Teaching Huckleberry Finn

There is a specific problem with teaching this book. There is a word in it that some people don’t like. (Most people, in fact). It’s a fine book, a borderline classic. It would be a great shame if people stopped reading it for fear of a word. Is it better to change the word ‘nigger’, where it occurs, to stop publishing the book, remove it from libraries, stop worrying about it, or when encouraging children to read it, explain why it uses that word, and its significance in that context?

Banning books is not civilized, and is almost impossible in practice, anyway.

Changing the word to something else is possible, and has been done before, but it’s a matter for the publisher. The book is out of copyright and freely available in electronic form, and I can’t see Gutenberg or Amazon or anyone else bothering to make that change. Many books have things in them that a lot of people don’t like.

I don’t believe the bad word should be forcibly removed, and the idea of Bowdlerization of any sort does not much appeal. The author wrote what he wrote and he did so for reasons which we cannot always understand, or even know. In the case of Huck Finn, the word is largely used by Huck himself, is not usually derogatory in any way, and it is certainly not an expression of hate.

I have never used the book in class, but I was thinking about it, partly because of some discussion I saw about this very matter. If I did, the word could be used as one of many internal devices for interpreting the internal and external context of the book.

This is great in theory, but the theory would clash rather badly with reality if that reality were a black student in the classroom. There aren’t many here, hardly any in fact, and the word doesn’t have the same cultural implications, but in the English-speaking world, to try to explain that an expression that  a black student has been told all his life means that someone hates you, and that he may well have experienced as such on a number of occasions, that he'll just have to lump it because that's what Twain wrote, is not quite so easy as it sounds.

I imagine it could be handled by asking the students what they think, negotiating among several options. Treating students as responsible, mature people is a good way of helping them to act like it, and to become like it. It would depend on the nature of the class. It's easy for a teacher to conclude that it's not worth the trouble, there are plenty of good books to read. I understand that position, but it can very instructive to work out a way of introducing difficult stuff in the classroom. It invariably means communicating with individuals, which is why it's rewarding for everyone, and why making some blanket policy, or talking in vacuo, doesn't work.

As a result of these idle ponderings I am about to read the book again. My thoughts may appear here in a few days.

Steinbeck on Teaching

"On Teaching" by John Steinbeck

      It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull school is. The learning by memory all the basic things one must know is the most incredible and unending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that watch an illiterate adult try to do it. School is not so easy and it is not for the most part very fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of luck. I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

      My three had these things in common. They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell - the catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and precious.

Teaching, good teaching that is, is indeed an art, both a creative art and a performing art. It is one of the situations in life which turns human interaction into an art form. The teacher needs to attract and hold the attention of the student, provide, at all times, an answer to the question, 'Why am I sitting here listening to this bloke?' You have to be worth listening to. And you have to find ways to communicate something difficult to understand to someone who has no particular reason to want to understand it. If you can't do that you shouldn't be teaching.

The reality of good teaching that Steinbeck remembers is a long way from 'sit down, shut up, study chapter 5, the exam's on Friday, don't look at me, teach yourself or there'll be trouble' which is the idea a lot of teachers have, and a lot of children, as they've never known anything else.

If the teacher doesn't know why the children should learn what he's teaching them, they won't learn it. Learning should be cooperation, not attrition, not conflict, not the ticking of boxes, not getting through the day. Give me children who want to learn, who are keen and sharp and have enthusiasm for life, the present and the future, who understand the importance of learning not in a dry, theoretical sense, nor a profound, mature, analytic way, but in an immediate, unreflecting, this-clearly-matters-now kind of way. Where to find such children? Give me good teachers, and I'll make them for you.

Under Western Eyes

My summer reading continues. I have just crossed Joseph conrad's 'Under Western Eyes' off my list.

A curious work- very unusual in its narrative structure, but it is handled with mastery- which tells the story of a student in Czarist Russia who is caught up against his will in a violent conspiracy, tries and fails to extricate himself, becomes an exile, and is forced to assume, and finally reject, his role in the movement. It is told through the memoirs of Razumov, the young man, but indirectly, through a series of multi-layered narrators, and it is always, ultimately, Western eyes that try to see and understand circumstances, motivations and actions which, we are repeatedly told, only a Russian can understand.

It inevitably reminds you of Dostoievski, as the story of a man caught up in events beyond his control, partially digested by a system which had no interest in him, but had picked him up like a grain of sand in a clam and had to find the right way of spitting him out. Or perhaps he was more like a fly which you have accidentally let into your bedroom. It makes no difference to you if it flies out of the window before you can swat it, as long as it ceases to annoy you. Or again, like a leaf caught in the gears of a printing press, some way must be found of working  it through, by pulling, scraping, pushing, charring, releasing, different levers and parts, until it can no longer damage the working of the machine or the quality of the product. Or … insert metaphor of choice here…

But, though he has some luck, and makes mistakes at the beginning, he does try to take control of his new situation from the very start. And he is quite successful, shrewdly manipulating everyone to his advantage, which at first is merely to avoid association with the event, then to stay alive, but later to exploit those who have come to believe in him. It would perhaps be wrong to describe him as cynical. He is a man of limited and weakly-held morality, interested mainly in his studies and some personal idea of his own well-being. He is forced to become something he has no wish to be and he finds that to do that he must in fact become something else again, until in the end he effectively chooses to give in to the fate that he has come to believe he cannot escape.

Having said roughly the same thing in three different ways, I think it’s time to stop. I enjoyed it. You probably will, too.

The Land of the Blessed Virgin

While I was reading 'Of Human Bondage', I also had a look at Somerset Maugham's 'The Land of the Blessed Virgin'

I wondered how the discerning observer and fine stylist would have seen the southern Spain of a hundred years ago. I was a little disappointed, as it is very much the opinions of a man who stayed outside everything around him.

It is very well observed in places, but there are too many statements glorifying, exaggerating the exotic which he thinks he has seen or should have seen. Generalized descriptions that cannot possibly be true.  I suspect he has not seen much of what he claims to have seen, and much of what he has he has not understood. A lot of the time he seems to be quoting guidebooks, adding literary embellishment of his own, sometimes good, often not. He has clearly had almost no contact with real people, he has not got to know anyone, except one woman, Rosarito, who I strongly suspect was not real anyway. Everyone else is described in the ignorant terms of the armchair anthropologist,.

He generalizes from a lazy interpretation of a single instance.  He has little curiosity about people, he is more concerned with finding a pretty phrase or a making an extreme pronouncement. Even the individuals he is forced into direct contact with, a doctor, a bullfighter, a watchman, etc, are described in terms of how he expects them to be, rather than how he has found them to be. On the other hand, some things he does describe well and in considerable detail, as though he had paid real attention. The Cathedral, the bullfight, the rain on the fields. It's not a book that will tell you anything much about the Spain of 100 years ago. At least, it won't tell you what you thought it was going to tell you. It will tell you how one man experienced a journey through Spain at that time. As such, it is a story well told, just not at all the one I was expecting.

La Familia de Pascual Duarte

Camilo José Cela won a Nobel Prize back in the 80's, and was awarded a Marquesate some time later by the King. He is known in Spain for these things and for swearing a lot. It's some years since he pronounced his last swearword, having gone to sit at the great writing desk in the sky, doubtless in front of a window through which can be seen far more interesting things than the ones he's now trying to write about (Perhaps that's just me, and might explain why his success was rather greater than mine. I wrote about 'La Colmena' a couple of years ago, I think, but the holotype, as it were, of his work, is generally considered to be 'La Familia de Pascual Duarte', which I had never quite got round to reading.

It was written in the early 1940's, and set during the preceding decades, as it describes most of the life of the title character. It sets the scene at such length, and is at first so pleased with the conceit of its own narrative framework, that you begin to wonder if there is any story to be told at all. But there is, it develops rhythm and power, and it gains a sense of its own surroundings, almost accidentally in the end, having tried so hard to do it deliberately, which makes it matter. It is not clear why Duarte does, or does not do, the central acts of the story. It is never explained why he didn't kill his sister's lover, why his brother died as he did, how his wife died, why he left his home and his wife, why his sister became a tart, why he killed his mother… His story is a series of  disconnected and unexplained actions.

The story is told, effectively, in his own words, supposedly in a manuscript found by the prison governor. he explains little, he only states, describes, sometimes justifies, often omits. He seems to care for nothing; fair enough. The family is not the story, the house is not the story, although that might have been the original idea. It is a combination of all these things, a mood created by them collectively, that is the story, and what makes the book worth reading.

Of Human Bondage

Attentive readers will have noticed that Mrs Hickory and I have been in Sweden, enjoying it with all the open-mouthed wonder of a farmboy taking his cabbages to the local market town for the first time. Which is how I think most things in life should be lived, even though I am prone to forget this and give in to world-weary cynicism at the first opportunity. Anyhow, we are now on the farm, and have been for a while, so now it is summer things: books I am reading, places I am walking through, curious things that happen, stray thoughts that strike me as I wander through this now familiar land

 I have just read Somerset Maugham's 'Of Human Bondage'. Many sources seem to consider it his masterpiece I really can't agree. It is in not a masterpiece, and Maugham himself has written better books. 'The Moon and Sixpence' is much better, in the literary sense, and a better read, and some of his short stories are innovative and compelling, which this isn't. It seems a bit unpolished to me. There are good and interesting characters, some well-painted scenes, some sections are genuinely captivating, but the whole doesn't work. The beginning, the childhood and school, is dull and might well have been left out. It would have some purpose if it created the character of Philip from the details that he experiences, but it doesn't do that. When we need to learn something about his character the narrator simply tells us what he is like. The end is predictable in part; it is obvious he is being set up for settling down with a specific girl, and obvious he is going to get on with the crusty old doctor. I wonder if it for moral reasons that the narrator doesn't let Philip travel as he wished once he is qualified. It seems strange in Maugham to care about that, but I don't see any other reason, unless he was just tired of the whole thing and wanted to finish it.

I wish we had been able to follow Paul's travels in Spain and the East before he was sacrificed to the demands of normality and maturity. But it is Maugham's book, not mine, and he conceived it that way. The central relationship is very powerfully created and the tension is maintained throughout. I repeatedly experienced an empty feeling in my stomach when I feared he was going to fall for Mildred once again. That is a sign of good storytelling, when it has you shouting at the character not to be a bloody fool.

The Beautiful Mechanics of the Body

The Architecture of the Femur.—Koch , by mathematical analysis has “shown that in every part of the femur there is a remarkable adaptation of the inner structure of the bone to the machanical requirements due to the load on the femur-head. The various parts of the femur taken together form a single mechanical structure wonderfully well-adapted for the efficient, economical transmission of the loads from the acetabulum to the tibia; a structure in which every element contributes its modicum of strength in the manner required by theoretical mechanics for maximum efficiency.” “The internal structure is everywhere so formed as to provide in an efficient manner for all the internal stresses which occur due to the load on the femur-head. Throughout the femur, with the load on the femur-head, the bony material is arranged in the paths of the maximum internal stresses, which are thereby resisted with the greatest efficiency, and hence with maximum economy of material.” “The conclusion is inevitable that the inner structure and outer form of the femur are governed by the conditions of maximum stress to which the bone is subjected normally by the preponderant load on the femur-head; that is, by the body weight transmitted to the femur-head through the acetabulum.” “The femur obeys the mechanical laws that govern other elastic bodies under stress; the relation between the computed internal stresses due to the load on the femur-head, and the internal structure of the different portions of the femur is in very close agreement with the theoretical relations that should exist between stress and structure for maximum economy and efficiency; and, therefore, it is believed that the following laws of bone structure have been demonstrated for the femur:	17
“1. The inner structure and external form of human bone are closely adapted to the mechanical conditions existing at every point in the bone.	18
“2. The inner architecture of normal bone is determined by definite and exact requirements of mathematical and mechanical laws to produce a maximum of strength with a minimum of material.”

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

This book I had only heard about, never read:

It's worth reading, and it is worth reading in the end. It's largely predictable, but then I think it's meant to be. Gordon Comstock can only ever be a failure, even, especially, on his own terms. He runs from the comfortable, satisfactory, though sometimes difficult and dull life of the hard-working family man, and takes refuge in a romantic image of himself which which probably can't exist, and which he, certainly, is quite incapable of living up to. He completely fails to realize that what he is running from is not imposed on anyone. It is what the people who have it want. Not all of them succeed, but those who do are happy. He has chosen not to have it, even though it is the route to everything he wants, including money, which he is far more obsessed with even than the people he pretends to despise, and he cannot have the girl he wants until he becomes like them.

He, not them, is the victim of the money-god. He is the one who measures everyone and everything in terms of money. He is a silly, infantile creature who expects the world to take him seriously because he has chosen to ignore it, to look down on it. He knows he is not what he claims to be but expects other people to believe it and to value it in a way that he himself cannot.

It is not surprising that he ends up a normal working man, nor the mechanism chosen by Orwell to achieve it. He begins to dimly understand that people choose to live the life he tried to renounce, and they so choose for perfectly good reasons, the same reasons that make him choose that life in the end. He wishes to live a symbolic life, as Ravelston does, but Ravelston can afford to live such a life and Gordon can't.

I was surprised he threw away the great poem, some of which wasn't bad, rather than keeping it locked in some desk as a memory of another time. And putting an aspidistra in his window shows a sense of humour and self-awareness that he has never appeared to have before.

Down and Out in Paris and London

I had never really read this book, only sections of it quoted at length in other works. These are the notes I made during and after reading, slightly edited (the purpose of this series of posts is to give someone who only know 1984 and Animal Farm a reason to read his other works, which are, despite their deficiencies, much more human in the sense that you learn much about Orwell the man, more than he realized, I imagine, and also a sense of what they might find):

It is much better than The Road to Wigan Pier, much livelier, more characterful, more a collection of good stories than a tedious political tract as that is. I shall read it to the end, it is certainly worth it, but it suffers from the same problems as his other autobiographical works- a lack of self-awareness and of genuine insight.

He is not working class and he never could be. He works hard at the restaurants in Paris, very hard indeed when he can get a job, and he suffers hardship when he can't. But it's all a game to Orwell. It's a bit of fun to placate his existential boredom and his bourgeois guilt. At the very most it's a kind of research. When he decides he can take no more he writes to England and asks someone to find him a comfortable job as a private secretary to someone or other. And that's it. He's bored with the game and goes back to his real life. Just like in Spain when after a few months he's had enough of the war and just goes back to England and gets on with his life.

He deals almost entirely with people like himself, broken-down foreign bourgoisie. He never chooses the company of the French working class, who he is so despetately trying to pretend he is like and understands better than anyone else. He either sneers at them- the landlords trying to make ends meet, the cooks and waiters at the restaurant making a living, taking pride in doing their job well, are enemies in the parochial little world he doesn't realize he's retreated into- or he charicatures them through the people and behaviours he describes seeing in the bars.

I was reminded by a scene he describes in a bar on a Saturday, where a brief moment of timeless joy and power gives way to the inevitable maudlin drunkenness and hangover. He says it was probably worth it. It reminded me of a black character in Faulkner's 'The Rievers', who says, 'If you could only be a nigger one Saturday night, you wouldn't want to be a white man again as long as you live.'

He is particularly blind when wondering what the life of a plongeur is for. He compares it disfavourably with the work of a miner, whose product is needed by other people. He doesn't seem to realize that if restaurants weren't wanted they wouldn't exist (unlike coal which was mined for political reasons at public expense for decades after it had ceased to be wanted in any quantity. I wonder if Orwell would have agreed with that business, or if he would acknowledged it was happening). 

