I've been thinking a lot lately about "In the Ravine," one of Chekhov's later stories (1900). Like all of Chekhov's writing, it is deceptively simple. Any amount of scratching below the surface leads one to discover that the layers of complexity go deep.
In other stories and plays, The Steppe (1888), "At Home" (1897), Uncle Vanya (1899), among many others, Chekhov's characters blame fate for the conditions of their lives and complain bitterly about it (Russian fatalism frustrated Chekhov immensely), but are incapable of doing anything to make themselves happier. But in "In the Ravine," no one complains. Everyone is resigned to his or her lot in life. Lipa, the central female character, even hopes that her son will grow up to do day labor with her. She actually fantasizes about her son becoming a strong man and the two of them working side by side in the fields (someone else's fields, of course). She's not only resigned to her own fate, she's resigned to her baby's fate as well. And yet, there's more to this sweet but pathetic daydream than Lipa's obvious lack of ambition for both herself and her son. If she can go back to day labor and take baby Nikifor with her, it means that they both have escaped the darkness of the Tsybukin family, the darkness (most critics call it evil) in a household where she lives much more comfortably than ever before but where she is constantly frightened.
Question: Was this a mellowing on Chekhov's part? His characters aren't complaining instead of acting, so Chekhov is not berating them for being pathetically fatalistic Russians. He doesn't criticize them, but he shows them as resigned. Which was worse to Chekhov, a whiny Russian fatalist or a resigned Russian fatalist?
To be continued...
July 7, 2008
February 8, 2008
"Brooding is the mother of ineffectiveness": The search for wit and atmosphere in international crime fiction
I feel compelled to comment on Clive James' article in an issue of The New Yorker from last April ("Blood on the Borders," April 9, 2007 - obviously, I'm behind on my reading...), about international crime novels.
Mysteries and police procedurals, especially those that take place in foreign lands, have recently become my favorite genre fiction, so I was excited to find James' article. I've read at least the first book in most of the series that he discusses, and I agree with him that one of best aspects of these entertaining but, for the most part, less-than-challenging novels is the atmosphere that the authors are skilled at creating. The mysteries themselves rarely if ever excite me. Great characterization drives my favorites. What's disappointing about James' article is that the author ignored, missed, forgot about or for some other reason excluded from his discussion some of the best writers and characters in the genre, while heaping too much praise on some that don't really deserve it.
I'll start with Ian Rankin. James likes Rankin's very hard-drinking ("Rebus...looks and sounds like a man who has slept under a horse...") and "maverick" Edinburgh cop John Rebus and the dark, creepy squalor of the city that he works in. I read the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, and then quit the series in frustration. In this first book (it has been a very long while since I read it), Rankin establishes Rebus as a less-then-well-adjusted former member of the British Special Forces (or similar military unit) and current police detective in the early stages of alcoholism. On at least once occasion, Rebus shop-lifts his breakfast buns from the neighborhood grocer. And if I remember correctly, the wife he still loves is divorcing him. These aspects of the character were all well and good. What I found intolerable was Rebus' penchant for, of all things, reading the Bible. No. I like my anti-heroes rather more hard-boiled, full of faults and regrets and maybe just enough self-awareness (and a desire to be happier) to make them willing to seek out the advice of a good therapist, at least until they realize that it was a stupid idea, but not searching for redemption for their "sins," or even comfort from a "higher power." Yuck.
I love Scotland, and because I'm intrigued by the dark and sleazy nooks and crannies of Edinburgh that Rankin writes about, I want to return to this series. I hope to find that the author realized the dopiness of having his troubled hero seek solace in religion, and that Rebus has given up the Bible while continuing to hit the bottle.
James gives only a very brief mention of Martin Beck, the Swedish Police Inspector created in the 1960s by Maj Sjowall and her husband, Per Wahloo. I've read Roseanna (translated from the Swedish by Lois Roth), the first in the series, and more than the atmosphere of Stockholm and its gray and white environs in winter, it's definitely the characterization that makes it a fine book. Beck himself is a brilliant, dogged investigator on the job, and a frustrated, unhappy man at home, married to a woman who bores him nearly to death. He probably lives too much in his own head. And there's Kollberg, Beck's police underling, friend and polar opposite in personality - "fat...and jovial and non-chalant." Kollberg's also very witty, the speaker of the quote in the title to this posting (he tells Beck that thinking too much is a waste of time). The mystery involves the murder of a sexually active young American woman traveling through Scandinavia alone. The police interviewers have to ask their suspects candid questions about the sexual activities they engaged in with the victim, and frankly, the dialogue from 1965 is so dated that it's humorous. But this flaw doesn't detract from the book's quality. I look forward to the rest of the series.
James' high praise for Andrea Camilleri and his Commissario Salvo Montalbano ("A typical Montalbano novel, and one that I recommend heartily...is the impeccably grimy The Shape of Water.") in Vigata, Sicily, is well placed (The Shape of Water and The Terra-Cotta Dog, both translated by Stephen Sartarelli, are the first two books in the series). Montalbano is one of my crime-fiction favorites, and I'm lucky to have a non-PBS-connected public television station in my area that imports great mystery series from around the world, including Montalbano from Italy. Vigata itself is fictional but the series is filmed in Sicily and the place is almost indescribably beautiful - washed by the sun and sea air, with old, high-ceilinged palazzos and bright gardens. Italian actor Luca Zingaretti plays the Commissario to perfection. He exudes the self-confidence of Camilleri's character, is honest, smart, funny, emotional and sexy. Sadly, the series is not available on dvd, at least not in Region I. Maybe when all the novels have finally been translated into English, the series will come to us on dvd as well.
James also gives very high praise to Donna Leon ("Hers is an unusually potent cocktail of atmosphere and event."), whose second Commissario Brunetti book, Death in a Strange Country, I found most disappointing. The setting is Venice, the city of my dreams. And yet, in this second book at least, Leon doesn't so much describe the city as list its neighborhoods and landmarks. Brunetti has a fondness for walking to clear his head, and I could follow him on a map, but this really isn't atmosphere. Interesting historical details do crop up periodically, like the fact that the words "Non Nobis" or "Not for us," are inscribed on the entrance to the city's casino. They date from the days of the Republic and are meant to admonish Venetians to stay away from the temptations of the casino, that only "foreigners were to be fleeced. Venetians were to invest their money wisely and not squander it on dice and gaming."
I've realized too that Brunetti himself is rather dull. He has no eccentricities to speak of. I think Leon means him to be witty, but he isn't, certainly not when compared to the likes Kollberg and Montalbano. The book's secondary characters are not very interesting either. His aristocratic wife Paola, though she teaches English literature at the local university, always appears as nothing more than his caretaker and companion. Brunetti's police colleagues are little more than two-dimensional. His boss, Patta, some sort of supervisor (Vice-Questore) in the department who's risen to his own level of incompetence and cares way too much about impressing the members of Venetian elite, is no match for Brunetti and is obviously very insecure about it. The battle of wills between the two is no fun because Brunetti is so much smarter than the other man.
