. As given by an extract from one of his more than a page long footnotes:

   The Athenian Murders, the novel I had just begun translating, was an eidetic text. She stared at me for a moment, holding one of the cherries on the nearby plate by its stalk.
   'A what?' she asked.
   'Eidesis,' I explained, 'is a literary technique invented by the Ancient Greeks to transmit secret messages or keys in their works. It consists in repeating, in any text, metaphors or words that, when identified by a perceptive reader, make up an idea or image that's independent of the original text. Arginisus of Corinth, for example, used eidesis to hide a detailed description of a young woman he loved in a long poem apparently about wild flowers....
   'How interesting,' smiled Helena, bored. 'And would you care to tell me what's hidden in your anonymous The Athenian Murders? [14]

Substitute The Cave of Ideas to the title in the above and one realizes it's more faithful to this 'eidetic' novel of ideas. Here is a striking passage from the "translated" text itself:

   There was a scream. Then another. For a moment, absurdly, Heracles thought they came from Itys' mouth, which was shut; as if she had roared internally, and her thin body were shuddering and resonating with this sound produced in her throat.
   But then the scream, deafening, entered the room; clad in black, it pushed the slaves away; crawled from one side of the room to the other, then collapsed in a corner, writhing, as if seized by a holy madness. At last it dissolved into an endless lamentation. [10-11]

I marked this up because I remember a similar passage of a sound's motion in The Savage Detectives.

He whispered that he loved me, that he would never be able to forget me. Then he got up (twenty seconds after he'd spoken, at most) and slapped my face. The sound echoed through the house. We were on the first floor, but I heard the sound of his hand (when his palm left my cheek) rise up the stairs and enter each of the rooms on the second floor, dropping down through the climbing vines and rolling like glass marbles in the yard. When I could react, I made a fist with my right hand and hit him in the face. He hardly moved. [194]

I was wondering about the resemblance between them. And then I came upon this passage from García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude:

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.

Blood and scream, the sound of slap. What to make of their trajectories?

Clandestine in Chile (Gabriel García Márquez)

The plan was to film an underground documentary on the increasingly desperate situation in Chile after twelve years of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. I had been unable to get the idea of making this film out of my mind. I had lost the image of my country in a fog of nostalgia. The Chile I remembered no longer existed, and for a filmmaker there could be no surer way of rediscovering a lost country than by going back to it and filming it from the inside.


Gabriel García Márquez faithfully transcribed Miguel Littín's voice in Clandestine in Chile (trans. Asa Zatz), a book of reportage. Littín is a Chilean filmmaker living in exile, homesick and determined to come back to shoot his documentary. To do this he was forced to impersonate a new identity, as a Uruguayan businessman. The transformation was complete: his physical appearance, his accent, and his family history and emotions were calibrated to another person's. This book turned out to be dedicated not only to exposing life under dictatorship but to describing a voluntary "identity crisis" and the large amount of risks a person is willing to undertake in order to practice his art (filmmaking) for purposes he believed were noble. Was it all worth it?
 

Santiago has always had street vendors but I cannot remember ever having seen as many as now. There is hardly a spot anywhere in the business center where they are not standing in long, silent ranks, selling everything imaginable. They are so many and so diverse that their presence alone reveals the social drama. Side by side with a physician who is not permitted to practice, a destitute engineer, a woman with the air of a duchess who is trying to dispose of her wardrobe from better days at any price, there were orphaned children peddling stolen goods and housewives offering homemade bread. Most of these once successful professionals have lost everything but their dignity. Standing behind their wares, they continue to dress as though they were in their former offices. A taxi driver, once a wealthy textile merchant, took me on a tour of half the city that lasted several hours, and at the end he refused to charge me.

