Slow pace...

Only 9, and I think I'll fiinish the year with 10, since the book on deck is more than 1,000 pages long. I'm really looking forward to it, though.

Yeah, I must confess I've read a lot of other stuff in between the laureates. I could have made it to 20, easily, but I read two of my favorite writer and several others because they are lighter reading and I needed a mental break.

I'll make an extra effort from now on.

Saramago's Death

I don't know why this book hasn't been turned into a movie. Maybe it has and I just don't know it. Anyway, if it has, I won't watch it because it can't be better than the book.

I have to admit, I started this book with a huge bias. Saramago was a secular writer, but that's not a problem, I was raised in a hyper-secular environment myself, the problem to me is that he was also an ardent critic of almost everything I believe in, so I started this book with a sigh, wishing I could skip him, but concluding that I must read him more out of a sense of duty than anything else.

Sure enough, the attacks were present from the get-go, but I was drawn in by the premise of the book: Death seemed to have taken a holiday. People quite simply stopped dying. At first, everybody thought it was great, they could live forever, but then the very practical aspects of life took over... If nobody dies, what will happen to the pension system, to healthcare? What to do with grandpa who is not dying and not getting better, either, just laying there in limbo? What to do with the old men and women that will inevitably crowd retirement homes and hospitals, putting an unbearable strain on the state's ability to care for its citizens and overwhelm insurance companies and private health care providers?

This is how the book starts and, even though this is the premise that is followed for a good 2/3 of the book, I say starts because it then takes an unexpected turn and we go from people and the State (most likely Portugal, Saramago's native land) as central characters, to death itself (not Death, but death, this difference is of critical importance) only to sync back with the original story in the very last line of the book.

I don't think I'd ever read anything more imaginative than this book. I recommend you read it, but remember, I'm not recommending it because I agree with Saramago's views about life and morals, but because it is an example of the power of human inventive powers.

Almost a Prophet

This was quite a treat. You probably have been asked the question about if you could meet any three people, dead or alive, who would them be? I don't know about yours, but I'm pretty sure about two out of those three (my third slot is still up for grabs) Martin Luther King Jr., and Sir Winston Churchill. Since Mr. Churchill was not only a Statesman -and one of the greatest the world has ever seen- but a prolific painter and writer, he managed to win a war and the Nobel Prize. And this is a Nobel prize that awarded as a result of an observable body of work, not because social media, the 24-hour cycle and the ignorance of people has made you a star. You actually have to be derserving for this one, as he was. On a side note, there used to be a bust of Mr. Churchill inside the Oval office and the current occupant sent it back to the British embassy in D.C. Must have made him feel inadequate.

Well, I read a collection of speeches compiled by Mr. Churchill's grandson. Every one of them is poetic, but more importantly, almost prophetic (sometimes without the almost) and made me wonder if we're ever going to see a true leader like this again. Churchill himself said that one of his achievements was "the mobilisation of the English language" and you can really see this unfold in his speeches, he writes in such a way that it makes you react, in some way, but you can't stay passive after reading his speeches. They must have fallen like bombshells on the House's floor when he delivered them with his well polished orator's voice. It is impressive to read how he foresaw the advent of Nazi Germany and even lost his seat for proclaiming it (yes, a politician that prefers to lose his seat rather than change his convictions. Apparently, they used to exist) and did not regain it until years later, well, he really did not because he went from holding no office to being Prime Minister of the only country (yes, this is factually correct) that was actively fighting the Nazi plague.

While most of his speeches were about the war, some of the latter ones are about the perils of economic uncertainty and the threat of socialism. I believe that there is still much to learn and apply in our day from what the great Mr. Churchill wrote 50 years ago. I fully recommend you get any compilation of his speeches or one of the history books he wrote and dive in. But remember, this is a man who, in addition to being a prolific writer had the fate of the free world in his hands, at the same time, and did both thigns extremely well. Simply amazing.

By the way

The title of Muller's book is "The Appointment", should you care to read it...

Off to Romania.

Back to good old socialilst / former socialist countries. Herta Muller won the prize in 2009, just last year, she was born in Romania and now lives in London, in case anybody wants to meet her in person.