Leon's writing leaves something to be desired as well. She has a habit of making choppy transitions with detailed descriptions of the inconsequential actions of her characters as they happen:
"He opened the magazine and began to read."
"The American crossed his feet at the ankles and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He held the pack towards the Italians, but both shook their heads. He lit a cigarette with a lighter, careful to cup it between both hands from the nonexistent breeze, then slipped both packet and lighter back into his pocket."
And I almost threw the book at the wall when I read this:
"He lifted his foot and prodded at the can with his foot."
James claims that the fourth book in the series, Acqua Alta, is a favorite among fans. I hope I have something to look forward to.
As for what James failed to mention, I can't understand how he could talk about international crime fiction and not talk about Paco Ignacio Taibo, II and his private dick in Mexico City, Hector Belascoran Shayne. It's been way too long since I read the first novel in the series, An Easy Thing (translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman), but I remember Hector fondly as an honest, frustrated idealist, much younger in years than his advanced cynicism would let on. He's also a chain smoker who guzzles soda pop, a reader of literature and a profane smart ass with an advanced degree in engineering from an American university who gave up a cushy job and the bourgeois lifestyle that went with it. Now he prowls the streets of his beloved, exasperating Mexico City on investigations or just because he's awake.
In this first book, he agrees to investigate three mysteries, including the "real" whereabouts of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, all at once. He realizes what a mistake he's made as he has less and less time to engage in the necessary activities of life, like sleeping and eating. He gets shot in the leg and the head, but instead of dying, ends up losing a eye. In a subsequent book, he does die, only to have Taibo enigmatically bring him back to life in the next book. Taibo is an unabashed leftist and probably the best writer that I've discussed in this post.
And now, for my sentimental favorite, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, creation of prolific but under-appreciated American writer Stuart Kaminsky, a police inspector and latent dissident in Soviet Moscow. Kaminsky must have based his character to some degree on Vassily Alekseyev, the great Soviet weight lifter who wiped out the competition in the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. Back then, Alekseyev was less than tall, had lots of bushy black hair, mutton-chop whiskers and what looked like a huge beer gut, but no one came close to beating him for the Gold Medal in the heavy-weight division. Rostnikov is so odd looking that people call him "the Washtub," a nickname that would not have been inappropriate for the Alekseyev of the 1970s. He's also permanently disabled by the bullet wound to his left leg that he sustained while making a hero of himself near Rostov during World War II. Like Alekseyev, he loves to lift weights, and has won his division in the city's amateur competition for men over fifty. Despite his disability and looks, he's completely at ease with himself and confident in his intelligence and abilities as a police detective.
Kaminsky captures beautifully the locale of Moscow and the Russian personality. In the beginning of the fourth book in the series, A Fine Red Rain, a crowd gathers while Rostnikov tries to talk a drunk down from atop the twenty-foot statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square. True to their Russian-ness, the on-lookers begin to discuss, and argue about, Russian literature as they watch the drunk teetering on Gogol's shoulders.
Kaminsky's secondary characters are intriguing as well, especially Emil Karpo, one of Rostnikov's investigators, a very tall, pale, ascetic known as "the Vampire," a true-believer in the Soviet State and Communist vision for perfecting humankind. He's younger than Rostnikov but almost as talented at his job as his boss, and in his free time, ploddingly investigates every unsolved homicide that's ever occurred in Moscow, determined to solve them all before he dies. Needless to say, he has no family and lives alone. He insists to himself and to all who know him that he has no sense of humor and never succumbs to emotional weakness. Rostnikov tells him he could make a living as a comic.
Like Leon's Brunetti, Rostnikov does not get along with most of his supervisors. They are all apparatchiks in the corrupt municipal system and will ignore a murder when expedient, especially if the KGB shows interest. But they're not nearly as stupid as Leon's Patta, and they have real power to hurt Rostnikov when he gets out of line, which he does. He has a Jewish wife, and tries to bribe one of his bosses by threatening to reveal to the Western press the assissination of a dissident if he and his family are not allowed to emigrate. He gets a demotion instead of travel papers.
It's a real shame that James chose not to include Taibo and Kaminsky in his commentary while giving so much praise and exposure (in The New Yorker, no less) to the inferior Leon. It would be an even greater shame if he, obviously an intelligent fan of international crime fiction, has failed to discover them.
Mysteries and police procedurals, especially those that take place in foreign lands, have recently become my favorite genre fiction, so I was excited to find James' article. I've read at least the first book in most of the series that he discusses, and I agree with him that one of best aspects of these entertaining but, for the most part, less-than-challenging novels is the atmosphere that the authors are skilled at creating. The mysteries themselves rarely if ever excite me. Great characterization drives my favorites. What's disappointing about James' article is that the author ignored, missed, forgot about or for some other reason excluded from his discussion some of the best writers and characters in the genre, while heaping too much praise on some that don't really deserve it.
I'll start with Ian Rankin. James likes Rankin's very hard-drinking ("Rebus...looks and sounds like a man who has slept under a horse...") and "maverick" Edinburgh cop John Rebus and the dark, creepy squalor of the city that he works in. I read the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, and then quit the series in frustration. In this first book (it has been a very long while since I read it), Rankin establishes Rebus as a less-then-well-adjusted former member of the British Special Forces (or similar military unit) and current police detective in the early stages of alcoholism. On at least once occasion, Rebus shop-lifts his breakfast buns from the neighborhood grocer. And if I remember correctly, the wife he still loves is divorcing him. These aspects of the character were all well and good. What I found intolerable was Rebus' penchant for, of all things, reading the Bible. No. I like my anti-heroes rather more hard-boiled, full of faults and regrets and maybe just enough self-awareness (and a desire to be happier) to make them willing to seek out the advice of a good therapist, at least until they realize that it was a stupid idea, but not searching for redemption for their "sins," or even comfort from a "higher power." Yuck.
I love Scotland, and because I'm intrigued by the dark and sleazy nooks and crannies of Edinburgh that Rankin writes about, I want to return to this series. I hope to find that the author realized the dopiness of having his troubled hero seek solace in religion, and that Rebus has given up the Bible while continuing to hit the bottle.
James gives only a very brief mention of Martin Beck, the Swedish Police Inspector created in the 1960s by Maj Sjowall and her husband, Per Wahloo. I've read Roseanna (translated from the Swedish by Lois Roth), the first in the series, and more than the atmosphere of Stockholm and its gray and white environs in winter, it's definitely the characterization that makes it a fine book. Beck himself is a brilliant, dogged investigator on the job, and a frustrated, unhappy man at home, married to a woman who bores him nearly to death. He probably lives too much in his own head. And there's Kollberg, Beck's police underling, friend and polar opposite in personality - "fat...and jovial and non-chalant." Kollberg's also very witty, the speaker of the quote in the title to this posting (he tells Beck that thinking too much is a waste of time). The mystery involves the murder of a sexually active young American woman traveling through Scandinavia alone. The police interviewers have to ask their suspects candid questions about the sexual activities they engaged in with the victim, and frankly, the dialogue from 1965 is so dated that it's humorous. But this flaw doesn't detract from the book's quality. I look forward to the rest of the series.
James' high praise for Andrea Camilleri and his Commissario Salvo Montalbano ("A typical Montalbano novel, and one that I recommend heartily...is the impeccably grimy The Shape of Water.") in Vigata, Sicily, is well placed (The Shape of Water and The Terra-Cotta Dog, both translated by Stephen Sartarelli, are the first two books in the series). Montalbano is one of my crime-fiction favorites, and I'm lucky to have a non-PBS-connected public television station in my area that imports great mystery series from around the world, including Montalbano from Italy. Vigata itself is fictional but the series is filmed in Sicily and the place is almost indescribably beautiful - washed by the sun and sea air, with old, high-ceilinged palazzos and bright gardens. Italian actor Luca Zingaretti plays the Commissario to perfection. He exudes the self-confidence of Camilleri's character, is honest, smart, funny, emotional and sexy. Sadly, the series is not available on dvd, at least not in Region I. Maybe when all the novels have finally been translated into English, the series will come to us on dvd as well.
James also gives very high praise to Donna Leon ("Hers is an unusually potent cocktail of atmosphere and event."), whose second Commissario Brunetti book, Death in a Strange Country, I found most disappointing. The setting is Venice, the city of my dreams. And yet, in this second book at least, Leon doesn't so much describe the city as list its neighborhoods and landmarks. Brunetti has a fondness for walking to clear his head, and I could follow him on a map, but this really isn't atmosphere. Interesting historical details do crop up periodically, like the fact that the words "Non Nobis" or "Not for us," are inscribed on the entrance to the city's casino. They date from the days of the Republic and are meant to admonish Venetians to stay away from the temptations of the casino, that only "foreigners were to be fleeced. Venetians were to invest their money wisely and not squander it on dice and gaming."
I've realized too that Brunetti himself is rather dull. He has no eccentricities to speak of. I think Leon means him to be witty, but he isn't, certainly not when compared to the likes Kollberg and Montalbano. The book's secondary characters are not very interesting either. His aristocratic wife Paola, though she teaches English literature at the local university, always appears as nothing more than his caretaker and companion. Brunetti's police colleagues are little more than two-dimensional. His boss, Patta, some sort of supervisor (Vice-Questore) in the department who's risen to his own level of incompetence and cares way too much about impressing the members of Venetian elite, is no match for Brunetti and is obviously very insecure about it. The battle of wills between the two is no fun because Brunetti is so much smarter than the other man.
Leon's writing leaves something to be desired as well. She has a habit of making choppy transitions with detailed descriptions of the inconsequential actions of her characters as they happen:
"He opened the magazine and began to read."
"The American crossed his feet at the ankles and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He held the pack towards the Italians, but both shook their heads. He lit a cigarette with a lighter, careful to cup it between both hands from the nonexistent breeze, then slipped both packet and lighter back into his pocket."
And I almost threw the book at the wall when I read this:
"He lifted his foot and prodded at the can with his foot."
James claims that the fourth book in the series, Acqua Alta, is a favorite among fans. I hope I have something to look forward to.
As for what James failed to mention, I can't understand how he could talk about international crime fiction and not talk about Paco Ignacio Taibo, II and his private dick in Mexico City, Hector Belascoran Shayne. It's been way too long since I read the first novel in the series, An Easy Thing (translated from the Spanish by William I. Neuman), but I remember Hector fondly as an honest, frustrated idealist, much younger in years than his advanced cynicism would let on. He's also a chain smoker who guzzles soda pop, a reader of literature and a profane smart ass with an advanced degree in engineering from an American university who gave up a cushy job and the bourgeois lifestyle that went with it. Now he prowls the streets of his beloved, exasperating Mexico City on investigations or just because he's awake.
In this first book, he agrees to investigate three mysteries, including the "real" whereabouts of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, all at once. He realizes what a mistake he's made as he has less and less time to engage in the necessary activities of life, like sleeping and eating. He gets shot in the leg and the head, but instead of dying, ends up losing a eye. In a subsequent book, he does die, only to have Taibo enigmatically bring him back to life in the next book. Taibo is an unabashed leftist and probably the best writer that I've discussed in this post.
And now, for my sentimental favorite, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, creation of prolific but under-appreciated American writer Stuart Kaminsky, a police inspector and latent dissident in Soviet Moscow. Kaminsky must have based his character to some degree on Vassily Alekseyev, the great Soviet weight lifter who wiped out the competition in the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. Back then, Alekseyev was less than tall, had lots of bushy black hair, mutton-chop whiskers and what looked like a huge beer gut, but no one came close to beating him for the Gold Medal in the heavy-weight division. Rostnikov is so odd looking that people call him "the Washtub," a nickname that would not have been inappropriate for the Alekseyev of the 1970s. He's also permanently disabled by the bullet wound to his left leg that he sustained while making a hero of himself near Rostov during World War II. Like Alekseyev, he loves to lift weights, and has won his division in the city's amateur competition for men over fifty. Despite his disability and looks, he's completely at ease with himself and confident in his intelligence and abilities as a police detective.
Kaminsky captures beautifully the locale of Moscow and the Russian personality. In the beginning of the fourth book in the series, A Fine Red Rain, a crowd gathers while Rostnikov tries to talk a drunk down from atop the twenty-foot statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square. True to their Russian-ness, the on-lookers begin to discuss, and argue about, Russian literature as they watch the drunk teetering on Gogol's shoulders.
Kaminsky's secondary characters are intriguing as well, especially Emil Karpo, one of Rostnikov's investigators, a very tall, pale, ascetic known as "the Vampire," a true-believer in the Soviet State and Communist vision for perfecting humankind. He's younger than Rostnikov but almost as talented at his job as his boss, and in his free time, ploddingly investigates every unsolved homicide that's ever occurred in Moscow, determined to solve them all before he dies. Needless to say, he has no family and lives alone. He insists to himself and to all who know him that he has no sense of humor and never succumbs to emotional weakness. Rostnikov tells him he could make a living as a comic.
Like Leon's Brunetti, Rostnikov does not get along with most of his supervisors. They are all apparatchiks in the corrupt municipal system and will ignore a murder when expedient, especially if the KGB shows interest. But they're not nearly as stupid as Leon's Patta, and they have real power to hurt Rostnikov when he gets out of line, which he does. He has a Jewish wife, and tries to bribe one of his bosses by threatening to reveal to the Western press the assissination of a dissident if he and his family are not allowed to emigrate. He gets a demotion instead of travel papers.
It's a real shame that James chose not to include Taibo and Kaminsky in his commentary while giving so much praise and exposure (in The New Yorker, no less) to the inferior Leon. It would be an even greater shame if he, obviously an intelligent fan of international crime fiction, has failed to discover them.
August 18, 2007
La Hija del Mariachi (The Mariachi's Daughter): The Best of Love and Rancheras
I try to convince myself that I haven’t posted in so long because I just haven’t felt inspired to write. The pathetic truth, however, is that I’m lazy. Now, happily, a bit of inspiration has arrived to shake me out of my sloth, inspiration not from literature but from the exquisite emotion and pathos of mariachi music.
Telenovelas, icons of Latino pop culture – I watch them to maintain my Spanish-language skills...
As if...
They’ve held me rapt in spite of myself ever since I lived in Ecuador over twenty years ago. The stories are frequently set in incredible places and audiences get treated to gorgeous views – beautiful countryside, charming colonial towns, tropical beaches, nighttime urban vistas. Then there’s the romance...the wooing, the sexual tension between two strong personalities, the beautiful men who cry so easily but with quiet dignity...the sentimental melodrama, the far-fetched plot lines, the frequent episodes of outrageous scenery chewing, the slapsticky humor. Telenovelas are, after all, soap operas...
One important thing about telenovelas makes them so much better than North American soaps: they end. Each telenovela ends and a new one begins. I watch a few episodes of each new one to check out the cast and the chemistry between the romantic leads, to get an idea of the plot. If I stick with one, it’s usually because I've noticed some unique quality about the production: a hot actor...
But there’s a novela running at the moment that’s unlike any other, a production of Colombia’s RCN network being shown on Telefutura (a “sister station” of Univision) here in the states - La Hija del Mariachi (The Mariachi’s Daughter). It’s the best written, best acted novela I’ve ever watched. It's so good that I rank it among the best TV shows I’ve ever watched, not far behind PBS’s Mystery! and Masterpiece Theatre, Homicide: Life on the Street and the first season of The Wire, and a few slots ahead of Six Feet Under and Rome (two more soap operas that got a lot more attention...).
The plot, of course, sounds rather ridiculous: Emiliano, a sophisticated yet somehow naive young man from a wealthy and powerful Mexican family is framed - by his business partners and lawyer no less, who are supposed to be his friends - for laundering drug money through his very high-end car dealership in Mexico City, and upon the advice of the unscrupulous lawyer, flees the country when the police raid the business, ending up in Bogotá, Colombia where he is mugged and robbed of his money and passport and left dazed and confused with a bleeding head wound to wander lost through the streets of the strange city until he happens upon a bar with a familiar name, La Plaza Garibaldi (the name of an actual park in Mexico City where strolling mariachis play everyday and where stands a statue of one of Mexico’s greatest composers of mariachi music, José Alfredo Jimenez), and suddenly, under the bright lights of the bar’s marquee, he sees standing before him the girl of his dreams, the beautiful, and as it turns out, very kind Rosario Guerrero, who takes pity on the lost but handsome young Mexican, believes him when he tells her his name is Francisco Lara (Lara – the last name of a famous mariachi singer/composer, Agostin Lara) and that he’s an auto mechanic who was just passing through Bogota on his way to a job in Argentina when he got mugged, dresses his wound, finds him a place to stay, gives him food and money, and who happens to be the one and only lady singer of the mariachi band at La Plaza Garibaldi and the daughter of one of its past stars (long since dead) and discovers that the young Mexican has a fantastic singing voice and helps him get a job as a singer in the band...and the Mexican becomes one of the stars at La Plaza Garibaldi and known to the loyal house audience as “El Príncipe de México” (The Prince of Mexico)...and he quickly falls completely in love with Rosario (and she with him) who is known on stage as “El Lucero de México” (The Star of Mexico)...and he becomes fast friends with the band’s lead violin player, Fernando Vladimir Molina, proud union member and son of a martyred union organizer, who’s so smart that he figures out pretty damn quick who Francisco really is and then sticks his neck out over and over again to help him, and is known on stage as “Mil Amores” (1000 Loves), an appropriate but frequently inconvenient nickname, and also with its lead trumpeter, Sigifredo de la Cruz, known on stage as “El Sentimentál” (The Sentimental One), older and wiser mentor to the young and foolish members of the band, who loves all things Mexican...and he gains an almost mortal enemy in the band’s lead singer and boss Manuel whom everyone just calls “Coloso” because his stage name is “El Coloso de Jalisco” (that’s “The ‘Colossus’ of Jalisco (the state in Mexico where mariachi music was invented).” My question is, “What exactly does “Colossus” refer to? – a colossal singing voice, a colossal presence on stage, a colossal...something else?? What’s really colossal about him is, of course, his villainous ego...) because he’s always wanted Rosario for himself...and he has to fend off the amorous advances of Virginia, the uber-spoiled, whiny, conniving daughter of the bar’s owner, and stop Rosario from being jealous of her...and he has to control his own jealous rages towards Rosario’s suitors, Coloso and a rich, pompous lawyer named Javier Macias who frequents the bar, even though he hates mariachi music, because he lusts after Rosario (and he’s married, the sleazy bastard)...and, of course, he has to stay one step ahead of the Mexican police, the Colombian police and Interpol who all believe that the young Mexican businessman has turned money launderer and is on the lam somewhere in Colombia.
So - its main plot line is the usual: two beautiful young people love each other passionately, but before they can live happily ever after, they have to overcome certain obstacles, primarily their own dopiness but also the evil intentions of several selfish people who, for various reasons, want to thwart their love. But La Hija del Mariachi has so much more:
A well-developed, well-acted friendship between two smart, witty men:
Mark Tacher (a Mexican actor) as Francisco/Emiliano is, of course, incredibly handsome and very charming, and he has great chemistry with Carolina Ramirez who plays Rosario. I like 'em, but they're just so sweet, really sweet, sickeningly sweet...
The best relationship in the show, an unusually interesting relationship for any tv show, is the one between Francisco and Fernando (Mario Duarte). The show could almost be called “Las Aventuras de Fran y Fer.” They first bond when Francisco helps Fernando fight off a gang of thugs who have hunted down the violin player to remind him again to stay away from his latest “amor,” a married woman whose husband is a mobster. But they keep getting into trouble together, especially after Fer figures out the truth about Francisco's identity. Fernando keeps a close watch on the internet for news stories about the police's search for the Mexican fugitive and listens with endless patience to Francisco's fears and heartaches. And he teases Francisco mercilessily, about his jealousy over Rosario, his "knack" for finding problems for himself, his inability to understand Colombian Spanish. The two actors make a talented comedy duo, with Tacher usually playing the straight man and Duarte improvising the funniest bits. While Tacher is almost too perfect in his Hollywood looks, Duarte has an unconventional handsomeness and his smile twinkles with so much charm that it takes female breath away.
As the show has progressed, these two have developed into sort of a macho male version of "Sense and Sensiblity."
Pertinent social commentary:
Novelas frequently tackle the ills that plague society at large - substance abuse, domestic violence and rape, child abuse, even mental illness. And, of course, the disparities between the rich and the poor. But the serious sociopoitical problems endemic to the country where one takes place usually don't crop up. Drugs cartels, kidnapping and political corruption rarely get mentioned in a Mexican telenovels. So I was almost shocked when Colombia's horrible history of murdered union members popped up in La Hija.... Early in the story, Fernando agrily laments to Francisco that his father had become another Colombian statistic as an assasinated union organizer. The revelation has never develped into a plotline, but the writers must have wanted to acknowledge the national problem.
Gay men have also long been portrayed in the macho world of telenovelas. As in all tv shows, these characters have been drawn with varying degrees of fullness and stereotyping, from the "swishy" comedian to the conflicted young man to the loyal friend of the heroine. While homophobia has been portrayed in a negative light, gay characters themselves have never been sexual towards each other. Finally, in LaHija..., two gay men have kissed each other in a romantic way. Granted, they were passing characters - one hired the band to serenade his lover - but it was the first gay kiss I'd ever seen in a novela, and I was impressed as hell.
Actors of African descent play characters who are not either servants or criminals.
Some of the greatest romantic music ever written – mariachi music – is integral to the story.
The story takes place mostly at night in La Plaza Garibaldi when the band is performing. It attracts a large loyal audience that knows the songs by heart and enthusiastically sings along (evidently, mariachi music is almost as popular in Colombia as it is in Mexico). The intrinsic romanticness of the music fits perfectly into a novela, and there are dozens of songs for each stage of a romantic relationship (granted, most are to be sung by men):
For the pre-relationship stage, there are the I’m-a-true-lover-of-women songs;
For wooing and declarations, there’re the polite Please-know-that-I-love-you songs and the more suggestive Just-wait-‘til-you’re-mine songs;
Then there’re are We-love-each-other-and-life-together-is-beautiful songs and the When-we-make-love songs...;
For when things turn to shit, there’re the You-broke-my-heart songs, I'm-no-good-for-you/I-don't-want-to-hurt-you-anymore songs, You’re-a-rotten-so-'n-so songs, Please-forgive-me songs, Please-don’t-leave-me songs, and She’s-left-me-and-I’m-not-going-to-survive-without-her songs.
The huge majority of these songs involve crying, drunkenness, dying of love, all three or in some combination. Francisco, Rosario and Coloso sing these songs and many more. They sing them to the audience and to each other, in duets and in duels (yep, duels). The band hires itself out for serenades and plays these songs to help the love-lorn citizens of Bogota with their romantic dilemmas.
I've been a lover of Latino culture, especially Latin music, for over twenty years, but failed to discover Mariachi music. Until now. Now I'm in permanent swoon for this music. Something about it has grabbed me and won't let go. It has a romantic aura about it similar to that of tragic opera. I can't really explain exactly how the two disperate genres are the same but the feeling I get when I listen to both is very similar so I know they both hit me in the same place in my soul.
Update:
La Hija... has, sadly, ended here in the States. For some really dumb reason, Telefutura decided to cut it short, even while the saga continues in Colombia. It was a dull, anti-climactic ending to the greatest of all telenovels. There will never be another like it. Look for it on dvd...
Telenovelas, icons of Latino pop culture – I watch them to maintain my Spanish-language skills...
As if...
They’ve held me rapt in spite of myself ever since I lived in Ecuador over twenty years ago. The stories are frequently set in incredible places and audiences get treated to gorgeous views – beautiful countryside, charming colonial towns, tropical beaches, nighttime urban vistas. Then there’s the romance...the wooing, the sexual tension between two strong personalities, the beautiful men who cry so easily but with quiet dignity...the sentimental melodrama, the far-fetched plot lines, the frequent episodes of outrageous scenery chewing, the slapsticky humor. Telenovelas are, after all, soap operas...
One important thing about telenovelas makes them so much better than North American soaps: they end. Each telenovela ends and a new one begins. I watch a few episodes of each new one to check out the cast and the chemistry between the romantic leads, to get an idea of the plot. If I stick with one, it’s usually because I've noticed some unique quality about the production: a hot actor...
But there’s a novela running at the moment that’s unlike any other, a production of Colombia’s RCN network being shown on Telefutura (a “sister station” of Univision) here in the states - La Hija del Mariachi (The Mariachi’s Daughter). It’s the best written, best acted novela I’ve ever watched. It's so good that I rank it among the best TV shows I’ve ever watched, not far behind PBS’s Mystery! and Masterpiece Theatre, Homicide: Life on the Street and the first season of The Wire, and a few slots ahead of Six Feet Under and Rome (two more soap operas that got a lot more attention...).
The plot, of course, sounds rather ridiculous: Emiliano, a sophisticated yet somehow naive young man from a wealthy and powerful Mexican family is framed - by his business partners and lawyer no less, who are supposed to be his friends - for laundering drug money through his very high-end car dealership in Mexico City, and upon the advice of the unscrupulous lawyer, flees the country when the police raid the business, ending up in Bogotá, Colombia where he is mugged and robbed of his money and passport and left dazed and confused with a bleeding head wound to wander lost through the streets of the strange city until he happens upon a bar with a familiar name, La Plaza Garibaldi (the name of an actual park in Mexico City where strolling mariachis play everyday and where stands a statue of one of Mexico’s greatest composers of mariachi music, José Alfredo Jimenez), and suddenly, under the bright lights of the bar’s marquee, he sees standing before him the girl of his dreams, the beautiful, and as it turns out, very kind Rosario Guerrero, who takes pity on the lost but handsome young Mexican, believes him when he tells her his name is Francisco Lara (Lara – the last name of a famous mariachi singer/composer, Agostin Lara) and that he’s an auto mechanic who was just passing through Bogota on his way to a job in Argentina when he got mugged, dresses his wound, finds him a place to stay, gives him food and money, and who happens to be the one and only lady singer of the mariachi band at La Plaza Garibaldi and the daughter of one of its past stars (long since dead) and discovers that the young Mexican has a fantastic singing voice and helps him get a job as a singer in the band...and the Mexican becomes one of the stars at La Plaza Garibaldi and known to the loyal house audience as “El Príncipe de México” (The Prince of Mexico)...and he quickly falls completely in love with Rosario (and she with him) who is known on stage as “El Lucero de México” (The Star of Mexico)...and he becomes fast friends with the band’s lead violin player, Fernando Vladimir Molina, proud union member and son of a martyred union organizer, who’s so smart that he figures out pretty damn quick who Francisco really is and then sticks his neck out over and over again to help him, and is known on stage as “Mil Amores” (1000 Loves), an appropriate but frequently inconvenient nickname, and also with its lead trumpeter, Sigifredo de la Cruz, known on stage as “El Sentimentál” (The Sentimental One), older and wiser mentor to the young and foolish members of the band, who loves all things Mexican...and he gains an almost mortal enemy in the band’s lead singer and boss Manuel whom everyone just calls “Coloso” because his stage name is “El Coloso de Jalisco” (that’s “The ‘Colossus’ of Jalisco (the state in Mexico where mariachi music was invented).” My question is, “What exactly does “Colossus” refer to? – a colossal singing voice, a colossal presence on stage, a colossal...something else?? What’s really colossal about him is, of course, his villainous ego...) because he’s always wanted Rosario for himself...and he has to fend off the amorous advances of Virginia, the uber-spoiled, whiny, conniving daughter of the bar’s owner, and stop Rosario from being jealous of her...and he has to control his own jealous rages towards Rosario’s suitors, Coloso and a rich, pompous lawyer named Javier Macias who frequents the bar, even though he hates mariachi music, because he lusts after Rosario (and he’s married, the sleazy bastard)...and, of course, he has to stay one step ahead of the Mexican police, the Colombian police and Interpol who all believe that the young Mexican businessman has turned money launderer and is on the lam somewhere in Colombia.