The social drama that Littín witnessed was the drama of ordinary people coping with a changed political and economic circumstances. Daily life under the Pinochet regime was, at surface, a veneer of good times, perhaps just as good as life outside Chile. But deep inside was raging silent protest. There was a persistence for ordinary people to continue existing, always hopeful that a better living condition awaited them, because they remember the benevolent past, and it was enough for them to go on. Littín's account of his clandestine shooting was permeated with feelings of nostalgia. Surprisingly, the main pathos of the story derived not from the filmmaker's film rushes but from his living a double life in disguise. While pretending to be someone of different profession and nationality, Littín was unwittingly recapturing his own identity in the pictures of the country he was taking. The documentary which was ostensibly meant to bring to light the injustices of military dictatorship became the same document that eulogized the country of a man dreaming, of the past and the lost possibilities.

In the book's preface, Francisco Goldman said that the book had acquired an extra-literary life after publication, perhaps even eclipsing the actual film made of it. The author being no less than García Márquez who is no stranger to power, and the subject matter being the strongman Pinochet, the conception of the book was far from neutral. Fifteen thousand copies of the book were burned in Chile to stanch any possible damage it may bring to the regime.

Goldman also mentioned that the book never really produced a memorable scene or image that depicted the horrors of the military rule. This is debatable. It did seem that the narrative style of the book, which stuck to the individual voice of Littín, had filtered the horror to the extent that one reads a dry recounting of socio-political and historical events, not an anguished litany of abuses. García Márquez's nonfiction was consciously written in that style, as he explained in his introduction. In a way, the novelist acted as film editor to Littín's director, cutting out extraneous scenes from a very long interview, trying to work with what footage was available, and producing a whole picture out of the whole intrepid project of an exiled man – filmmaker, citizen, son – going home. The editor constrained himself with faithfulness to the vision of the filmmaker. His stylistic decision certainly did not give full dramatic mileage to the horrors of history which were somehow dampened by the nostalgic voice of his subject. Goldman added that one only need read Roberto Bolaño's novels Distant Star and By Night in Chile, in order to come face to face with evil perpetrated under Pinochet's rule. I agree. These two novels about Chile provide a richer canvas for understanding the uses and misuses of art for political ends.

Bolaño's immediate concerns in Distant Star and By Night in Chile are the heinous crimes perpetrated by writers in the name of literature and the collaboration of the Chilean literary establishment with the totalitarian regime. He employed in his fiction the registers of both the journalistic and the poetic. Like García Márquez, the journalistic was used to report objectively on unspeakable crimes. But Bolaño's treatment argued for an ethical dimension of literature, hence a more powerful discourse of evil was essayed. The merger of the journalistic with the poetic allowed Bolaño to dramatize his scenes and represent evil and its relationship to literature and politics as both palpable and paradoxical. His passionate engagement approached that of Littín's belief in his artistic enterprise.

Clandestine in Chile did contain some unforgettable stories. At least two incidents in the book illuminated how the Chileans reacted to violent abuses committed under the regime. A few months before Littín entered Chile, an opposition militant and sociologist named José Manuel Parada, along with two other activists, was kidnapped by military. Parada was an officer of Vicariate of Solidarity, which was critical of the government and was working for human rights. A few days after the kidnapping the bodies of the three men were found bearing the signs of torture; their throats were cut. Public outrage led to the resignation of the police commander believed to be the mastermind of the murders. At the end of this recollection, it was mentioned that the name of one of the streets leading to Plaza de Armas, the location of the vicariate, "was erased by an unknown hand and replaced with that of José Manuel Parada, the name by which it is now known."

The second incident told of a man named Sebastián Acevedo who set fire to himself after failing to find help in stopping the torture of his two children. His son and daughter were arrested by the authorities. As a result of this sacrificial act, the public was outraged and his children were eventually released from the torture chambers. Acevedo was able to speak to his daughter before he died. "Since that time," the story concluded, "the people of Concepción have had a secret name for the place of sacrifice: Plaza Sebastián Acevedo."

