This won't take you long, and you'll be glad you visited the Laguna del Vuelo in the Bluefields region of Nicaragua. Which may or may not exist, you decide.
f a i l b e t t e r . c o m
2010/09/03
2010/09/02
Spain's disloyal opposition
Please accept my excuses, lame though they be, for not writing anything of consequence about contemporary Spain since mid-July. First, nobody does any unavoidable work in Spain in August (that's really lame, I know, but it was hot—up to 38º [100.4º F] locally, though much worse in other parts of the country). Second, the current political scene here has been so depressing that I preferred to think of something else, anything else. Except of course the rise of the Know-Nothings of the Tea Party back in the US, which is even more depressing. Finally and most importantly, I was focused on the final corrections to my novel, now done. The printers just today wrote to say they have shipped me the author's proof, and if (as I expect) all is well, we plan to launch it early next month (October).
That the PP is a den of thieves is amply demonstrated in the corruption investigations almost everywhere they govern, most notoriously in Valencia and Madrid. (See the many trials and revelations regarding Fabra and Francisco Camps & co. in Valencia.) They're not the only ones—the fragmentation of supervisory and judicial authority and the wide hiring and contracting powers of local executives in Spain practically invite corruption, and too many mayors and others have accepted the invitation. The PSOE has also had some notorious corruption cases, but far fewer and on more local levels.
That the PP is uncivic-minded, unpatriotic in the sense of desiring the best for the collective interest in Spain, has been evident in their campaign to discredit the PSOE government by undermining confidence in Spain's economy and by trying to sabotage the government's negotiations abroad, most notable with Morocco and Cuba.
There's an ominous spat about nothing between Spain and some Moroccans right now at the border of Melilla, one of Spain's two remaining beachheads on Morocco's Mediterranean coast (the other one is Ceuta; both are tiny urban enclaves left over from colonial days). Relations between the two kingdoms (unlike Spain, Morocco is a real kingdom, that is, Muhammad VI actually rules) have been generally good, but lately two radical Moroccan organizations have been demanding that Spain "return" the territory to the Kingdom of Morocco (which actually never possessed it; Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish since before the current Kingdom of Morocco existed), and staged a blockade preventing Moroccan produce from entering the enclaves. Whatever the merits of this campaign (given the disparities in wealth and civil rights between the two countries, it's unlikely that most Ceutis or Melillenses would opt for Moroccan rather than Spanish citizenship), what Spain needed to do was to calm things down by patient negotiations with the Moroccan government. The PP's José María Aznar seized the opportunity in a lightning visit to Melilla to denounce the passivity of the Spanish government in protecting its citizens against Moroccan insults, the only possible consequence of his intervention being to further anger the agitators. (See Aznar: "Melilla vive entre el acoso y la dejadez del Gobierno" — ELPAÍS.com)
And as for Spain's Cuba policy, it may not be brilliant but it has managed to get a lot of people out of prison, and for that the PP also denounces the government: the PSOE should not have deigned to deal with Raúl Castro, they say.
All of this is sad. But sadder yet is the inadequate response of the PSOE, fighting with the trade unions that have always been its major supporters and now riven by a primary battle for the autonomous region of Madrid. Primaries shouldn't weaken a democratic party, but Spanish politicians are not accustomed to them and the whole party structure is set up with top-down command, allowing very little discretionary maneuver by party members. The party chief, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is also the president of the government, is pushing for one candidate, Trinidad Jiménez, for president of the region, and whatever he says should by law. Thus the candidacy by the current president of the PSOE organization in Madrid, Tomás Gómez, is seen as defiance of the president of the party and the government. If he wins, or even if he loses by a small margin, the opposition PP will ballyhoo the vote as further demonstration of the weakness of Zapatero.
eso es lo que hay —that's what we have and what we have to work with. The PP does not inspire much confidence among voters, but if the PSOE doesn't look to be better, it's potential supporters are likely to abstain from the next election or vote for any of the many minority parties, and let the crooks and opportunists triumph.
(A Gift for the Sultan—my 388-page novel—is totally unrelated to contemporary Spanish politics or to anything else I've written in the past; it takes place in and around Constantinople in 1402, and features Byzantine nobles and rabble, a princess, a Russian slave, English mercenaries and a Frankish knight, Ottoman Turkish warriors, soothsayers and connivers, a couple of Armenians and a young Serb woman. What fascinated me was the interaction—much conflict, but also collaboration and affection and mutual imitation—among all these very different people in the midst of open Muslim vs. Christian hostilities. Sort of like what's going on in our world today. The only Spanish connection is the fleeting reference to the 1403 visit by the Castilian knight Ruy González de Clavijo, who stopped in Constantinople while on a diplomatic mission to the terrible Tamerlane; his report to his king was a major source on the condition of Constantinople in this period. You'll be hearing more about A Gift for the Sultan soon.)What is most depressing about Spanish politics is that the most unscrupulous, uncivic-minded band of thieves is very likely to return to power here, because the good (or at least somewhat better) guys are pusillanimous, confused about what to do and quarreling with one another. I am talking about the Partido Popular (PP) and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, pronounced here as "soy").
That the PP is a den of thieves is amply demonstrated in the corruption investigations almost everywhere they govern, most notoriously in Valencia and Madrid. (See the many trials and revelations regarding Fabra and Francisco Camps & co. in Valencia.) They're not the only ones—the fragmentation of supervisory and judicial authority and the wide hiring and contracting powers of local executives in Spain practically invite corruption, and too many mayors and others have accepted the invitation. The PSOE has also had some notorious corruption cases, but far fewer and on more local levels.
That the PP is uncivic-minded, unpatriotic in the sense of desiring the best for the collective interest in Spain, has been evident in their campaign to discredit the PSOE government by undermining confidence in Spain's economy and by trying to sabotage the government's negotiations abroad, most notable with Morocco and Cuba.
There's an ominous spat about nothing between Spain and some Moroccans right now at the border of Melilla, one of Spain's two remaining beachheads on Morocco's Mediterranean coast (the other one is Ceuta; both are tiny urban enclaves left over from colonial days). Relations between the two kingdoms (unlike Spain, Morocco is a real kingdom, that is, Muhammad VI actually rules) have been generally good, but lately two radical Moroccan organizations have been demanding that Spain "return" the territory to the Kingdom of Morocco (which actually never possessed it; Ceuta and Melilla have been Spanish since before the current Kingdom of Morocco existed), and staged a blockade preventing Moroccan produce from entering the enclaves. Whatever the merits of this campaign (given the disparities in wealth and civil rights between the two countries, it's unlikely that most Ceutis or Melillenses would opt for Moroccan rather than Spanish citizenship), what Spain needed to do was to calm things down by patient negotiations with the Moroccan government. The PP's José María Aznar seized the opportunity in a lightning visit to Melilla to denounce the passivity of the Spanish government in protecting its citizens against Moroccan insults, the only possible consequence of his intervention being to further anger the agitators. (See Aznar: "Melilla vive entre el acoso y la dejadez del Gobierno" — ELPAÍS.com)
And as for Spain's Cuba policy, it may not be brilliant but it has managed to get a lot of people out of prison, and for that the PP also denounces the government: the PSOE should not have deigned to deal with Raúl Castro, they say.
All of this is sad. But sadder yet is the inadequate response of the PSOE, fighting with the trade unions that have always been its major supporters and now riven by a primary battle for the autonomous region of Madrid. Primaries shouldn't weaken a democratic party, but Spanish politicians are not accustomed to them and the whole party structure is set up with top-down command, allowing very little discretionary maneuver by party members. The party chief, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is also the president of the government, is pushing for one candidate, Trinidad Jiménez, for president of the region, and whatever he says should by law. Thus the candidacy by the current president of the PSOE organization in Madrid, Tomás Gómez, is seen as defiance of the president of the party and the government. If he wins, or even if he loses by a small margin, the opposition PP will ballyhoo the vote as further demonstration of the weakness of Zapatero.
eso es lo que hay —that's what we have and what we have to work with. The PP does not inspire much confidence among voters, but if the PSOE doesn't look to be better, it's potential supporters are likely to abstain from the next election or vote for any of the many minority parties, and let the crooks and opportunists triumph.
2010/08/28
Updating Whorf
Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com: "Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany?"
I remember being tremendously impressed by Benjamin Whorf's arguments back when I was in graduate school: the language you speak shapes the way you think. This was obvious to me as somebody who was learning other languages, even languages as closely related to my native English as French or Spanish. Then when I poked into Russian, Hebrew and Arabic, the effects of language on thought seemed even more obvious: for example, in Russian you have to have to be conscious of a verb's "mood" (subjunctive or imperative), and you lose the distinction that other European languages provide by the definite versus indefinite article ("a" vs. "the", "ein/eine" vs. "die/das/der", etc.).
But as Guy Deutscher points out in this article, there were some things in Whorf that just didn't make sense — like, that certain peoples can have no sense of time if they had no way to express past tense. In short, it now appears that Whorf, "a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University," was on to something important even if he misinterpreted his data. His hunch was right even though his facts were wrong. And that's something; the hunch has inspired some important further research.
Much to think about. Deutscher has already done much of the updating of Whorf, though there's still a lot more to learn about language and thought. This line of inquiry should help us in our tense international relations. The sequence of ideas and the relative importance of aspects of reality must be very different if one is speaking English, or Farsi, or Korean, or Pashto or Dari.
Also, check out my earlier blog note on Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain.
I remember being tremendously impressed by Benjamin Whorf's arguments back when I was in graduate school: the language you speak shapes the way you think. This was obvious to me as somebody who was learning other languages, even languages as closely related to my native English as French or Spanish. Then when I poked into Russian, Hebrew and Arabic, the effects of language on thought seemed even more obvious: for example, in Russian you have to have to be conscious of a verb's "mood" (subjunctive or imperative), and you lose the distinction that other European languages provide by the definite versus indefinite article ("a" vs. "the", "ein/eine" vs. "die/das/der", etc.).
But as Guy Deutscher points out in this article, there were some things in Whorf that just didn't make sense — like, that certain peoples can have no sense of time if they had no way to express past tense. In short, it now appears that Whorf, "a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University," was on to something important even if he misinterpreted his data. His hunch was right even though his facts were wrong. And that's something; the hunch has inspired some important further research.
Much to think about. Deutscher has already done much of the updating of Whorf, though there's still a lot more to learn about language and thought. This line of inquiry should help us in our tense international relations. The sequence of ideas and the relative importance of aspects of reality must be very different if one is speaking English, or Farsi, or Korean, or Pashto or Dari.
Also, check out my earlier blog note on Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain.
2010/08/25
Dreamers & doers at Black Bear commune
Here's a good, short video (7 minutes) to remind us (those who are old enough to remember) or to instruct us (if we've never known anything like it) about a long-lasting effort to live a communal ideal, where women didn't accept any subordinate role.
YouTube - Canal de fmindlin
The video is a good companion piece to this book about the Black Bear commune that I mentioned earlier. Great to have the pictures of the people, the mountain wilderness, and the ramschackle buildings and vehicles.
YouTube - Canal de fmindlin
The video is a good companion piece to this book about the Black Bear commune that I mentioned earlier. Great to have the pictures of the people, the mountain wilderness, and the ramschackle buildings and vehicles.
2010/08/19
Literature, society, and me
As you know, I devote this blog to two themes with radically different discourses, literary arts and social analysis. The former is a discourse meant to appeal to all people who use and love language. However the vocabulary and tropes of the latter, including graphs and highly technical language, are too often accessible only to the specialist, and that's a pity. We need both: works of the imagination that explore the possibilities of language to suggest new possibilities of existence, and observation and measurement to understand the real limits of our present existence.
This is why my works of imagination — novels, short stories — are usually also explorations of real present or past situations. And my works of social analysis seek to tell their stories with the fluidity of a novel or epic poem, that is, social analysis as literature.
And now, in just a few weeks, you will be able to read my new novel, A Gift for the Sultan. It's written, edited, and with cover design approved, so all that remains before printing and posting as an e-book (cheap) are two dozen minor corrections to the interior design. (If you'd like a review copy and seriously intend to write a review, just let me know.)
This is my most ambitious effort to date combining literary play and social research, so you will be able to judge how well I've been able to pull it off. The setting is Constantinople and its environs in 1402, when that celebrated capital of Eastern Christianity was on the verge of collapse before an Ottoman and mostly Muslim siege. Getting the place and time right required a lot of research in all my languages (which regrettably include neither medieval Greek nor Turkish — I had to make do with French, Spanish and English). What fascinated me and kept me going was the multi phased conflict of that time, with so many parallels to the attack on New York in 2001 (our "9/11"), the siege and bombardment of Sarajevo in the 1990s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The chronological (more than six centuries) and the technological distance (siege machines had to be much closer to the walls than today) helped to imagine objectively, if not dispassionately. I did get emotionally involved in the lives of those historical and fictional characters, and I hope you do, too. The dynamics of power, tribal solidarity, religious passion and cynicism — at least as I've imagined them, I think correctly — are not so different from today's. But soon, very soon, you will be able to read the novel (386 pages) and judge for yourself.