This book is odd. It’s the first book I’ve ever read in which not a single question is ended with a question mark. It gives everything a sense of dejection, very much in tune with the book itself. An example: “And what about the ring.” Instead of: “And what about the ring?” The question mark makes you think the person is engaged, really wants to know the answer, while the question without it makes you think the person doesn’t care anymore, the question is an after-thought, a non-issue. Well, it’s not fortuitous, the entire book is like that, it shows you life from the perspective of somebody that doesn’t really care, that used to care, but not anymore. The death of her closest friends, the political intrigues of the socialist regime, endless interrogations (she’s suspected as a spy) and an alcoholic life-partner have sucked the joy away from her life.



This book is like an abstract painting. If you like them you would like this book. It’s really not my favorite, but I do recommend it.



Off to England and one of the men I admire the most: Sir Winston Churchill. Yes, he won the Nobel prize, too, but one that actually counts!

Sub-prime mortgage crisis in turn-of-the-century Iceland

So I read Halldor Laxness’ “Independent People”. It’s about a man, Bjarthur of Sommerhouses, that spends his entire life trying to be independent. Of everything. Of landlords, God, wants, needs, love, everything. He holds independence as the highest and truest value a man can attain.


Honestly, the book is not that much to talk about. He Raises sheep, 95% of the book is about sheep. The most interesting part is when, late into his life, he decides to build a house. Iceland is doing really well because of world war I, when apparently, they were supplying the rest of Europe with goods. Bjarthur is doing really well in this environment so he goes to the savings and loan company and asks for a mortgage loan… you know where this is going. They lend him the money, happily, and then the sheep market crashes after the end of the war, Bjarthur can’t sell his sheep, he defaults on his mortgage and the bank forecloses. So the issue is not new, people have been getting themselves under water for more than a century, almost two, actually.

Other than this, the book is good because of its imagery and descriptions of Iceland, you almost feel cold as you’re reading it, so if you’re interested in learning about a little known place, certainly learning about Iceland in a non-transportation related way (remember the volcano that halted flights all over Europe?) this is a good book. It’s not up-lifting, it won’t make you feel good, but you will remember the characters and end up feeling like they are personal acquaintances.

I liked it well enough, but I’m not dying to read another of Halldor’s books any time soon.

It's only been five!

And it's already June. And I must confess, I am reading "El Asedio", the latest novel by Don Arturo Perez-Reverte, my all-time favorite writer, so it might go even slower... Anyway, I've decided to come up with my personal rankings as of now, and here they are for you to disagree with:

1. Hemingway
2. Solzhenitsyn
3. Camus
4. Faulkner
5. Neruda

I'll update it when I get to 10.

Nice to meet you, Mr. Hemingway.

Alright, I’ll admit it: I’d never read Hemingway. But back off, I’m sure you’ve never read Quevedo or Gongora.


So I started reading “The old man and the sea” this past Saturday and finished on Sunday, couldn’t put it down. The narrative is so vivid that I recall passages of the book as if they were memories, instead of my imagination. I don’t know what Hemingway’s point was when he wrote it, but to me it represented –however grandiose it may sound- the triumph of the human spirit over adversity and how all noble effort is good in itself. If I evaluate the story as an accountant, he ran a tremendous loss, in fact, he’s a complete failure, but only because what he gained in self-respect (and from others) is intangible and cannot be measured in dollars and cents. It’s an excellent read, one of my favorites as of yet. I heartily recommend it.

It’s now turn Mr. Halldór Laxness, Icelandic, who won it in 1955.

I despise Anse Bundren.

He’s not a man. He’s a weasel. I took up “As I lay dying” again and ended up disgusted with this wretch of a man. I will say that you should read this book because whenever a character can inspire such strong feelings in you it means that the book is good. By that standard, this book is superb. I won’t tell you why I hate him so you can read it yourself and come to hate him as much as I do, which I’m sure you will.


The book was also my introduction to the stream-of-consciousness style and while it’s hard to follow at times it’s also fascinating: “- My mother is a fish. Darl is my brother. Jewel’s mother is a horse. My mother is a fish.” Peppered in between are real issues that will leave you pondering, like “Is he really crazy or do we call someone crazy when he doesn’t think like everybody else?” The value of a promise, of life, material things… all are covered and played out through the almost Dantesque journey.