These stories showed that the laying down of life under the cloud of injustice is a sacred act that people do not take for granted. More importantly, it showed that people under the iron rule are not prevented to commemorate in order to honor those who were killed in the name of freedom and justice. In loud protest lies liberty and in the record of memory lies salvation. This was true for Chile then, and perhaps will be true for countries where dictatorships still prevail and where freedoms and rights are curtailed.

Here is one more passage where the novelist was able to capture Littín's speaking voice, where both filmmaker and editor were closely listening to the travails of another artist singing her soul – the whisper of a sweet song – bitter, tender. The speech evoked the blood of history as being perpetrated by the audience's disregard. We only finally listen when we recognize what we've lost.

I sat down on a bench to read the newspaper but my eyes ran over the lines without seeing them. What I felt just sitting there on that bright autumn morning was so intense that I couldn't concentrate. All at once, the twelve-o'clock cannon went off, the pigeons scattered in fright, and the notes of Violeta Parra's most moving song, "Gracias a la Vida," floated from the cathedral carillon. It was almost too much to bear. I thought of Violeta, of how often she had gone hungry and homeless in Paris, of her unfaltering dignity. The system had always rejected her, ignored her songs, and mocked her rebelliousness. A president had to die, gun in hand, Chile had to go through the bloodiest martyrdom of its history, and Violeta Parra had to die by her own hand before her country discovered the profound human truth and the beauty of her songs.

Clandestine in Chile is the December 2010 book selection of The Wolves (Richard, Emily, Sarah, Frances, E. L. Fay, and Claire). Also read by Stu and Lizzy. Check out The Wolves' lineup for 2011.

Conversation about a cathedral: Or, what would Roberto think?

Of course, the well-read and opinionated Bolaño has certain opinions of Vargas Llosa. When asked about what comes to his mind when he hears the name of García Márquez, he replied: "A man who's enchanted by the fact that he's known so many presidents and archbishops." And Vargas Llosa: "The same, but more polished."

Among the celebrated Boom writers (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, and Cortázar), Cortázar is apparently the one he most admired. As for Carlos Fuentes, he also had some things to say. He thought that Octavio Paz is "more universal" than Fuentes, that Paz is a "more interesting" writer of prose (in his essays) than Fuentes, and if he had to sit between them, he'd rather "sit closer to Octavio Paz than to Fuentes."

Bolaño's writing is seen as a break from the magical realist mode of the Boom writers and their imitators. His fiction is a sort of reaction to the previous generation's realism. However, it doesn't mean that he entirely objected to the literary outputs of the rest of the Boom writers. Possibly, he didn't like their politics or he just didn't like them as persons. But still he was an avid reader of their books. In a 1999 interview with two writers of a Chilean magazine (one of his published interviews in English), he shared his positive assessment of the (now) two Nobel winners.

Soto & Bravo: Perhaps the emblematic figures of the [Boom] movement were too adored, an injustice for quieter figures like Monterroso and Onetti, who are vindicated more and more. They’ve stayed relevant with the passage of time.

Bolaño: I don’t believe so. The literature of Vargas Llosa or García Márquez is gigantic.

Soto & Bravo: A cathedral.

Bolaño: More than a cathedral. I do not think time will harm them. The work of Vargas Llosa, for example, is immense. It has thousands of entry points and thousands of exit points. So does the literature of García Márquez. They’re both public figures. They’re not just literary figures. Vargas Llosa was a candidate for president. García Márquez is a political heavyweight and very influential in Latin America. This distorts things a bit, but it shouldn’t make us lose sight of the position they have in the hierarchy. They are superiors, superior to the people who came after and, to be sure, to the writers of my generation….

I suppose, though I’m not entirely sure, he didn’t answer in an ironic tone.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel García Márquez)

It isn’t right that everybody should know that they’re going to kill her son and she the only one who doesn’t.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold can really stand another rereading. There is still a lot to be mined for such a short book, a novella in fact. Gabriel García Márquez has so imbued the book with folk wisdom and traditional beliefs that I find that this is not one of those ‘magical realist’ works that has everyone gasping in disbelief. It is rooted in its own domestic atmosphere of news and gossips.

The novella centers on a courtship, a wedding, and a murder. There’s no magic realism in these pages. There is fatal realism, for sure. It concerns mass guilt and a stab at the culture of machismo that has so pervaded the decisions of an entire village to condone a murder. Throughout the narrative, a sustained voice of inevitability permeates the telling that it is impossible not to turn your eyes away from the pages, even if the outcome is already foretold, even if by rereading, it is somehow retold.

The patriarchal and matriarchal society is what defines the novella’s strength as more than a chronicle but a document of conventional attitudes on such principles as honor and justice. I think also that the role of mothers in Chronicle of a Death Foretold is important in understanding the whole puzzle, just as important as the machismo that propels the announced crime of murder to its bloody success.

You always have to take the side of the dead.

The man whose death is foretold is Santiago Nasar. The motive is clear: he is accused of the unforgivable crime of tarnishing the honor of a just-married woman, Angela Vicario. Only in the man’s death will the woman’s honor be regained. A murder is then set in motion – a murder that has every chance of being thwarted and yet every indication of being a foregone conclusion.

The novella’s chronicler is one of Santiago Nasar’s friends who comes back to investigate the cold case a good many years after. With the obsession of a journalist, he interviews almost all the people involved in the crime. The major witnesses sought for explanations and recollections include Angela Vicario herself and Pedro Vicario, one of the two murderers who are twin brothers of Angela Vicario. (It was all too neat that the killers be twins. Perhaps to better emphasize the conflict and wavering of resolve between them.) Yet the primary witness is the entire village who was helpless to stop the crime unfolding before their very eyes.

There had never been a death more foretold.

What is poetic justice? Is it the same as the plain old romantic justice that is a condition of a society in which evil is outshone by good?

The novella is a lens for observing human behavior and responses shaped by a tragic event. The novelist is deft in providing all the necessary means, motive, and opportunities for a crime whose consummation is the very reflection of guilt, both individual and collective. There is a popular backing behind the murder and the narrator tries to find out why. Eventually it is no longer essential to know whether Santiago Nasar really is guilty or innocent of “dishonoring” a woman– this is not ultimately resolved at the end. What is perhaps more important is to understand why so many people can be so powerless to stop something they have all the means to prevent.

Is it deep-seated tradition that puts the village on the spot and leads them to commit a crime of omission? How can people be expected to react and to take action, if their long held beliefs in things such as honor is the one put on trial? It is this very same belief that commanded “what a man should do” to avenge the honor lost. It's not unlike the fundamentalist attitudes of religion.

For years we couldn’t talk about anything else. Our daily conduct, dominated then by so many linear habits, had suddenly begun to spin around a single common anxiety. The cocks of dawn would catch us trying to give order to the chain of many chance events that had made absurdity possible, and it was obvious that we weren’t doing it from an urge to clear up mysteries but because none of us could go on living without an exact knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to us by fate.

This is a book in which a second reading will not put anything in better perspective but will leave the virtue of ambiguity intact. It does not judge anyone. Not the killers, not the murdered man, not the woman on whose disgrace the murder was predicated. The killers only could do what is expected of them. The book does not judge anyone because everyone is implicated in the crime.

Gabriel García Márquez’s blow by blow style is a powerful thing. He made the reader spectator to the crime. On second reading, the reader is still held hostage by the narrative pull. It has the intensity of a thriller. The murder, even if already forecast in advance, is still a murder mystery and will remain unsolved.

Love can be learned, too. This cliché is put to good use in a surprising subplot. But that is another story. If the pursuit of love is like falconry, what about the pursuit of truth? The falcon cannot hear the falconer?

(Image: Le Fauconnier. France, 17th century; watercolor and gouache on vellum)