And this brings me (by the roundabout circuitry in my brain) to Amartya Sen's concept of "human development" as a measure of a social system's success: judging a system by the physical well-being, cultural development (literacy, etc.) and social opportunities of its citizenry in general, rather than by its GDP (which may be very unevenly distributed) or military triumphs or the size and splendor of the monuments glorifying its leader.
In the period of my novel, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos of the Byzantine Empire (he called it "Romania") seems to have aspired to such a measure (you can read his letters to his son, advising on good government), but there was little he could do for the "human development" of his subjects in the precarious defense situation of his diminishing empire. Sultan "Yildirim" ("Thunderbolt") Bayezid of the Ottomans, however, held exactly the opposite notion, that his subjects existed only to enhance his power and glory.
But, as Amartya Sen might have predicted, it was Manuel and not the aggressive Bayezid who survived this episode. To read more about cross-country comparisons developed from Sen's approach, check out the essay (in English or Spanish, as you choose) by Gustav Ranis in the Revista Latinoamericana de Desarrollo Humano. To read more about the conflict between Sultan Bayezid and Manuel II's Constantinople, read A Gift for the Sultan (soon).
This is why my works of imagination — novels, short stories — are usually also explorations of real present or past situations. And my works of social analysis seek to tell their stories with the fluidity of a novel or epic poem, that is, social analysis as literature.
And now, in just a few weeks, you will be able to read my new novel, A Gift for the Sultan. It's written, edited, and with cover design approved, so all that remains before printing and posting as an e-book (cheap) are two dozen minor corrections to the interior design. (If you'd like a review copy and seriously intend to write a review, just let me know.)
This is my most ambitious effort to date combining literary play and social research, so you will be able to judge how well I've been able to pull it off. The setting is Constantinople and its environs in 1402, when that celebrated capital of Eastern Christianity was on the verge of collapse before an Ottoman and mostly Muslim siege. Getting the place and time right required a lot of research in all my languages (which regrettably include neither medieval Greek nor Turkish — I had to make do with French, Spanish and English). What fascinated me and kept me going was the multi phased conflict of that time, with so many parallels to the attack on New York in 2001 (our "9/11"), the siege and bombardment of Sarajevo in the 1990s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The chronological (more than six centuries) and the technological distance (siege machines had to be much closer to the walls than today) helped to imagine objectively, if not dispassionately. I did get emotionally involved in the lives of those historical and fictional characters, and I hope you do, too. The dynamics of power, tribal solidarity, religious passion and cynicism — at least as I've imagined them, I think correctly — are not so different from today's. But soon, very soon, you will be able to read the novel (386 pages) and judge for yourself.
And this brings me (by the roundabout circuitry in my brain) to Amartya Sen's concept of "human development" as a measure of a social system's success: judging a system by the physical well-being, cultural development (literacy, etc.) and social opportunities of its citizenry in general, rather than by its GDP (which may be very unevenly distributed) or military triumphs or the size and splendor of the monuments glorifying its leader.
In the period of my novel, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos of the Byzantine Empire (he called it "Romania") seems to have aspired to such a measure (you can read his letters to his son, advising on good government), but there was little he could do for the "human development" of his subjects in the precarious defense situation of his diminishing empire. Sultan "Yildirim" ("Thunderbolt") Bayezid of the Ottomans, however, held exactly the opposite notion, that his subjects existed only to enhance his power and glory.
But, as Amartya Sen might have predicted, it was Manuel and not the aggressive Bayezid who survived this episode. To read more about cross-country comparisons developed from Sen's approach, check out the essay (in English or Spanish, as you choose) by Gustav Ranis in the Revista Latinoamericana de Desarrollo Humano. To read more about the conflict between Sultan Bayezid and Manuel II's Constantinople, read A Gift for the Sultan (soon).
2010/08/13
Friday the 13th
Not that we're superstitious, but it was one of those days. We'd spent most of it shopping in Almería and Vícar (60 -70 km from home), and after a late midday meal (about 4 p.m.), home with our load of groceries etc. found that the gate to our condo wouldn't open. We and our neighbors couldn't get our cars in, and one that was already in couldn't get out. Big problem, especially because the August 15 weekend is the biggest vacation period in Spain so the condo is full and we're expecting guests tomorrow. And try to get a repairman specialist late Friday afternoon in August in Andalucía.
We parked just outside the gate and unloaded the car and carried everything in and Susana decided to start the dryer, but when she pushed the button it plunged deep into the machine instead of popping back. When I tried to spring it loose, it fell completely inside. Now we needed not just a gate repairman by a dryer technician. And it was by then even later on Friday.
