“Bon Voyage, Mr. President,” by Gabriel García Márquez the Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-eighty two – From: “Strange Pilgrims: and Other Stories,”
“Strange Pilgrims,” by Gabriel García Márquez the Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-eighty two takes a different shape and form from his first collection reviewed on here. With this collection Gabriel Garcia Márquez goes abroad. The world of Macondo and the Caribbean, and moves towards the life abroad. In his introduction to this collection of short stories, Márquez discusses how his family and himself live abroad for many years. “Bon Voyage, Mr. President,” the first story in this collection deals with to no surprise or shock an ageing politician who has a health problem, and has left his home country in the Caribbean to seek medical attention in Geneva.
Our dear old Mister President, for the first bit is more or less content with his own thoughts on his own morality and the fact that he has a strange pain in racked throughout his body. Now that he has an understanding of where it is coming from, one can at least hope that it’ll all be solved. Yet as the doctor tells the president, that he should get all his things in order – in my opinion it sounded a lot more than just getting one’s clothes packed for a night at the hospital – it appeared to be a more or less to say that he should get his legal matters in order, and make sure that his funeral and whatever else needs to be done, done. For there is no guarantee (as there is with any medical procedure) that it may not be effective or that the patient may or may not survive. The city of Geneva in its current state (at least in the narrative) can be seen as a symbol or a mirror to the president’s current situation. How the lake was once calm and now is an angry usurped angry mess. To the flower peddler, who remarks when the president that when he takes a flower from the patch in the park, and the flower peddler reprimands him for it, when she calls out telling him that those are not Gods flowers but the flowers of the city.
Then along comes a spider it feels like, who recognizing the president, and a fellow countryman and invites him home, hoping for some own personal gain. He’s an ambulance driver, who also works on the side doing some for some funeral parlours, selling their goods to others. It is here, that as a reader, we learn that the president is not as wealthy as we had hoped and had expected. Yet over time, our little spider and his wife turn out to be more like disguised benefactors for Mister President, as they learn of his frugal living, and his necessary need to sell off the few possessions he has – and they have sentimental value; in order to make the medical expenses that he has. Together they take care of him, and nurse him back together after the operation. Though unfortunately the pain is not gone – but on a rather optimistic side, it is not worst either. But what becomes more disturbing is the thought that this man’s political ambitions are far from over.
A meditation on life, death, political ambition, and the life of the exiled by choice or by force, Gabriel García Márquez has allowed for his shift from the provincial and exotic lands of his own country to that of fellow countrymen, trying to make it in the world they find themselves in, that is foreign to them. With it Gabriel Garcia Márquez connects the world of Latin America/South America with the immigrants of their homelands and their new adoptive countries.
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“Spells,” by Antonio Tabucchi – From “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,”
On March twenty fifth of two thousand and twelve, Antonio Tabucchi lost his grave battle with cancer, at the age of sixty eight. It was difficult news to hear, when personally I myself had just been entertaining the thought of all the books that he has written and will write, will find their way into my own bookshelf, and yet now – half of that entertaining thought; has come to an abrupt end. Yet that still does not mean that it is impossible to enjoy his work with the thought melancholic thought that it is the end of his literary output. It just gives his work a much sweeter taste of satisfaction.
Antonio Tabucchi thrived in the written forms of the short novel (the novella) and the short story section. They allowed him to express his ideas, and show off his talent as a writer, whose works has a ethereal dreamscape quality to it. In this collection “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” Antonio Tabucchi shows how the course of life can change ever so whimsically from simple mistakes and misunderstandings, to almost that fate like quality that takes over the lives of the characters, and shapes their lives, and changes it suddenly at yet with such, mundane ways. From the simple misplacement of a file or name – and these misunderstandings change the course of a life.
“Spells,” by Antonio Tabucchi takes place in the areas of childhood, with a young boy on vacation to his aunt’s home, visiting her and her daughter Celia who has a real hatred for her new stepfather, Uncle Tullio who Celia proves, had killed her real father Uncle Andrea, by turning him into the Nazi soldiers where he was executed – this being presented in a dream that the narrator has of the uncle that he has never met before.