People like to eat well without having to cook or clean, when they can afford to do so. Working men need to earn a living. Competent businessmen, restaurateurs- and anyone who wants to take a chance can be one, after all- satisfy both of those needs at once, while benefitting themselves at the same time. It is silly to ask for what purpose a plongeur works 15 hours a day. The purpose is the same for which any man works, to fill his belly. It is even sillier to claim, as he does, that there is some kind of conspiracy of the wealthy to keep the poor toiling senselessly, for fear they might otherwise want to share in their wealth.

It's a good read, illuminating on many aspects of poverty that most of us have probably never known or even thought about.

Homage to Catalonia

I recently re-read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, inspired by exhanges with Brett Hetherington in comments at his place and mine. These are the quick notes I made when about halfway through:

 He freely admits that when he went to Spain he had no idea what he was fighting for, and was quite ignorant of the politics. He seems to have gone to the Republican side because the British press suggested they were in the right. He was just sucked in by baseless propaganda, peer pressure and the thrill of war.

He says that journalists did nothing but scream hatred from the comfort of their offices, and he hoped one day to see a 'jingo' with a bullet hole in him. He says the Communists tried to destroy the incipient 'workers' revolution', which he thinks was taking place, rather than just a reaction against the uprising. He clearly says that the Communists hated the Anarchists more than they did the Nationalists and were responsible for a lot of repression and death on the Republican side. It was pure People's Front of Judaea out there and I don't really understand why he stayed. He seems to have had, despite his professed ignorance and the treacherous, almost comically ridiculous circumstances in which the Republican position was being defended, an unshakeable conviction that he was on the right side, and that it was worth his while to fight with them. It seem to be based on nothing more than the belief that the far left is always the right side to be on.

And these are more considered and structured remarks written when I had finished reading:

Orwell's tale of his experiences in the trenches and in Barcelona in the first year of the Civil War are very instructive, about him and about the war. He clearly wanted the glamour of being killed or badly wounded. He was there as a kind of war tourist, satisfying his ego and justifying his beliefs by jumping into something he didn't understand and didn't care to.

He speaks of his fellow English and American mercenaries as though they were the most important people there, whereas they were just having their fun and would go home when they were tired of it. He speaks of the bourgeois hiding among the workers, pretending to be one of them, which is exactly what he was doing himself.

The fighting between the factions of the left is quite farcical. When it breaks out, however, Orwell stays with his group of anarchists and is fighting against the government. This reveals as false the original justification of fighting for the legitimate government against the uprisen. He is fighting fo his own, rather confused, political philosophy, which seems to involve control of everything by the working class. Whether this means anything at all in a practical sense is not clear. And the question of whether it could possibly work is another matter. He does at least have a fairly clear and consistent aim, revolution followed by rule by the working class. He contrasts this with capitalism, by which he appears to mean private ownership of the means of production (and implicitly, although the point is usually ignored, private organization of work and distribution).

He predicts that whoever wins there will be a dictatorship, but prefers a Communist dictatorship to Franco. He says that the Communist dictatorship would abolish serfdom, distribute the land among the peasants, and would create good communications, public health services and update the infrastructures that the country needed. If he had lived to see Franco do all of that (except steal other people's property, of course), he would have been astonished. If the Communists had won, I think we can be sure that they would have done hardly a fraction of it.I reread

A Reaction to Ayn Rand

Does the world need another amateurish review of Atlas Shrugged? Why try to write a review of a book that has already been examined from every possible political, literature, personal and critical perspective? Why write about a book that is of no interest to anyone who hasn’t already heard about it? Er, because I'm a blogger with nothing better to do just now. Not a good reason, I know, but it'll have to do.

Anyone who hangs around libertarian blogs hears references to John Galt, Ayn Rand, and the book. There comes a point where you think you might as well read it, rather than take your opinion of it from anyone who happens to comment on someone else’s blogpost.

