Adios Señor Dictador!

Despite the title of this last blog entry for Span312, I'm actually a little sad to see it pass by. But, that just may be the nostalgia talking, making me forget the hours of torment that was I, the Supreme and Facundo (although I really do appreciate them both now) as well as the hours spent staring at the Dictator Novel article on Wikipedia. I actually really liked the class, I liked the way that it was structured in the way that the reading order of the novels made sense and built on one another.

I wasn't so fond of the blog entries, although they did a good job of making sure that you were keeping up with the reading material, and I probably won't continue blogging as I am too lazy for that at this stage in my life.

I thought that the Wikipedia assignment was very inventive as opposed to the usual paper or exam. I had previously used wikipedia a lot at work for looking up information for customers on books that I didn't personally know about, as well as for looking up things at work when I was bored, lazy, wanted to kill some time or all of the above and had learned fascinating things (Did you know that a male platypus has poisonous barbs on its flippers?) and had become somewhat familiar with how it operated. However, having to edit and create an article myself gave me a very good perspective of the article making process, and how to spot the good ones from the bad ones. Although I was one of the "shy" people at first when it came to editting, I think that I did manage to get into it and I think that I will continue to edit various wikipedia articles that I am personally interested in that may not necessarily have to do with school. Oddly, I found the project kind of fulfilling in a strange way. I didn't really like the group structure, though the feat of gaining FA status, or even GA status seemed to require a group effort given the rigorous amount of editing that one has to do. So, I'm not sure how I would approach that problem.

My two favourite novels that we read would have to be The President and The Feast of the Goat, although I did manage to carve out a soft spot in my heart for El Supremo (somehow). I'm also glad that I am now able to freely use the words bias! and magical realism! again without using x's in the words.

The Feast of the Goat - Part II

Well, I have to say that I don't really know where to start with this, the last of the dictator novels. I’m actually speechless. To begin with, I think that this is one of the novels that we’ve read in class that I could definitely see myself re-reading sometime down the road, even though many parts, especially in the second half, were completely heart-wrenching. I just couldn’t put it down, I had to know what happened, despite the terrible things that I knew would befall the assassins and Urania; I just felt compelled to go on, and I had no choice. I thought this book was particularly interesting because a large portion of the points of view don’t come from the dictator, but from the common people who are being crushed beneath him. While we get a glimpse of this in The President, I feel that we get a much stronger view in this book.

The storyline that most captivated me was that of the assassins, or the May 30th Heroes, however you want to title them. I found them very interesting, they had wives, families, and children and yet they sacrificed it all when they conspired to kill Trujillo. They all seemed so tangible and so human, and their motivations for what they chose to do, tied with the way each of them faced their own mortality and death. Some went out in a blaze of glory, while others were captured or allowed themselves to be captured and faced extreme torture with what seemed to be superhuman bravery, while at the same time maintaining their humanity. While for a time I feared that all the assassins would be captured and killed one by one, which seemed to be the pattern that we were seeing for a while, it was somewhat relieving to find that Imbert and Amiama (whom we didn’t really get to know) survived the terrifying hunt. I was also intrigued to learn that, in reality, Imbert even went on to become President of the Dominican Republic for a few months.

Urania was a very compelling character as well. Even after being away from her country for thirty-five years, the figure of Trujillo continues to dog her steps, perhaps to illustrate that there are some wounds that go too deep to ever truly heal.

Overall, I loved this book. Although I don’t think I could bring myself to read it again for quite some time…

The Feast of the Goat - Part I

I’ve been trying to go into these dictator novels with a generally open mind, however, I do go into them with some expectations. For example, I expect them to require a lot of concentration and a great deal of resolve and determination to get to the end. That said, I’m finding Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat to be much more laid back then any of the previous novels that we’ve read so far in class. And I’m finding myself actually drawn into the book; I actually care about the characters in a different way than I did about the ones in the other books. When I was at work the other day, I even found myself wondering, for instance, “What’s going to happen to Amadito in the end?”

I really enjoy the way the author tells his story. Maybe I’ve just been watching too much Lost, but I like his use of flashbacks to explore the personalities and motivations of the characters. All the characters, however, seem to be trapped in the past always looking there for their answers. The conspirators were all former diehard Trujillistas, whom at some point in their lives ceased to be because they and/or their families were brutalized by Trujillo and his regime. Urania returns to the Dominican Republic from a thirty-five year, self-imposed exile in the United States where she has obsessed over information and writing from the Trujillo era, and once there, she ruminates over memories of her father, and through her memories, we are introduced to Cabral’s own flashbacks. Trujillo himself, who occupies the centre of everyone’s memories in some form or another, dwells just as much if not more on the past; although, more than any other character, he looks toward the future, ironically enough.

