Portugal 2013

Portugal 2013, a set on Flickr.

Victor Jara, his dignity and his legacy

‎39 years ago today, Victor Jara was killed by Pinochet's army. In his final days, in the midst of terror and torture, he composed his last, greatest poem. I recommend you read it; an English translation is available at: 

http://www.mahmag.org/english/worldpoetry.php?itemid=380 

The final few stanzas are thus:

"Song, How imperfect you are!
When I most need to sing, I cannot
I cannot because I am still alive
I cannot because I am dying

It terrifies me to find myself
Lost in infinite moments
On which silence and shouts
Are the objectives of my song

What I now see, I have never seen
What I feel and what I have felt
Will make the moment spring again."

Resistance is never futile.

A Small Free Kiss in the Dark

Ye gods! A wild review appears!

Glenda Millard's short novel overcomes several problems to stand as a thoughtful, poignant read for tens and up.

An urban dystopian future-war scenario may seem to be a full-house of cliché keywords for a contemporary YA novel, but Millard sensibly subverts the tropes to craft an original, often surprising, story. The first and most obvious example of her characters playing against type is their positioning in the fringes of society even before the bombs start dropping and the jackboots come marching in. Their displacement is accelerated by the conflict, but it remains for most of the book a distant phenomenon, far removed from the immediate plight of Millard's lovingly-crafted characters.

The book's central figure Skip, a young runaway and burgeoning artistic mind, immediately captures the imagination. Millard shows us the world, all pastel sunsets and smoky ruins, through a remarkable volume of creative description. Skip's insightful similes are disarming and effective in painting the artist's view of beauty and horror in the world. These exhaustive but not overbearing descriptions account for the book's relative brevity - at under 200 pages it's a slim, but not lightweight, read - as every page displays some new creativity and concentrated wonder.

Skip's fierce friendship with Billy, a proud, lost man, forms the heart of the story and is the most convincing relationship of the few that Millard sketches. Their interdependence, coupled with classic odd couple stubbornness, proves enduring and the only thing that either of them can hold on to in their devastated world. Some tropes are worth keeping, and Millard sagely keeps this most touching and hopeful of classsic children's literary traditions alive.

The book's one and only true misstep is its dénouement. This isn't as damaging to the impact of the story as it sounds, but particularly in a re-read it fails to ring true. The dilemma of the final dramatic characters, while brave, seems forced, which is a particular shame considering the grace with which other issues are confronted by Millard's prose. The closing imagery is as vivid as any other in the book but coming after the odd tonal changes introduced in the last chapters it doesn't have the impact of the earlier wonderful portrayals of Skip's world.

A recommended read, in spite of its flaws, and one that will stick in the memory. At least, the first three-quarters will.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"What in hell are people for?" 

Kurt Vonnegut's legacy is being questioned, if not yet recast, due to Charles Shields' new, entirely unauthorised, biography of the man whose reputation is seen by many as unassailable. It is not an overstatement to say that I see in him, through his work, a kindred spirit. I count myself as one of the many who have found profundity in lines such as the above, this one quoted from Rosewater by way of his short story 2BR02B and a despairing indictment of the endemic and needless cruelty of human society.

It is this despair that drives Eliot Rosewater and, more importantly, his wife Sylvia, to and over the brink of destruction. They try to effect a sea-change in social interaction but prove to be as ineffective as Canute against the remorseless, infinite tide of human pettiness and selfishness. Sylvia's eventual fate is narrated tenderly: it is clear that Vonnegut has invested in her something of himself. It is also clear that he does not claim that he has the answer to the sorry state of the human condition, nor would he want to be the person who has. After all, sings the wordless chorus behind every page, who would listen to him?

When Vonnegut describes himself, by way of his nom de plume Kilgore Trout as "society's greatest prophet" the inference is that Trout is the author's rhetorical ego unleashed, loosed from the smothering effect of compassion, even conscience. He can offer half-truths, solutions that lack complexity and subtlety and above all fail to grasp the tired, trapped bird of doomed hope that Eliot cannot release from within his cage of psychosis. Imperfect, irritable Vonnegut may have made a better attempt: Trout's is feeble and platitudinous and singularly useless.

There is more, far more, to be said about Rosewater, but it is in his depiction of Sylvia and Trout that Vonnegut reveals himself. This is not, and nor are any of his other works, the writings and emotions of a misanthrope. He may not have ever mellowed, but if not it was for the same reason as Noam Chomsky: he looked at the world.

"If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable."