Strategies/Techniques
• speaking suddenly with that aplomb which, when it emerged,
made him into another man. Describe a
gesture or tone of voice or other affect as completely changing the narrator’s
perception of a character when the gesture manifests itself. Helps to bring out
the contradictions in the characters.
• everything he tells me is aimed at some kind of
self-justification. But doesn’t everyone do the same thing? Why is it I have no
confidence in him? Awareness on the part
of the narrator that the things he despises in an antagonist (or any character)
are present to some degree in everyone, including himself. Careful not to spell
it out too explicitly, though.
• His voice is that of a man who has overcome all tests. Describe someone’s tone of voice by
describing what “type” or “breed” of person they sound like. A person who has
_______ or a person who does _______.
• in slow fury. Beautiful.
Try modifying an emotion-noun with a speed-adjective. Or any intangible noun
with a speed adjective.
• Lawsuits are a sport practices by all classes in this
province, at least as popular as soccer and Carnival. Any activity can be described as a sport, to emphasize that it is
popular and to trivialize it.
• Personal vengeance, the confrontation between the idealist
and the conformist, the rebel and the authority: these are images that
correspond to the romantic appetites of our people. Which doesn’t mean, of
course, that they can’t be true. After a
specific anecdote, zoom out and make a more general statement about the nature
of the society or era represented by the anecdote. Also, the paradoxical
impulse to both distrust and believe in romantic clichés/ ideals.
• Two prison stints introduced on page 279, but the
explanation of the second offense occurs ten pages after the first, page 289. Withholding/saving information in a matter
of fact way, without trying to build false tension or titillate the audience
with a withheld secret.
• All that, for Mayta was one episode in a life in which,
before and after, there were many other episodes, as important, or even more
so. Narrator/protagonist becoming aware
of the limitations of his own perspective, and the way other people’s
narratives are not centered around the same personal or historical events.
• “When I read that one of them’s been killed, I feel really
happy.” Very simple diction, simple
thought, matter-of-fact tone, that expresses something sinister about the
speaker, becomes a profound statement about human nature. When character who is
generally viewed positively expresses something evil, unapologetically, it
carries so much weight.
Loved Phrases and Ideas
• Firing a sub-machine gun is much easier than the thesis of
double power. The divide between theory
and praxis is a major theme throughout the work, here expressed beautifully
because of the confident tone and the specific examples that stand in for each
side. Action is expressed as the easier of the two here, but the judgment is
reversed over the course of the novel, or if not reversed, at least
complicated.
• He writes well, for a politician…He invented a good number
of the high-sounding phrases that conferred a progressive aura on the
dictatorship. The utility and the power
of language to (re)define the terms of reality.
• The basic idea was always ‘Your worst enemy is the guy
most like you; get rid of him” We
generally think that people want to be surrounded by people most like
themselves and separate themselves from those who are most different. But we
must also remember that some groups are so different we are not even interested
in opposing them, and that it is often those who are most similar to us that
represent the greatest (perceived) threat. They are too like us, and so are
slandering our reputation.
• I know he’s wrong, that it can still get worse, that there
are no limits to our deterioration, but I respect his grief and keep my mouth
shut. Cynical attitude about humanity,
paired with a very human empathy and respect for human grief. Power in the
juxtaposition.
• Does it make any sense to be writing a novel with Peru in
this condition and Peruvians all living on borrowed time? The idea that creating art is senseless amidst conditions of brutal
warfare and human suffering. The inability to stop creating art, despite the
presence of such doubts.
• I’ll wonder about that until I die.
• But Comrade Father Time shows no pity, Mayta was
twenty-five years too early with his plans. Time’s indifference sounds so brutal when time is anthropomorphized
like this. The sheer number of things that have the right idea, but fail
because of timing.
• The Cuban Revolution broke through the taboos. it killed
that superego that ordered us to accept the dictum that ‘conditions aren’t
right,’ that the revolution was an interminable conspiracy. With Fidel’s
entrance into Havana, the revolution seemed to put itself within reach of
anyone who would dare fight.
• For the working classes, the blows of repression are like
pruning for plants (Trotsky).
• If Peru survives, it will be prostrate.
• He felt a lacerating sadness
• “Nothing bothered him more than someone who believed one
thing and did something else…People like that aren’t usually happy in life,
ma’am.” Not the hypocrite who can’t be
happy, but the person who hates hypocrites. Hypocrisy is part of being a human,
those who feel the need to iron out all ideological inconsistencies will be
miserable.
• “To report” among us now means either to interpret reality
according to our desires or fears, or to say simply what is convenient. It’s an
attempt to make up for our ignorance of what’s going on—which in our heart of
hearts we understand is irremediable and definitive. Since it is impossible to
know what’s really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent dream, and take refuge
in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in
which so few actually do read, has become literary. Blurring of literature and reality. Invention in life makes living into
inhabiting a type of fiction. To live is always, in some sense, to inhabit an
illusion and constantly invent the world around us. Think about the way kids
are constantly making shit up, making false inferences and assumptions about
their world. Adults do it to, but in a less obvious way.
• But I, in this case, am history, and I know that things
aren’t that simple, that time doesn’t always let the truth come out. History is frequently made and altered by a
single person.
• He was very dead when they brought him into Cuero
• a body turned into a sieve
• propelling himself along with a broomstick.
• It just happened, the force of events. Explanations are useless, it’s just “the
force of events”, the inertia of fate.
• …finally killed that faith as well. What came to replace
it? Nothing. That’s why he gives the impression of being an empty man, without
the emotion to back up his words. Faith
in something, anything (religion, politics, nation, another person, love)
necessary for being a real man, to put force of conviction behind your words. The
degenerative effects of too much skepticism.
• All my questions wither before I can get them out.
New Words and Words To Use
• fallow
• report (as in the sound from a gun)
• prolix
Ideas for my story
• Use dialogue to travel between present and past
seamlessly. For example, D. asks a question in the present, and C. says
something which sounds like it is an answer to the question, but is in fact
remembered dialogue, the beginning of a scene in the past, via D.’s
imagination. See page 75, page 82.
• Is a determined vanguard capable of starting a revolution,
or will it be doomed as a petit-bourgeois adventure? p. 162. This would be a
chief concern of young C., as a bourgeois leftist. With references to history
(Algeria and Cuba)
History Notes
• Military coup in 1948 topples APRA (center-left) President
Bustamante and installs Manuel
Odría as President. Initially center-right, but indulged in many populist
policies.
• MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria) founded in
1962, launched in insurrection but it was crushed by 1965
• Hugo Blanco Galdos- leader of the Confederación Campesina
del Peru (CCP), leader of Trotsky’s Fourth International, joined the RWP in
1958, but left after joining the union of peasants. Led the Quechua uprising in
Cuzco in the early 1960s land seizures
No comments:
Post a Comment