All in all, I’m enjoying this book very much, it definitely is the Clive Cussler novel of the bunch, and I can’t wait to see how it ends.

The General in His Labyrinth - Part II

For the second half of The General in His Labyrinth, it was definitely a downer, and I feel compelled to ask, as did someone in our class (can’t remember who, sorry) said: “Do any of these books have a happy ending?” Although, I kind of had a feeling that the General wasn’t going to be the recipient of any kind of magical cure for his terminal illness, it was still very depressing to read of his gradual demise and eventual death throughout the book. Even so, I thought that Garcia Marquez did a very good job of making the General’s condition gradually deteriorate, especially when considering that the author started at the very end of Simon Bolivar’s life to begin with. And, I really got the sense of how strong the General really was – he wanted to hang on, he wanted to continue to help solve all the problems that were plaguing, and even threatening to destroy his vision of a free and united continent, and yet his very own body was betraying him, stopping him from accomplishing all the things that he felt he still needed to do.

I thought Garcia Marquez did an excellent job just describing death in general. One passage near the end of the book, on page 260, particularly stood out to me: “Then he had the room sprinkled with more cologne than ever, and he continued to take the illusory baths, to shave with his own hand, to clean his teeth with fierce savagery in a superhuman effort to defend himself against the obscene filth of death.” Just the entire aura of death in these last few pages and yet the General is still trying to live and to do things like brush his teeth and shave, even though there is no apparent purpose in the act, but to try and defy death.

The General in His Labyrinth - Part I

The General in His Labyrinth turned out to be quite a nice read, so to speak, coming directly out of a book like I, the Supreme. It has characters! It has chapters (sort of)! It’s only a little more than 250 pages! García Márquez is very talented in drawing out the very tail end of the life of Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator, with every page and paragraph meticulously sculpted by the author to create a poignant image of the General as he goes on his final journey. Right from the first page and continuing on into every page, is a carefully created dichotomy and contrast of the General’s person. He is simultaneously weak and strong at the same time. While he suffers terribly from tuberculosis (I felt compelled to look it up because I was becoming very frustrated with the General’s refusal of doctors, and because I just really wanted to get a more precise image in my head of what was really going on with him. Oh, and I looked it up on Wikipedia no less, so I know it must be right!) and bears all of the disease’s symptoms: fever, coughing, chills, night sweats, loss of appetite, etc… Yet, he is mentally alert, his will is tremendously strong, and he does all that is in his power to retain every last scrap of his dignity.

In the last three novels that we have read in class, all of the dictators we have encountered have turned out to be very much the same, and the authors have all done very good jobs of making me despise them. So, I was understandably surprised when I found myself actually liking, and even at times admiring, the General. García Márquez has made a larger than life figure like Simon Bolivar into a very tangible, very human character. He has his faults: he gets angry, he shouts, he throws a temper tantrum when he loses a card game. And he has his strengths: he’s an excellent tactician and a seemingly loyal friend who inspires such loyalty in others around him, and he’s very persevering when it comes to accomplishing any kind of goal, which is probably what allowed him to achieve so much in what seems like such a short amount of time. Overall, I’m finding that he’s a much more enjoyable “dicator” to hang around than El Supremo was. And on that note as well, he seems to throw into question what exactly defines a dictator.

I, the Supreme - Fin

I have to say, after my initial difficulties with the first half of I, the Supreme I found the second half of the book to be somewhat easier to read for some inexplicable reason – maybe I just became more familiar with the tone, style, and diction it was written in, or Roa Bastos just got lazy. Personally, I think the former is much more likely. That aside, I really came to love the style that the “novel” was written in (dictations to Patino and private journal entries by El Supremo) as it seemed to be the best way to accomplish Roa Bastos’s goal of getting as close as possible to El Supremo, even allowing his readers to seemingly slip inside the dark crevices of the man’s psyche. At many times the book had a surreal quality to it as though one was experiencing a sort of hallucination (i.e. El Supremo’s numerous conversations with his dead dog, Sultan), and at other times, it was almost unclear what exactly was happening, as though you were reading a diary of a madman even when an event was taking place, such as when El Supremo accidentally set fire to his study at the end of the book (by the way, was I the only one wondering how he was writing all of that down while the fire was raging?).