What ensures is a battle of; childhood desires to have special abilities, and the doubts that one has over the others claims that, her stepfather really is an evil man, who represents Satan himself. Yet, the young boy finds its difficult to believe that the man who comes by every weekend, bring more life to the rather gloomy morgue of a home, with its solemn and quiet atmosphere that became oppressive and tyrannical throughout the week and gets all that much more better, when the weekend comes with the superficial enjoyments of ice cream and movies in an open aired theatre. Then comes the cat Cece from Uncle Tullio who Celia says is not just any cat, it’s a Matagot a evil spirit – usually taking the form of a cat, rat, fox or dog. Celia immediately despises Cece, and directs the narrator to watch over it – even coming to fear the creature when it attacks Flora the less then humble and modest cook of the household.
With this story (“Spells,”) Antonio Tabucchi shows childhood jealousies, and justifiable anger, at the thought of a stepparent – someone that intrudes on their lives, that was once occupied by the parent who is either deceased, or has since left and is still in contact. This sense of disgruntled jealousy and anger is very understandable, but it is what the child or the person does with this disgruntled anger and absolute disappointment not just with the intruder into their lives but with the person that brought them into their own home and world.
Antonio Tabucchi provides the outsider experience and observations allow for him to truly wonder if the character Uncle Tullio is a evil and Satanic person, or just a man that happens to have entered the wrong home, and have produced and awaked the anger of a grieving child at the loss of her father. Antonio Tabucchi called this piece of work a ghost story, and in many ways the desire of spells and magic – not necessarily the kind of magic of fairy godmothers or angels but rather the darker sinister kind of nasty stepmothers, evil queens and witches themselves. This itself becomes a horrifying experience for the observational narrator who watches with slight doubt, and horror of the antics of his cousin, and finds himself longing to get out of the house.
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“An Almost Guinea Fowl,” by Ersi Sotiropoulos – From “Landscape with the Dog,”
In an interview both Ersi Sotiropoulos and her English translator Karen Emmerich discuss the stories in this collection. The author Ersi Sotiropoulos, had said that she thought “The Pinball King,” was the best and was her personal favourite. When asked for an explanation for the answer (and it really was a good story, so far one of my personal favourites as well) Ersi Sotiropoulos, explains that the writing is simple yet the depths are complex. I myself concur with her opinion. Though the writing is simple. Ersi Sotiropoulos mixes images, and scenes that show the awkward pauses, the undercurrents of the emotions that show what is left unsaid to be painfully exposed bare. Like a heart still in its cavity but exposed when the rib spreaders, are in place, and the skin pulled back.
In “An Almost Guinea Fowl,” by Ersi Sotiropoulos, presents an almost Edward Albee like concept on the pages of this story. It reminded me a lot of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a lot of the time, with the characters odd little dinner party, and then the truth finally being revealed to both Telis and Maro about their relationship – which from an outsiders perspective is not a very healthy relationship, when Maro informs Telis that the bird is not a guinea fowl, but just a chicken. Telis’s reaction is less than what would appear logical for he gets over excited, and angry but the fact that he just lied to his friends on the phone about their dinner for the evening.
Well a guinea fowl was not found – life is full of such little disappointments aren’t they; and a turkey is used in its place. What ensures is the drunken roar and antics of the guests. Much like Edward Albee’s play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Yet there is no real exaggeration of emotion or at times any real humour that disguises the darker veins that are really running underneath the lives of the characters, or the shadows in the corners of the rooms, behind closed doors, or even under the very skin of the characters themselves. Instead of comedy making fun of or making light of the situations of the characters, and the hidden pasts, and unrealized moments, that have shaped their lives, Ersi Sotiropoulos reveals with more ease, with the pauses, the drama that unfolds of the characters interactions, their realistic conversations, and the awkwardness of their loose lips by the touch of alcohol, allow for an interesting dialogue and truly allow for some revelations and truths to be shown.
In the play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” the titular question means – who is afraid to live their lives free of illusions, where is Martha answers: “I am, George, I am.” Much can be said about the same with the characters of these stories. Telis and Maro, have a volatile relationship, which can be seen when Telis grabs Maro’s wrist, and his sudden and unexpected anger over the fact that Maro had lied about the fact of a guinea fowl. These emotional outbursts from both of the two continue throughout the evening. When in the nursery of their infant son, Maro starts to cry when confronted and urged by Telis to tell their guests Jeanette and Christos, that what they had been led to believe was guinea fowl, was in fact a turkey. They had been duked and deceived. Much like the characters Telis and Maro are doing with their own relationships. Deceiving each other that they truly love each other, and yet they cannot even place the masks of the happy couple on each other’s faces, and they are left with a relationship that is both naked and goose fleshed like the naked chicken in the ice box.
