Mercier, Camier & The Luckless Gentlman
Posted May 31, 10:02 AM by Tom Sparks
I was in England in April of 2006 around the time of Samuel Beckett’s birthday anniversary. Becketts picture was in all the book store windows. I am an ardent student of this master of darkness and mirth. It takes some chewing but with time you can digest Beckett’s unique otput. I particlarly liked his short stories First Love & Other Novellas and his 1946 novel, Mercier and Camier.
First Love & Other Novellas contains one of the harshest and heart breaking stories of a destitute man just released from an unnamed institution . He is homeless penniless and friendless. This gentleman is intelligent and fully aware of his terrible plight, things continue to worsen and in the end he summons the will to do the unspeakable. Few stories carry the same kind of power, showing a reality that truly befalls too many. This story is deeply humanist and tragic.
Mercier and Camier is the story of two drunken French peasants wandering around a country village at night getting into trouble. It predates Waiting for Godot and is full of humor and examples of man’s stupidity and warmth. The purpose of their wanderings is never made clear nor is their destination. Most of the action is verbal, the jaunty drunken conversation between the two main characters. They do meet an array of people in the night, a prostitute a policeman a barman. They seem to be waiting for some thing or someone, but that is never explicit. t rains from begining to end, quite like life here in the NorthWest.
A very interesting review of Mercier and Camier can be found in the book The Art of Hunger by Paul Auster. Samuel Beckett died on December 22, 1989.
More on Bolaño
Posted Dec 11, 09:53 PM by Tom Sparks
Roberto Bolaño died of liver failure in 2003 in Spain, many people think the cause was drug use; his family and agent deny this, emphatically.
The New Yorker published a short story by Bolaño in the Aug 4. 2008 edition, CLARA , translated, from the Spanish, by Chris Andrews, translator of Distant Star and three other books by Bolaño.
Clara is a young women, the story is told by one of here admirers. Her character is drawn naturally, she seems like one of your acquaintances or friends. We never learn the name of the narrator, but he is smitten by her from the first line, till the last. Clara dies at the end just like the writer Bolaño, you can’t help but think about that connection. The story was published in English a year after his death.
She had big breasts, slim legs, and blue eyes. That’s how I like to remember her. I don’t know why I fell madly in love with her, but I did, and at the start, I mean for the first days, the first hours, it all went fine; then Clara returned to the city where she lived, in the south of Spain (she’d been on vacation in Barcelona), and everything began to fall apart.
One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room. I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes and escaped from that miserable dream.
bq.
So begins the tale. It is the story of a beautiful bright star named Clara, a that star burns out and leaves the narrator in the darkness. CLARA is not a ground breaking story, it isn’t perfect but it is affecting, it has a beautiful naturalness and is a great introduction to Roberto Bolaño.
Roberto Bolaño
Posted Dec 8, 05:28 PM by Tom Sparks
2666 published posthumously in Spain in 2004 one year after the death of Mr. Bolaño, the now famous and celebrated Chilean author, is a complex and convoluted tale with a grand and dark cast of characters.
“ I conceive, in a very humble way, the totality of my oeuvre in prose, and even some of my poetry, as a whole. A whole not only stylistic, but also narrative. The characters are continously dialoging among them and they are appearing and dissapearing. “ – Robert Bolaño
If Mr. Bolaño is describing his complete body of work in the above quote, 2666 must be considered the Mother Lode. 2666 and Bolaño other work can be consider a break from the cliched “Magic Realism” popular in Latin American Fiction. Bolaño and authors like Ignacio Padilla have choosen to leave the magic behind and focus more on character and plot ala Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges.
2666 is broken into multiple sections or novellas that placed together make a whole. The dark core of the novel focuses on Saint Teresa which is a fictional representation of Ciudad Juárez, the border town, site of many grisly murders of women and girls. These murders are fictionalized and documented by Bolaño and make for difficult reading. 2666 is both linear and a non-linear in style. It consists of stories within stories, many of the characters tell stories to each other or relate dreams to the reader. It makes for a complex plot.
The center of the novel called The Part About The Crimes is more realistic less poetic more like reportage. The real Ciudad Juárez is a part of a vast “Metroplex” of more than 2 million people. It is in the junture of three states Texas, New Mexico and Chilhuahua Mexico. It is the largest border community in the world and is growing at an astounding 5% a year. In 2666 Ciudad Juárez is a nightmare world.
I can’t conclude this brief review with out a few words of praise for the translator Natasha Wimmer. She has done a herculean job and done it well. There is an iterview with Ms. Wimmer here