Firstly, it is a very long and boring book. Very long indeed, and extremely dull much of the time. There is no real story, everything, every character, every conversation, every event, is driven by the need to make a particular statement, or to allow something to happen. As literature it is pretty much worthless. I don’t think it ever aspired to literature.*

It does, however, articulate its ideas very well. It is a refreshing, uplifting, dynamic read, reminding you constantly of how those with small minds and hearts drag down those who might contribute, albeit by chance, to the greater benefit of mankind.

The great problem of life is always other people. The leeches and moochers of Atlas Shrugged are a caricature, but they represent deeply influential currents of belief in most developed countries today. It is hard for many to understand that ‘sharing the wealth’, ‘sharing the jobs’, however good and just this sounds, requires that someone create the resources we are all going to share. If those who are capable of doing it don’t get the biggest share, or at least, if they are given no hope of getting a significant share, they simply won’t do it. And there is nothing to share out, fairly or otherwise. Wealth does not grow on trees and when the usual people stop its creation they look around desperately, wondering where it’s gone. The answer is that it was never there. They refused to let it exist, and they can’t make it themselves.

I say it is refreshing and uplifting even though it offers no solution to the problem. The book’s response to the situation is so fantastic as to be inconceivable. It wouldn’t work, even if it were put into practice. After all, in those countries where creators of wealth are not allowed to exist, they are still blamed for the resulting poverty. Even so improbable a strike as Ayn Rand describes would not change the minds of those who don’t want to see. In the current economic crisis, governments, with the help of the press, have successfully sold the myth that there isn’t any money because the banks have taken it all.

No, the book is refreshing and uplifting because it repeats, relentlessly and unapologetically, the message that some people create wealth, while others only consume it. The creators of wealth do not have to exist. In a sufficiently large and free society they will probably exist if they are allowed to. But it is a matter of chance.

*Years ago I read ‘We, the Living’. I read it as a novel, a literary novel, before I knew that Ayn Rand had any greater significance to some people than that of a writer who had lived the hell that was Stalinist Russia and could articulate the horror dramatically and poetically. I remember it as a novel that was good on its own terms, a story well told, regardless of the background which was, I now realize, the main reason for writing it.

I have also just read ‘The Anthem’, which has a political and philosophical message. The book is mostly that message, but it is told through a story, a genuine literary creation. It’s short, and worth reading for what it is.

Niche Narratives

Rereading some short stories by O Henry, I was struck, as I often am, by the desire to have written some of them myself. If I could excise him from history, hide the tales from the world for long enough for them to be forgotten, then produce them as my own, I think I would do it. Or possibly not. His style is not mine, his life was not mine, his characters can never be mine, but many of the ideas behind the stories are universal, at least, they are once they’ve been thought of.

Last night I read ‘The Last Leaf’. I am certain I remember the story from another setting, involving a couple of Frenchmen. I don’t know which is the original, or perhaps it comes from some folk tale, or a source older than writing itself, and O Henry and others have taken it and given it a new world and new flesh to live in. His story may be overdramatised, and I would have given it a different title, but the composition is perfectly balanced, and the whole thing is gathered together by its own coherence.

It made me think about other unusual idea which have been repeated (or copied) in writing and in song. I have a little list (now that line rings a bell, too, for some reason) of particularly striking cases:

I’ve always thought that Thomas Hardy pinched the entire plot of The Mayor of Casterbridge from Les Miserables. The story of a man reacting against his own weakness and stupidity, trying to make up for them, rising to achieve great things, and finally losing the daughter who was his main inspiration is common enough, but there are too many similar details for it to be purely chance. I would have to read them both again to explain it more fully, but I am sure there is some influence.

Lope de Vega once wrote a sonnet which is a description of the process of writing itself. (It’s called Soneto de Repente, if anyone wants to look it up). And Leonard Cohen wrote a song called Hallelujah, a rather splendid song if you like that sort of thing, the first verse of which describes its own musical theme (It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift) very cleverly.

Another O Henry story is ‘The Tainted Tenner’, narrated by a ten-dollar bill. The Guy Clarke song, ‘Indian-Head Penny’, is not narrated by the coin, but it tells a similar story of its birth and adventures, and all the places it ends up and the jobs it has to do.

Country music has many niche narratives. Although every second country song ever written is about some guy getting drunk over some girl, among the songs which find other aspects of life there are some unusual themes. Girl who turns to prostitution out of despair is common enough (Townes van Zandt’s ‘Tecumseh Valley’ is one of the best). But there are a couple of songs which refine it further, as ‘mama was a whore because she had to be but she was always good to me.’ ‘Hickory Hollow Tramp’ and ‘Lily of the Alley’ aren’t great songs, but they take a very specific and unusual theme and do something with it.

There is even room for a, very small, ‘Jesus Christ on the highway’ genre. I forget the name of the song in which a truck driver meets Jesus out jogging on the road. He explains that Heaven isn’t a good place for running so He comes down to Earth to do His jogging. And there is the brilliant, and very funny, Terry Allen song ‘Gimme a Ride to Heaven,’ which is worth 5 minutes of anyone’s time.

This has been a series of random thoughts. Indulge me. In a couple of days I must return to the city, where I shall have to think, get up in the morning, organize my mind and my life, and pretend that what I do has a serious purpose. The riffing on odd things seen in the mountains will have to end. But today I can still think random thoughts.

*The photos are of the salt works I wrote about last week. I couldn't upload them then.

La Mala Hora

More Gabriel García Márquez for your delight. La Mala Hora. In a coastal town- in Colombia, we assume- someone is putting up signs on the walls of houses, causing a murder which opens the book. The mayor has had an agonizing toothache for several days but can’t go to the dentist because he is a political enemy who refused to leave town when told it was in his best interests to do so, and fills teeth with a gun on his tray.

The new judge has only just started work months after taking up office, and the mayor doesn’t trust him. The parish priest is interested in the souls of his parishioners almost to the exclusion of politics. No one knows who is putting up the posters but they become an excuse for the mayor to return to his previous tyrannical ways, a curfew is declared under threat of death, the thugs hired as policemen, for a while confined to barracks, are let loose on the streets, innocents are arrested because someone has to be, conspiracies abound. There is little justice, little law and little religion.

There are few diversions. The priest rings a bell to tell the people when the film starting at the cinema is immoral, and notes the names of those who go in anyway. The circus comes to town just as the curfew is declared, and the mayor is inflexible, even after bartering with the virtue of the fortune-teller. Sex, beer and political hatred are the only real entertainments, and those who have the thick hide and the strong stomach indulge them freely.

The mayor has tried, we are told, to be a little more relaxed about things, but the people are obstinately unwilling to be dictated to unless threatened with death, and even then they are not all as compliant as they might be. So the people are enslaved, impoverished and murdered in the name of the people, a rhetorical trick that bloodstained tyrants have been pulling off throughout the 20^th C, and GGM’s good friend Fidel has provided him with a fine example of how these things are done.

This is the purist realism, no magic here. You can feel the heat and taste the dust, and the beer it’s washed away with. You stand beside the characters as they speak and act, you are cowed by their fear, shocked and inflamed by their hatred, and inspired by their courage.

You finish the book with the sense of having lived through it, and you close it, guilty that you must abandon them to the arbitrary whims of the brutal mayor.

Life in Cantabria c.1880

Escenas Montañesas is a series of vignettes by José María de Pereda about life, particularly some of the dying customs, in Santander and the mountain villages, in his time. I imagine the speech is authentic, although it sounds like nothing I heard. It is probably dead now. And the characters are mostly meant to be real. Dramatised perhaps, but people he really met and situations he really lived. They are irregular, a couple are dull, but most are very good. You feel as though you were there, you take sides, you feel along with them their sufferings, happinesses and motivations, they are real people living real lives, and they are fun to read about.