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“Flotsam,” by Peter Stamm – From “In Strange Gardens: and Other Stories,”
“You can’t imagine the kind of things that get washed up here,” says a man who runs a museum on Block Island tells the visitors of Robert (the narrator), Grahame and Werner (friends of Roberts), and Lotta who lives in the same apartment as Robert, and happens to be Finnish and also enjoys sleep and sleeping a great deal. As our narrator Robert points out, soon on, Lotta slept in until midday and often, would head to bed much earlier than him. Her entire life is like the shells in the ocean – a recurring motif. A dark, cold and damp place, where objects and items from others places just happen to appear and wash up ashore. Lotta lives off of the good charity of others, and yet doesn’t appear to mind that fact at all. She loves her little kitten Romeo – who later turns out to be a boy, and her attitude is best described like a child. Which can be seen in a scene where she goes to bed wearing pajama’s with teddy bears on them. She is innocent, and cannot be bothered to look at life, at all, and is more interested in sleep. Perhaps her dreams are better than the reality that she herself is faced with.
“Flotsam,” by Peter Stamm is written in simple minimalist prose. There are no beautiful descriptive phrases in this short story, which one might find in the works of Dame A.S. Byatt, or Margaret Atwood. What is described is described in its simplistic forms and place. Simply mentioned and left, at that. Any motif or anything that may hold a deeper meaning the reader must go and find it, and then theorize about it. It is not the main objective of the story where it might be in some works of English Literature, where a flower or a building is described in almost Shakespearean poetics. As a reader I enjoy long poetic descriptive prose, when used appropriately – but the matter of fact way that German literature is written is a real enjoyment. The answering machine has no voice on it, it just plays classical music, and then it beeps, for the caller to leave a message. That is it, which is all. Nothing special, it’s not described as being primarily as string or wind based symphony, just rather a generic classical music performance. When describing the lighting of the apartment, Peter Stamm states in simplistic way of speaking that the light bulbs are red and green, and often give off the dim lighting that reminds one of being underwater. There was no simile or sentimental piece or discussion of how the narrator Robert felt about the lighting – which is pictured as a place of swimming shadows and shifting shapes; it is simply described as if being underwater.
Water itself, becomes an image itself throughout the story. From the title of the story, which is a definition of the cargo that floats after the ship has sunk. To the vacation at Block Island, and collecting sea shells, to the museum curator who used to be a realtor who discusses the old myth or legend that in the older days the inhabits of Block Island had lured ships to their shores, causing the ships to hit the reefs, causing the ships to sick and the cargo to drift towards the shore. Of course in the present Block Island becomes nothing more than a tourist attraction.
Peter Stamm however focuses on the four people in this story, and there mundane and boring lives. Grahame’s marriage is on the fritz, Lotta never truly knows where she is going and much prefers to avoid her life and its realities and unfulfilled potential by sleeping, and Werner whose silence and often aloof personality leaves him to barely noticeable. Robert himself seems to be the only one who has any control on his life and yet the tints of melancholia can still be seen underneath the surface.
Peter Stamm is an established author in the short story so far. “Flotsam,” is a larger improvement then “Ice Lake,” where it is longer, and the characters encounters and actions make more logical sense, or at least have some background to them. I like forward to the other stories by Peter Stamm.
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“(Winter) The forest on the Superhighway,” by Italo Calvino – From “Marcovaldo or The Seasons in The City,”
Italo Calvino’s stories read like humorous parables, teaching a rather black comic or absurdly comic lesson at the expense of his characters. However they teach lessons. Such as, do not pick mushrooms up off of the street, or use pseudo-medicinal (folk medicine) as treatment of currying an ailment. The stories are light in tone and simplistic yet they are very enjoyable stories. With humour, and a well-crafted premise of a story Italo Calvino brings magic to the mundane and mysticism to the otherwise common place and ordinary. As if every day is just an adventure waiting to happen. A walk through the neighbourhood shows to be a haven for treasures and interesting sights and sensations; such as a daisy sprouting in the crack in a sidewalk, or a cat whose lazy contemplative attitude, gives an example to takes one’s life a bit simpler and easier. Each story reads with such images and such themes of nature whose unbridled beauty and power, pops up into the world.
