Archive for March, 2012

“The Sickness” by Alberto Barrera Tyszka

Friday, March 9th, 2012

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A novel searing in emotional power that will be felt especially by readers who have lost a parent to a difficult illness, THE SICKNESS qualifies as a necessary book. It is the most accomplished piece of literature I’ve read recently, and unquestionably the most moving.

Alberto Barrera Tyszka’s formidable achievement starts with a simple formal structure — two intertwining storylines that play out over the course of a month or so, involving a handful of people living in contemporary Caracas, Venezuela. The primary focus is on Dr. Andres Miranda and his relationship with his sixty-nine-year-old father. In the opening pages the son learns his father has an aggressive form of cancer that will kill him in only a few weeks’ time. (Their reticent love may remind you of the father-son relationship in Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses: A Novel). A secondary story traces the emotional entanglement of the doctor’s secretary with a hypochondriac patient, charted through a fevered exchange of email messages.

I’m hoping THE SICKNESS receives the attention of careful critical reviews in places that allow for expansive analysis. So finely packed with incident and insight is this novel, so expertly orchestrated are its emotional revelations, and so sure-footed is the author’s blending of erudition and raw truths, that you will be caught in its influence long after reading its final pages. (The American novelist Chris Adrian, who supplies a short Introduction, confesses he was at first afraid to open the book with its wrenching report of terminal illness; then, having read it, he found himself eager to read it again.) There is so much to talk about! This novel is an ideal selection for a book club discussion.

Among Tyszka’s wonderful touches are his aphoristic observations, nonchalantly released into the flow of the narrative. These are usually serious and relate to the medical world, though not always: “Blood is a terrible gossip.” “Sickness is a form of disloyalty, an unacceptable infidelity.” “Why do we find it so hard to accept that life is pure chance?” In old age “there are no more deadlines, there is only the present.” “There are some people who only read in waiting rooms.” “Adolescence is the most unclassifiable of joys.” “Reality is always different when you’re taking a shower.”

And consider this Zen-like statement:

“Tears are very unliterary: they have no form.”

Throughout the novel the generous Tyszka also pays homage to the thoughts of others who’ve traveled the same terrain of illness, pain and death. Among them are Chekhov; Celine; Robert Burton, who wrote “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621); Susan Sontag, who observed there are two kingdoms, sickness and health; William Carlos Williams, who wrote that the doctor “must watch the patient’s mind as it watches him, distrusting him”; and Michel Foucault, who said that, “viewed from the experience of death, illness can be seen as a function of life.”

The book asks — and answers — the final question: What is the best way to say goodbye to life?

Other reviewers who are better qualified to judge the translation have praised Margaret Jull Costa.

In my photo, above, the U.K. edition (hardback) is on left, U.S. edition (paperback) on right. Depicting what appears to be a father and son at the prow of a ferry boat is appropriate as it directly relates to two scenes in the novel. The photo of a pier extending into the sea with a lone figure at its apex is an example of poetic license.

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“The Tunnel” by Ernest Sábato

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

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In this, his first novel, Ernesto Sábato displays an assured hand in fashioning a fresh tale of obsession and murder. The pace of THE TUNNEL is uncommonly well controlled. There is no fat on the bones of its first-person confessional narrative. At 140 pages, divided into 39 chapters, the book can be read in one or two sessions. This I recommend. Uninterrupted attention to the diseased mind of the artist-confessor, Juan Pablo Castel, is the optimal way to experience Sabato’s own artistry.

We know from the opening pages of the novel and from the first encounter between Castel and María Iribarne that these two lovers are doomed to play out a fatal destiny. We expect the descent will be devastating. It is.

The affair begins with the traditional dance: tentative connections, daydreaming, high expectations, misunderstandings, jousting, furtive telephone calls. Looking back after his crime, Castel recalls “how we are blinded by love, how magically love transforms reality.”

It is chilling to come upon the first intimations of violence. Sábato is a master of the slow reveal. He is aware of how we, his apprehensive readers, are taking in and digesting the progress of the tale. I was struck by the teasing manner in which he parcels out dialog between the lovers, and how he uses their diverging temperaments (the overly-analytical Castel versus the elusive María) as a means to keep us off-balance. We want to hear more from María, in her own words, unfiltered by the claustrophobic, maddeningly selfish perceptions of the narrator. When she finally speaks honestly to him of her desires, during an escape from the city to an estancia by the ocean (“I can’t count the times,” she tells Castel, “that I have dreamed of sharing this sea and this sky with you”) — the emotional effect is powerful.

When first published in 1948, and championed by Albert Camus, THE TUNNEL was placed on the shelf with contemporary existentialist literature. It is true Sábato bows in that direction, as when Castel waxes philosophical:

“There are times I feel nothing has meaning. On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, or others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.”

But to the 21st-century reader chances are this will sound like window-dressing. Nowadays the philosophical takes a back seat to the psychological, which means THE TUNNEL becomes a case study. It is an examination — or, since the story is in the form of a confession, let us say a self-examination — by a man suffering through deep psychological trauma. Castel boasts: “My brain is in constant ferment and, when I get nervous, ideas roil in a giddy ballet.” Although he fancies himself a superior analytical being, we know better. Obsessive, vengeful, violently jealous, here is a man depressed, suicidal. His descent is plotted with steady skill by the author.

Notes: The paperback edition I read, no longer in print,  is covered with the striking a black and white photo (below). Penguin Classics is issuing a reprint edition in April, 2012, with an inferior cover (above) that does little to evoke the novel’s mood. A film version of  The Tunnel was released in 1988 to mixed reviews; Peter Weller plays the role of Castel, and Jane Seymour is María.

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Rain 1

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

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Washington, DC (North Capitol Street and New York Avenue), February 29, 2012, 9:30am.

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Rain 2

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

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Washington, DC (North Capitol Street and New York Avenue), February 29, 2012, 9:30am.

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