So - its main plot line is the usual: two beautiful young people love each other passionately, but before they can live happily ever after, they have to overcome certain obstacles, primarily their own dopiness but also the evil intentions of several selfish people who, for various reasons, want to thwart their love. But La Hija del Mariachi has so much more:
A well-developed, well-acted friendship between two smart, witty men:
Mark Tacher (a Mexican actor) as Francisco/Emiliano is, of course, incredibly handsome and very charming, and he has great chemistry with Carolina Ramirez who plays Rosario. I like 'em, but they're just so sweet, really sweet, sickeningly sweet...
The best relationship in the show, an unusually interesting relationship for any tv show, is the one between Francisco and Fernando (Mario Duarte). The show could almost be called “Las Aventuras de Fran y Fer.” They first bond when Francisco helps Fernando fight off a gang of thugs who have hunted down the violin player to remind him again to stay away from his latest “amor,” a married woman whose husband is a mobster. But they keep getting into trouble together, especially after Fer figures out the truth about Francisco's identity. Fernando keeps a close watch on the internet for news stories about the police's search for the Mexican fugitive and listens with endless patience to Francisco's fears and heartaches. And he teases Francisco mercilessily, about his jealousy over Rosario, his "knack" for finding problems for himself, his inability to understand Colombian Spanish. The two actors make a talented comedy duo, with Tacher usually playing the straight man and Duarte improvising the funniest bits. While Tacher is almost too perfect in his Hollywood looks, Duarte has an unconventional handsomeness and his smile twinkles with so much charm that it takes female breath away.
As the show has progressed, these two have developed into sort of a macho male version of "Sense and Sensiblity."
Pertinent social commentary:
Novelas frequently tackle the ills that plague society at large - substance abuse, domestic violence and rape, child abuse, even mental illness. And, of course, the disparities between the rich and the poor. But the serious sociopoitical problems endemic to the country where one takes place usually don't crop up. Drugs cartels, kidnapping and political corruption rarely get mentioned in a Mexican telenovels. So I was almost shocked when Colombia's horrible history of murdered union members popped up in La Hija.... Early in the story, Fernando agrily laments to Francisco that his father had become another Colombian statistic as an assasinated union organizer. The revelation has never develped into a plotline, but the writers must have wanted to acknowledge the national problem.
Gay men have also long been portrayed in the macho world of telenovelas. As in all tv shows, these characters have been drawn with varying degrees of fullness and stereotyping, from the "swishy" comedian to the conflicted young man to the loyal friend of the heroine. While homophobia has been portrayed in a negative light, gay characters themselves have never been sexual towards each other. Finally, in LaHija..., two gay men have kissed each other in a romantic way. Granted, they were passing characters - one hired the band to serenade his lover - but it was the first gay kiss I'd ever seen in a novela, and I was impressed as hell.
Actors of African descent play characters who are not either servants or criminals.
Some of the greatest romantic music ever written – mariachi music – is integral to the story.
The story takes place mostly at night in La Plaza Garibaldi when the band is performing. It attracts a large loyal audience that knows the songs by heart and enthusiastically sings along (evidently, mariachi music is almost as popular in Colombia as it is in Mexico). The intrinsic romanticness of the music fits perfectly into a novela, and there are dozens of songs for each stage of a romantic relationship (granted, most are to be sung by men):
For the pre-relationship stage, there are the I’m-a-true-lover-of-women songs;
For wooing and declarations, there’re the polite Please-know-that-I-love-you songs and the more suggestive Just-wait-‘til-you’re-mine songs;
Then there’re are We-love-each-other-and-life-together-is-beautiful songs and the When-we-make-love songs...;
For when things turn to shit, there’re the You-broke-my-heart songs, I'm-no-good-for-you/I-don't-want-to-hurt-you-anymore songs, You’re-a-rotten-so-'n-so songs, Please-forgive-me songs, Please-don’t-leave-me songs, and She’s-left-me-and-I’m-not-going-to-survive-without-her songs.
The huge majority of these songs involve crying, drunkenness, dying of love, all three or in some combination. Francisco, Rosario and Coloso sing these songs and many more. They sing them to the audience and to each other, in duets and in duels (yep, duels). The band hires itself out for serenades and plays these songs to help the love-lorn citizens of Bogota with their romantic dilemmas.
I've been a lover of Latino culture, especially Latin music, for over twenty years, but failed to discover Mariachi music. Until now. Now I'm in permanent swoon for this music. Something about it has grabbed me and won't let go. It has a romantic aura about it similar to that of tragic opera. I can't really explain exactly how the two disperate genres are the same but the feeling I get when I listen to both is very similar so I know they both hit me in the same place in my soul.
Update:
La Hija... has, sadly, ended here in the States. For some really dumb reason, Telefutura decided to cut it short, even while the saga continues in Colombia. It was a dull, anti-climactic ending to the greatest of all telenovels. There will never be another like it. Look for it on dvd...
February 5, 2007
From the soap box: Read world literature and improve American foreign policy...
Valdimir Nabokov claimed that he translated Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in order to move his readers “to learn Pushkin’s language and go through EO again without this crib.” Nabokov believed, according to writer David Remnick, that the translation of literature was an “impossibility” and an “insult.” Perhaps Nabokov had a similarly caustic opinion of the concept of “world literature,” since it is so frequently read in translation.
Other critics, however, have pointed out that we read literature in translation in order to expand our understanding of cultures not our own. While I agree with this point, I think more needs to be said about what the literatures of other cultures can teach us. During this time of our government's ever-expanding hegemony, we Americans should read the literature of other cultures in order to understand the effects of one country’s military, political and cultural dominance over another.
For most of the twentieth century, the translations of Western masterworks of prose and poetry entailed all that might have been included under the term “world literature” in the minds of most American. Any anthology would have reflected the Eurocentric concept of “the world” since it would have included no text from beyond the borders of Europe and North America. Beginning in the 1970s, however, the canon has gradually expanded to encompass the literature of the actual world. The latest edition of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, published in 2003, includes six volumes and literature translated from Japanese, Chinese, indigenous North American languages, Bengali, Hindi, Nicaraguan, Mexican and Chilean Spanish, Egyptian Arabic, and Martiniquan and Senegalese French, among other languages.
But even as the concept of world literature has expanded, translation itself has remained controversial. As Peter France has pointed out, no definitive set of criteria exists for judging the quality of a translation, and - as Nabokov perhaps proves - “many evaluations...are personal, metaphorical and hard to argue with.” Other critics admonish readers to remember that knowing the translation is not the same thing as knowing the original.
Translation is perhaps most problematic where colonial and post-colonial literatures are concerned. In her introduction to Masks of Conquest (a history of how literature was taught in Indian schools and colleges during British rule), Gauri Viswanathan describes how Sanskrit texts were banned in the early nineteenth century by the imperial authorities because their “immorality” and “impurity” were too dangerous for the Indian mind since it could not “discriminate between decency and indecency.” As this ridiculously condescending censorship was being imposed in India, audiences in England were enjoying immensely the translated versions of Sankrit poems and plays.
In her article “Imperialism and Sexual Difference,” Gayatri Spivak discusses how both the failure to translate and the translation of the language of a colonized people can play roles in the oppression of the colonized. In his story “William the Conqueror,” Rudyard Kipling frequently used Hindusthani words and phrases incorrectly. As Spivak points out, Kipling was using the pidgin Hindusthani of the British colonizers. He did not need to bother to translate it at all, much less translate it accurately, because the “narrative practice” of the imperialist power “sanctioned this usage.” The language of the servants was “not worth mastering correctly." At the same time, Kipling “painstakingly” translated the Indians’ speech in Hindusthani into “archaic and awkward English” and mocked their English with “phonetic transcription.” Spivak calls this “translation-by-violation.” She believes that this violation continues when “third-world” literatures are taught and critiqued from a state of “sanctioned ignorance” by professors or critics with no knowledge of the original languages or the actual societies and cultures from which the literature comes.
I don't think Spivak is discouraging the reading of third-world or post-colonial literatures in translation. Rather, she is pointing to the strong possibility that the erroneous discourses that we engage in from our positions within the culture that dominates much of the rest of the world will taint our well-intentioned reading of world literature unless we correct those discourses. The close reading of the literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America - the areas of the world that have suffered under the political and cultural hegemony and imperialism of Europe and the United States - can at least begin to affect a change in the Eurocentric discourses, including those developed by Euro-ethnic America, on the rest of the world.
Much of the literature of Asia, Africa and Latin America deals in some fashion with the experience of living in these regions during and after colonization by an invading power. The term “post-colonial literature” - literature written after independence but frequently about the period of colonization - with its fluid definition, applies to this literature in translation, though it also includes texts written originally in English, French and other languages of the colonizers. Novels in translation from former colonies such as Algeria and Lebanon, as well as post-colonial texts written in English by authors such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya), Salman Rushdie (India) and Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka), all present the reader with narratives of countries at various stages of the struggle to reclaim their national identity from an imperialist power, either during or after colonization, or of individuals striving to discover, understand or adjust their own personal identities in relation to their participation in the national struggle.
Rather than one of the colonizer with the colonized, the relationship between the United States and Latin America is one of a hegemonic power and its victim. While Latin American literature may not be historically post-colonial, it can certainly be read as such. Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Nobel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias of Guatemala and Sergio Ramirez of Nicaragua, to name just a few, have all written novels that deal with the repercussions of American military force and political and cultural hegemony in their countries.
Considering that the current focus of discourses on global relations and American military and foreign policies is the Muslim world, authors from this part of the world should be of special interest. Nobel Laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, of course, quickly come to mind, along with Nawal al-Saadawi (Egypt), Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Algeria) and Hanan Al-Shaykh (Lebanon). Tahar Djaout, another novelist, poet and journalist from Algeria, wrote about the militant Islamic fundamentalism that developed in his country after the end of French colonialism. He was assassinated by fundamentalists in 1993.
America has never been the ruler of a “traditional” empire. But it has occupied through military force, and taken great economic advantage of the nations that it has occupied. It has also controlled by political and cultural hegemony when not actually engaging in military occupation. It is this “non-traditional” empire - and the discourses developed and maintained by its power structures - that Americans must understand in order to begin to change it. Reading post-colonial literature and understanding narratives about the confrontations between imperialist or hegemonic powers and the countries they dominate, independence movements, and the repercussions and consequences of domination and independence can help Americans begin to change the hegemonic foreign policies and Orientalist-like discourses developed and maintained by previous generations.
Sources
Remnick, David. “The Translation Wars: How the Race to Translate Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Continues to Spark Feuds, and Create Small Fortunes.” The New Yorker November 7, 2005, 98-109.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Imperialism and Sexual Difference.” Oxford Literary Review 8:1- 2 (1986): 225-40. Rpt. in Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Ed. David H. Richter New York: Bedford/St. Matins, 2000. 31-40.
Viswanathan, Gauri. “Introduction.” Masks of Conquest. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. Rpt. in
Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Ed. David H. Richter New York: Bedford/St. Matins, 2000. 60-68.
Other critics, however, have pointed out that we read literature in translation in order to expand our understanding of cultures not our own. While I agree with this point, I think more needs to be said about what the literatures of other cultures can teach us. During this time of our government's ever-expanding hegemony, we Americans should read the literature of other cultures in order to understand the effects of one country’s military, political and cultural dominance over another.
For most of the twentieth century, the translations of Western masterworks of prose and poetry entailed all that might have been included under the term “world literature” in the minds of most American. Any anthology would have reflected the Eurocentric concept of “the world” since it would have included no text from beyond the borders of Europe and North America. Beginning in the 1970s, however, the canon has gradually expanded to encompass the literature of the actual world. The latest edition of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, published in 2003, includes six volumes and literature translated from Japanese, Chinese, indigenous North American languages, Bengali, Hindi, Nicaraguan, Mexican and Chilean Spanish, Egyptian Arabic, and Martiniquan and Senegalese French, among other languages.
But even as the concept of world literature has expanded, translation itself has remained controversial. As Peter France has pointed out, no definitive set of criteria exists for judging the quality of a translation, and - as Nabokov perhaps proves - “many evaluations...are personal, metaphorical and hard to argue with.” Other critics admonish readers to remember that knowing the translation is not the same thing as knowing the original.
Translation is perhaps most problematic where colonial and post-colonial literatures are concerned. In her introduction to Masks of Conquest (a history of how literature was taught in Indian schools and colleges during British rule), Gauri Viswanathan describes how Sanskrit texts were banned in the early nineteenth century by the imperial authorities because their “immorality” and “impurity” were too dangerous for the Indian mind since it could not “discriminate between decency and indecency.” As this ridiculously condescending censorship was being imposed in India, audiences in England were enjoying immensely the translated versions of Sankrit poems and plays.
