September, 2009Evil Editor said...Welcome Book chatters. Before we start, breaking news: the author of our October book, Sway, is hoping to join our chat. That means we could have the author present for five of our next seven books. Not this one, however; I couldn't afford a translator.
Dave F. said...The moth on the cover of the hardback is a Death's Head Moth. Hannibal Lecter made it famous.
Evil Editor said...Perhaps we can start by discussing the overall makeup of the book, by which I mean the fact that the main character (the main human character: the cellist) doesn't show up until more than halfway through, and up till then it's mainly setup. Of course the setup is an intriguing one; is it intriguing enough to hold your attention until the cellist arrives?
Robin S. said...I liked the extended setup and what it says about social constructs.
Dave F. said...The Cellist arrived about the time I was tiring of the satire. 100 pages of satirizing government and officials was fun and wicked but it reached a point of so what.
Evil Editor said...I thought by changing the situation from no one dying to one-week notices to the inexplicable returned letters he kept it interesting. If it had stuck with no one dying I'd have gotten sick of it, but the one week notice of your death was an even more intriguing situation to consider.
Robin S. said...I agree about the interest - and i also think this book shows that the 'showing, not telling' rule can be turned on its ear by a good enough storyteller.
Dave F. said...At first I was giggling at the razor sharp skewering of the government and various groups - organized crime and undertakers and family relations. After a while I was left wondering where the story was going.
Steve Wright said...Felt to me as if Saramago had milked the initial situation for all it was worth, so decided to change direction abruptly ...
Dave F. said...No "death" was easier than "one week's notice"... I'm not sure that I would want to know even a week in advance of any death. well, in fact I have known a week in advance that a relative is going to die and it isn't fun. There is a gradual personalization of "death" as feminine and as something more than just the grim reaper.
Robin S. said...I've seen death handled both ways, by totally different people. One took it on the chin, said it was time, and those of us who loved her went in to her room alone to say goodbye. I've never been more impressed with a human being as I was with her. The second wouldn't go in a hospital room to say goodbye to her husband, who was not conscious, because she 'just couldn't see him'. So that meant others had to take care of it all. Depends upon the inner strength of the person, and if they have huge regrets, or not, I think. Which is why I find the topic so fascinating, I suppose.
Evil Editor said...It seems like when we do literary fiction we keep running into authors who take liberties with punctuation. It took a while to get used to the lack of paragraphing in dialogue and the dearth of periods. Is this common in his books, or is it meant to show something in this book?
sylvia said...The syntax in Blindness is the same, conversation in a single paragraph without full punctuation: As the blind man had said, his home was nearby. But the pavements were crammed with vehicles, they could not find a space to park and were obliged to look for a spot in one of the side streets. There, because of the narrowness of the pavement, the door on the passenger’s side would have been little more than a hand’s-breadth from the wall, so in order to avoid the discomfort of dragging himself from one seat to the other with the brake and steering wheel in the way, the blind man had to get out before the car was parked. Abandoned in the middle of the road, feeling the ground shifting under his feet, he tried to suppress the sense of panic that welled up inside him. He waved his hands in front of his face, nervously, as if he were swimming in what he had described as a milky sea, but his mouth was already opening to let out a cry for help when at the last minute he felt the other’s hand gently touch him on the arm, Calm down, I’ve got you. They proceeded very slowly, afraid of falling, the blind man dragged his feet, but this caused him to stumble on the uneven pavement, Be patient, we’re almost there, the other murmured, and a little further ahead, he asked, Is there anyone at home to look after you, and the blind man replied, I don’t know, my wife won’t be back from work yet, today it so happened that I left earlier only to have this hit me. You’ll see, it isn’t anything serious, I’ve never heard of anyone suddenly going blind, And to think I used to boast that I didn’t even need glasses, Well it just goes to show.
Evil Editor said...Thanks for saving me a trip to Amazon, Sylvia. While I may not know why he doesn't paragraph more etc., it's interesting that I eventually adapted. As I got used to Rushdie and Auster.
Dave F. said...That's why I asked about his writing style in Portuguese and the translation. I wondered how well his style was preserved and maintained from language to language. I also still wonder if there is some verbal or poetic quality to his Portuguese that doesn't translate. My first reaction to the page of type was "my eyes are going to hurt for two weeks thanks to this" ...
sylvia said...I had real issues with the style, I have to admit. I tend to read before bed and the syntax, with the very long sentences and two page paragraphs, seemed to act like a sleeping draught on me.
Dave F. said...I can read this style very fast. I want to read it slow because of the deliciousness of the story and the meanness of the satire.
Robin S. said...There's a really interesting passage on page 146 of the paperback. Blends several things I liked about the book...Sorta what you're talkng about EE- the lack of capitalization - say for the catholic church, senies institutions high standing. Makes them part of the fray. And what S. says on this page about death - that people needed a spiritual tranquilizer, even those who hadn't needed one before. I like it that he doesn't pull any punches about the human condition, and I think his lack of common use of caps and punctuation speaks to that.
Evil Editor said...There was a short passage in which the narrator said something about Death not needing to worry about punctuation or something like that. Made me wonder if Death was the narrator. If nothing else, lack of paragraphing cuts printing costs. Putting dialogue in paragraphs would have added 50 pages.
