Off to 1971.

And off to Latin America, or as we sometimes more aptly call it, Hispanic America (Hispanoamérica), to meet Pablo Neruda. So my friend Adam knew of my idea and gave me three books, “Confieso que he vivido” (I confess that I have lived) by Pablo Neruda is the first one of those three.

Neruda is a card carrying Communist, atheist, promiscuous, selfish man… that also happens to be a genius. How is it that God showers such a man with an uncanny understanding of nature and mankind that allows him to capture the essence of places and people and put it on paper as if he were reading their DNA code? I don’t know, but that is for my friends that write about philosophy and theology to discuss, I just find myself mesmerized by the details of his life in Chile, his trips abroad as a consul of his country, his political career as a Senator representing the poorest region of Chile, his escape from his political adversaries and his seemingly un-ending love for the written word. This book is written in prose and it does not contain a single one of his poems (most of which are not suitable for the Anglo-Saxon personality, I don’t think) but it does capture the essence of this man and lets you understand his view of the world that ultimately influenced his poetry.

I don’t agree with him in anything when it comes to morality and values. Not a single thing. Sometimes I am tempted to throw the book across the room in anger (which would be rude and, possibly expensive, since I normally read at bars, sipping a beer and I would hit the stack of bottles facing the bar with it) but then I read a few more lines and he steps away from his reprehensible discourse (for whenever he talks of love, God, good and evil he is always dead wrong) and gets back to describing to me countries and people and feelings in such a way that it makes me feel like I am there, like I am smelling, touching, seeing Valparaíso, Santiago, Perú, Rangoon, Paris, Madrid, México (he even mentions my beloved home State of Sonora)… it makes me think how much richer (if that is even possible) his poetry would have been were he alive today, and able to benefit from the modern jet that can take you to any corner of the world in less than 24 hours... On the other hand, he is the fruit of the mid 1900’s, with all the turmoil of the Spanish civil war (that changed every Hispanic American country), World War II and the ideological wars of capitalism and communism. That was his breeding ground, that intellectual environment was the soil that fed him.

Read this book. Read it soon! Even if you don’t like it as much as I do, you will have learned much about my people, through the words of one of his most celebrated sons.

If you’re the kind of people that needs closure, don’t read this book.

Because the book is like people watching. Not a single storyline is concluded. The book ends completely open-ended, some characters are just left by the wayside without ever appearing again and it is unclear who is good, bad, right, wrong… It’s all left to us, readers, to decide. I’ve always said that I have a lot more respect for a staunch enemy than for a weak ally: at least I know where the enemy stands. I would have liked for the author –who definitely has a stance- to carry it ‘til the end. Some may say he does, but I don’t think so. Some may say there’s sufficient evidence to know what his stance is, what the ending should be. I say that may be true as a whole (communism is reprehensible and unsustainable as a form of government) but it’s not true as it pertains to the characters. In the end, if I wanted to read about the evils of communism in the abstract, I would have bought a political science book or a history book. I bought a novel.


Not all is lost, of course, after all, the author is a Nobel prize winner. It is still an impressively well written book, just not one that I’ll find myself re-reading anytime soon, if ever.