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.