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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
So here are the books I've read by José Saramago in the order I've read them, with a brief reaction to each and a note about where it falls in his career:
- Blindness: This absolutely spectacular, powerhouse book took my breath away. It was published in 1995, about 13 years into Saramago's status as an internationally recognized novelist, and seems to be regarded as a major part of the reason he received the Nobel prize.
- Seeing: This book requires fairly close reading. I think that the combination of this book with Blindness (to which it is a sequel) is far greater than the sum of its parts; the worldview of the two books together is immensely more complicated than of either one by itself. The book was published in 2004, six years after Saramago had won the Nobel prize. I have read reviews which characterize it as Saramago coasting, a minor work; I think they are wrong.
- The Cave: This book does not have the fireworks of Blindness and Seeing. It is a book on a human scale, a cottage rather than a skyscraper. I loved it -- it cemented my view of Saramago as a consummate artist of human characters. It was published in 2001.
- The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis: This book is very different from the previous three. It is the most intensely "literary" work of Saramago's among those I have read -- it is concerned with how literary representation of reality works. It was published in 1986, the second novel Saramago published after Baltasar and Blimunda, which appears to have marked his entree to worldwide recognition.
- Death with Interruptions: I found this book disappointing. It is brief but not, I think, worth spending your time on for any reason other than completeness. It was published in 2005.
- The Stone Raft: Hugely thought-provoking. This book opens up many avenues for further investigation (and makes me ache to travel to Spain and Portugal). I'm still not sure quite what it is about. It was published in 1986.
What's next? I'd really like to read all of his books that are not on this list, with maybe my top priorities being The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and All the Names. If The Elephant's Journey is published in translation before I get to either of those, it will certainly be at the top of the list. For now I am going to try and broaden my Portuguese palate a bit by reading Lobo Antunes' What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?.
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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So Sylvia and I watched Despereaux this rainy Christmas Eve afternoon. I am finding this kind of funny: I, who did not like the book, thought the movie was better than the book; Sylvia, who liked the book (and who liked  the movie better than I did) thought the movie was not as good as the book. That makes it seem to me like a pretty middle-of-the-road movie, worth recommending to people who need some movie to watch with their kids over the long vacation but not to anybody else -- fun but not that fun. The movie was different from the book in a huge number of plot points but contained the same essential story and the same moral (the transformative power of apology -- this lesson is my primary complaint about the book). Sigorney Weaver's narration sounded just about exactly how I picture Kate DiCamillo sounding. And, well, the sanctimonious voice of the narrator is my other big complaint with the book -- so the movie matches the book for its drawbacks. On the other hand, it's got cute animation (with minor but noticeable continuity problems) which is fun to watch and diverting. It's got big names (Ms. Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, Matt Broderick, Kevin Kline...) on the marquee. I think if I hadn't been so pissed-off at the book for being lame, I probably would have really enjoyed the movie.
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
I have never given any thought to why Brazil is historically a Portuguese colony, when (almost) all the other states of South America are historically Spanish colonies. But perhaps it is because of the Treaty of Tordesilla, which specifies that lands west of the meridian halfway between the (Portuguese) Cape Verde islands and the West Indies shall be the territory of Spain, and lands east of this meridian shall be Portuguese. Brazil is the easternmost country of South America and much of it lies east of this meridian. (In The Stone Raft, the Iberian "peninsula" comes to rest "on the line that in those glorious days had divided the world into two parts, one for me, one for you, one for me." -- That's how I came to be finding out about it.) Also here, we have a couple more direct textual references, to "Padre António Vieira's History of the Future and The Prophesies of Bandarra, as well as Pessoa's Mensagem, but that goes without saying." ...And, Roque Lozano has rejoined the story! Can Maria Dolores be far off? Your questions are false if you already know the answer.
posted evening of December 23rd, 2008: 4 responses
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Hanukkah gifts from my parents arrived in the mail today -- my present looks suspiciously 12"X12" and flat... Could it be outmoded media?
  Yes! It could indeed. It is "The Complete Fats Waller, vol. I 1934-1935", on Bluebird Records. Not only vinyl; mono vinyl. Thanks, mom and dad! Fats Waller is someone I only know as a name, I'm listening to side A right now and looking forward to familiarizing myself with his music. (But how'm I going to put it on my IPod?...)
posted afternoon of December 22nd, 2008: 3 responses
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008
Cool: (ಠ_ೃ)
Type it in (where HTML is accepted) as "☃ ". Thanks for the link, Miriam!
