Stories Without People: "Histórias Falsas" by Gonçalo M. Tavares

Published 2010.


"Histórias Falsas" = "False Stories"

Gonçalo M. Tavares tells us a bunch of semi-false stories based on “real” stories, i.e., stories belonging to a kind pf parallel universe of Stories, wherein everything looks slightly askew:

The story of Juliet, the saint from Bavaria

The story of Lianor de Mileto

The story of Listo Mercatore

The story of Metão, the little one

The tyrants’ story

The story of Aurius Anaxos

The story of Elia de Mirceia

The story of Faustina, the fearful

The story of Arquitas

I cannot resist translating into English two very small excerpts from the same story (“The story of Listo Mercatore”):

1.

“Mercatore was climbing down small stairs when he run across the philosopher, shabbily dressed, sitting on the floor, against the wall, eating lentils.

Haughty, more than usual, with a full stomach, and full of cheekiness due to the wealth that he sported, said to Diogenes:

‘If you had learned to kiss ass to the king, you wouldn’t need to eat lentils.’

And then he laughed, mocking Diogenes poverty.

And yet, the philosopher, looked at him with even greater haughtiness and pride. He had had standing in front of him, Alexander the Great; who was this now? Just a simple rich man?

Diogenes answered to the letter: ‘and you,’ said the philosopher, ‘If you had learned to eat lentils, you wouldn’t need to kiss ass to the king.’”

While reading the story I was thinking on a different take to the excerpt:

” Hey man, I’m eating lentils because I like it. There is no accounting for taste, which is one of the conclusions in Aesthetics-Philosophy, because even yesterday I was stuffing my face at José Avillez’s Belcanto (*), but today I feel like eating lentils, you know? Therefore go kiss the King’s ass, I don’t really need this shit. For me, the power of my brain is enough to do well in life; go ass-kissing instead, scat!”

2.

“’You have before you, Alexander the Great; what do you have to tell him?’

Diogenes, the philosopher, looked at Alexander, the great, and said, ’you are blocking the sun. Would you mind stepping aside?’

Diogenes reply became famous.”

“Histórias Falsas” follow in the footsteps of Jorge Luis Borges (“A Universal History of Infamy“ comes to mind) which also tells false stories of known characters, near and parallel to the familiar characters.  Like Borges before him, Tavares also aims at writing stuff without people. His writing delves into the research of ideas, objects and concepts. What we call “people” in some of Tavares’ novels (“Jerusalem”, “Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique”, and "A Man: Klaus Klump" also come to mind), are really archetypes of people.

Unfortunately the usual juxtaposing of logical thoughts and sensory experience is absent here. On top of that, the writing here is so sparse and pithy that some paragraphs only had one word…Not my cup of tea. I’m not sure what kind of effect Tavares was looking for here, but it didn’t work.

(*) Awarded 2 Michelin stars - one of the most famous and expensive restaurants in Lisbon.

Reality-behind-the-surface Literature: "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher" by Hilary Mantel

11:40 pm 24 October 2014

This is my first Mantel. I’ve been postponing reading the first two volumes of the Cromwell trilogy, waiting for the third volume to come out predictably in 2016. One does not tackle a twice-awarded-writer-with-the-Man-Booker-Prize without having everything in one big bundle to make a proper assessment...Nevertheless here goes my first take on Hilary Mantel, for what it’s worth.

One of my favourite things in life is reading that truly astounding book at the right juncture in time, ie, a book that mysteriously echoes and enriches my current thoughts. I think this was one of those (imperfect/perfect) books. There is a peculiar comfort in reading a book whose structures and operations mimic what, I think, literature should be all about. One of the things I like the most about literature is to read it and later on write about it. Literature for me is all about a set of interlocking conventions (a system), and how we can read this so-called system into something meaningful.

This short-story collection is a good example of this. First of all it’s a mixed bag, ie, we have The Magnificent, The So-and-So, and The-Not-So-Good (there are not really bad short stories here). What is immediately noticeable is Mantel’s use of language (the system). What better way to evaluate a write’s skills than in the shorter form? I’ve always stated that there’s no better way to “see” the inner skills of a writer. In the shorter forms the writer cannot hide behind the usual literary contraptions: plot, complex character development, etc.

In this aspect Mantel succeeds entirely, ie, her use of language drew me in, revealing the horror that just lies beneath the surface of our everyday life, to reveal the inner structure of reality, much like Gonçalo M. Tavares (vide review) is able to do:

 “I knew not to mention her name and the pressure of not mentioning her made her, in my imagination, beaten thin and flat, attenuated, starved away, a shadow of herself, so I was no longer sure whether she existed when I was not with her.” (From “Comma”)

“And we saw – nothing; we saw something not yet become; we saw something, not a face but perhaps, I thought, when I thought about it later, perhaps a negotiating position for a face, perhaps a loosely imagined notion of a face, like God’s when he was trying to form us; we saw a blank, we saw a sphere, it was without feature, it was without meaning, and its flesh seemed to run from the bone.” (From “Comma”)

"What I had taken to be stucco was in fact some patent substance newly glued to the front wall: it was grayish-white and crinkled, like a split-open brain, or nougat chewed by a giant." (From “How Shall I Know You”, my favourite short story in this collection).

