Literary Characters Versus Real People

For years, my thesis adviser kept telling me, "Clarissa, these are not real people you are discussing. These are characters. You are not analyzing historical accounts or ideological manifestos but works of art." I had no idea what she was trying to tell me and kept getting annoyed.

And then I started reading criticism on female novel of development and realized that the following argument keeps being offered by the critics who write on the subject: "Novels reflect reality. The reality of women in the 19th century was that they were miserable, stunted, and oppressed. After the women's liberation movements achieved important successes in the 1970ies, women became liberated, happy and a lot less oppressed. Ergo, novels about women written in the 19th century will be populated by oppressed, miserable female characters who are incapable of developing. After the 1970ies, novels will show crowds of happy, fulfilled female protagonists." 

When you start reading actual female Bildungsromane, you discover that both novels and reality are a lot more complex than such facile definitions allow us to imagine. These works of fiction do not conform to the critical expectations in the least. Often, they present the exact opposite of what the above-mentioned argument leads us to expect.

This is probably the rule of literary criticism that it took me the longest to learn: characters are not real people.

I Don't Like Reading Spanish Literature

It is a very paradoxical state of affairs where I like reading Spanish literature so much that it gets to the point where I don't like reading it. Most of the other literature in the world (including Latin American), I can at least try simply to enjoy. However, the moment I open a book from Spain, my brain immediately goes into overdrive.

How does this work of literature inscribe itself into my critical understanding of the time period? Do I need to modify my perception of era, of the writer, of the genre? What will be my own reading of this book? How can I connect it to the entire oeuvre of this author? What type of narrator do I see in this work? What does this tell me? Have I seen this writer move towards this type of narrator in a previous novel? What was it that critic A said about the XYZ subject and can it be related to this work of literature? Who is this politician / writer / painter that is mentioned on page 17? How come I don't know them? When will I order books about them? Where have I seen this metaphor already? What does it mean that I'm encountering it in this text? Why are the chapters named this way (not named, numbered, etc.)?

And it goes on and on forever. Of course, after reading a single 300-page novel, I feel like I've been lugging sacks of flour around. 

Just as I cannot turn off the feminist in me, I cannot turn off the literary critic. How do people turn off their professional identities and just relax?

More on XIXth Century Female Characters

One of the most common responses that female characters of the XIXth century novels of growth and development have to being abandoned by their beloved, humiliated by acquaintances and rejected by family members is to seek employment. Even Fernan Caballero's goody-two-shoes character Gracia Vargas says, "I have hands, I can work" and rejects a former fiance who comes back to her in favor of independence and security (these are the actual words she uses) that work provides for her. Fernan Caballero was one of the most rabid conservatives of her times. She reminds me of Ann Coulter whenever I read her novels. Even she, however, created female characters who see work outside the home as a panacea for all women's problems.

There is nothing even remotely resembling this attitude among female characters of Bildungsromane published in the last three decades. What happens is the exact opposite. In Espido Freire's Irlanda, the main character murders her cousin who tells her that a woman can acquire power by becoming an executive or a banker. Freire is a young, quite progressive writer. She is no Fernan Caballero, and I'm sure that she is no fan of Ann Coulter either. And still, the very idea of having a life outside the home drives her character into a murderous rage.

I only discussed these two writers here but there are many more who do the same thing both in the XIXth and the XXth century. (And not only in Spain, of course.)

XIXth-Century Female Literature in Spain

As I’m disinterring XIXth-century novels by authors like Patrocinio Biedma, Faustina Sáez de Melgar, Ana García del Espinar, Blanca de los Ríos de Lampérez, Adela Sánchez Cantos de Escobar, Pilar Sinués del Marco and Ángela Grassi, I realize, first of all, that we have no idea just how much women writers produced in the XIX century and how incredibly popular their novels were. The canon hasn’t treated them kindly or, in my opinion, at all fairly. Another thing that I’m realizing is that our vision of what women were like in that era is quite simplistic and limited. Even the vilified (and rightfully so) concept of the Angel in the House is more complex than what we often believe. 

Eduardo Mendoza's Riña de gatos. Madrid 1936: A Review

There has been a veritable flurry of very long novels about the Civil War published by the leading Spanish writers in the past couple of years. Almudena Grandes is even planning an entire series of such novels. She has already published two, El corazón helado (very good) and Inés y la alegría (a review will appear on this blog shortly). Also of note is Antonio Muñoz Molina's La noche de los tiempos, which is as long as it is enjoyable. 

The reason why so many authors in Spain still write about the Civil War at great length is that the trauma of the war was never fully healed. Decades of a fascist dictatorship followed the defeat of the Republicans in the war. After Franco's death, one of the characteristics of Spain's transition to democracy was (as usually happens with countries that emerge from long and repressive authoritarian regimes) to try to forget the war. No persecution and punishment of war criminals took place. People who fought against each other, the victims and the executioners were expected to start living peacefully side by side pretending that no Civil War and no dictatorship had ever taken place. This approach was obviously doomed to failure. Spanish writers today are trying to heal the trauma of the Civil War by talking about all of its aspects at length. This is something that Spanish society definitely needs. Great novels come out as a result, which is an added bonus.

Eduardo Mendoza decided to participate in this trend with his recent novel Riña de gatos. Madrid 1936. Mendoza's approach to exorcising the ghosts of the Civil War is different from that of many other writers. Riña de gatos turns the tragic months preceding the beginning of the war in the summer of 1936 into a burlesque. Laughter has the power to heal trauma and bridge even the most profound differences. Mendoza brings to the pages of his new novel José Antonio Primo de Rivera (the leader of the Spanish fascists), generals Francisco Franco and Queipo de Llano  (who are plotting a  military uprising against the Republic, an uprising we all know will be successful and cause untold horrors to the country), Niceto Alcalá Zamora (the first president of the Second Spanish Republic) and Manuel Azaña (who will become the last president of the Republic.) All of these historic figures are placed in situations that make them look homey, non-threatening and slightly ridiculous.

The plot of the novel revolves around Anthony Whitelands, a British art critic, who comes to Spain to authenticate a painting that was supposedly created by Velázquez. As the hapless Brit boozes and whores his way through the Madrid of the spring of 1936, his activities attract the attention of competing political factions that would like to get their hands on the painting. A genuine Velázquez could pay for a lot of weapons and help the group that manages to lay its hands on the painting win the approaching war. Soon, Anthony Whitelands finds himself being torn between offers of friendship from the charming fascist José Antonio Primo de Rivera, sexual advances of sex-crazed countesses, demands of an underage prostitute, manipulations of British and German spies and threats from a Soviet conspirator named Kolia.

When I first started reading the novel, I opened it in a suitably somber mood that I believed was appropriate when reading about events as painful as those of the pre-war months in Spain. By the end of the novel, however, I was beating my head against the desk in laughter. I've read several reviews of Riña de gatos. Madrid 1936 and realized that many of the readers didn't manage to escape from the weight of gravitas that usually accompanies the discussions of the Spanish Civil War. If one were to let go completely of the doom and gloom attitude to the war, one would realize that Mendoza's novel is extremely funny. This writer is known for subverting the readers' expectations and this is exactly what he does in his new novel.

How Do You Separate the Artist From Their Art?

Stringer, who is a frequent reader and commenter on this blog, sent in this fascinating question, and I decided to address it in a separate post. As a scholar of Hispanic literature, I have to analyze and teach works of art whose authors often hold beliefs that I find to be deeply repugnant. 

Take, for example, Francisco de Quevedo, a 17th century Baroque poet from Spain. The guy was a rabid anti-Semite and a profound woman-hater, and we all know how much I adore these particular qualities in people. From what I have been able to gather about him, Quevedo was an extremely nasty human being. At the same time, he wrote the kind of poetry that is so indescribably beautiful that no matter how many times I read it, I never cease to be amazed with it. His poem "Love Constant Beyond Death" (it's really not the same in the English translation, but here you have it anyway) touches me so deeply that I even avoid reading it. I'm not a touchy-feely-weepy kind of person, but I know that I will not be able to get my emotions under control if I start discussing it in class. You can write a doctoral dissertation on every single line of this poem and still never exhaust its meaning. It is so annoying that this nasty woman-hater and vile anti-Semite had to be the person who created my most favorite poetry in the entire world.

Then, we have Juan Goytisolo. He is not only my favorite novelist but also one of my main research interests. His novel Count Julian makes my heart stop every time I read it because it's so good. And yet, Goytisolo has written extremely nasty stuff about women in this very novel that I love so much. 

So how do I deal with this? How do I reconcile myself to the realization that some of my most favorite writers whose work I dedicate my life to studying and teaching are often jerks whose ideas I detest? How do I deal with the fact that whenever I meet writers whose work I love, I always discover that I don't enjoy spending even five minutes in their company? I thought long and hard about this and about the nature of artistic production. I know that people will criticize me for romanticizing the creative process, but I believe that artists (just artists, not literary critics, bloggers, journalists, or anybody else) get their creative gift from a place that has nothing to do with their personalities, their foibles, their vices, and their often extremely silly political beliefs. A creative genius (yes, you can laugh now, I don't mind) is something that gets bestowed on a person by nature or whatever it is you believe in for no particular reason whatsoever. 

I don't think that I'm "talented" or that any of the leading scholars in my field are "talented." (Just try calling me "talented" or "gifted" and you'll get me to become you enemy forever.) They are just extremely hard-working, dedicated, stubborn, and passionate individuals. Artists, however, are a different thing. You often see a person who is a nasty, lazy, condescending jerk who, for some unfathomable reason, has been given the gift of creating art. There is no reason for this. It just happens. (At some point, I will also blog about how scary it is to discover that a person you've known forever also has this terrifying creative gift that seems to come from nowhere.) Whenever I encounter works of art created by people I cannot possibly respect, I just look at their artwork as something that comes from a mysterious place and that, by pure chance, gets channeled through them.

Just One More (Sorry!)

I thought we had reached the pinnacle of stupidity with Melibea prostituting herself to feed her father. But no, the real culmination to the course has been reached in another essay which informed me that Juan y Juana of Miguel de Unamuno's short story "Al correr los años" are a typical North American family. 

This reminds me of this old joke where a professor asks the class, "Do you have any questions before we proceed to write the final exam?" "Yes," a student says. "What is the name of this course?"

The name of our course was Survey of Spanish Literature. I have no idea what kind of a weird mental perversion could have led anybody to assume that Unamuno's Juan and Juana were North American.

What Melibea and Lazarillo Have in Common

I know that those of my readers who are not Hispanists must be sick and tired of this kind of posts, but I have only four final essays more to grade, and then I promise that no more posts like this one will appear. I simply need to share this with my colleagues because otherwise I will explode.

A student just informed me that Melibea and Lazarillo de Tormes have a lot in common. For example, they both have to make a living by prostituting themselves. When Melibea's father discovers that his daughter has been selling her body to put food on their table (sic!), he becomes distraught. Lazarillo, in the meanwhile, sells sexual favors to a blind man AND to his mother's new husband.

Of course, there are also some differences between these works of literature. For instance, La Celestina belongs to the Romanticism while Lazarillo de Tormes is a Realist PLAY. 

Now, a question for everybody. Is this student doing this just to bug me? This cannot possibly be written in earnest, right? Right?

Tired

I'm tired, people. As I'm preparing for my Birthday trip to St. Louis this weekend, I need to do everything well ahead so that the grading for next week is done, the classes and the mini-quizzes are prepared. I've been working since 9 am today with a short nap during the day. And there is still a class to prepare and mini-quizzes to grade. 

In my Survey of Spanish literature course, we finally got to the stuff that represents my main area of specialization. We will be reading two of my favorite writers Luis Martin Santos and Juan Goytisolo from tomorrow on. And it turns out that it is a lot harder for me to prepare classes on these writers than, say, on Arcipreste de Hita or Espronceda whom I know and like a lot less. It is very difficult to squeeze all the knowledge I have on these authors and everything I have to say about them into two short lectures. I could probably spend the entire 50 minutes assigned to the lecture on Goytisolo quoting his work from memory.

When I first read Goytisolo's greatest novel Count Julian, my Spanish was still pretty weak. Most of Goytisolo's literary allusions which abound in the novel went right over my head. Still, the very first sentences of this novel, whichI consider to be the best novel of the XXth century not just in Spain but anywhere in the world, gripped me like no text had ever done before or since:

harsh homeland, the falsest, most miserable imaginable, I shall never return to you: with eyes still closed, it is there before you, enveloped in the blurry ubiquity of sleep and thus invisible, but nonetheless cleverly and subtly suggested, foreshortened and far in the distance: with even the tiniest details recognizable, outlined, as you yourself admit, with such scrupulous accuracy as to border on the maniacal: one day. another, and yet another; ever the same: a predictable sharpness of contour, a mere cardboard model, in reduced scale, of a familiar landscape; burning beneath a fiery sun perhaps? or enveloped in lowering clouds?: impossible to say: an unpredictable climate, this. 

Mind you, no translation can do justice to Goytisolo's text. It is worth learning Spanish just to read the novel, in my opinion. The best thing about this novel is the pure, undiluted rage that the narrator expresses towards every accepted piety he can find. And then, after declaring a cruel war on stereotypes, cliches and reductive ideologies, he ends up creating his own set of stereotypes and binary oppositions that is just as reductive that the one he battled against. Count Julian loses his war against ideology but his spectacular defeat produces the most magnificent and profound work of literature I have ever encountered.

This, of course, is my own reading of the novel. Many people would disagree with it. That is precisely where Count Julian's power resides. It is a novel that establishes a dialogue of its own with all readers who are ready to abandon themselves to the breathtaking adventure of reading it.

And now I think I'm ready to go and prepare my class. Blogging rocks, everybody.

Appreciation of Literature

"Out of all the texts that we have read in our Survey of Spanish literature course, which one did you like the most?" I ask my students.

"The short story by Unamuno," they respond unanimously.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because it has a happy ending!" they say completely seriously.

Now I'm wondering what I have done wrong in this course to get such a result.

Contemporary Spanish Literature: What To Read?, Part II

- If you are into trashy literature (which it is your God-given right to be), then historical mystery novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and adventure novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafón should be of interest to you. Their books are bestsellers in most European countries (including mine, which is very surprising.) In my opinion, they are as bad as they are popular. Pérez-Reverte's most popular novel is said to be La reina del Sur (The Queen of the South in English). The writer recently announced that there will now be a soap opera based on this book. As for Zafón, his most famous novel is La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind). Very convoluted, silly, but so easy to read that you can get through it in a couple of days even if your Spanish isn't really good.

- Care Santos writes very well about teenagers and people in their early twenties. She is about to release a collection of short stories about ghosts, so if you are into the supernatural, stay on the look out for her Los que rugen. 

- Eduardo Mendoza has been writing great novels since 1975 when he published his La Verdad Sobre El Caso Savolta. Last year he won Premio Planeta with his Rina de Gatos, Madrid 1936 (Spanish Edition) which I'm planning to read as soon as I get it.

- A colleague recently introduced me to a writer I somehow managed to miss but who is really good.  Eduardo Mendicutti's Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera (Fabula / Fables) (Spanish Edition) is the only novel by this writer I have read so far but if it's any indication of his talent, then he is definitely worth following. This novel is funny, touching, and very well-written.

- Juan José Millás is a writer whose books I read because I have to, not because I love them. His El desorden de tu nombre and La soledad era esto have long become classics. I, however, find that if you've read one of them, you've read them all. This writer doesn't strike me as being extremely original.

- Rafael Chirbes also has a tendency to employ the same formula in his novels but that formula and the resulting novels are so good that he can be forgiven for giving us too much of a good thing. His La caida de Madrid is the best novel on the events of November 19, 1975 that I have ever read. And if you don't know why that date is important, then you should really find out before you proceed to read contemporary Spanish literature.

I know that I'm missing somebody important but I can't think of who that might be right now. Feel free to offer comments and suggestions.

Contemporary Spanish Literature: What To Read?, Part I

People often come to this blog looking for advice on which contemporary writers from Spain are worth reading and following. It's getting a little too time-consuming to respond to each email asking this question individually, so I'll just dedicate a separate series of posts to it. Of course, these will be just my own personal preferences. If there are other writers from Spain writing today whose work you enjoy, do share their names in the comments.


Before you begin your journey towards a better understanding of contemporary Spanish literature, make sure that you read at least something by the two greatest Spanish writers of the twentieth century*: Juan Goytisolo and Juan Marsé. These writers are obviously past their prime right now, having created their greatest works in the seventies and early eighties. Still, Goytisolo's Reivindicacion Del Conde Don Julian (or Count Julian in the English translation) is, I believe, the best novel of the twentieth century. And not just in Spain. It's the best novel of the century in the entire Western Civilization. If you know of a better one that I might have missed, do tell me but be forewarned that on this subject "Hier stehe ich und kannst nicht anders."** Juan Marsé has written a lot but it's his early novel Últimas tardes con Teresa (Spanish Edition) that I love the most. Whatever you do, though, don't watch any movies based on Marsé's work. They are horrible.


Now, as for the writers who are doing some of their best work today, I'd recommend (in no particular order):


- Antonio Muñoz Molina and especially his novel Sefarad (or Sepharad in the English translation.) We all know that the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. Over five hundred years later, Muñoz Molina wrote this tribute to every exile - Jewish or not - which offers a profound insight into the nature of otherness. 


- Espido Freire wrote a really curious novel titled Irlanda a while ago. This was her first novel and even though her later work Melocotones helados (Spanish Edition) received Premio Planeta, Freire hasn't been able to create anything better than Irlanda. I'm still waiting, though.


- People often ask me about the fantasy genre in Spanish literature. I don't normally read fantasy so my only suggestion is Rosa Montero's Temblor (Spanish Edition). I read it because it's a female Bildungsroman but it's a fantasy novel as well.


- Almudena Grandes keeps growing as a writer. Her recent El corazón helado is vastly better than anything she wrote before. If, however, you are not into extremely long novels (this one has over 1,000 pages), check out her "pornographic masterpiece" The Ages of Lulu or her novel about female insecurity that devour the protagonist's life Malena es un nombre de tango (Andanzas) (Spanish Edition).


- Many people really enjoy the work of Javier Marías. I find him way too sentimental and cheesy but there are people who see him as a serious writer. Corazón tan blanco (A Heart So White in the English translation) is considered to be his most important novel.



- Lucia Etxebarria writes the kind of novels that make everybody in Women's Studies extremely happy. I find them too theoretical, formulaic and repetitive but if you are writing a doctoral dissertation and your thesis advisor came of age as a 70ies feminist, Etxebarria might be just the writer for you.

* If it's OK, I will not repeat "in my opinion" every time I make a similar claim in this post. Obviously these are my opinions that I'm offering here.


** Here I stand and can do nothing other.