Carte blanche

Montano by Enrique Vila-Matas, tr. Jonathan Dunne (Harvill Secker, 2007)

'To recall with a memory that is not our own,' I heard him whisper in my ear, 'is a variant of the theme of the double, but it is also a perfect metaphor for literary expression.'

A narrator of Enrique Vila-Matas in the lecture novel Montano (in Spanish: El mal de Montano, 2002) was basically admitting that most of the things he (the narrator) was writing about was borrowed. He constantly alluded to his writing as parasitic, the way it depended on the ideas of other writers he read or conversed with. His conversation, for instance, with César Aira, whether it really happened or not (though why would the narrator invent something like it), found its way on the novel.

My memory is infiltrated by the recollection of something César Aira told me in the Café Tortoni, in Buenos Aires, one day when we fell into a bizarre conversation about the essence of literature. We had started discussing the review I had written of his last book and in a few seconds, with barely any transition from one theme to the other, we became engrossed, almost without realising, in the subject of the essence of literature. 'As a teenager, reading Borges,' Aira said to me, 'I saw where the essence of literature was. This was definitive, but later I also discovered that literature does not have one, but many historical and contingent essences. So it was easy to escape from Borges' orbit, as easy as going back, or as never having escaped.'

Aira was speaking in circles, contradicting himself as he was wont to do. It was a safe answer in any case. Designed as a discourse on 'literature sickness', Montano was a writer's attempt to arrive at the essence of literature, and it arrived not in one destination but in many of them ("many historical and contingent essences"), via the texts of many modernist writers and diarists, or more precisely, the insidious memory of those texts. 

Memory infiltration was the mechanism with which the lecture novel proceeded with its free association. Perhaps I should stop saying lecture novel when what I really meant was literary criticism. Montano was a compartment of many prose forms: diary/private journal, novel, dictionary, lecture, memoir, essay, criticism. And yet the veil of criticism was probably the most accommodating form of the novel since the recombination of many texts from various sources produced a new text and new bibliography of imagination, a new way of looking at literature from the perspective of a sick man, or a deceived man, as the narrator later considered himself to be.

As Montano progressed, the narrator was successively commenting on the preceding chapters of the novel, clarifying which parts of the work was fiction, which ones invented. Every page contained copious ideas from select writers. These bookish ideas were creatively incorporated into – or had infiltrated – the novelist's consciousness. Sometimes he would access "his real life" and insert it into the text, thereby breaking the monotony of his thoughts and finding another material for his text.

An hour ago, I rang the poet Pere Gimferrer to ask him which of Dalí's two diaries he likes more: 'Why do you want to know?' Gimferrer, who always wants to know everything, asked  me. 'I don't know if I want to know,' I told him, 'really I rang you so that you would appear in the diary I'm writing, which has turned into a novel and dictionary and looks less and less like a diary, especially since I started taking about things from the past, maybe that's why I rang you, perhaps to have something to relate that occurred today, that happened this Thursday in real life, I need a bit of present.'

And that was how the conversation with Gimferrer was integrated into the text. The narrator was free to escape from his philosophical musings and infuse reality, its immediacy, into his diary/text. The material of reality now invaded the novel, was now duly represented and made a part of that novel, the very novel enacted before the reader's eyes.

Thinking what Kafka would have thought about the 9/11 attacks in New York, the narrator felt the need to read the 11 September 1911 entry in Kafka's diaries, 90 years before the attack, discovering there the collision between a motor car and a tricycle. Later, the narrator would open the 11 September 1912 entry of the diary, reading about a particular dream by the Czech writer.

I kept talking about "the narrator" here as if there was only one protagonist when in fact there were probably at least five personae whom Vila-Matas created in this novel, one for every chapter. Every narrator subverted the form and contents of the previous one's writing, until the reader was no longer sure which person was written about and who was a character in whose text. The selection of quotes from many writers – Walter Benjamin, Kafka, Walser, Sebald, Musil, Josep Pla (in The Gray Notebook) – only served to stitch together Vila-Matas's meditations on literary creation and mortality, on the anxiety of influence and the labyrinthine ways in which novelistic ideas relate and coincide.

By the end of Montano, the narrator's comic and melancholic tone gave way to exhaustion. The narrator dissembled even as he pursued his never-ending text. More than once, the narrator/s referred to himself (themselves) as the very embodiment of literature and even if he was "literature-sick", there were indications that he had freely embraced his literary destiny.

I wonder how I can have been so stupid, believing for so long that I must eradicate my Montano's malady, when it is the only worthwhile and truly comfortable possession I have. I also wonder why I should apologise for being so literary if, in the final outcome, only literature could save the spirit in an age as deplorable as ours. My life should be, once and for all, purely and only literature.

The sickness had taken full possession of the narrator. The novelist had disappeared inside the novel, right there in the text, fulfilling Blanchot's question in the epigraph: "What will we do to disappear?"

* * *

"There is nothing sometimes further away from reality than literature, which is constantly reminding us that life is like this and the world has been organised like that," the novelist in Montano said, before entertaining the converse, "but it could be otherwise". The autonomous world we lived in is not a tidy novel, and the ways we negotiate our lives do not resemble a well-argued literary essay. If anything, it fitted well with how the novelist in David Markson's final novel self-referentially described his final novel:

Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.

The collage novel was perfectly realized in Markson's novel called – again, self-referentially – The Last Novel (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007). Quoting Walter Benjamin, Vila-Matas described the  ideal properties of a collage novel in Montano (a collage in its own way): "In our time the only work truly endowed with meaning – critical meaning, as well – would have to be a collage of quotations, excerpts, echoes of other works":

In its time, I incorporated into that collage relatively personal ideas and phrases, and slowly created for myself an autonomous world, paradoxically very closely linked to the echoes of other works. ...

And I came down, as tends to happen when one scales the peaks of tragedy. I came down and saw that I did not have to worry about my parasitical past, rather to convert it – to revert it – into my own artistic programme, to turn into a literary parasite on myself, to make the most of the reduced but autonomous part of my anxiety and of my work which I could consider to be mine. Then I read 'Second Hand' by [Alan] Pauls and relaxed even more when I saw, for example, that Borges had been a highly creative and astute case of literary parasitism.

Nothing so comforting as Pauls' idea that an important dimension of Borges' work revolved around the writer arriving always after, in second place, in a subordinate's role – with a minimal biography, but with a biography, which is already saying a lot – this writer always arrives later and does so to read or comment on or translate or introduce a work or writer that appears first, original. [emphases added]

The Last Novel was a novel of aphorisms, of successive short sentences or flash sentences, in the manner of flash fiction. Its narrator was called Novelist, with capital N. Like the narrator of Montano, Novelist in Markson's novel was mapping out his minimalist autobiography in the work. While the narrator of the second section of Montano – "Dictionary of Timid Love for Life" – promised to tell only true things about himself in his diary, Novelist decided "carte blanche to do anything [in the novel] he damned well pleases". Like Vila-Matas (and his narrators), Markson (and Novelist) was establishing a personal genre: "A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak, minus much of the novel."

I'm still in the middle of Markson's book. The form should be tiresome, but there were fascinating details and comic relief in every page. The self-contained aphorisms had an invisible engine propelling them forward, wee drops of wit accumulating, accumulating.

While waiting for the death of the novel, which is like waiting for the barbarians, we could welcome the arrival of new novel forms, in new formats. These anti-novels and autofictions, they follow their own artistic programmes. They depend on a trove of treasures and trivia about certain writers and artists, recalling memories not their own, creating a mosaic of passages from literature to produce new texts, new textures. They are "last novels" because they hardly look like proper novels. Certainly they terminate, or break, the monotony of this-happens-and-then-this-followed-by-this storytelling.

It is said that every moment in life must be lived as if it was the last. In the same way, every novel could be written as if it is the final one. Haunted by death, sustained by the last flickering breaths, final novels have unlimited freedom. To play around with texts, with wild artistic abandon. To do whatever with a blank page as with a signed blank check. Unrestricted, only the last novels have the spirit of carte blanche.



For the Spanish Lit Month, by Stu of Winstonsdad's Blog and Richard of Caravana de recuerdos.

The healing powers of mediocre fiction

"'I'm thinking,' [Montano] said to me in a sensible and very thoughtful tone, 'that Walter Benjamin speculated about the possible relationship that exists between the art of storytelling and the healing of illnesses.'" The narrator of another of Enrique Vila-Matas's lecture novels thus shared his conversation with his son, Montano, in the novel of the same name (trans. Jonathan Dunne).

I was forced to confess the truth, namely that I had no idea about this curious relationship between narrative and healing. So Montano explained, in a sweet and friendly voice, that the connection between storytelling and curing illnesses had been suggested to Walter Benjamin by a German friend who told him about the healing powers of his wife's hands, saying that their movements were very expressive, but it was impossible to describe their expressiveness, because it was as if those hands were telling a story.

'In such a way,' said my son, 'in such a peculiar way, Walter Benjamin was reminded of an intimate scene: that of the boy who, when he falls ill, is sent to bed by his mother, who then comes and sits by his side and starts telling him stories. As a result of this memory, Walter Benjamin wondered whether narrative might not in fact be the most propitious atmosphere, the most favourable condition, for a large number of cures.'

This talk of healing, illness, and storytelling was a main concern of the novel. At the outset, the novel's speaker, who happens to be a literary critic, admitted that he is afflicted with "literature sickness", similar in symptoms to his son's disease, what he termed "Montano's malady", a kind of writer's block. We learned that Montano was the author of a "dangerous novel" about writers who were unable to put pen to paper.

The form of the novel was a lecture, although it was supposedly culled from diary or journal entries of the critic. We might as well say "speculative criticism" (an unfortunate term, considering that every criticism is some kind of speculation, and yet speculative fiction also suffers from the same terminological inadequacy), because the diarist's very literariness intruded on his writing. He was literature-sick because he analyzes every aspect of his life as if it was a text, as if every lifestyle was a writing style. He was "saturated with so many books and so many quotations" that it was impossible for him to escape the labyrinthine ways in which literary ideas connect and interconnect. While he was trying very hard to prevent his mind from making associations between texts and real life, his son was desperately trying to recapture his ability to string words together. Both were exhausted or fatigued by the same literariness.

This 'textual' intrusion of literature into life was of course not an unusual phenomenon, especially in writers. And the idea of storytelling having healing properties was already present in the myths and legends. The 'germ' of the novel as the very antibiotic, so to speak, against real and imagined ailments.

In Rene O. Villanueva's memoirs (Im)Personal: Gabay sa Panulat at Pagmamanunulat ((Im)Personal: Guide to Writing and the Writerly), the writer used as his primary metaphor for writing the idea of a magic cure from the epic of Ibong Adarna, the Adarna bird. The story was about how three princes set out to capture the mythical bird whose renowned beautiful song was the only (magical) antidote to the mysterious malady that afflicted their father king. For Villanueva, this epic about a bird's enchanted song was the very embodiment of storytelling's miraculous ability to cure individuals and nations of individual and societal ills. (César Aira, of course, had his own potent and playful concoction with his own miraculous cures.)

Let it be said that the assumed ability (or power) of storytelling to cure maladies was not monopolized by epics and legends or great modernist works such as those by Vila-Matas or Aira. Mediocre and genre fiction, insofar as we understand the terms 'mediocre' and 'genre' at face value, had their own special thing going. A case in point is Stephen King, whose own writing manual On Writing was proof of the storyteller's own belief in his own formulaic writing.

The first story I did actually publish was in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama (Mike is still around, and still in the biz). He published this novella under the title "In a Half-World of Terror," but I still like my title much better. Mine was "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." Super Duper! Pow!

I confess I was not able to finish the book due to its shallow prescriptions and self-justifications. King had only to describe his writing process and validate his own personal narrative style and literary preferences for the magic to appear on the page and his fans to applaud and be cured. Pow! Super!

A narrative can be said to have two poles—form and content—to be able to function as a story. But it requires a third element (substance) for discerning readers to be able to attach values and judgements, not value-judgements, in a work of fiction and to distinguish stories that matter from those that do not.

Consider another popular medicine—The Alchemist (1988) by Paulo Coelho. This unprecedented bestseller, with more than 65 million copies (and counting) sold in original Portuguese and in various translations, was also world record holder for being translated into the most number of languages (56 and counting). I came across a copy of its very recent translation, Ang Alkemista (Lampara Books, 2014), a Filipino version by Edgardo B. Maranan. The translator was a great poet and translator who contributed to the marvelous reconstruction of the epic version of the Palawan epic Kudaman (1991).

Ang Alkemista is a tale of a shepherd who exchanged his sheltered life in a seminary for a life on the road. It was a tale of adventures and various encounters with characters who are destined to define his nomadic existence.

I can't say I was not warned about Coelho. Roberto Bolaño called the Brazilian's prose poor "in terms of lexical richness", in terms of "richness of vocabulary", scoffing at the latter's induction to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. For Bolaño, no language was capable of withstanding any translation if it is in the first place written in pale prose. The whiff of this poorly contrived language may be hard to assess in translation. What could more obviously be detected was the philosophical richness (or impoverishment) of the translated text. Ang Alkemista lacked the complex and fertile ideas that would propel the novel beyond its fabulist intents. Coelho himself confessed in the introduction that the novel was meant to be symbolic and not realist.

Sa pamamagitan ng librong ito, ipinamamana ko ang lahat ng aking natutunan sa buhay. Sinikap ko ring parangalan ang mga dakilang manunulat na nakatuklas sa Unibersal na Lengguwahe—sina Hemingway, Blake, Borges (na gumamit rin ng kasaysayang Persiyano sa isa niyang kuwento), Malba, Tahan, at marami pang iba.

[With this book, I bequeathed everything I learned in life. I also tried to honor the great writers who discovered the Universal Language—Hemingway, Blake, Borges (who also used a Persian story in one of his tales), Malba, Tahan, and many others.]

The Universal Language that Coelho spoke of is the simplicity of his words, and yet it is not only language that clothes an entire novelistic enterprise. For the symbol or metaphor to work, it must still be grounded in reality. The substance of ideas and the way they are developed are what makes for a convincing tale. How Coelho brewed his own alchemical ideas, his manner of punctuating words and branding them and selling them as proper nouns, can be an insult to a reader's intelligence. Yet for some, no words of healing and redemption could be sweeter. The constant reference to the quest for one's "Personal Legend" (Sariling Alamat) is too farcical to be taken seriously.

"Sinasabi ng librong iyan ang parehong bagay na sinasabi ng halos lahat ng libro sa mundo," patuloy ng matanda. "Inilalarawan ang kawalan ng abilidad ng tao na piliin ang mga Sariling Alamat. At natapos yan na sinasabing lahat ay naniniwala sa pinakamalaking kasinungalingan sa mundo."

"Ano ang pinakamalaking kasinungalinan sa mundo?" tanong ng binata na gulat na gulat.

"Ito: na sa isang tiyak na panahon sa buhay natin, nawawalan tayo ng kontrol sa nangyayari sa atin, at ang buhay natin ay kontrolado ng tadhana. 'Yan ang pinakamalaking kasinungaliang sa mundo."

["That book tells you the same thing all books in the world tell," the old man continued. "It describes the people's lack of ability to chart their own Personal Legends. And it concludes that all men believe in the greatest lie in the world."

"What is the greatest lie in the world?" asked the very shocked young man.

"This: that at a certain moment in our lives, we lose control of the events around us, and our lives are at the mercy of destiny. That's the greatest lie in the world."]

This. The greatest lie in the world. Sealed in a case and delivered with utter solemnity. The greatest lie in the world. The underlining was implicitly supplied.

And what about the "mysterious energy" and the "one great truth in this planet"?

"Sa paglipas ng panahon, isang mahiwagang lakas ang mangungumbinsi sa kanila na imposible nang matupad ang kanilang Sariling Alamat."

Para sa binata, walang saysay ang sinasabi ng matanda. Ngunit nais niyang malaman kung ano ang "mahiwagang lakas"; hahanga sa kanya ang anak ng mangangalakal kapag sinabi niya ito!

"Isang tila negatibong lakas, ngunit sa totoo ay nagpapakita sa iyo kung paano makakamit ang Sariling Alamat. Ito ang naghahanda ng iyong kaluluwa at kalooban, dahil may isang dakilang katotohanan sa planetang ito: kahit sino ka man, at kung ano man ang iyong ginagawa, kapag talagang may hinahangad ka, ang pagnanais na iyon ay nagmumula sa kaluluwa ng uniberso. Iyon ang misyon mo sa lupa."

["With the passage of time, a mysterious energy will convince the people it is no longer possible to realize their own Personal Legends."

For the young man, the old man did not make any sense. But he wanted to know what this "mysterious energy" is; the merchant's daughter would admire him if he shared this idea with her.

"A kind of negative energy, but in truth you will see for yourself how to realize your own Personal Legend. It prepares your own soul and being, because there is one great truth in this planet: whoever you are, whatever you do, when you truly desire something, that desire emanates from the soul of the universe. That is your mission in life."]

The writer here was enamored by his own proselytization. If I've read this book at an impressionable age, fifteen, twenty years ago, I could have become one of this book's high priests. But the medicine was lost on me. Maybe I suffered enough of a bookish malady and became immune to a sincere dosage of planetary truths.

The works of writers like King and Coelho (and Murakami Haruki, in certain novels) were a brew of self-validation and legendary fabulism. The form and content are fantastical, even magical, but the ideas are depauperate. Their avid readers, if they read it in the right frame of mind and in the right context, get their fix in this kind of thing. To borrow a concept from medicine, this is the "placebo effect" of mediocre writing. Technically it is a false cure, but some readers are administered a tyranny of quasi-philosophical ideas and became all the better for it.

The deep, healing novel was repository of all things profound. The tried and tested genre remained a potent drug. Even Bolaño's bookish pharmacists who snorted at the "great, imperfect, torrential works" would go for the perfect cough syrup. Storytelling had never been so curative. Even if wisdom always cautioned that prevention is better than cure. Should that prevent us from pursuing our own Personal Legends?