Como hemos estado? TFC has been off for line edits for about three weeks now, so on my end the work is in the waiting. As alien a feeling as it’s been to not work on it daily, it’s been a much needed reprieve. By the end of developmental revisions I was seeing edits on the ceiling like Beth Harmon. The cover art is starting to shape into its final form, and it’s been a joy to watch it slowly come to life. The world map is more or less in limbo still, but it’s not something that I’m overly concerned with. These things will pass as they pass. I’ve been more or less spending the newly acquired free time as I planned in the June Report. I still haven’t gotten to the games, but I’ve finished three novels, and thoroughly enjoyed each one.
Minor Detail, by Adania Shibili was surprising in both its brevity and what it was able to accomplish in such a tightly wound story.
“And it is possible, at first glance, to mock this tendency, which could compel someone after the building next to their office is bombed, to be more concerned about the dust that was created by the bombing and that landed on their desk than about the killing of the three young men who had barricaded themselves inside, for instance. “
My foremost and most immediate takeaway from Minor Detail, is the haunting immediacy in which daily life in Palestine is subjugated by the occupation. The complete erasure of normalcy in life presented here reminded me of an episode from the show, Ramy, in which the titular character visits Jerusalem, where he is made to confront the realities of the occupation in a way that he (like much of the audience) previously only considered abstractly. The occupation’s horrors are not only in the immediate either, the first half of Minor Detail’s story centers around the brutal gang rape and murder of a Bedouin-Palestinian girl in 1949, itself only possible due to the occupation’s dehumanization of the indigenous people and its lack of respect for their stewardship of the land. On the whole, Minor Detail provides a harrowing and potent insight to the endless cycle of violence Palestinians are made to endure.
Before finishing this book I hadn’t realized it was the novel that had resulted in the egregious removal of the LiBeraturpreis ceremony from the Frankfurt Book Fair after being selected for the honor. It goes without saying that Minor Detail is more than deserving of the recognition, and that it serves as a powerful reminder that Palestinian voices will not be silenced or suppressed, no matter how much the powers at be try to make such things so.
I also finished Homage to Catalonia, an honest and at times hilarious account from George Orwell of his time serving in the Spanish Civil War.
“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.”
Memoirs aren’t my typical wheelhouse, but I was recommended Homage from an online friend. I’m glad to say I was enthusiastically surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. There’s a special quality to Orwell’s simple honesty as he details his experiences in the war, or rather his lack thereof. It’s in this inaction where Orwell’s humor shines, as well as the clarity with which he perceives the stockpiling of war’s minute horrors. From his initial arrival in a revolutionary Barcelona, to his return to a bourgeois one, to his narrow escape to France, Homage to Catalonia is one that I’m extremely grateful for having picked up, and one I’m sure will influence how I write about war in my own fiction.
Lastly, I burned (slowly) through Robert Bolaño’s 2666. Unlike the previous two novels, there was nothing brief about 2666, and if it’s length wasn’t intimidating enough, there’s nothing simple or easy about its content either.
“Now even the bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown . . . they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
Man, the incredible scope of this thing. Told in five “parts”, 2666 spans everything from lust, to the dissolution of relationships, to the wanton violence that we humans are capable of, and the bleak reality of our ability to desensitize ourselves to the horrors we commit and witness, and so much more in between. The parts crescendo (mostly) around their respective characters in and around the fictional Mexican border town of Santa Teresa, where women are being murdered by the hundreds. Bolaño’s tome is riddled with unanswered questions, both in those asked by the text and those that you will undoubtedly ask yourself. At times it’s especially challenging to get through. The fourth part especially was merciless in its grimness, and in real time I wanted to put it down more than once. However, the further removed I am from having finished it, it’s this fourth part that I keep coming back to, and I’m almost certain that it’s because of this unyielding nature, which I’m inclined to believe is the exact stroke with which Bolaño’s brush aimed for as he painted the canvas. There’s not much I can say about this one that hasn’t been hashed out from far more polished minds and acute eyes ad nauseam, but this is one that won’t ever leave me, and I know without a doubt that it will shape everything I write henceforth.
I’m currently reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, although I’m not far enough through it to warrant opining. Outside of the reading, the writing is picking up again. I’ve started a new project. I found it impossible to stay put after finishing 2666, and now I find myself tackling literary fiction for the first time. It’s incredibly premature to even announce this, as I’m sitting at about 1,000 words (3 pages in a .docx file), but I’m bursting with excitement for it, so it’s announced. The only detail I’m willing to provide at the moment is that I’m constructing it under the title ¡Salvame!.
That’s all for July. Expect to hear from me again before the August report on the 24th. I have something special planned for here that I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks now. It’ll be my most personal work on Rose Street yet, and I’m promising that one will come on time. Until then, adios.