“I did my act on autopilot, except that when it came to my influences I went a bit wild and invited a Portuguese writer who I said knocked Pessoa into a socket hat. The golden young man kept invading my mind, and I thought I’d quite like to go bed with someone of that ilk, by way of change. Wasn’t everybody due a change?” (“How Shall I Know You”)

As I said, not all of the stories are successful. Sometimes we get the feeling that Mantel just ran out of steam by the end of some them, but the ones that work, oh my…Almost all of the short stories here are a wonderful example of the show-don’t-tell type; they show everything, almost, and tell nothing. What more can I ask for in a literary work? In this aspect Mantel belongs to the Gonçalo M. Tavares, António Lobo Antunes and Philip K. Dick lineage.

Without having read her other body-of-work, ie, having read only this collection, Hilary Mantel may be one of the best writers of her time, and there's no better evidence of her skills than this short-story collection. I’ll refrain from further praise. I’ll wait for the Cromwell trilogy to fully state my case.

Is it possible to name a writer as the best prose stylist of our time? Should the discussion be exclusively Anglo-centric? I think not. I can give two wonderful examples of writers writing in Portuguese, but with numerous translations in English, that in my mind could be real contenders for this elusive “prize”: Gonçalo M. Tavares (he pushes the boundaries of what fiction is or should be in a way I haven’t seen in a writer writing in English in recent years – vide review above), and António Lobo Antunes (I always thought that his writing is very god-like, ie, Lobo Antunes can write as if God himself were choosing the words for him; it all fits perfectly in his sentences).

I invite you to name a few writers having this “illuminating”, reality-behind-the-surface quality (in English or in any other language). Any thoughts on this? I’m curious to know.

"Heaven's Prisoners" by James Lee Burke

12:00 am 26 July 2013

My 2nd James Lee Burke.

With each book I'm getting convinced that Burke's books are more than meets the eye Crime-Fiction-wise. 

I'm also starting to realize that I don't read Burke for the plotting, which is almost non-existent, by detective story standards, ie, he is barely competent in that area. But what he lacks in terms of plotting skills, he gains by using his books as a vehicle for serious comment on society, specifically the Southern one.

Along the lines of Gonçalo M. Tavares books, James Lee Burke also writes using aphorisms. In this book it's not so pronounced as it was in "Neon Rain". I still remember one of "lines" that impressed me the most: "I don’t like the world the way it is, and I miss the past. It’s a foolish way to be.” (or something roughly similar).

In the first two novels I've read, Robicheaux reasserts the “mature” wisdom of Burke's aphorisms, as though he, after the intense turmoil depicted in the novels, finally achieves something like inner peace — with himself and with the world he does not like. 

I find some likeness between P.D. James and James Lee Burke, namely the fact that my main interest in Dalglish and Robicheaux lies not in the answers these two main characters give us but in the sort of persons they're and the answers they'll find for themselves, in their own lives. As I've stated again and again in several reviews, what interests me are neither the plotting contraptions nor the solving of mysteries. That's neither here or there.

Unlike what happened with the Matthew Scudder series by Lawrence Block, where I almost read them in one sitting, I'm going to limit myself to one or two Robicheuax's books a year...

Personal Take on the Book "Jerusalém" by Gonçalo M Tavares

Jerusalém by Gonçalo M. Tavares
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Uhm...Ich fühle mich zweischneidig lol

Disgrace it's just too terribly depressing. Phrases that come to mind after having finished the book: "tremendously suffocating", "feeling of emptiness deep down inside", and on and on.

It's gives such an horrific view of human existence that I've finished it feeling as if someone had just punched me in the gut. Intentional (or not...)? Gonçalo, what were you thinking...?

I'm a man of two minds about his book... It didn't fully work for me but the parts that did. Oh my!

Let's put the jarring effects aside:

1 - The effectiveness of the philosophical pondering misses the mark due to the fact that the book is too focused on the thoughts and actions of the "abnormal man" and not on the "normal man" and therefore the applicability of the novel’s themes lacks some necessary universality of themes;

2 - The characters are extreme caricatures and not one of them mirrors the common modern man (aka normal or abnormal);

3 - It gives a very distant and cold perspective that makes it difficult to relate to.

Above-average effects:

1 - The writing is superb;

2 - Gonçalo is funny, intelligent and mind-numbing original. Enough said.

It was my first Gonçalo's book and it won't be the last. I'm curious to read this book in a language other than Portuguese. His prose poses some conundrums that I would like to see how they're dealt with in another language.

I think Gonçalo is the equivalent to reading crack cocaine and I'm damn well addicted. Fortunately I'm Portuguese and I can read all of them in the original... lol

NB: Along with this book, a friend of mine also recommended another one: "O homem ou é tonto ou é mulher", which means something like this: "Man is either a fool or a Woman". How much better can one get, ah?


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