The opening line of this story conveys the image of Italo Calvino’s intended effect with this story, about nature’s uncontrollable power, and yet it’s majestic beauty:
“Cold has a thousand shapes and a thousand ways of moving in the world: on the sea it gallops like a troop of horses, on the countryside it falls like a swarm of locusts, in the cities like a knife-blade it slashes the streets and penetrates the chinks of unheated houses.”
It’s a wonderful description of how the cold of winter works. For some reason the cold is the same no matter where you are. But the warmth or the enclosed space of the city always feels warmer than that of the country – where the blistering winds of winter blow across the fields. But the cold is still much the same. Yet such a description of the cold, is something one should come to expect from Italo Calvino where the mundane becomes majestic!
Even the description of the breaths of the family, show the personalities of each of the family members. The wife and mothers, long sigh. The children’s quick breaths, which resembled bubbles. To Marcovaldo’s quick flashes of cold breath, that resembles a flashing light bulb. The humour comes quick and fast though, from the children who collect their hatchets, and head off much like their father Marcovaldo to go and grab some wood. When Marcovaldo comes back home he finds to his own surprise that there is a fire in the home when he gets there. He asks the children where they had found the firewood. To which they reply that they got the wood from the forest on the superhighway. Which Marcovaldo goes to explore and get more firewood from. Of course what happens to be a forest is rather just a bunch of large billboards made of wood. Still its wood and Marcovaldo sets off to collect himself, some firewood for his family.
Enter Officer Astolfo an ageing law enforcer whose eye sight is poor, and yet has been notified that there has been some trouble on the superhighway of some people vandalizing the billboards. Yet his poor eye sight does not allow him to see the billboards properly and misinterpret them as the vandal. Yet when he finally spots Marcovaldo he mistakes him as part of the billboard, with his saw, representing the migraine of the advertisement. Yet Astolfo startles Marcovaldo and almost has him fall off of the billboard, yet luckily for both men, Marcovaldo retains his balance and gets his wood.
This story makes me think of my own bonfires, and the best firewood: wooden pallets. Wooden pallets are wonderful firewood. Take a crowbar and pry the planks apart and though them into a pile, in the fire pit and set them ablaze and one has a quick fire started, with a glorious intensity. Yet that intensity is also its downfall. The wood is thin and burns fast, but it’s a great starter to use when adding on more logs and pieces of wood. Often starting a great fire with a glorious blaze!
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“In the Ruins,” by Bei Dao – From “Waves: Stories,”
Bei Dao is a Chinese writer now living in exile. In his youth he was a member of the Red Guards in China under Mao Zedong, who had begun to change and shift the climate in China’s political atmosphere to something far more complex and brutal – which still is practised to this day, yet is not really talked about as much because China is a supplier of textile goods and services to Westernized civilizations. With its cheap labour, and ability to manufacture raw resources China has become a leading superpower in the world. Even now as we speak the entire economic power has shifted to the Eastern front, with China in the driving seat. Yet this can only mean that China itself is less reported on for its Human Rights infractions. The most well documented cases so far, about China’s poor Human Rights track record was when the Nobel Peace Prize of two-thousand and ten was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, the cold reception of fact that the prize had been awarded to him was less than kind. The celebrations of the victory were dispersed or curtailed with many supporters harassed or put under surveillance. In the year two thousand, the turn of the twenty first century Gao Xingjian, became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author himself has lived in exile away from China, and the reception that his former country bestowed upon him after learning he had won the prize, was congratulations to the author who had a Chinese background but is a French citizen, but went on to give their congrats to the winner and to the French cultural department as well.
