Gabriel Garcia Marquez link

The beauty of the Internet is that it provides virtual libraries of information about a book or an author. If the links are good it can really add value to the reading experience. In a brief scan of what is out there on Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Modern Word site stands out and is not only a good place to find out all about the author but also a chance to read the latest news, which includes a mention of the Guardian story from the summer on the possibility that Love in the Time of Cholera is going to be made into a film.

Love in the Time of Cholera - post V

The parallel lives of Fermina and Floretino carry on with both growing older. He notches the times with being present at her public appearances and she seems to grow old without much of a thought for him but more of a general mental trawl back through her past

Bullet points between pages 210 – 260

* There is a short but savage passage where a love affair with a married woman and Florentino ends abruptly after he pains a message on her body and her husband reads it and then slashes her throat

* In the meantime the appearances of Fermina and Dr Urbino seem to be happy but behind the public smiles they are drifting apart and she is given plenty of chances to dwell on her marriage and her past

* Things come to a head and they separate for two years after she discovers he has had an affair with a female patient, a black woman living with a preacher, who manages to possess his good senses and make him almost risk losing everything for lust/love

* She finds that heading back to where she was born and staying with her cousin is deeply depressing as so much has changed and even her cousin has become a fat old woman so she is overjoyed when her husband finally comes for her to take her home

* Florentino goes to the cinema and Fermina is behind him and as the lights come on he notices that she needs help from her husband walking down the steps and it dawns on him that he might die before she does

More tomorrow…

bookmark of the week

I popped into my local library yesterday and they were giving away bookmarks to promote a campaign to promote books that are all linked to the theme of food and cooking. most of the time the bookmarks in the library promote local council services and are a world away from the sorts of things that are on offer in American libraries that are designed to encourage reading. This one came from a library in Wheaton, in the suburbs of Chicago.

Love in the Time of Cholera - post IV

It's been a busy today putting the decorations on the Christmas Tree and rushing round trying to get the heating fixed so reading was very much pushed back on the list of things that had to be done. As a result very few pages were consumed but I thought it worth while just posting some brief highlights

Bullet points between pages 180 - 210

* The two men - doctor urbino and Florentino Ariza finally meet and despite his years of wishing him dead Florentino actually feels sympathy for him and understands that they are both attached to the same yoke with their love for Fermina Daza

* Florentino continues to go through relationships, which are based on a sexual basis because his heart belongs to Fermina, that end unsatisfactoraily and lack the power that real love would bring to the coupling

* For the first time since she spurned Florentino you get an insight into the mind of Fermina and she feels guilt over the decision and although publicly seems very happy with her husband is unhappy and often sits in the bathroom smoking in secret in tears

Hopefully more tomorrow on what might be a less packed day...

Recommended by Richard and Judy

There is a Richard and Judy Christmas books special on TV tonight and an article in The Times book section discusses the power the celebrity couple have over influencing the titles people choose when they go into a shop. The piece reports that according to The Bookseller one in every 50 books sold in Britain is recommended by Richard and Judy and while they have chosen some good reads there is always the hint of a suggestion that what they are doing is not quite right because it puts so much influence into the hands of just a couple of people.
On the one hand if it gets people reading then great. But on the flip side, the more cynical side, judging by the assembled celebrities lining-up tonight (Rupert Everett, Michael palin and Billie Piper) to get you to buy their autobiographies, maybe the old cliché about power without responsibility comes into play here, and there has to be some sort of questioning about the role publishers are playing in this promotion game, the general quality of the recommendations and how books are chosen to get on the shortlist of what is promoted by R and J.

Love in the Time of Cholera - post III

The challenge for the reader, for me at least anyway, with Lobe in the Time… is working out which side you are going to take in the love triangle that revolves around Fermina Daza.

The skill of the writing is that just as you think you are going to back one of the men your feelings change and you are left keeping an open mind seeing how things develop.

