“That’s what you see in the photo: a tired man. Tired from
not having slept enough, from having walked a lot, or, maybe, tired from
something that’s much older, the fatigue of a life that has reached a boundary,
not old age yet, but something that might well be old age if behind it there
is, as in Mayta’s case, nothing but lost illusions, frustrations, mistakes,
enemies, political deceptions, wan, bad good, jail, police stations, an
underground life, failures of all kinds and nothing even remotely resembling
victory. And nevertheless, in that exhausted and tense countenance, there glows
as well, somehow, that secret, intact integrity, in the face of setbacks which
it always thrilled me to find in him over the years, that juvenile purity,
capable of reacting with the same indignation to an in justice, in Peru or at
the ends of the earth, and that honest belief that the most urgent task, the
one that could not be shirked, was to change the world.” P.14
-Pretty in depth character analysis, perhaps says too much
at the outset, but certainly sets up expectation and creates a grandness around
the character. This description is nicely rooted in a photo and introduces the
idea of the deception of photos, of the way something may look or seem, which
is integral to the story too. Also, reveals something of the writer/narrator
and what he is looking for, what he is drawn to in Mayta as a character, as a
failure and in whatever ways a victor.
“I know he’ll help me, because Moises is an obliging type,
always willing to help anyone. But I realize at the same time he’ll have to
break through his own psychological reservations, do himself a kind of
violence, sine he had worked closely with Mayta and they had certainly been
friends. Is he made uncomfortable by the memory of Comrade Mayta in this office
full of leather-bound books, a parchment map of old Peru, and some fornicating
pre-Colombian deities from Huacas in a glass case? Does having to speak again
about the activities and illusions he and Mayta shared make him feel he is in a
slightly false situation? Probably. Remembering Mayta makes even me—and I was
never one of Mayta’s political buddies—ill at ease, so the important director
of the Action for Development Center must…” p.30
-Again, carrying the physical space into the interior and
opening up the tension involved in even bringing up Mayta, which reinforces the
worthiness of learning about him. The discomfort mentioned here is one that
persists throughout and, over time, accumulates to show a sort of mockery of
socialism, communism and revolution.
“I don’t know how to go on. If I could, I would tell him,
but at this moment I only know that I want to know, even invent, Mayta’s story,
and as lifelike as possible. I could give him moral, social, and ideological
reasons, and show him that Mayta’s story is the most important, the one that
most urgently needs to be told. But it would all be a lie. I truthfully do not
know why Matya’s story intrigues and disturbs me…But it’s also possible that the
whole historical context has no more importance than as décor and that the
obscurely suggestive element I see in it consists of the truculence,
marginality, rebelliousness, delirium, and excess which all came together in
that episode of which my fellow Salesian School chum was the leading
character.” P.44
-Genius set-up of the writing of the novel as an integral
piece of the novel’s narrative structure. It sets up the journey, that we will
discover along with this author the reason for the book, which invites
closeness, a trust, which is incredibly important before fracturing/blurring
the narratives.
“‘I wonder if we ever really know what you call History with
a capital H,’ Maria interrupts. ‘Or if there’s as much make believe in history
as I novels. For example, the things we were talking about. So much as been
said about revolutionary priests, about Marxist infiltration in the Church…But
no one comes up with the obvious answer.’” P.67
-Asks the reader to question both the book, and the idea of
the book, and then moves, after this passage, deftly into the Mayta
time-switch, the first, I think. The idea of knowing you should disbelieve,
actually creates a strange trust of the untrue, of history rather than History,
and invites all of it, in its paradoxical mess, to hang together as one.
Already I’m prepared for Mayta to be many different people and for this writer
man to be disappointed.
-calumny: slander; the making of false and defamatory
statements to damage reputation
“But of course I say nothing at all. I’m not here to
contradict anyone. My job is to listen, observe, compare stories, mix it all
together and weave a fantasy.” P.123
-And yet, this so perfectly evades the responsibility of the
novelist, which is to present only that which we ought to consider, as the
curator of the story.
“But Blacquer and I skirt these momentous issues and chat
about that insignificant, forgotten episode of a quarter century ago, the key
to my novel.” p.147
-the difference, perhaps, between the key to a historical event
and the key to a novel, in that it lives in the tiny, small turns, the
individual, the invisible
“He would have to be a machine. It was something he
remembered from his military instruction course: a lucid robot, who is neither
early nor late, and, above all. Who never doubts; a fighter who executes his
orders with the precision of an electric mixer or a lathe.” P.210
-Such great commentary on what it means to be soldier, and
the machine comparison seems so apt. Also a great way to implicate an electric
mixer.
“What would he do in that new society if he was still alive?
He wouldn’t accept any important place in government, in the armed forces, or
in the diplomatic service. Maybe a political post, a minor one, perhaps in the
country, on a collective farm in the Andes, or on some colonization project in
the Amazon region. Social, moral, and sexual prejudices would give way little
by little, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone, in that crucible of work and faith
that Peru would be in the future, the be living with Anatolio.” P. 244
-Mayta’s beautiful, delusional idealism and optimism, but
what makes him a compelling character
“Tales. In Quero, there’s not a sign of either insurgents or
soldier. I’m not surprised that reality contradicts these rumors. Information
in this county has ceased to be objective and has become pure fantasy—in
newspapers, radio, television, and ordinary conversation. ‘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 four hear of hearts we understand is irremediable and
definitive. Since it is impossible to know what’ 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.” P.246
-Um, so relevant, esp in our internet age
“I’m shocked, because this whole year I’ve been obsessed
with the subject, and I naively supposed the major actor in it would be too,
and that his memory would still go
on scratching away at what happened
in those few hours a quarter century ago. Why should it be that way? 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. It’s only normal that
these other events would replace or blur Jauja.” P.295
-Such a lovely new perspective to come flying in at the end,
it feels like refreshing breeze. To open this up and ask if we are even after
the right narrative, rather than to offer some kind of definitive answer to the
unanswerable questions being posed throughout.
“I too, lose something at that moment: my interest in this
conversation. I know I’m not going to get from my false fellow student anything
more than what I’ve already got: the depressing confirmation that he is a man
destroyed by suffering and resentment, who has even lost his memories. Someone
in essence quite different from the Mayta of my novel, that obstinate optimist,
that man of faith who lives life despite the horror and misery in it. I feel
uncomfortable, as if I’m abusing him by keeping him here—it’s almost
midnight—in a predictable conversation that has no substance.” P.303
-Raises the level of the significance of this story and
questions of the role of history and memory, what the value should be.
Ultimately, his book is, like the quote above, an ignorant attempt at
reconciling the unreconcilable. While simultaneously tying up several narrative
threads. Pretty impressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment