In Memoriam: Jose Saramago

Jose Saramago, the first Portuguese writer to win the Nobel Prize, passed away on June 18.

For a career that began only in earnest when Saramago was in his late 50s, his artistic output rivals that of any of his peers, and while his politics invited condemnation in some quarters, when all is said and done (when is that, exactly?), he will be counted among the literary luminaries of our age.

Saramago had an allegorical bent, most noticeable in his best-known novel, Blindness, a harrowing and viscerally shocking work that will not fail to leave you shaken. In The Cave, as well, Saramago played with allegory, updating Plato's Parable of the Cave for modern audiences.

Several of his novels deal with historical and political themes, including his masterpiece (my favorite), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, which expands on a character among the constellation of the poet Fernando Pessoa's universe to provide a reckoning of Portugal's dictatorship...

Saramago was a novelist of ideas (as they are called), but one of the more humane ones, a writer who understood and sympathized with the ambiguities of our troubled lives and who gave expression to those feelings that can be called, for lack of a better or more precise word, universal.

Not only that, but several, if not all, of his novels include a dog who often steals the show. In the aforementioned The Cave, the dog is called Found. Found is a remarkably memorable character. Go find out for yourself.

It's the...Book of the Month!

In his introduction to El Monstruo, John Ross starts small and immediate as he describes his room in the crumbling Hotel Isabel where he has lived since the disastrous earthquake in 1985 that left Mexico City leveled in the same way the 1906 left San Francisco.

Ross starts out small but there is nothing small in his history of Mexico City. In fact his tale of the down-and-outs, the prostitutes— those who make up his teeming city— is more of a love affair with a haggard and desolate lover; much like Bolaño’s Chile or Saramago’s Portugal.

This book consumed me. It made me yearn for and recoil from Mexico City all at once. It is the literary and historical heartbeat of a city that always seems on the brink of destruction but somehow lives on.

It is beautiful and heroic tribute to this incredible city.

One more book to add to your list...

A short time ago I talked about reading The Implacable Order of Things on my recent remainder-buying trip to Pittsburgh (sort of) & Boston (not really). On my trip to McKeesport, PA & Fall River, MA I read not only this Saramago Award winning book but one other, Jerusalem & our Book-of-the-Month, Running Away.

(See the new Green Apple Commercial HERE)

Now that you watched that & read about two of the books I was fortunate enough to choose to read on my trip here is the third...

Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares is another new & exciting book put out by Dalkey Archive. Jerusalem is another Saramago Prize winning book. When presenting the Prize to Tavares Saramago said of both author & book, "Jerusalém is a great book, and truly deserves a place among the great works of Western literature. Gonçalo M. Tavares has no right to be writing so well at the age of 35. One feels like punching him!"

More recently Saramago said, "Gonçalo M. Tavares burst onto the Portuguese literary scene armed with an utterly original imagination that broke through all the traditional imaginative boundaries. This, combined with a language entirely his own...I've predicted that in thirty years' time, if not before, he will win the Nobel Prize and I am sure my prediction will come true. My only regret is that I won't be there to give him a congratulatory hug."

All that being said I will only tell you that I don't want to tell you anything about this book. I want you to be as surprised & taken by this book as I was.

So there you have it, three books all under $15.00.

From Pittsburgh...My Airplane Read

Hey everyone. I have just landed in Pittsburgh, PA, and I thought I would post before I hit the sack, seeing as I have to hunt though warehouses for remainders at 8am Eastern tomorrow.

So here is the book I just finished on the plane.

For awhile now I've seen the beautifully designed cover of José Luís Peixoto's book The Implacable Order of Things with "Winner of the Jose Saramago Literary Award" at the bottom. I have twice picked the book up, read the back, and immediately put it back on the shelf.

The description of this book does it a huge disservice.

Yes, there are "a pair of twins conjoined at the pinky, a 120-year-old wise man, a shepherd turned cuckold by a giant, and even the devil himself," but--as the back of the book states--these characters are far from an "oddball cast."

These are deeply complex and sorrowful characters who seek the meaning of love and life. There is something refreshingly ordinary about each one. Though unique, they are also simple townspeople dealing with the trauma of love and death, of family and loneliness.

This novel is like a river. The repetition and story wind in and out of generations like currents. If Luís Peixoto is not yet known as one of the best writers from Portugal, if not the world, this young writer soon will be.