Bullet points between pages 130 -180

* After ignoring the doctor’s advances for so long suddenly Fermina decides to allow him to court her and the next thing is that they are getting married and as a result Florentino Ariza spirals into depression and is sent away by his mother in an attempt to forget her

* However the trip is a failure and he returns home and seems content, starting an affair with a widow and forgetting his love by focusing on physical passion, but things spiral out of his hands when he sees her with her husband six months pregnant

* The married couple have returned back from a two-year stay in Europe, where they went for honeymoon, and they have grown to love each other after starting out on the relationship with not too much of that emotion in evidence

* In response to the sight of them both together Florentino dedicates himself to becoming successful enough to win her back and despite the marriage and pregnancy he seems convinced that there will come a point at which Doctor Urbino will die and he will get his chance

We know that of course he does have to wait for fifty years but will he get his chance or not? Even more of a question is if you want him to? On that I am far from sure.

Chances for more voices to be heard

One of the benefits of the Internet for musicians and to some extent film makers is the platform it provides for them to get global attention. The costs are minimum and fan power can prove that a record company should sign a band or a film has an audience. it got me wondering if the same was true of writers and I received an email the other day that gave an indication that digital books, which are obviously cheaper to produce than the printed alternative, is a way for unpublished authors and poets to get their work out to a larger audience. I haven’t looked into it yet in great detail but the DigitalPulp Publishing Company do seem to have quite a wide mix of selections online at its cyber bookstore. I’m going to try and find out more about this because it might also be a way of getting older translations back into circulation, which would be a great.

Love in the Time of Cholera - post II

Today has been a real challenge on the reading front. It is cold and wet and my boiler has broken so I’m trying to read and compete with my wife for space by the electric heater and inevitably I lost.

Still what makes the few pages you do get through so rewarding is that the story continues to surprise you and keep you with it.

Bullet points between pages 72 – 130

* The story goes back to relate the love story between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza and after he asks for her hand in marriage things start to develop at a slow pace until she is discovered writing love letters to him and expelled from school

* To try and get her to forget her father takes her away for a year and half but because he had telegrammed all the relatives they were going to stay with Florentino is able to send messages via telegram offices on her route

* Her love for him remains intact and she returns home and they meet as he follows her around the market and as she sees him she is full of horror and cannot understand why she fell for some one like him and calls the marriage and the relationship off

* The narrative then shifts focus to concentrate on Doctor Juvenal Urbino and explains that he is so keen to stop cholera because the disease keeps breaking out in the Caribbean and ravaging the local community and his father was a victim of the last major outbreak

* After being sent to check on Fermina, who is suspected of having cholera, he falls in love with her and because the father approves of the match he is given the sort of access and parental support that was never on offer to Florentino who the father once threatened to shoot

* She resists the growing pressure to start a formal courtship with the doctor and her cousin comes who feels that it is tragic she broke off with Florentino and reopens a dialogue with him at the Telegraph office

Tomorrow should brings more twists and turns…

book of books - Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is a novel that is working on various different levels but regardless of that it is a book you will never forget and lingers on as you unravel the story in your mind trying to work out what it all means.

Bearing in mind the book was written against a background of Stalin’s Russia, where people would disappear in the middle of the night, friends would denounce each other and the Gulag system was at its height this conveys the sense of reality being distorted. Things that shouldn’t happen are happening in real life so the idea that people would wear clothes that then leave the naked after they vanish is no more stupid than the thought that people would change their ideas just to survive the purges.

Plot summary
The book starts with two atheists sitting in a park in Moscow talking about how Jesus didn’t exist when the Devil, a character under different names but mainly described as Woland, walks up and says he knows Jesus lived because he was there. There then unfolds the story of Pontius Pilate putting to death a man he knows is innocent told through a book that is being written by the character called the Master; a story of the Devil (Woland) running rampant through 1930s Moscow performing all sorts of acts in the guise of a magician with his henchmen; plus the love story of the Master and Margarita who leaves her life of bored luxury to follow the writer to the end.

Is it well written?
Some of the scenes will never be forgotten but and it is a challenge to get through what is clearly not a normal story. But it transmits the feeling of fear, oppression and topsy turvy decisions that must have been the norm in Stalin’s time. The Christ story is told in a way that is more narratively engaging than the traditional biblical story and the actions of Woland leave you sometimes bemused and at other points horrified. But as a satire on Modern Russia the only comparison that I have read, I’m sure there are plenty of others, is Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Should it be read?
The book is so well known that it would be odd if it was not consumed at some point by a reader and it deserves to be because rather than hide in the past and produce pastoral stories that implied the peasants needed a revolution, like some modern Russian authors, this is set clearly in modern Moscow. The other benefit of reading this is that it gives you a chilling insight into the power of the regime, as portrayed by Woland to literally erase or move people from their lives.

Leads to
More Bulgakov, although as already posted The White Guard is very different in style, Animal Farm by Orwell or some of the non-fiction titles about life in Stalin’s Russia, In the Court of the Red Tsar is particularly good example by Simon Sebag-Montefiore.

Version read – Penguin modern classics paperback

Struggling to read more than one at a time

Whenever I talk to people about reading they always list off the books they are reading with about three or four on the go. On friend told me that he couldn’t read just one book at a time and needed different styles and authors to mix it up and make life more interesting. But however hard I try it is not natural for me to have more than one book on the go at a time. Last night after finishing a good number of pages of Love in the Time of Cholera I picked up the Ukrainian history book Borderlands but found it hard to concentrate and so ended up putting it to one side.

Maybe you are just born a one book at a time reader or can handle three or four at a time? Maybe you can teach yourself to hold numerous plot lines and characters? But for me it is proving too difficult to do after years of just a single book at a time, which is a shame because I’m sure mixing it up more would be entertaining and could even be complimentary to the books – like mixing a good wine.

Love in the Time of Cholera - post I

There is something about the way that Garcia Marquez takes apart the normal structure of a novel and rebuilds it in a way that makes you think about the development of a story in a different way.

You put all your concentration into an 81 year old doctor who is sketched out in quite a lot of detail and there are 50 pages spent building this character and his world up before the rug is pulled from your feet ands you find that the real story could be coming from a different direction.

Bullet points between pages 3 – 72

* The focus of the opening few pages is the discovery of a suicide and the calling to the scene of a aged doctor, Dr Urbino, who happens to have been a friend of the victim and makes sure that the suicide is kept secret and the burial takes place quickly

* The friend, Jerimiah de Saint-Amour has left him a note that really disturbs the doctor because it contains not only the revelation he has had a mistress but that he was an escaped convict who in his time had resorted to cannibalism

* Dr Urbino then goes home and his wife Fermina Daza, who it is revealed he has had a strained relationship with as they grow old, and you discover that he has become weaker and more infirm as the years have gone by but he still dominates the town

* He has a talking parrot that is quite a local attraction and it escapes and in a moment when it loiters in the trees Urbino climbs up to get it but slips and crashes down to the earth and after telling his wife he loved her more than she knew he dies

* Then the story shifts dramatically as a man steps forward to the widow – Florentino Ariza and declares his undying love for Fermina – and the story goes back to a summer when the two young people were in love and he had asked and had his proposal of marriage accepted

Quite where it will go from here is not clear but that is the beauty of Garcia Marquez…

book of books - The White Guard

For most people the name Mikhail Bulgakov is linked with the Master and Margarita, a book that is very different in style from The White Guard (I will post a review of the Master… later) so it is good to come to this with an open mind.

This book is on a par with other war time novels including All Quiet on the Western Front in describing what people feel under fire. The difference is that the setting is not trenches or woodland but on the streets of Kiev.

But not only is it a book about war but is also about revolution and impact of fluid and brutal politics on normal people trying to work out where their loyalties should lie.

Plot summary
The central focus of the story is the Turbin family – Alexei, Elena and Nikolka – and the City of Kiev. The year is 1918 and the Tsar’s regime has collapsed and the Germans are still in the Ukraine and those who fought for Russia or were cadets on their way to becoming officers sit and ponder what happens next. Events start to develop with the Germans, now a defeated nation , pulling out from the City and as the Cossack army advances each individual has to decide whether to fight or to melt into the background. Alexei is wounded and almost dies, Nikolka fights then runs but in so doing become a man and Elena loses a husband into exile but sees her brothers safe.

Is it well written?
It captures the fear and the inner turmoil of people facing the decision to fight or run and also the tension in the city. You want the main characters to survive and come out intact and Bulgakov makes sure that you are left worrying about them until the end and even then with the hint of more trouble to come you are left wondering just what becomes of them. This story is timeless because it is fundamentally about human nature and in terms of showing a host of emotions ranging from cowardice to bravery and grief and joy then the White Guard has real depth.

Should it be read?
What might prevent more people from reading this is not interest but availability and the problem with being able to see beyond the Master and Margarita. This is an engaging read that drags you in and despite its difficult subject is absorbing page turner that really gets you to care for the people inside number 13 St Andrew’s Hill and for the City itself as the guns are aimed at its heart from the armoured train waiting to crawl into Kiev and start the killing all over again.

Leads to
In a way although it might lead to more Bulgakov the sort of books that are in a similar vein are All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.

Version read – Fontana modern classics paperback

Poet bloggers

Poetry is not my strong point but it seemed like a good idea to go out and find out what the act of blogging is doing to poets and poetry for an article I ended up submitting to Poet's Letter.

The responses were interesting...

Numerous poets have embraced the chance to blog on an almost daily basis, a welcome change from working away in isolation appearing for occasional readings, signings and new book releases.

Becoming a blogging poet posting poems and thoughts about writing and literature provides their readers with a chance not just to see the thought process in action but also to interact in a completely different way.

The benefits for the reader are clear, with access that would have been restricted to a mere handful of people now open to everyone, and it is having a positive impact on the poets as well.

“The blog has embedded me in daily practice. Poets often say, ‘Write every day, no matter how little.’ But I was never able to do it. Since 2003, I more or less have. Also, I keep a small notebook close to me at all times. I've always used notebooks, but writing for the blog has reinforced that practice,” says Mairead Byrne.

“ It has become a very really daily force in my life. I am indebted to the poetry editors and publishers of my world but I am an advocate of self-publication too, and the Internet allows that, not just for poetry, but for every sort of information,” she adds.

For others the chance to promote their own work has been a welcome alternative to the traditional routes to get published. For Martin Locock that was the main motivation of becoming a blogger.

“The main reason was my discouragement at the process of trying to get the poems into print. I had been circulating small collections among my friends, but these were by their nature limited by duplication costs and whether people had expressed an interest in receiving them. I thought that if I put them on the Web then maybe more people would find them,” he says.

For Reyes Cardenas it was the speed of the web that offered the main attraction: “I started my blog as an alternative to publishing on paper which of course involves time. And as a lot of my poetry is time sensitive a blog is the ideal vehicle.”

Another advantage that blogging can provide is a platform for poems to reach the world with feedback from readers that can offer poets vital encouragement.

“I don't post for critique as much as for pleasure. But one ‘Good poem!’ comment goes a long way. The trick is to not read silence to mean ‘You suck.’,” says Alice Hudson.

The comments might not be the sort of critical analysis that reviewers and peers might provide but as Bob Hazleton has found it be valuable nonetheless: “It's mostly general encouragement, which of course helps greatly.”

Being online has also led to new friendships and most poets have experienced interaction with readers well beyond the boundaries of their local community.

“The Internet certainly opened up my connection back to Ireland. I emigrated [to the US] in 1994 and, after five years or so, re-connected with Irish poetry at a level that was more suited to me, through American and British poetry listservs,” says Byrne.

“ I know people from different parts of the world read my blog. Some of them are old friends. Maybe some of them will be new friends too. But we're not talking about large numbers. Poetry is a one-by-one sort of art,” she adds.

Understandingly blogging, where the expectation is that there will be regular posts online, has also had an impact on the way poets write.

“I write more, I try to write a little everyday. For some weird reason though, posting my poems online sometimes makes me feel a little cheap, easy, desperate. Like the screen isn't as legitimate as paper. And sometimes I think I rush a poem to get it posted that day, when maybe if I wasn't blogging I would have taken more time to develop the thought,” says Hudson.

Lacock also feels the pressure but has a relaxed approach to developing poetry online: “The immediacy of writing online has led to my writing very short poems: a lot of haiku, for example. In an informal context, a poem doesn't have to be big or clever to be worth writing, so I write more often.”