Fortunately we know a super handyman, a McGyver who is a brilliant improviser. He came right over, and after considerable study of the problem including nearly total disassembly, found a way for us to operate the gate manually, using the remote control just to unlock it. That'll get us through this weekend. He was also able to improvise a very ingenious solution to get our dryer running again. It involved a paperclip, pliers, tape and a lot of care.
But as I then drove our little Smart through the gate and up the ramp, something exploded and we heard gas escaping. Nothing vital, it turns out, but a big scare and maybe some future discomfort; it was, our McGyver thinks, a puncture in a tube of the air conditioning. Since it has reached 38º here lately (that's over 100º F), this may be a problem.
We parked just outside the gate and unloaded the car and carried everything in and Susana decided to start the dryer, but when she pushed the button it plunged deep into the machine instead of popping back. When I tried to spring it loose, it fell completely inside. Now we needed not just a gate repairman by a dryer technician. And it was by then even later on Friday.
Fortunately we know a super handyman, a McGyver who is a brilliant improviser. He came right over, and after considerable study of the problem including nearly total disassembly, found a way for us to operate the gate manually, using the remote control just to unlock it. That'll get us through this weekend. He was also able to improvise a very ingenious solution to get our dryer running again. It involved a paperclip, pliers, tape and a lot of care.
But as I then drove our little Smart through the gate and up the ramp, something exploded and we heard gas escaping. Nothing vital, it turns out, but a big scare and maybe some future discomfort; it was, our McGyver thinks, a puncture in a tube of the air conditioning. Since it has reached 38º here lately (that's over 100º F), this may be a problem.
2010/08/05
In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR
In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR
Thanks to Greg Weeks and his blog Two Weeks Notice: A Latin American Politics Blog for pointing to this NPR program on "backfire"—Brendan Nyhan's term for the tendency to cling even more firmly to your beliefs when you are faced with contradictory evidence. A major example right now is the outrageous and utterly false campaign in Arizona blaming illegal immigrants for crimes that aren't even occurring.
One curious thing about this transcript, if you get down to where they take calls from listeners: Every listener, it seemed to me, was eager to demonstrate that he or she, unlike ordinary prejudiced mortals, had changed views on some important issue after considering other arguments. And in each case, had ended up just as stubbornly convinced as before of his or her new "truth". Ah, well, maybe there's no hope for rational discourse!
Thanks to Greg Weeks and his blog Two Weeks Notice: A Latin American Politics Blog for pointing to this NPR program on "backfire"—Brendan Nyhan's term for the tendency to cling even more firmly to your beliefs when you are faced with contradictory evidence. A major example right now is the outrageous and utterly false campaign in Arizona blaming illegal immigrants for crimes that aren't even occurring.
One curious thing about this transcript, if you get down to where they take calls from listeners: Every listener, it seemed to me, was eager to demonstrate that he or she, unlike ordinary prejudiced mortals, had changed views on some important issue after considering other arguments. And in each case, had ended up just as stubbornly convinced as before of his or her new "truth". Ah, well, maybe there's no hope for rational discourse!
2010/08/04
Public Citizen
Recommended site for all those who, like me, don't want to see the continuation of practices that destroy the earth in the name of free enterprise. Such as, for example, was exposed in the "Potosí" show at the Reina Sofía Museum this spring (link below).
Public Citizen Home Page
Also see:
Potosí and us — my review of "the complex, exhausting, sometimes exhilarating exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía, Principio Potosí / ¿Cómo podemos cantar el canto del Señor en tierra ajena?"
Public Citizen Home Page
Check out the report on CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) and this pdf. "Backgrounder" which begins:
Pacific Rim Mining Corp., a Canadian-based multinational firm, sought to establish a massive gold mine using water-intensive cyanide ore processing in the basin of El Salvador’s largest river, Rio Lempa. … In December 2008, the firm filed a claim under the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), demanding hundreds of millions in compensation from one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries.
Also see:
Potosí and us — my review of "the complex, exhausting, sometimes exhilarating exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía, Principio Potosí / ¿Cómo podemos cantar el canto del Señor en tierra ajena?"