I strongly recommend you read this book. Besides, if you’re American, you have to. You just have to.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

All of Camus’ writings should start with that disclaimer. By the way, I hate it when people quote “Dante’s Inferno” because there is no such thing, so for the record, I am quoting “The Divine Comedy” which happens to be split in three: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The fact that some editor decided that people didn’t really care about Purgatory and Heaven and published the Hell section separately does not a stand-alone book make. In fact, you don’t get to the best part. Anyway, Dante is not a Nobel Prize Laureate, so enough about him.


I ended up reading more than one of Camus’ books, since I have a collection of his works. As I mentioned before, I read “The Plague” followed by “The Fall” and continuing with “Exile and The Kingdom”. It’s always the same story with different characters and set in different places, so don’t bother. His message always is “There’s no hope in life. All you can aspire to is death”. If you read reviews about him they’ll say things like “insightful” and “shows the greatest understanding of the human mind”, but I personally don’t know where they get that from, unless all the critics are as limited in vision as he is and fail to grasp that life does have a meaning. Even if you were to take the supernatural out of the equation, Wouldn’t you say that helping others and making them happier, devoting yourself to service, could be deemed to be the meaning of life? I read once that the Greek Hedonists became more stoic than the Stoics, because in due time they came to realize that the only true pleasures were those of the spirit, and sometimes I think that people like Camus just didn’t have enough time to come to the same conclusion. I don’t know if he might have, but he did die before he was 40.

If you start reading one of his books, it will suck you in, I assure you. His narrative is powerful. He’ll have you flying high just to drop you suddenly and without warning into a pit of despair and hopelessness. If you’re curious read one and you’ll know how all his books end.

Ladies and Gentlemen, pinch hitting for Faulkner, Albert Camus.

Yes, I was defeated by Faulkner, although only momentarily. I can’t continue reading his book right now, it’s too difficult and I’m in the midst of filing the first quarterly report with the SEC. Too much to handle.


I went to the bookstore the other day thinking I would get some Tagore, Solojov or someone else to help me get out of the Faulkner rut. They didn’t have most of the Laureates, Can you believe that? The best writers in the world and they don’t have their books, but ask for Palin’s, the unauthorized biography of Oprah or Obama’s audacity of… whatever, and they have them by the scores. Pathetic.

Anyway, they had Camus, and even though I’ve read “L’etranger” (in Spanish) years ago and found it an extraordinarily odd book –wonderfully written, masterful in what it conveys- that left me with a physical feeling similar to what you get when you see a dead animal on the side of the road, a mix of disgust and curiosity, I bought Camus’ book, as he was the first laureate that they actually had.

Well, it turns out that the book has three of his novels and some essays. I am now reading the first one, called “The Plague”, and it’s exactly about that, a plague that strikes the French town of Oran. It starts by killing all the rats and then it transfers to people. I’m right now in the middle of the worst of the plague, almost two hundred died just yesterday, but the most interesting thing is that the different characters' reactions run the whole spectrum from despair to resignation and everything in between.

His characters don’t really have any faith in God, the authorities, or even plain simple destiny. They are afraid to die –most of them- yet they refuse to let the plague really alter the way they live. It’s as if they had concluded that so long as they don’t acknowledge it, the plague doesn’t really exist. Sounds familiar? I think we do that all the time.

I haven’t gotten to the part where Camus makes his attack on the institutions of modern society, as all existentialists do. I know he will, he always does, but for now, I’m enjoying the read and eager to find out if… Well, I can’t give it away. You might want to read it.

Faulkner and the language barrier.

Okay, I have to admit that I’ve read two non-Nobel laureate books between Neruda and now. I won’t apologize, Perez-Reverte deserves it, and besides, I’m only skipping ahead a little bit, as I’m sure that Don Arturo will win the prize, eventually.


I thought my English was good. I mean, I grew up in a Mexican border town, some of my college classes and most of my books were in English, I’ve been in this country for six years, I barely speak a word of Spanish on a normal day –unless it’s to myself- and I don’t watch TV in Spanish (they don’t have any good channels on cable), so I thought my English was good. Good enough. It all changed when I started reading Faulkner’s “As I lay dying”.