(Note: 뫚55 might make a good handle for someone, consisting as it does of the successive hex digits bada55 (뫚55). It does not appear to be in use AOTW.) ...And as long as we're venturing into Korean orthography, it looks like 바다55 would be transcribed as "bada55".
posted morning of December 21st, 2008: Respond
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Watching John Ford's The Searchers last night I was struck by a curious parallel to Gopnik's reading of Babar -- I was only able to watch it as if it were a dark satire about Confederate racism. But I am far from sure the movie is intended this way. Wayne's character (and to a lesser extent, every other character in the film) seemed by turns creepy and darkly hilarious; but instead of laughing I kept asking whether Edwards is being put forth as a hero, and whether audiences in 1956 would have taken him that way. I mean the story-teller definitely portrays Edwards as having some problems; but does not seem to think he is evil through and through. So as a viewer I'm in this uncomfortable position -- am I being asked to sympathize with this jerk? There were moments in the film where I did sympathize with him; but then the next minute I would recoil when he said the white women who had been captured by the Comanche were no longer white, and no longer human. Is this recoiling the point of the film? I never saw Ford tipping his hat.
posted morning of December 21st, 2008: 2 responses
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Do you believe in any of what you're saying, It's not a question of believing or not believing, everything we go on saying is added to what is, to what exists,... when I get to the end of what I'm saying, I have to believe in my having said it, that's often all that's needed, just as water, flour, and yeast make bread.
I read a lot more of The Stone Raft today and am pretty well cured of my fear (sort of silly on its face) that Saramago was going to turn the story into a conventional unconventional romance. I still feel concerned about the way the two female characters were brought into the story each to hook up immediately with one of the men -- it seems to diminish their roles as independent characters, when the male characters had a hundred or so pages to develop themselves solo, not as part of a couple. (Also I'm still wondering about Maria Dolores -- why was she brought into the story and given an identity if she was not going to play any role going forward?)But maybe the romantic pairing is necessary -- it gives me as a reader a familiar element in this very alien story. I like the characters and I'm ok with them getting together. Joaquim is still immature and petulant -- he has not been cured of that by his liaison with Maria Guaivera. And yet I respect him, since he is the one who set this whole pilgrimage in motion. Something I'm wondering about: When Pedro tells of the stone ship he found at the coast, it reminds Maria of an old story that "saints landed on this coast in ships made of stone, coming from deserts on the other side of the world." Is this a real story? I'm going to try and find out more about it -- Maria references St. James as one of the sailors in question. ...Yes, a real story. celticcountries.com says, Further details about Saint James' late whereabouts were given in the Historia Compostellana [sic] commissioned by Archbishop Diego Gelmirez of Galicia in the 12th century. According to the Historia, after St. James was martyred in the Holy Land his disciples carried his body to Galicia in a ship made of stone. Like St. James, many other Celtic saints such as St. Matthieu or St. Malo in Brittany navigated also across the Atlantic in stone vessels.
(later, the travellers "are following the old route of Santiago," who is St. James, as they move slowly through the villages south of Lugo.)
posted evening of December 20th, 2008: Respond
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"Let's work hard and cheerfully and we'll continue to be happy," the Old Lady tells the elephants, and, though we know that the hunter is still in the woods, it is hard to know what more to add. Adam Gopnik has a good article in the current New Yorker about de Brunhoff's Babar books -- "Freeing the Elephants" addresses complaints about the colonialist worldview in Babar by calling the books "a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination." I'm not totally convinced that this describes the spirit in which the books were written -- Gopnik doesn't really make an argument, just an assertion -- but it does seem like an excellent spirit in which to read the books.Next week we're going to see the exhibit at the Morgan Library. The library's website features a digital reproduction of de Brunhoff's first, hand-printed copy of Histoire de Babar.
posted morning of December 20th, 2008: Respond
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 I found out about this Mexican band by a circuitous route -- reading Alejandro Rossi's essay about Octavio Paz' Labyrinth of Solitude made me interested in finding out more about the book; and I came to learn that Botellita de Jerez had written a song with the same title.
The lyric (as far as I can understand it) refers to Paz' essay "Los Hijos de la Malinche", which I think is about Hernando Cortes' mistress, her role in turning Mexico into a Spanish colony, her place in the Mexican imagination. Here is another fantastic song from Botellita de Jerez, "Niña de mis ojos":
posted morning of December 20th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, December 18th, 2008
 Ellen tells me she has gotten me two books for Hanukkah, both featured on this year's reading list: What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? by António Lobo Antunes, and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. Thanks El!
posted morning of December 18th, 2008: Respond
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