2010/08/02
Bulls
 |
| Forges, El País, 29 July 2010 |
As a product of an utterly different culture, I find it hard to get engaged by the ritualistic blood ballet of the corridas. I remember attending three in my whole life. The first, in Caracas, featuring a then (1963) famous Spaniard, "El Cordobés", I barely remember. I didn't understand much of the ritual, and neither did most of the Venezuelans, as far as I could tell. Then, more recently and after reading up on what to watch for, in the Plaza de Toros in Almería, reportedly the only plaza de toros in the country where everybody packs a lunch with wine to share with everybody else at the break between toreadores. And still more recently, in the big Las Ventas plaza in Madrid, to see something different, rejoneadores taunting and ultimately killing the bull from horseback—a stunning equestrian performance.
But unlike Tóibín, I don't think those who do get engaged with it are looking for cruelty to animals. I don't even think the ritual is especially cruel; those bulls lead far better lives than any of the animals we eat. But certainly outmoded, belonging to a more primitive time, when man had to demonstrate his power to overcome brute force of nature. Nowadays Spaniards are more likely to do that (personally or vicariously) in motorcycle and auto races.
Tóibín's article is especially good on Catalan sensibilities and why the Catalan Parlament's ban is stirring so much excitement in the rest of Spain.
Bullfighting ban is sweet revenge for Catalonia | World news | The Guardian
2010/07/28
Affaire fatale
In the Marché aux Pouces in Paris a few weeks ago, I picked up a small collection of postcards from the Great War. To the merchant's surprise, I didn't care as much about the pictures as the messages, some in cramped letters to pack in lots of detail, some more sprawling and repetitive, to and from a young soldier writing from different military addresses and his anxious wife and daughter and an aunt, more anxious about her own health and the hardships of scarcities than about the dangers at the front. And I started imagining the story of the things they left unsaid. And as it happened, I had with me this book by the very young Raymond Radiguet, about an adventure in civilian life but also involving a soldier, in just this period.
It was really an accident that I had picked up this book before the trip. I was simply looking for something in French to read for practice and for vocabulary. But I didn't recognize the name of the author and didn't remember ever hearing the title before. According to Wikipedia, Radiguet was only 17 when he wrote it, and 20 when he got it published, the same year he died of typhus—1923. In his short life he managed to write another novel, Le bal du Comte d'Orgel, which Wiki says also deals with adultery, a play and some volumes of poetry. And to become briefly a playmate and tease of 30-something Jean Cocteau. The book is worth reading just for the scandal it caused, and as another glimpse of that brilliant and tumultuous post-war period in Paris, where Radiguet was the boy wonder.
But it's also worth reading for another reason. It is an awful, painful and true-sounding portrait of adolescent hormonal rage and egotism unchecked. It's about a schoolboy, only "12 years and a few months old" when the war begins (just a year older than Radiguet himself), whose awkward crush on a slightly older girl blossoms into a dangerous and adulterous career that is ultimately fatal to the girl. After their first awkward glimpses of one another, the girl and boy are separated (their parents live in different places), and by the time the narrator sees Marthe again, he is 15 and she has married a young man who has been mobilized and is off at the battlefront. After playful and progressively audacious flirtation, they become lovers—their rendezvous and his sleepovers complicated by his shyness and the fact that he doesn't want his parents and the neighbors to know what he is up to. Except that he really does want them to know, because having a mistress would make them deal with him as a grown man. Except that he is not a grown man and has no idea of, and no willingness to accept, the responsibility of the relationship. Oddly, Marthe, though older and more experienced—she's a married woman, after all—lets him dominate her and seems eager to have a master, even as incompetent and confused a master as this 15 and then 16-year old boy.
There is a built-in tension in the structure of the novel, because we know that summer (when her parents are away) will not last forever, nor will the war, that Jacques, the soldier husband, will be returning and that this whole relationship is utterly unsustainalbe. And meanwhile all the neighbor's and the milkman and the letter-carrier are watching the boy's nocturnal visits to the young army wife, and her parents and/or her parents-in-law are sure to find out, probably soon. The boy, as narrator, describes all his own hesitations, bursts of bombast and other stupid mistakes, and frequently admits his cowardice—his unwillingness to accept responsibility or even the discomfort that an open break with his parents and community norms would entail. He thinks he is madly in love, but it is not a love concerned about the welfare of Marthe but one demanding that she constantly demonstrate her passion for him. He is just an awful cad, and the only excuse is his extreme youth.
There are cutting observations not just of his own conduct, but also of the ridiculous hypocrisies of the neighbors and the moral doubts of his parents, her parents and everybody. The story is probably not strictly autobiographical, but the adolescent confusions, narcissism and naked lust ring true.
Raymond Radiguet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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