Pereda was a Cantabrian who wrote in the second half of the 19thC. He belongs to the tradition of ‘costumbristas’, writing novels and stories about the people and places that were part of the life of the area they knew, linking realism and romanticism Many works of Emilia Pardo Bazán and Blasco Ibañez, and some periods of Pérez Galdós, are similarly inspired.

The longest story is not set in Santander, but between a farm in the mountain, and Madrid. It’s a version of the town mouse and the country mouse but with at least three other, equally important, narratives woven into it and an immense amount of humour and detail.

Another tale, of a very different feel, is told in several parts over the course of the book. It describes the world of the Cabildo, the Fishermen’s Guild, two of which operated in Santander until the end of the 19^th C, constantly fighting, and the centre of life and the world for the people who lived from the sea. Pereda tells of the sudden end of these Guilds, through his own eyes, via a series of connected incidents in the lives of men and women who were clearly real, and known to the author, as they struggle with their daily problems, winning and losing, surviving, or sometimes not.

The stories end with the closure of the Guilds and the death of the most iconic character on the docks. Pereda claims to have been present, and he clearly felt very deeply the loss of this man.*

Despite all this, Pereda was not one of them, except as an observer. He lived a comfortable life in a four-storey stone house on the fashionable port front**, and watched all of this from his windows. He never had to put to sea in a tiny fishing boat, or worry about hoe to feed his children, or what to do when his boots finally fell to pieces, or how to defend his trade from the other Guild, and the town council. Nevertheless, he understood the lives of the people who did live that way, and had great affection for them.

*For a longer dramatized telling of life in the Cabildos, I recommend his novel ‘Sotileza’.

**His family still lives in that house. I was friendly with his great-great-nephew and visited it regularly at one time.

El Otoño del Patriarca

El Otoño del Patriarca is one of those novels of Gabriel García Márquez in which time is moved around and stretched in any way that fits the narrative. It’s a form of Magic Realism often used by South American writers of a certain type or period, but he does it in his own way.

García Márquez is a storyteller of genius, there are very few who can touch him. Often when I read a novel I stop after a few chapters because I think, ‘What’s the point of reading this book when I could have written a better one myself?’ (My attempt to prove myself right on this point should be in the Amazon store by the autumn, by the way, very modestly priced.) But when I read GGM I wonder why I even bother trying.

The patriarch of the title is a decaying dictator, bloodthirsty and ruthless, but we don't learn how he gained power and he has little idea what to do with it. It doesn’t seem to matter very much. He is the leader because someone has to be. At times his main interest in power is the fact that he can do what he wants without having to explain himself to anyone. The country is a mess because he's more interested in his routine than in any of the trappings of power, or in power itself. He has been the tyrant for decades, they celebrate his hundred years of power a couple of times. He has a shack full of concubines and their children, none of whom he cares in the least about, and the palace is full of valuable objects being spoiled by chickens.

The banality of his life and the pointlessness of the power he wields go round and round in time and the characters and the situations come up again and again and nothing is explained. There are many narrators who are never properly identified and often switch in mid-sentence for no apparent reason. Some of the sentences are many pages long without being especially forced. It's good stuff, although any point it had was made long before the middle and the narrative purpose could have gone on forever. It's a strange kind of allegory for a friend of Fidel.

The ‘palace’ is mostly abandoned because he cares nothing for comfort or luxury, even the comfort of the eye. The only woman he ever loved is long gone, his mother lived and died in poverty because she never understood that she owned half the country, and his only friend was an actor, discovered by chance, who was his exact double, and who took his place when he wanted to be somewhere else, or was afraid of assassination, or just bored by his duties, and thus a legend of ubiquity arises around him. The double becomes his confidante because they are, to most people, the same person. They share the same life exactly, as they must, they run the same risks, they become identical in every aspect of their appearance, speech, gestures and character.

The double is also long dead and when he died the army and the people thought the tyrant was dead and most of them celebrated. The tyrant watched and waited, then rounded up and tortured to death many of those who had cheered, and rewarded opulently those he had seen genuinely mourning him.

The book doesn’t end, any more than it begins. It’s GGM doing what he does very well.