Bei Dao is similar to both of the two gentlemen. A man who has seen the horrors of the Cultural revolution, and was disheartened, as well as deeply disillusioned about Mao Zedong and his communist regime that had spread like a cancer throughout the country usurping the control of the lives of the people, and placing them under his own will and iron grasp. Disobedience or any difference in thought or opinion other than that of the political leader, one was to be re-educated. Which usually took place, in hard labour. Bei Dao’s own misgivings about the political changes in China led to his own re-education. Much like it had done previously with Gao Xingjian. However this did not stop the writer himself from his own desire to be a writer and to write even against the Cultural Revolution and its desire to assimilate and conform all to its own destructive means and measures. Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the underground literary journal “Jintian,” or “Today,” which appeared irregularly, from nineteen-seventy eight until nineteen-eighty when it was officially banned by the government. The literary journal “Today,” had allowed for many poets who identified themselves as the “Misty Poets,” which includes the authors other than Bei Dao and Mang Ke; Gu Cheng, Bei Ling, Duo Duo, and Shu Ting. The “Misty Poets,” are noted for their obscure and hazy style of poetry as well as influencing many newer forms of rock musicians in China.
Though Bei Dao is primarily a poet he has written a collection of short stories, “The Waves,” which are being read and reviewed here now. He is also known for his essay collections “Blue House,” and “Midnights Gate.” It has also been speculated that he will someday win the Nobel Prize for Literature along with fellow misty poet Yang Lian.
“Waves,” by Bei Dao focuses on the Cultural Revolution of China and its aftermath, it should be noted that this collection of stories, according to the preface on the back of the book, does not focus on the polemics, but rather the individuals. The individuals who had witnessed history in its dark nightmarish making. Yet their undying devotion against the horrible acts that has been committed by their government urges them to keep on fighting, even against the dead-end despondency that has taken over their lives. Their passions and the anger expressed gives these stories the vitality they need to continue on, and fight for a China that is one day free of the red apron strings of communism.
Such an example can be seen in the conversation between father and daughter:
‘“Papa, some people say you’re bad, is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I speak the truth.”’
Yet that was once a conversation that father and child had once had. Now she has left him. Done away with him, and gone to live in schools, leaving her father alone. This an earth shattering destruction of their relationship, and the final blow it would appear to the main character who had stopped at nothing but to fight against the communist regime of his country, to which he told the truth to their lies. Yet everything changes for the main character when he walks to the to yaunmingyaun or the Summer Palace ruins by accident but then explains that it could not be some coincidence or accident:
“He didn’t understand how he had got there. It had been a completely unconscious act. No, he remembered someone saying that consciousness existed in the midst of unconsciousness.”
For those of you who are not sure what the Summer Palace is, it was an old European style palace, that was destroyed in eighteen sixty during the Second Opium war. It was looted by the soldiers of England and France, which happened because of twenty British, French and Indian soldiers died, after being taken prisoner and tortured. The two men who had lead this expedition of talk Henry Loch and Harry Parkes along with a few other soldiers were set free after two weeks. But after the discoveries of the remaining soldier’s bodies were barely recognizable, all hell broke loose. On the night of October six, the French had turned their attack towards the Summer Palace. Though the French commander had assured the British that nothing had been stolen, or touched there was major looting by both the French and the British. On October eighteen the British High Commissioner to China Lord Elgin (who many Canadian may recognize as part of their own history as being a Governor General of the Province of Canada, and had actually shaped a responsible and competent government) had ordered for the destruction of the Sumer Palace, as a retaliation for the deaths and to further discourage the Chinese empire from deploying kidnaping and torture as a way of negotiation. After the plundering and the three day burning of the palace a sign was erected stating “This is the reward for perfidy and cruelty.”
Standing before him was China’s history, the history of the last decades, or even of the last centuries or millennia. The endless arrogance and revolt, dissipation and vice; the rivers of blood and mountains of bones; the thousands upon thousands of horses and soldiers mirrored against the huge canopy of the heavens; the axe on the execution block, dripping with blood; the sundial with its shadow revolving around the glossy stone slab; the thread-bound hand-copied books piled in dusty secret rooms; the long, mournful sound of the night watchmen beating his wooden rattle . . . all these together formed these desolate ruins.”
The above quote truly shows Bei Dao’s mixture and fall into poetry while describing the scene, of the destruction of one of China’s treasures at the hands of outsiders. Bei Dao grasps and understands the individual’s attempts at telling the truth and fighting falsities. He shows their lives moving in a cul-de-sac where their attempts at breaking free from both the present and the past, merely go around in circles. Yet Bei Dao shows the vigour and anger, and breathes these emotions into the stories giving them vitality.