Steve Wright said...I may be playing devil's advocate on this one - I was much less impressed than I was expecting to be. I know lots of people rate this Saramago bloke, but surely that can't be based on this one? The cynic in me remembers Scott Adams talking about how you tend to over-value things you've paid a high cost for. Is it possible, my inner cynic wonders, that people over-value Saramago because his style makes him hard to read? (I don't think the lack of capitalization and inverted commas actually adds anything ... It does make for a different reading experience, but different isn't necessarily good.)
sylvia said...Steve: I think your dislike of it doesn't mean that other people are overvaluing it necessarily :)
Steve Wright said...I didn't exactly dislike it ... It's more a case of me wondering what all the fuss is about. The "skewering" of authority figures would be more convincing if those authority figures came across - to me - as anything more than straw men. And the overall situation - well, to a genre-dwelling bottom-feeder like myself, it all seemed too familiar. Demographic effects of unnatural longevity? John Wyndham did it in Trouble with Lichen. Death as hot babe? Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Death getting too involved with mortal life? Terry Pratchett, passim. It made it seem rather ... stale. To me, anyway.
Dave F. said...I thought about "death" as a character when I wrote that short story last year. One can ascribe all sorts of powers and abilites and limitations to Death. Take the Ghost of Future Christmas in Dickens or Terry Pratchett's HogFather with Death playing Santa Claus, or the Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. By the way, Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN deals with Morpheus, the lord of dreams and not Death, although Death is a character in the books.
Sylvia said...I found it quite readable once I got used to the idea but as I say, it also seemed to make my eyes slide down the page until the next thing I knew, it was morning and I had page prints on my forehead.
Robin S. said...I can't remember where I read it, but I remembering reading that this wasn't one of his 'best'. I enjoyed it - if that's the correct word - but I agree, Sylvia - this is not the right prose for right before bed. I'd need something easier to digest for that. I reread old favorites or something, so I don't have to really take in what I'm reading. Reading this novel was a job, but with rewards - but I had to be on my game to catch it all. I had to read in pieces because of that.
Evil Editor said...I Googled our book and read two reviews. The New York Times reviewer said it wasn't one of his best, while the New Yorker reviewer liked it a lot.
The idea of setting up a situation and detailing the ramifications as in this book and Blindness is what's happening in the new TV show Flash Forward. Anyone else see it?
Dave F. said...Yes, I watched Flashforward. I unfortunately read a bad review of flashforward which spoiled it somewhat. The review was bad, written by an idiot, not the show.
Robin S. said...I haven't seen the show. Is it about people being warned what's gonna happen to them?
Dave F. said...Flashforward asks the question "if you knew the future, could you change ir or are we predestined to live it out?"
Evil Editor said...Everyone on Earth blacks out for a couple minutes and lives a couple minutes of their future.
Robin S. said...I'm not a believer in predestination, exactly, but then neither do I think we have absolute free will, given our personal circumstances and raising.
Dave F. said...Saramago asks that same question in the violet envelopes. She assumes that everyone will be happy to put their affairs in order and calmly meet death, making amends and ordering life's end...yeah, right sure.
Dave F. said...I like the story and I like appreciate the way he wrote it. But it reinforces my belief that all these "rules" promulgated about books being this way or that way are just foolish barriers. It's a form of hazing set up by agents (who don't write books) and teachers (who write textbooks for sale) to keep themselves in business. Now that's a little cynical even for me.
Robin S. said...Dave, I agree. The prose if good enough (and once you have a good reputation) can be done mnhy more ways than the rule guys tell us. Like the telling not showing done so well here, in my opinion.
Dave F. said...The other very cynical statement is that if you tell a good story, no one cares that the writing is goofy. ala Dan Brown and Harry Potter.
_*Rachel*_ said...Dave, I think you'll agree the writing definitely matters. One book I read, for example, had a really good premise (one I'd tried to use before, too). Somewhat awkward writing and characters who struck me as way too obvious and predictable. IE, I could tell the book's ending by the time I'd met the girl, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's friend. So, no matter what the story, the writing matters.
Dave F. said...Yes Rachel, I was being confrontational in my statements.
sylvia said...We've had exactly 1.5 inches of rain but this being Spain, the power has gone out. If it doesn't come back soon, I'll disappear without warning. If so, sorry! I think Saramago really showed me that you better be damn good at what you are doing if you are going to start ignoring conventions.
Dave F. said...By the way, this is the plot of the old movie "Death takes a Holiday" where death does take corporeal form and falls in love. In that we actually get a dinner where the young lady introduces death to her parents.
_*Rachel*_ said...As far as books with death as a character/narrator go, there's The Book Thief. That was a good one.
Evil Editor said...We seem to be discussing the premise and ignoring the cellist. Is he just another character like the family at the beginning? Or is he the focus of the whole book?
Dave F. said...It's a love story. Death has an affair thanks to some unknown power causing one of her letters to be returned.
Robin S. said...I don't think the cellist is the focus as much as I think death is the main character and her love for this man give the book a humanity at the end.
Dave F. said...The cellist? That's what musicians do when they perform. They pour everything of their being into the performance and that makes great music.I've had season tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony for 30 years and I know what happens on stage when they all play as one.
Robin S. said...Steve - are you glad you read it?
Steve Wright said...Robin - on balance, yes. If nothing else, it makes me want to read more of Saramago, just to find out what makes people think he's so good. It is well-written, obviously. It just seemed rather slight. To me.
Robin S. said...Steve, After I read the novel, I dug around to find out about Saramago, who, I'm unhappy to admit, I hand't heard of. Fascinating life, and you can catch reasons behind the subjects he chooses.
Dave F. said...There's a DVD out there of the Pittsburgh Symphony playing Mahler's 2nd for Pope John Paul 6, and they play their fingers to the bone (to borrow a phrase). You can see it in the musicians attitude and you can hear it in the hall. Nothing is more emotional or spectacular. That's the magic of live performance.
Evil Editor said...I know what you mean Dave. I attended a couple Grateful Dead concerts back in the day.
Robin S. said...EE a Dead Head. How about that?
Dave F. said...We know in a live performance when it really works. So can the Grateful Dead. They transcend the venue and become something more. That's our cellist.
