Eco on Literature – An Acquired Taste

I love Umberto Eco’s fiction.  I believe The Name of the Rose is utterly brilliant (to the point where I actually bought a pretty edition of the thing.  And we’ve discussed Foucault’s Pendulum here before.

Eco’s essays, for me, were a different story.  At first reading, I found them a bit dry and boring.  Perhaps a little too philosophical for their own good.  They are certainly well thought out, but you need to be very awake to fully process them.  He was not a big believer in delivering easy to understand wisdom.

So the first time I read Umberto Eco on Literature, I had to read it when I was fully awake and alert, despite finding the subject matter, for the most part, absolutely fascinating.

But then, I discovered the secret to unlock the full enjoyment of this volume.  The trick lies in undersanding that these essays were actually speeches that Eco gave in different elite literary places: universities, institutes and such.

They are meant to be heard, not read.

Therein, however, lies another problem: most of these aren’t on YouTube.

No matter, I disovered.  All you need to do is to watch any English-language interview with the great man – I recommend this one – to see what he sounds like, just before starting one of the essays and, magically, as you read, you will read them in his own accent. That makes them utterly perfect.

Umberto Eco shouldn’t be anything less than brilliant.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist.  His latest novel, The Malakiad, will likely make a lot of Greeks angry, while making other Greeks laugh.  People from other nationalities will invariably enjoy it.

 

 

The Malakiad – Launched!

Every author on the planet loves book launch days.  That moment when people around the globe can (finally!) enjoy the fruits of all the hard work in writing, rewriting, selling the book, working with the publisher to edit and givin suggestions for cover art.

The Malakiad, my comic fantasy that takes place in Heroic-era Greece launched today.  You can buy it at Amazon right now.  Yes, right now!

As a special bonus for Classically Educated readers, I’d like to tell you about the genesis of this paticular volume.

It begins (as many of my writing adventures do) in the late 1980s when I read Another Fine Myth by Robert Lynn Asprin.  That was my introduction to humorous genre work, which eventually led to my love for Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.  I devoured each book by these guys as soon as I could get my hands on them.

Unfortunately all three are now gone, having died much too young.

Worse, I am unsatisfied with the current crop of humorous genre writers.  The problem isn’t their talent–I believe most aretop-notch writers–but the type of humor they attempt: watered-down, milquetoast and nowhere near as funny as their precursors.  The problem, I believe, is that genre humorists today are genre writers first, humorists second.  So, like most people in SFF, they are extremely aware of the sensibilities around them and write in such a way that no one at all could ever be offended.  Punches are being pulled in unforgivable numbers.  The books are set aside with a sigh.

That method isn’t particularly funny.  As Seth MacFarlane or Mel Brooks would tell you, the secret isn’t to offend no one, but to offend everyone equally.

And that’s why I wrote this book.

The Malakiad won’t offend too many people.  It’s meant to make you laugh, not to make anyone unhappy.  But it does poke fun at human foibles and it does ridicule things that are open to ridicule.  I wrote, in essence, the book I wanted to read, hopefully the kind of book that the great writers of the past wrote.

Is this one as good as its predecessors?  That’s for readers to say.  Critics, of course will be fed to the nearest large carnivore (unless they like the book, in which case they are extremely intelligent people who should be celebrated).

For now, all I’ll say is that, if you miss Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett or Robert Asprin, you could do much worse than to give this one a go.

Enjoy!!

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.

Remembering Why We Love Poetry in the First Place

Poetry.

To some, the word conjures images of inspiring speeches made by Robin Williams in The Dead Poet’s Society.  To other – dare I say a much larger number?  Yes, I dare – it calls to mind incomprehensible readings by pretentious twits (or should that word have an “a” in it?) in smoky bars in front of six (never more) equally pretentious twits.

As a writer, I fall somewhere in between.  While I’m well aware that postmodern poetry often descends into the deepest realms of obtuse navel-gazing and its practitioners include many people who might stop speaking to you if you inadvertently did something as accessible as rhyme the ends of two lines (or use recognizable meter, god forbid), I also have a soft spot for Poe’s poetry among others.

I’ve even invited guest posters here to discuss speculative poetry, which, as far as I can tell, hasn’t fallen prey to the postmodenists yet.

Every once in a while, though, it’s nice to conect with the greatest hits of the past.  Back in 1996, my wife was given a volume entitled The Best Loved Poems of the American People as a prize in school (she went to a bilingual school).  When I discovered that she owned this item, I tossed it into my TBR pile and eventually, it cycled to the top.

This is exactly the kind of volume that, if it were published today would a) sell millions of copies and b) come under severe critical fire for all sorts of reasons.

There’s many reasons for this one getting lambasted.  From a purely academic point of view, the poems are in forms and meters that have fallen out of favor.  Blank verse and incomprehensibility rule the roost.

The second reason they would get themselves attacked is that in many if not all cases, these works reflect their times.  They don’t address or even care about diversity or race or even, really, politics of any kind.  When attacking the big issues of life, they leave these considerations aside.  Poetry has become a political vehicle in many cases, and critics would not allow someone to backslide on this “progress”.

The final criticism, and perhaps the only valid one is that the poems themselves have become clichéd, victims of their own success.

That’s true.  And there’s a good reason for it: they’ve been quoted, referred to and have brought happiness, comfort and solace to countless generations.  The word “Loved” in the book’s title is spectacularly apt.

I thought the book would be a slog, but it wasn’t.  It was a trip down memory lane and a reminder that accessible, non-angry oetry isn’t a crime, and that the great human emotions are prety much the same today as they were 150 years ago, no matter how many shrill voices try to tell us that anything from that age must necessarily be racist (or whatever) and therefore no longer valuable.

It is a book to dip into as opposed to reading straight through, of course, but even reading as a single exercise, I enjoyed it enormously.  I truly wonder whether any of today’s poetry will be read a century hence.  I seriously doubt it.

There’s a reason these values (and these words) have a lasting effect and anyone reading these verses will remember why. In such a cynical age, perhaps it’s a good idea to reflect on more simple things every so often.  I know I enjoyed it.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer who has published exactly one poem in his life.  Perhaps that doesn’t make him the greatest expert on poetry, but his novels are pretty good.  Outside, for example, is about what happens when humans escape the harshness of reality to live in simulated worlds.

Bluebeard the Great Dictator

Of the three great silent film comedians, Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton, I always ranked Charles a very, very distant third.  His melodrama and tortuously drawn out scenes of awkwardness never quite caused me to laugh in anything but a nervous way.  You know the type: he, he, when is this scene going to end, he, he.

So his postwar decision to abandon the style that made him famous for a slightly more dramatic form of film, while unpopular at the time, is a bit of a relief to me as I watch the 1001 films.  The Little Tramp is not a character I miss in the least.

Today’s subject, Monsier Verdoux (1947) is about a man who, after getting laid off from his long-held job at a bank, snaps and begins to make money by seducing and killing wealthy widows.  A bluebeard, as those men were called in the day.  Its based on an actual serial killer.

The film was badly received in the US when launched, and one can easily see why.  It’s a bit weird, in the same vein that European films were weird in 1947.  The story is compelling, but the execution and is strange and strays from hollywood norms in jarring ways.

It’s nothing too striking, but enough to make one wonder what just happened which, in a way, fits the tone and theme of the movie well enough.  There is one truly memorable scene in the film, one in which Chaplin’s character, pursued by the family of one of the women he’s killed buys himself just enough time to escape and say goodbye to a girl who was kind to him before, with every avenue open to escape, turning himself in.  It is both poignant and funny – what Chaplin always strove for.

BTW, the above isn’t a spoiler.  Anyone familiar with the lamentable Hays Code era will be aware that criminals need to be brought to justice in the end.

It’s not the strongest film on the list, and probably keeps its place only because it was Chaplin’s favorite of his movies.  Strangely, The Great Dictator is not included in the list I’m following.  Perhaps that’s for the best, as it is likely a very predictable offering.  We all know how to spoof a dictator, but the Marx Brothers were better at it.

My own pleasure came when researching this article.  The name Fritz Leiber jumped out at me from among the cast members.  Turns out that he is the father of the Fritz Leiber who wrote so much amazing Sword and Sorcery from the pulp era to the eighties.  A talented family, then.

Anyway, this one has some sordid interest, a strongly pacifist message at the end and pacing that makes it slightly off kilter.  If that sounds like fun, give it a go.  If not, look  for some Buster Keaton.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.  His most off-kilter story is probably Branch, a novella, available for Kindle.

Free Gifts = Happiness

We’ve written about the Folio Society‘s beautiful books here before (I should probably ask them to sponsor me for plugging them so often…), but I’ll say that one of the nicest things about them are the free gifts that arrive with most purchases.

The first couple of times I bought from them I received totes, which were cool and are paticularly useful in Argentina where stores are prohibited by law from giving people bags (which is probably the dumbest new law I’ve seen in a long time, and illustrates once again how good intentions pave roads to hot places).  I’ve also timed a couple of purchases to ensure that I receive the Folio Diary (in fact, last year, I actually bought a book I wasn’t necessarily planning to purchase just to receive this one).  The diary is usually illustrated with plates from books, and organized as a weekly agenda, with the week’s activities on the odd side and the illustration on the even. It is a beautiful thing and my wife loves them.

My own favorite gift is the Folio Society magazine, Folio.  This onesometimes arrives with the books and, since it isn’t advertised, you never know if you’re going to receive one or not.

They’re a treat because, in much the same way as how you don’t know you’ll get one, you also won’t be able to guess what’s inside until you read them.  Of course their main function is to get one interested in other Folio titles but they also include a lot of content unavailable elsewhere.  I own the March 2014 and September 2016 issues (as I said, prety random) and can report that  they are the product of extremely thoughtful collation.  I think there’s something in each for any book lover – I myself enjoy them a lot.

They’re not big – you can probably consume each in a lunch hour – but, as little bite-sized breaks from routine that remind of why we enjoy books so much, they are wonderful.  The March 2014 issue is especially nice because it discusses book arts and speaks to the artists.  Fun stuff.

Anyway, thought I’d share.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer and an all-around lover of books.  He is the author of the well-received Siege.

The Collaboration Effect

I recently read a thriller by Tom Clancy and Peter Telep entitled against all enemies, which got me thinking about collaborations between colossally famous writers and relative unknowns.

The book, entitled Against All Enemies is a good one.  It pits a classic Clancy-esque lone wolf hero against everyone from the Taliban to Mexican drug cartels.  How cool is that?  (Answer: it makes for a very entertaining book which is definitely better than this one).

It’s a successful collaboration which, having read some of Clancy’s later solo efforts, makes one think that Telep did most of the writing.  It also makes one thankful.  Clancy had, either because no one dared to edit his work in his latter years or simply because his writing had deteriorated, become a bloated bore in books such as The Teeth of the Tiger.

But basically, these aren’t collaborations between two bright stars.  For a brilliant example of that, check out Good Omens.  No, these books are built this way for the simple purpose of bringing a steady revenue stream to a needy publisher.

Simply stated, before his death in 2013 Tom Clancy was (and if he’s anything like Robert Ludlum, he still is) a cash cow for his publisher.  But for whatever reason, Clancy couldn’t push out all the books the publisher wanted.  Enter the “created by Tom Clancy” and “Tom Clancy’s Op Center” or whatever.  A similar (albeit not identical) approach works really, really well for books sold under James Patterson’s name.

These books sell.  They adhere to the brand and they give customers what they want.  People know what they’re getting with these. So… are they a good thing or a bad thing?

The people who say “no” will argue that the time wasted with these is time that could be better spent reading the classics.  Or the newest truly deep modern novel which finally explains the human condition.

I beg to differ.

I ascribe to the  school of thought that says that anything that gets people to read is a good thing, even if these books are essentially brain-off beach reads.  That’s fine.  Reading is reading and it isn’t staring at a cel phone to see if anyone has posted something a little less stultifying on Facebook.

And, now that Clancy isn’t writing them, they seem to be reasonably decent books, too.

And besides, afer reading The Stranger, I was ready for something a bit more entertaining!

 

Gustavo Bondoni is the author of Outside, which, if you like a good thriller, should be right up your alley.

Stripping the World to its Bare Bones

It’s amusing to wonder what the Wehrmacht censors thought when presented with Albert Camus’ novella The Stranger for their approval in 1942. One can imagine them getting together in a smoke-filled meeting room, looking into each other’s eyes to see if any of them had taken any particular offense (or even any particular meaning) from the book and then, with a collective shrug, approved it for lack of any better idea.

After all, a book about the world’s indifference to someone completely outside of all its rules–Nazi, Allied, Polynesian, it makes no difference–can’t be framed as a political tract or even particularly subversive.

And, in that light, they were correct.  The books subversiveness is aimed at a much deeper level of existence than mere politics.

But let’s talk about the politics for a second.  The Nazis–the freaking NAZIS–let it pass and yet in the post-colonial world a sequel was written where the arabic characters were given a life of their own. Talk about completely missing the point and making a fool of oneself.  This is why so many post-colonial movements are derided: they put anger ahead of brains, and it shows a little too strongly.

So what does it subvert if not the social and political structure of its day, which it accepts without question?

It goes after the very core of what it means to be human.  By looking at the world through the eyes of the ultimate flatliner and alienated outsider, Camus questions the botom layer of the fabric of society.  Family.  Friends.  Lovers.  The very existence of a possible connection between two individuals besides shared interests and shared pleasure.

In that sense, it’s a brilliant exercise and flinches away from the end consequences only a couple of times that I was able to spot.

Of course, it’s also a dead end.  The reader is left feeling very little for the character at the end of the book.  Perhaps a vague sense that it would have been a happier ending if someone had recognized his right to be different… but also that it probably wouldn’t have made all that difference after all.  The nihilism is a bit contagious.

It’s also a dead end because it doesn’t really deal with the human condition except at one extreme, and that extreme, though valid as an argument–why can’t humans be allowed to live within their own moral codes–is still not a discussion (seventy five years after the book was writen) that humanity is mature enough to have.  People who deviate from the social establishment (be that a small group such as an office, a medium-sized group such as a political party or a large one such as a nation-state) are treated badly and metaphorically put to death.

I’ll leave others to attempt to link this one to the modern world (try analyzing a school shooting through this lens and you’ll come up with a disturbing and different take), but I do recomend giving it a read.  It’s one of those which sets the borders of human thought, and that’s always valuable.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argetine novelist and short story writer.  If you enjoy reading about outsiders, check out his novella Branch, which explores what might happen when humanity splits into distinct species.

Books About Writing – There is At Least One You Should Read

When non-writers learn that you are a writer, the reactions are generally classified into two major groups: the ones that think you’re some kind of celebrity who bathes in champagne and is airlifted everywhere on specially modified helicopters and the ones who assume (based on the fact that they haven’t seen your books at their local bookstore window) you are an unpublished novice who needs all the help you can get.

That second group wants to assist, so they tend to give you writing books as gifts.

I’m certain that there are newbies out there who call themselves writers who genuinely need these books.  In my own case, I never told a soul about my writing until I had a number of published stories under my belt (published by other people, not self-published), so I was pretty familiar with messrs Strunk and White (even though I never read their book until much later) when my friends started giving me writing books.

Writing books, I’ve found, are mostly aimed at the writer who’s never sold a word of prose in his life (I assume there are similar tomes aimed at the aspiring poet, but I have no first-hand knowledge of these).

Still, other writers will know that writerly self-image–even those of people who have published a lot–tends to be a fragile thing, so I always read the ones that people give me.  Can’t risk having hubris make you miss the piece of advice that turns you into the next gazillion dollar bestseller.

The latest batch I read included two books.

The first was Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (since updated to 55 it seems – god, I hope that the one I need to become a gazillionaire isn’t one of hose extra 5!)  This one is one of those that I consider a standard writing guide.  My impression as that it’s a solid primer that lists the things you need to do to avoid embarassing yourself and cut down on the unnecessary rejections (as well as the unfinished projects and the badly edited work sitting in your hard drive).

Perhaps the main thing I can say about this one is that it’s a great guide to what you need to learn and an even better list of the rules you have to break once you learn them.  A friend of mine says that you need to transcend the rules, not merely break them.  For that, I guess you have to know them first.  This is, as far as I can tell, a reasonable place to start.

Published authors may want to give it a miss, though.

The second book is the one writeng book I’d recommend to absolutely everyone.  The author starts by saying that he doesn’t know s**t about what works and what doesn’t and goes from there.

Most of you will already have guessed that I’m talking about Stephen King’s On Writing.

I won’t pretend that I’m an expert on King.  I don’t read that much horror, so I’ve read three or four of his books at most, and find his style accessible to point of annoying me at times…  but no one who can’t tell a story extremely well will have sold as many copies of any genre as he has.  Any writer who doesn’t respect King is likely either a snob or a wet-behind-the-ears newbie with no clue what publishing looks like.  He has earned the right to make us listen.

And his writing book is marvelous.  He doesn’t try to tell us what we have to do.  He tells us what he did, and what he does.  He tells us his life story, and how he came to be a storyteller.  He tells us what it felt to make a life-altering (at least on the economc front) sale. He tells us how important it is to have a support structure in place.

Then, in the least interesting part of the book, he goes on to tell us what works and what doesn’t, contradicting himself, but giving us value for our money.  “If this is what works for Stephen King…” we say, and try to do it.  Even these bits are well written and a lot less dry than most writing books out there.  So, yeah recommended.

Anyway, if you’re just starting out, then read both of these.  The Clark first.  But if you know what you’re doing, and haven’t done so, pick up the King.  It is so much more than just a book on writing.  It’s the writing memoir you wish you could have written.

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist.  If you followed a link here because you saw Stephen King’s name on the post, and are a horror fan, you might like Gustavo’s story Pacific Wind – available for Kindle at 99 cents!

All About The Love Goddess

Rita Hayworth was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood’s golden era, and it you only have to watch one movie to know why: Gilda.  Has there ever been a more perfect femme fatale in the history of cinema?  If so, I haven’t encountered her yet and the only one that really comes to mind is Loiuse Brooks in Pandora’s Box twenty years earlier.

In the noir era?  I’d say that Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman, though often playing dangerous women, were redeemed by the fact that they were dangerous because of the situation they were in, or their upbringing.  None of their parts comes close to the gleeful courtship of an early death through her own actions of title character of this film.

The film itself?  Well, it was OK…  my wife enjoyed the first half and found the second half boring while my reaction was exactly the opposite, with the film getting better as it advanced.  But I have a feeling that I’ll be hard-pressed to remember much about it in a year or two other than as the film with Hayworth in it playing a very dangerous woman.

To be honest, I would probably also recall the fact that the action takes place in Argentina.  It wasn’t filmed in Buenos Aires and didn’t show any landmarks I could identify, but it felt like the action could, conceivably, have taken place here.  So that was a fun bit of trivia.

Anyway, without giving away any spoilers, this one is something lovers of noir will like, as will people with an unhealthy fascination for women who can really, really wreck your life.  As a noir, I guess it’s middle-of-the-road as opposed to brilliant, with a few interesting elements such as the casino (shades of what was concurrently happening to Bugsy Siegel permeate the film and make one wonder).  And compared to other Hays Code films, this one is much sexier in nature.

But in the end, it’s all about that Hayworth woman.

We always do a few fun facts about the different films here, and this one’s is about the woman who dubbed the singing on the earworm signature tune Put the Blame on Mame.  Turns out that Singer Anita Ellis is still alive (albeit suffering from Alzheimers) – hope she is lucid enough to receive this shout-out and know we love what she did with that song!

Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.  His novel Outside was published in 2017.

The Fascination with Lost Worlds

In the late 19th and early 20th century, European maps still had large swathes of terrain marked as unknown.  The siren call of these blank spaces led to some of the greatest explorations known to man and sparked the imaginations of countless young and not-so-young readers.

Writers, of course were quick to fill in the blanks that real-life explorers were leaving.  It was a time when one felt that anything could be found in those spaces, from an advanced civilization, to Prester John’s people to Shangri-La.  Readers couldn’t get enough of it, and some truly talented people took up the challenge of revealing what lay behind tropical jungles, Asian mountains, African deserts and Antartic ice.  Perhaps the most recognizable today are Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, H. P. Lovecraft and, of course, most famous of all, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Each of these men gave the genre their particular spin (especially Lovecraft in At the Mountains of Madness).  Haggard was the great doyen of the genre, and Burroughs was perhaps better known for Tarzan (which we discuss here) and Barsoom, but all three were inspired by the same terra incognitas.

Conan Doyle used his fame to create what is arguably the purest form of the lost world story, however, and my recent reading of The Lost World and Other Stories (essentially the complete Professor Challenger tales) is what inspired me to write about the sub-genre here.

The first thing we need to understand is that, while they may seem to us to be Fantasy stories today, these books were very firmly planted in Science Fiction convention when they were written.  Even At the Mountains of Madness was more akin to a modern SF story than the usual Lovecraftian horror piece.  These writers, while poring over their incomplete maps were asking the central question of science fiction – “What if?” – and attempting to answer it in the most plausible way while telling a gripping story.

Professor Challenger himself is an interesting character.  A rough-around-the-edges, unapologetic genius who is loathe to suffer fools – or anyone else really – he is the driving force behind the discovery of a world of prehistoric creatures (and both uncivilized natives and under-evolved proto-humans) on a plateau in South America in what is almost the standard recipe for Lost World tales.

The science fictional purity is lost in later Challenger stories as the protagonist (and Conan Doyle himself) become lost in their attempts to put a scientific frame around the period’s craze for spiritualism.  In my opinion, these are the weaker books, but perhaps, like so many others, I am tainted by my modern views.

That last brings us neatly to the central point of any discussion about lost world stories.  While they certainly had a golden age, that era passed as the gaps in those maps steadily got filled in with the names of villages and rivers and mountains.  The need to suspend disbelief became too great and people, more sophisticated now, moved on to newer things.

Worse, modern reevaluation has cast many of these explorers as little more than land-and-resource-grabbing colonial exploiters.

My response to this is twofold.  I am saddened by the fact that I will never be able to feel (as an adult, at least) the wonder that must have been common for educated people who understood that those blank spaces existed, and there was actually something there… and wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that that something was a wonderful something?

But even with a modern education, I still enjoy these romps into the supposed unknown, and my sadness is heightened by the knowledge that very few really good Lost World type books are published each year.  It’s a loss to readers everywhere, but it’s logical and follows the market.

Finally, it becomes necessary to address the whole revisionist thing.  No one will pretend that the scramble for Africa didn’t happen (or was in any way positive for the people already living there) but I am of the opinion that classic literature needs to be evaluated within the mores of the times, and that any attempt to apply a post-colonial prism is a waste of time and space in academic journals which could much better be used for praising my own books (or panning them – all is well as long as they spell my name right).

Our obsession with judging the past by our standards and rewriting it to suit our tastes has been particularly cruel to this brand of literature.  The fact that it still survives to be enjoyed today by those with the open minds needed to do so is a testament to how much fun it was in the first place.  And “The Lost World” is as good a place to start as any other (although my own personal favorites are the Haggard books).

 

Gustavo Bondoni is an award-winning Argentine novelist.  He is the author of Siege, a well-received far future tale of survival and determination.