The openness of the web can cause some challenges with poets being able to see each others work, gauge the popularity of certain styles and as a result possibly be influenced to change their own style.

“Sometimes I read other poems that get a lot of comments and I say to myself ‘I wish I could write like that,’ but then I always realise I can only be me. But it does inspire me to be more experimental on occasion,” says Hazelton.

The web is offering a much larger audience for poets, the chance to develop new relationships and adapt writing styles. With an increasing number of poets embracing online tools to share and publise their work it is to the web that the health of the poetry nation will have to measured in the future, not on the bookshelves.

White Guard an epilogue

At the end of the Fontana paperback version of the White Guard I am reading there is an epilogue in the form of an article by Victor Nekrasov, written for a Moscow literary journal in 1967, who sets out to find the locations described in the book and eventually finds the house of the Turbins at 13 St Andrews Hill and manages to visit the people living there. In a piece, which is saved from just being simple hero worship because of its interest, he discovers that the Bulgakov family lived in the house and most of the content of the book is autobiographical.

The most interesting things he discovers are that as a consequence of describing the owner of the flat downstairs as a money hoarder the authorities thought there might be some truth in it and made his life difficult. That he did have a brother Nikolai and he died in exile in Paris. But the interesting thing that this topographer cannot explain is the most important two streets in the book – where the Turbins live and where the woman who saves Alexei lives - have their names changed while everything else stays the same.

The final thing that you have to remember is that the book followed a play The Days of the Turbins, which Stalin liked so much he saw 15 times and when Bulgakov found the censorship and life in Russia so hard he pleaded to be allowed to go into exile it was Stalin who telephoned him and made him stay - not someone you could really argue with.

“When you come to Kiev I invite you to walk down the steep slope of St Andrews’s Hill to No. 13, to glance into the backyard (be sure to notice the steps on the left, under the verandah, for it was just there that a shiver ran down poor Vasilisa’s belly when he caught sight of Yavdokha, the beautiful milkmaid), and then to go uphill, cross the ‘mediaeval’ courtyard of Richard the Lionheart’s Castle, and to go up on to the hilltop, sit down on the edge of it, light a cigarette if you like, and admire the City which, even though he never came back to it, Bulgakov loved so much.”

The White Guard - post IV

If you read the post earlier you will know that this book is being consumed with a smile on the face and eyes keenly scanning each word and it is a real shame that it has come to an end.

Anyway enough of the premature review and the gushing comments about Bulagov’s writing and onto the highlights of today’s reading.

Bullet points between pages 180 – 270

* The blanks are filled in with the story of what happened to Alexei after the story left him ripping off his epaulettes and when he stumbled through the front door injured and it involves him being chased by the Reds and then saved by a woman who takes pity on him

* Back in the Turbin’s home the old faces start to reassemble and there are arguments about being betrayed by the leadership but a truce of sorts is called because fears turn to thoughts of being raided

* Thieves raid the neighbour downstairs and as a result they agree a system of alarm bells to warn each other of trouble but discover that the thieves took the guns that Nikolka had hidden so carefully in the gap between buildings

* The population of the City has no idea what is going on but turns out at the cathedral to greet Petlyura, without any idea of what he looks like or even what he stands for, and cheer on an independent Ukraine

* Things then come to a climax with Alexei’s illness and it seems as if he is going to die from Typhus and there is a moment when the doctor tells Elena, his sister that there is no hope and she starts to pray

* You can feel the rhythmic intensity of her kneeling and kissing the floor in front of the icon as she pleads for her brother to be spared and makes a deal (slightly similar to the End of the Affair deal in Greene’s novel) that she will lose her husband to save her brother

* In a moving passage she is called from her room and her brother has pulled through and not too long afterwards she gets news that her husband has gone into exile in France and is divorcing her so the deal made in the prayers is balanced out

* Carrying out a promise Nikolka made to the colonel who was killed fighting with him he goes to his family and tells them of his death and then helps find the corpse and give him a proper burial

* Alexei returns to practicing medicine and as things become slightly more normal the independent Ukrainian forces disappear and the next stage of the Civil War is ushered in with no one knowing quite what it means for the City or the people who live in it

A full review will appear tomorrow…