In her article “Imperialism and Sexual Difference,” Gayatri Spivak discusses how both the failure to translate and the translation of the language of a colonized people can play roles in the oppression of the colonized. In his story “William the Conqueror,” Rudyard Kipling frequently used Hindusthani words and phrases incorrectly. As Spivak points out, Kipling was using the pidgin Hindusthani of the British colonizers. He did not need to bother to translate it at all, much less translate it accurately, because the “narrative practice” of the imperialist power “sanctioned this usage.” The language of the servants was “not worth mastering correctly." At the same time, Kipling “painstakingly” translated the Indians’ speech in Hindusthani into “archaic and awkward English” and mocked their English with “phonetic transcription.” Spivak calls this “translation-by-violation.” She believes that this violation continues when “third-world” literatures are taught and critiqued from a state of “sanctioned ignorance” by professors or critics with no knowledge of the original languages or the actual societies and cultures from which the literature comes.
I don't think Spivak is discouraging the reading of third-world or post-colonial literatures in translation. Rather, she is pointing to the strong possibility that the erroneous discourses that we engage in from our positions within the culture that dominates much of the rest of the world will taint our well-intentioned reading of world literature unless we correct those discourses. The close reading of the literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America - the areas of the world that have suffered under the political and cultural hegemony and imperialism of Europe and the United States - can at least begin to affect a change in the Eurocentric discourses, including those developed by Euro-ethnic America, on the rest of the world.
Much of the literature of Asia, Africa and Latin America deals in some fashion with the experience of living in these regions during and after colonization by an invading power. The term “post-colonial literature” - literature written after independence but frequently about the period of colonization - with its fluid definition, applies to this literature in translation, though it also includes texts written originally in English, French and other languages of the colonizers. Novels in translation from former colonies such as Algeria and Lebanon, as well as post-colonial texts written in English by authors such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya), Salman Rushdie (India) and Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka), all present the reader with narratives of countries at various stages of the struggle to reclaim their national identity from an imperialist power, either during or after colonization, or of individuals striving to discover, understand or adjust their own personal identities in relation to their participation in the national struggle.
Rather than one of the colonizer with the colonized, the relationship between the United States and Latin America is one of a hegemonic power and its victim. While Latin American literature may not be historically post-colonial, it can certainly be read as such. Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Nobel Laureate Miguel Angel Asturias of Guatemala and Sergio Ramirez of Nicaragua, to name just a few, have all written novels that deal with the repercussions of American military force and political and cultural hegemony in their countries.
Considering that the current focus of discourses on global relations and American military and foreign policies is the Muslim world, authors from this part of the world should be of special interest. Nobel Laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, of course, quickly come to mind, along with Nawal al-Saadawi (Egypt), Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Algeria) and Hanan Al-Shaykh (Lebanon). Tahar Djaout, another novelist, poet and journalist from Algeria, wrote about the militant Islamic fundamentalism that developed in his country after the end of French colonialism. He was assassinated by fundamentalists in 1993.
America has never been the ruler of a “traditional” empire. But it has occupied through military force, and taken great economic advantage of the nations that it has occupied. It has also controlled by political and cultural hegemony when not actually engaging in military occupation. It is this “non-traditional” empire - and the discourses developed and maintained by its power structures - that Americans must understand in order to begin to change it. Reading post-colonial literature and understanding narratives about the confrontations between imperialist or hegemonic powers and the countries they dominate, independence movements, and the repercussions and consequences of domination and independence can help Americans begin to change the hegemonic foreign policies and Orientalist-like discourses developed and maintained by previous generations.
Sources
Remnick, David. “The Translation Wars: How the Race to Translate Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Continues to Spark Feuds, and Create Small Fortunes.” The New Yorker November 7, 2005, 98-109.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Imperialism and Sexual Difference.” Oxford Literary Review 8:1- 2 (1986): 225-40. Rpt. in Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Ed. David H. Richter New York: Bedford/St. Matins, 2000. 31-40.
Viswanathan, Gauri. “Introduction.” Masks of Conquest. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. Rpt. in
Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Ed. David H. Richter New York: Bedford/St. Matins, 2000. 60-68.
February 3, 2007
Impulse traveling...
I'm reading Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War. I find certain elements of Helprin's style somewhat annoying, but the adventurous life of the main character, a young Roman named Alessandro Giuliani, and the novel's eclectic ideas make for very interesting reading. I'm not yet even a third of the way through the book (723 pages), but am inspired to comment on an event that happens early in the story. It's 1914 and Alessandro has joined the Italian navy, but there's a certain work of art he must see before he goes to war. He travels by train from Rome to Munich - into the war zone - just to visit Raphael's portrait of Bindo Altoviti, a wealthy young banker and friend of the artist, painted in the early 16th century.
Alessandro has just finished his Ph.D. in aesthetics - he was about to start a professorship in Bologna when the war intervened - and wants to contemplate the beauty of Raphael's work. In the passage, Helprin gives a brief history of how the painting traveled from Italy to Germany (by mule cart), describes the lovely museum and its Alpine surroundings, and puts into words the complexity that Alessandro sees in the face of the young Altoviti. I, on the other hand, simply enjoy the idea of jumping on a train and traveling for hours to see a painting...or a play, or an author's writing desk, or whatever may be at the end of the line.
Before I went to Dublin in January of last year, I happened upon Jonathan Harr's recent book, The Lost Painting, about "The Taking of Christ," one of Caravaggio's many "lost" masterpieces, and how it was discovered and restored. It now lives at the National Gallery of Ireland. I still haven't read Harr's book, but I saw the painting while in Dublin. It's the first Caravaggio I've seen. I was fortunate enough to see another while in Russia in June - "The Lute Player," the only Caravaggio at the The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I won't attempt to describe the beauty of these paintings, but I can envision traveling the world just to see every Caravaggio (there are only between 60 and 80, according to Harr, at least until more are discovered). Alessandro's impulsive trip seems only natural.
Alessandro has just finished his Ph.D. in aesthetics - he was about to start a professorship in Bologna when the war intervened - and wants to contemplate the beauty of Raphael's work. In the passage, Helprin gives a brief history of how the painting traveled from Italy to Germany (by mule cart), describes the lovely museum and its Alpine surroundings, and puts into words the complexity that Alessandro sees in the face of the young Altoviti. I, on the other hand, simply enjoy the idea of jumping on a train and traveling for hours to see a painting...or a play, or an author's writing desk, or whatever may be at the end of the line.
Before I went to Dublin in January of last year, I happened upon Jonathan Harr's recent book, The Lost Painting, about "The Taking of Christ," one of Caravaggio's many "lost" masterpieces, and how it was discovered and restored. It now lives at the National Gallery of Ireland. I still haven't read Harr's book, but I saw the painting while in Dublin. It's the first Caravaggio I've seen. I was fortunate enough to see another while in Russia in June - "The Lute Player," the only Caravaggio at the The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I won't attempt to describe the beauty of these paintings, but I can envision traveling the world just to see every Caravaggio (there are only between 60 and 80, according to Harr, at least until more are discovered). Alessandro's impulsive trip seems only natural.
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