What?

Yes, that’s the only thing I can say about the book.

What?..

Sorry, Pablo.

I wish he’d been around to see where all his beautiful communism ended. Well, it never even really made it to communism, it stayed in socialism and amounted to nothing. I wish he’d said something about that abomination called the Berlin wall. Would he have rejoiced, like I did –yes, I was 11 at the time and remember it perfectly- with seeing huge slabs of concrete fall under people’s sledge hammers? Would he have smiled at seeing long-lost cousins, maybe sons and daughters, husbands and wives, reunited for the first time in decades? Perhaps not. He would have said something about the failed promises of capitalism and the destruction of the true communist dream. And he would have said that at least they still had China. Well, Pablo, I wish you could have seen China become the most powerful force in capitalism today. And they are smart, they are playing –sometimes controlling- the world’s free markets, fueled by a seemingly never ending, cheaper-than-dirt work force. Oh, they figured it out alright, but not how to turn the system into the people’s paradise, but how to turn people into cogs of their capitalist machine.


No, Pablo, you were wrong. Always wrong. At least I know that wherever you are now, heaven, purgatory or hell, you know it. Now you know it. If only your rhetoric had gone away with you instead of leading others to error.

You were wrong.

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.

Life in general

I know I haven't posted in a while and I apologize, sort of to myself, more than anyone else. This filing season has been a crazy one where 14 or 15 hour days (like yesterday) have been far too common. In any event, I'm back.




By now it is clear that the writer's intent is to express his point of view on the great issues of mankind. His characters ask such questions as "What is happiness?" "Where do I belong" "What is my purpose in life" even the title, "In the first circle" refers to a drawing in the dirt made by Innokenti (whom I suspect is the "traitor") in which he drew three concentric circles, the first of which depicted Russia, with the outer one being all of mankind. He wants to be a citizen of the world and live in the third circle, but he can't, because a system full of barricades and men with guns forces him to stay within the first one. In that you can definitely see the author's personal point of view about socialism, but it makes a greater point, one that a friend of mine made just yesterday on his facebook: "Am I meant to be where I am, to do what I do, to be who I am?" The interesting thing is that my friend is a lawyer, living in Washington, D.C., the antithesis of Innokenti's environment, however, they both share the same feeling, they are both looking for some sort of purpose in life that, as of now, has been hiding from them. I guess it's true what they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It made me remember a conference in college in which the professor explained in a very convincing manner how socialism and capitalism tended to the same end, but through different means. I guess he was right.



I don't share Innokenti's lack of purpose and I don't think my friend actually feels that way -maybe he as just having a bad day because he had to read a particularly boring brief- but I do understand how one can be lost in this maelstrom called life. It helps to have anchors -family, friends, faith more than anything- to keep you grounded and give you that sense of purpose, but just imagine how many millions of people in the world don't have any of that, how many millions were raised under Socialist rule not to have any! I remember reading a book once about socialist indoctrination for the special forces of the KGB written by a defector and how he described that every session started with reciting the party's oath and saying out loud "there is no God". If there is no God, Why do you have to deny him so? I don't deny the existence of unicorns; it doesn't even cross my mind because they don't exist. People like that are like monuments that were stripped bare during revolutions, sure, they still stand, they are even functional, but they are sad, dejected, devoid of their original glory.



So don't read the book if you're looking for a thriller! I can recommend you many others, instead.

A day with Stalin

I just spent a Day with the former leader of the Soviets. I was taken on a typical Russian "tangent" (I'm sure there's a technical name for side stories, but like I said, I'm not a writer or anything remotely close) and read and entire biography of Stalin in a few chapters.

And it wasn't just that, it was a brief history of the Soviet Union. I had forgotten that Stalin had been a seminarian, and about to be ordained, too, before he was expelled for being a socialist. Reminded of the "Liberation Theology" priests of post Vatican II, but that's a topic I will leave to the experts, like my friend Joe, whose blog you can and should read and that's why I have his link in mine.