The moment that had the most impact on me was Patino taking dictation for his own death sentence from El Supremo (especially after he had just spent the last page or two praising El Supremo to the skies). That scene for me, was much like watching a horror movie. You know the one, where you’re almost yelling at one of the characters to stop doing something enormously stupid, like walking down into the basement with no weapons and without bothering to turn on the light, while all the while calling out “Is anybody there?” when they know perfectly well that there’s a serial killer on the loose whose been targeting his/her circle of friends and killing them one by one in various, gruesome ways. My immediate reaction was much like that, I felt like yelling at Patino to just stop taking the dictation. Just stop. Just put down the pen, turn around, and walk out the door. After though, when I thought back to this scene, I realised the significance of it. El Supremo’s control over everything was so absolute that Patino could not refuse; in fact, he acted like the idea of disobeying was nonexistent. However, the message was that El Supremo needed Patino in order to communicate his will. Without Patino, or without someone to take his dictation, he was just a sick, dying old man – not El Supremo.

I, the Supreme at Last

When I first cracked open Roa Bastos’s I the Supreme I had certain expectations about the book, especially since is supposed to be the “best” in the group of five dictator novels that we will be reading for this class. However, it did not exceed or come to be lower than my expectations since it was nothing like what I expected it to be. I was first caught off guard by the style it was written in. Firstly, there are no chapters, just four hundred pages of a dictator dictating to his secretary. And secondly, usually there are two characters speaking: El Supremo, or Dr. Francia, and his secretary, Patino who takes dictation from El Supremo in every sense of the word, but their dialogue makes no use of quotation marks. So, at first it was a bit difficult to distinguish which of them was speaking, but after a page or two it became apparent and easier to tell, as El Supremo’s dialogue is commanding and authoritative, whereas Patino always uses “Your Excellency” and other such titles when he speaks to El Supremo. Likewise his language is usually very sycophantic, and very fanciful – especially when he is regaling El Supremo with some story or event (which all seem like events from a science fiction or fantasy novel).

The mysterious “third character” in I the Supreme, the Compiler, is also interesting because of the notes that he leaves. In them he comments on things that El Supremo or Patino has said, almost acting as an authority as he denounces or calls into question some passages. Perhaps he is the most supreme presence in the novel as he also, it seems, decides what will and what will not be included in the book as well as being able to influence the reader’s perception.

Farewell El Señor Presidente

The end of El Señor Presidente left me feeling cold. We had witnessed the “hero” of the novel, Miguel Angel Face, undergo a metamorphosis from being a seemingly cruel man, no better than The President himself, into a person of conscience. Asturias seemed to let us hope, at one point, that there was hope for Miguel Angel and his wife, Camila, that they would be able to escape from the complete and total prison that The President has created – a prison that is not only physical, but psychological as well. There was also the hope that Camila’s father, General Eusebio Canales, would create and lead the insurrection that would topple The President’s regime of fear. However, both hopes were crushed as Miguel Angel Face was killed by a lie in the form of the spoken word and General Canales was killed by a lie in the form of the written word. Both of these lies originated from The President, hence the link between writing, words, and power.

At the same time, I found it difficult to find hope in Asturias’s novel. It seemed more to me to be a reflection and analysis of the vicious, cyclical nature of The President’s reign of oppression. At the end of the book it was as though everything that I had read had no overall effect, it was as though none of it had ever taken place in the world that El Señor Presidente is set in; because at the end of the novel nothing had really changed at all. However, perhaps Asturias is saying that [I]real[/I] change cannot come about all at once, because some change did occur – Camila and her son Miguel did manage to break out of the cycle by moving out of the city and into the countryside, and Angel Face’s name does live on through his son. So perhaps little by little others will manage to break out of the circle as well.

Angel Face’s transformation from a man into a bestial creature was very depressing to read, especially after having watched his transformation via his love for Camila, although it was beautifully written (as was the whole novel).

"He was as beautiful and wicked as Satan"

To begin with, Asturias's The President, is a breath of fresh air coming out of Facundo. While Asturias's work is definitely written in a unique style, it is far more familiar than Facundo in that it is readily identifiable as a novel. There is an over-arching plot; a cast of characters who feel less like historical caricatures and more like they could be real, living, breathing people; and a writing style that flows (even in the mind of the mad) in sequence from one thing or even to the next. As I said though, it is unique and somewhat out of the ordinary. In many novels, the titular character is usually introduced (at least from my experience) directly to the audience or at least makes an appearance very early on in the story. However, if we take the President to be the main character, then he isn't physically introduced until the story is well underway. In fact, going through the book was like walking up a pyramid in that the first characters we encounter are from the lowest rung of society: the beggars (the Zany, Mosquito, etc...); and then through the Zany we are introduced to the next level: the woodcutter; and from the woodcutter we meet Angel Face, the favourite, and soon after when we meet the doctor, and it is through Angel Face that we meet the illustrious and infamous President. While we do not "meet" the President until this point, his presence and will are constant factors throughout the story that are largely responsible for shaping the other characters' fate. So even though he's hardly seen by us, Asturias ensures that he is always in our minds.

So far, I have found Angel Face to be the most intriguing character. He always leaves me a little bit puzzled as to what his true character is. Is he an Angel or a Devil? Like the title of this post says, "he was as beautiful and wicked as Satan" (a phrase that Asturias seems to repeat almost every time that Angel Face makes an appearance), reminds me very much of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray from The Picture of Dorian Gray whose beauty was not a reflection of his soul's state. On the one side our first meeting of Angel Face is of him helping the woodcutter bring the Zany to the hospital, however, at the same time, he is the President's favourite, and the President hasn't exactly shown himself to be a kind and merciful figure, so what has Angel Face done to become his favourite? He seemed willing enough to lie to General Eusebio Canales in order to have him killed for a crime that he knows the General never committed, and yet he shows genuine concern over the well-fare of his daughter, Camila. In chapter 21: Vicious Circle, Angel Face has a tortuous internal struggle with regards to who he is and why he is doing what he's doing. I love a character with internal conflict as they are bound to change and evolve (or devolve) throughout the course of the novel, making much more interesting reading than characters who are static.

Facundo: The End

Like many of the other bloggers out there from Span312, I have to admit that I felt as though I were in some kind of battle with Sarmiento's tome. While I found many parts very interesting to read, and can appreciate the way that the author chooses to portray the dichotomy of barbarism and civilization (I can see now how it moves from "or" to "and," for example), there were many parts in it where I struggled to move on, or where I was constantly asking myself, "Why is he telling me all this?" However, what always kept me going is that just when I felt that I should throw the book at the nearest person on the bus, Sarmiento always inserted a passage that grabbed my attention. The best example I can think of is at the end of Chapter 7: Social Life (1825). Ending with political talk about Unitarists and Federalists in Buenos Aires, Chapter 8: Tests of Strength really caught me. Sarmiento's descriptions of Colonel Lamadrid and his battle with Facundo, was amazing. I even found myself becoming upset when it appeared that he had been defeated in battle, and then relieved, in the next paragraph when it is revealed that the colonel is alive and had escaped with the words: "I will not surrender!"

Even though Sarmiento reveals in the next paragraph that he did indeed surrender, it was still quite moving.

On page 159, the author introduces an interesting idea (at least for me): "...why shouldn't a man without brakes to control his passions do good?" Sarmiento, I believe, had been before operating on the principle that human beings are inherently wicked, and that they need the power of God or of civilization in order to be able to lift themselves up. However, this passage questions that. Simply because someone succumbs to their base instincts, why does every action that they commit have to be evil? Sarmiento says that this not always the case, that there is always some light in the darkness. But I believe, from all the other statements in his book, that Sarmiento means us to take this as an exception to the general rule; for more often than not, barbarism will lead humanity down an evil path.

First Half of Sarmiento's "Facundo"

The first thing that struck me about "Facundo" was Sarmiento’s writing style. Highly descriptive, it flows very well sending the images of the Pampas and La Rioja so clearly into my mind, that I felt that I had been there myself. Perhaps my favourite description is in chapter five: “Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga.” In the opening pages to this chapter, Sarmiento details the tale of a man, a gaucho, being pursued across the desert by a tiger (I must admit that I was confused about what lions and tigers were doing in Argentina, until Sarmiento explained that the colonists gave pumas and jaguars these names in emulation of familiar animals), and he writes, “The tiger’s roar…causes an involuntary shaking of the nerves, as if the flesh all by itself were trembling at the announcement of death” (p. 92). Later, we learn that this man is Facundo himself, who ironically goes on to be called The Tiger of the Plains.

As Sarmiento tries to draw a line and a contrast between the civilized, European influenced city of Buenos Aires and the barbaric rural life that lies outside of it, it is very obvious what side he is on. However, because of hindsight bias it was fairly easy to dismiss his assertions about the superiority of Europe, although I could see how, when it was written it was a very powerful and moving piece of literature. Likewise, it did take me a while to look past Sarmiento’s ethnocentrism and sometimes racist words, and I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in 1845 and that the mindset of that period and in that place was drastically different from the city of Vancouver in 2008.

I also thought that Sarmiento’s description of singular events in Facundo’s past did a very good job of turning the reader against Facundo. And at the same time that Sarmiento describes these scenes in which Facundo has a man suffer two hundred lashes of a whip for a seemingly trivial action, or when he makes all the cultured men of the city practice army drills all night he is very careful about drawing comparisons with Rosas (or even simply bringing up his name at the right time), causing his readers to associate Rosas with the atrocities that Facundo was capable of.

Test!

First blog post...