Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Che the motorcyclist

For quite some time I wanted to read "The motorcycle diaries" by Ernesto "Che" Guevara. I am not a fan of Che, too many people were killed around him and by him, that I would like anything about him, but by an old Marxist maxime, it is good to know the enemy.

To be just, Che, or what he was involved in, I would not think the worst thing in the world, at his time. It was definitely more moral doing than what his opponents were doing. And, also, I respect the fact that he died the way he lived. He did not dodge, become worthless politycal shit-mouth only, but actually died doing what he considered right thing to do.

The book itself is a short text worth reading, as a first-hand raport from the places which at the time he visited them, were not exactly the touristic attraction.

The title is a bit misguiding, as he and Alberto made in fact less than half of the trip by motorcycle, the rest was ship, boats, a raft, lorries which they hitch-hiked...the title should be "A tramp's diary".

Thanks to the fact that they travelled with minimum finances, the trip became a school of life-there is no better school than getting to know the bottom of the ladder. Keen observer, Ernesto noticed things which would not be noticed by some fatty brain of some ordinary tourist.

He lived only 15 years after the trip, then he was killed.

Obviously what he saw, what he learned on this trip was important to him... important enough to go and invest his life (and lives of others) into the idea.

Who are we to judge? South America, Africa, were batttlefields at those days, battlefields of ideologies, visions... I am not certain that the taken course brought us closer to happiness for the peoples of both those continents, but my uncertainty is that of an armchair observer. Che was a participant and a creator of one viable option. Which, eventually, lost, and we got a rabies of rabbis, priests, imams and mullahs instead. In package with suicide bombers at age 7-77, refugee crises and USA becoming a 3rd world country. Russia becoming an agressor in wish to make others even poorer capitalists than they already are. China becoming the wealthiest communist party in the world, leading the largest rampant capitalistic economy in the world.

Really an advance?

In this book one can also see a child, like there is one in every of us. What becomes of a child, depends on so many things. But one is admirable: this child went for an adventure, lived it, learned from it. Parents of today should remember to relax their love-ties a bit, not to cripple the new generation.

Recommendable read, indeed.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

A Small Courtyard

I wrote in http://mikidkolan.blogspot.com/2007/12/literature-without-borders-milan.html about a Serbian writer Milan Jovanović.

His recent book, from 2012, "Malo dvorište" ("A small courtyard") is an interesting historical detective story. Located on the mountainous Balkans, Serbia proper, at 13th century. Story happens in a small monastery in which are placed, in fact detained, daughters, wives or widows of Serbian royal families, which are for some reason unconvenient or dangerous for the family or the kingdom.

Jovanovic tells of escape of some of the detainees, and unexpected plots around seemingly static places and situations.

In the narrative method Jovanovic returned to the method of his debut, the novel with the similar topic, "Monk". In both novels the story is told through relations of the participants, building the story that way. Very successful, probably because such a narrative corresponds to the historical context, and evokes something of the slowness with which the information was transmitted in the Medieval times.

In an anthology edition, which Jovanovic's works will surely once obtain, "Monk" and "A small courtyard" will form a couple that would not shame any literature.

One does not often find stories told with so much genuine feeling ... it seems as if the writer spent decades in Hilandar, Serbian monastery at the Greek Holy mountain, Atos, that he would be able to tell the story in such a way.

Shortness - both novels are only about 100 pages - adds brevity resembling rather the Zen Buddhism than Orthodox eloquence and lavishness - but wisdom is transmitted in a short, not overflowing form, and Jovanovic knows this very well.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

"Will you please be quiet, please?" - more Carver

It is perfectly clear why this first of Carver's collection of short stories attracted attention. It is as mind-gripping as I described two posts back, when writing about "Cathedral", maybe even a bit more.

The titular story, which is the last in the collection, is really a masterpiece. It is a story about an ordinary couple. Everything was going maybe too smooth for them, and there is a problem with one outing of the wife few yeaars ago, which was an infidelity. It is obviously a thorn in the body of otherwise happy marriage, and it is revealed in a seemingly unnecessary manner, during a relaxed family day at home. Is it a call to sobriety, reminder that nothing in the world is as it seems? Or just a sign of rotting human flesh, which eats human happiness? I would not opt for this, as I think that such happiness is not real at all, that it is more often just a blindness, voluntary or involuntary. And I would not think what happened immoral or anything, rather a natural thing. But definitely not something what should happen, or be revealed, in a happy marriage.

Small scenes from life of ordinary people, which held me more tense than any chainsaw-massacre movie (I would leave such a performance, anyway) makes that I will probably not go deeper into Carver's writing soon. But I hail him as, indeed, a novel voice in American writing of the 2nd part of the XX ct. Almost every paragraph holds a screenplay for some Lynch' movie.

Through the writing I see, however, the writer being not only a spectator, but a participant of the show he is writing about: in his meek writing I find he is often humiliated, frightened, not at ease with the surrounding world. Also with the inside world of his heroes-no, characters, they are not possible to be described as heroes.

Carver taught me another dimension of writing. It still has to settle in me, but it is to stay, definitely. Thanks!