Anyway, as predicted, the original tangents are becoming a cohesive story. I went to jail so I could meet the men (I'm not being sexist, it's just men) that are working on technology that will help the government figure out who called the American embassy. The problem is that instead of having GE run the project and subcontract parts of it to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others, you have two guys that are fighting for the favor of the Stalin and a Lenin prize, so the leaders of these two teams keep trying to sabotage each other, while the engineers, who are all political prisoners, could not care less because, as one of them put it "You should realize that you can't take everything away from a man, because when you do, he is no longer under your control, he is free again" (I told you it had great quotes).

If this is true, if this is how Socialism really worked, it's no wonder it imploded the way it did. Then again, the author was forced into exile by the system he is describing, so he's not what we could call impartial.

Now I know where this is going. It's only a matter of time before he throws me into another loop, I'm sure of it.

By the way, he won it in 1970

I neglected to tell you that he won the Nobel prize in 1970. I'll try to be chronological in the future, but I make no promises.

I wasn't thinking of posting every day, and maybe I won't, but as I was reading last night I wanted to write about the seemingly chaotic exchange that takes place in chapters 7 through 9. These two guys are talking about the deepest questions of mankind -happiness, the meaning of life- in a non-chalant way, like discussing the weather. Now, I don't necessarily agree with their points of view, which are very materialistic, but I recognize the genius of teasing the reader by barely touching upon these issues without really going into them. It leaves you wondering if the storyline will bring you back to that discussion or if it was just like the splash of bright red paint that all abstract paintings seem to have, something to capture your attention. It's as if the writer was saying "look what I'm capable of, so hang on and I'll show you a thing or two".

It is also very interesting how some people might find it hard to find something to believe in, but we all tend to more or less know what we don't believe in. How is that?

Solzhenitsyn, first impressions

I can tell he's Russian. I could tell even if I didn't already know who the writer is. He is similar to Tolstoi and Doestoevsky without being like them. You have the tangents that make you feel like you're reading five different books at the same time, but they are not self-encompassing, he doesn't take you for a circular walk before returning to the main story like they do, I have a feeling that this tangents will become the story and I will find out that they were not tangents at all, but lines that meet at some point in the future, it's just that my outlook was wrong.

I can tell you now, I'm hooked. I can be in my apartment in Crystal City or in Old Town Alexandria, but that doesn't matter... When I open the book, I'm in Russia, years before I was even born. I can see the streets, the dim lit offices, feel the cold of the Moscow winter. This book is already worth it, even if it's only for the beautiful and realistic images it has created in my mind. Better than a museum full of paintings.

But I should say something about the plot. There's an atomic bomb in the wrong hands. A Russian official that goes against his sense of loyalty and reports it to the US embassy. An American military attache that doesn't speak Russian and dismisses the call, tells the guy to call the Canadians instead, they speak better Russian... Even in this little detail, Solzhenitsyn captured the stereotypical American living abroad, the one that expects the rest of the world to speak proper American English -not even British!- American. But then the tangents start and I'm thrown in jail, celebrating Christmas with German prisoners, working in the radio lab and trying to figure out how to get real news, not the sanctioned version of the world published by Pravda.

I know I'm up to something, I just don't know what that is yet. I'm sure I'll find out soon.

The basic idea

Nobody said New Year's resolutions had to be restricted to 365 days, however, that is how I'd always thought of them. Until yesterday, January 3, 2010. I'd been to the bookstore the night before and bought two books: Doestoevsky's short stories and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "In the first circle". The next evening, I was sitting at home reading Solzhenitsyn and thinking how great it would be to own that collection they have at my University of all Nobel laureates in literature. I contacted the publishing house once (it's a Spanish company) but they didn't have it in stock anymore. So then I thought "Why don't I buy a book of each winner myself?" - It sounded crazy, but so logical I was surprised I hadn't thought about it before.

I then decided to make it my new year's resolution, but there's a problem. The greatest number of books I've ever read in a year is 56, and that's when I was in college, when there's all the time in the world to read. Now I have a full time job and I have to fight traffic every day. Then again, nobody said I had to finish in a year. Actually, it's even better if it takes longer.

I'm not a critic, I don't have a degree in literature. I simply like to read. All my comments will be based on this very simple principle, I read for pleasure, and I like what I like. Now let's start this adventure.