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Tu rostro mañana #3
Zehir, Gölge, Veda
With this much-anticipated third and last volume of Tu rostro mañana, the work is hailed as one of the literary highlights of our time. The novel kicks off with the premise that the death of another, any other be it our workmate, brother, father, lover, yes, even our child, is preferable to our own. Jacques, the main character, discovers that underneath the seemingly calm Western world there is an underlying need of betrayal and violence that inoculates us all.
Description in Spanish: «Uno no lo desea, pero prefiere siempre que muera el que está a su lado, en una misión o una batalla, en una escuadrilla aérea o bajo un bombardeo o en la trinchera cuando las había, en un asalto callejero o en un atraco a una tienda o en un secuestro de turistas, en un terremoto, una explosión, un atentado, un incendio, da lo mismo: el compañero, el hermano, el padre o incluso el hijo, aunque sea niño. Y también la amada, también la amada, antes que uno mismo.» Así arranca Veneno y sombra y adiós, el tercer y último volumen de Tu rostro mañana, la grandiosa novela de Javier Marías que, por fin completa, y como ya ha anticipado la crítica extranjera, se revela como una de las cumbres literarias de nuestro tiempo. El narrador y protagonista, Jacques o Jaime o Jacobo Deza, acaba por conocer aquí los inesperados rostros de quienes lo rodean y también el suyo propio, y descubre que, bajo el mundo más o menos apaciguado en que vivimos los occidentales, siempre late una necesidad de traición y violencia que se nos inocula como un veneno.
512 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2007
55 people are currently reading
2520 people want to read
About the author
Javier Marías
140 books2,445 followersJavier Marías was a Spanish novelist, translator, and columnist. His work has been translated into 42 languages. Born in Madrid, his father was the philosopher Julián Marías, who was briefly imprisoned and then banned from teaching for opposing Franco. Parts of his childhood were spent in the United States, where his father taught at various institutions, including Yale University and Wellesley College. His mother died when Javier was 26 years old. He was educated at the Colegio Estudio in Madrid.
Marías began writing in earnest at an early age. "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga", one of the short stories in While the Women are Sleeping (2010), was written when he was just 14. He wrote his first novel, "Los dominios del lobo" (The Dominions of the Wolf), at age 17, after running away to Paris.
Marías operated a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. He also wrote a weekly column in El País. An English version of his column "La Zona Fantasma" is published in the monthly magazine The Believer.
In 1997 Marías won the Nelly Sachs Prize.
Marías began writing in earnest at an early age. "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga", one of the short stories in While the Women are Sleeping (2010), was written when he was just 14. He wrote his first novel, "Los dominios del lobo" (The Dominions of the Wolf), at age 17, after running away to Paris.
Marías operated a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. He also wrote a weekly column in El País. An English version of his column "La Zona Fantasma" is published in the monthly magazine The Believer.
In 1997 Marías won the Nelly Sachs Prize.
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April 8, 2023
An argument could be made that Javier Marias was a brilliant writer. One example, most authors can’t write about sex. Martin Amis has given this matter some thought. “Carnal bliss,” he says, “is more or less impossible to evoke. . . Erotic prose is either pallidly general or unviewably specialized.” *
Moreover, most fiction usually stops for sex and resumes afterward, interrupting the flow of the story. But Javier Marias can carry the narrative forward during sex — not that there’s much of it. But somehow he makes the intimacy integral to the tale, not extraneous, and not off-putting.
The recent death of the author at 70 has brought me back to this novel, which I previously called a “bloated whale.” I may have overdosed on his idiosyncratic style by the time I got to this last volume of his 1,200+ page post-Cold War spy trilogy.
It’s a spy novel, yes, but not in the Ian Fleming sense; Fleming wrote actioners. YFT Vol. 3, by contrast, is a highly readable intellectual thriller. It’s like Philip Roth‘s American Pastoral in a ruminative sense. It considers many matters and reconsiders them in light of new evidence or conclusions. It’s modernist. A major theme is how violence irredeemably changes us.
Jaime has left his estranged wife in Madrid, who has become involved with another man, to go to work for London’s spy services. He is an interpreter of people. He is paid well to read people, to give the agency a sense of their weaknesses. Jaime’s mentor in Oxford, Wheeler, explains the need for such specialists.
“According to Wheeler, there were very few people with our curse or gift, and we were getting fewer and fewer, and he had lived long enough to notice this unequivocally. 'There are hardly any such people left, Jacobo,’ he had told me. 'There were never many, very few in fact, which is why the group was always so small and so scattered. But nowadays there's a real dearth. The times have made people insipid, finicky, prudish. No one wants to see anything of what there is to see, they don't even dare to look, still less take the risk of making a wager; being forewarned, foreseeing, judging, or, heaven forbid, prejudging, that's a capital offence. No one dares any more to say or to acknowledge that they see what they see, what is quite simply there, perhaps unspoken or almost unsaid, but nevertheless there. No one wants to know; and the idea of knowing something beforehand, well, it simply fills people with horror, with a kind of biographical, moral horror.” (p. 439)
Naturally, Jamie’s job accords beautifully with what Marias does as a novelist.
Western twentieth century history, especially that of British spying — MI5, MI6, Cold War espionage, black propaganda, assets working abroad, the turncoats Philby, Maclean, etc. wartime high jinks, peacetime coercive ops, etc. — is used as background. Here’s an interesting quote that serves as a somewhat reductive description of the author’s narrative approach.
“I wasn't going to allow him to continue wandering and digressing, not on a night prolonged at his insistence; nor was I prepared to allow him to drift from an important matter to a secondary one and from there to a parenthesis, and from a parenthesis to some interpolated fact, and, as occasionally happened, never to return from his endless bifurcations, for when he started doing that, there almost always came a point when his detours ran out of road and there was only brush or sand or marsh ahead.” (p. 22)
Actually Marias never runs out of story; the book is remarkably sustained. Back in Madrid briefly Jamie’s friend, a matador — who provides him with a pistol to put a scare into his estranged wife’s new man — is coolness itself with the beautiful Old World manners which come across even in his translated speech.
“'The first thing to remember, Jacobo, is never put your finger on the trigger until you know you're going to shoot. Always keep it resting on the guard, OK? Even if the pistol isn't cocked. Even if it's not loaded.’
“He used what was to me an unfamiliar, seemingly old-fashioned word for 'guard,’ ‘guardamonte,' but then Miquelin was himself in the process of becoming old-fashioned too, a relic, like his generosity. I didn't need to ask any questions, though, because he showed me what to do and I could see where he placed his forefinger. Then he handed the pistol to me, so that I could do the same, or copy him. I had forgotten what a heavy thing a pistol is; in the movies, they hold them as if they were as light as daggers. It takes an effort to lift one, and still more of an effort to hold it steady enough to aim.
“And then the Maestro taught me how to use it.” (p. 344)
If I have a criticism it’s that Jaime’s interiority can irritate at times; he’s a deep thinker who never seems to pass up an equivocation. His second guessing at just the moment he kidnaps his wife’s boyfriend is one particularly annoying example.
Be advised, Marias is not light reading; this is not a book to take on a flight or to the beach. The sentences are long and often Proustian. I was far too tough on Vol. 2, which I discuss elsewhere. But If you want to know more about the trilogy’s plot, that’s the review to read.
———
*Review of Sabbath’s Theater, The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000.
Moreover, most fiction usually stops for sex and resumes afterward, interrupting the flow of the story. But Javier Marias can carry the narrative forward during sex — not that there’s much of it. But somehow he makes the intimacy integral to the tale, not extraneous, and not off-putting.
The recent death of the author at 70 has brought me back to this novel, which I previously called a “bloated whale.” I may have overdosed on his idiosyncratic style by the time I got to this last volume of his 1,200+ page post-Cold War spy trilogy.
It’s a spy novel, yes, but not in the Ian Fleming sense; Fleming wrote actioners. YFT Vol. 3, by contrast, is a highly readable intellectual thriller. It’s like Philip Roth‘s American Pastoral in a ruminative sense. It considers many matters and reconsiders them in light of new evidence or conclusions. It’s modernist. A major theme is how violence irredeemably changes us.
Jaime has left his estranged wife in Madrid, who has become involved with another man, to go to work for London’s spy services. He is an interpreter of people. He is paid well to read people, to give the agency a sense of their weaknesses. Jaime’s mentor in Oxford, Wheeler, explains the need for such specialists.
“According to Wheeler, there were very few people with our curse or gift, and we were getting fewer and fewer, and he had lived long enough to notice this unequivocally. 'There are hardly any such people left, Jacobo,’ he had told me. 'There were never many, very few in fact, which is why the group was always so small and so scattered. But nowadays there's a real dearth. The times have made people insipid, finicky, prudish. No one wants to see anything of what there is to see, they don't even dare to look, still less take the risk of making a wager; being forewarned, foreseeing, judging, or, heaven forbid, prejudging, that's a capital offence. No one dares any more to say or to acknowledge that they see what they see, what is quite simply there, perhaps unspoken or almost unsaid, but nevertheless there. No one wants to know; and the idea of knowing something beforehand, well, it simply fills people with horror, with a kind of biographical, moral horror.” (p. 439)
Naturally, Jamie’s job accords beautifully with what Marias does as a novelist.
Western twentieth century history, especially that of British spying — MI5, MI6, Cold War espionage, black propaganda, assets working abroad, the turncoats Philby, Maclean, etc. wartime high jinks, peacetime coercive ops, etc. — is used as background. Here’s an interesting quote that serves as a somewhat reductive description of the author’s narrative approach.
“I wasn't going to allow him to continue wandering and digressing, not on a night prolonged at his insistence; nor was I prepared to allow him to drift from an important matter to a secondary one and from there to a parenthesis, and from a parenthesis to some interpolated fact, and, as occasionally happened, never to return from his endless bifurcations, for when he started doing that, there almost always came a point when his detours ran out of road and there was only brush or sand or marsh ahead.” (p. 22)
Actually Marias never runs out of story; the book is remarkably sustained. Back in Madrid briefly Jamie’s friend, a matador — who provides him with a pistol to put a scare into his estranged wife’s new man — is coolness itself with the beautiful Old World manners which come across even in his translated speech.
“'The first thing to remember, Jacobo, is never put your finger on the trigger until you know you're going to shoot. Always keep it resting on the guard, OK? Even if the pistol isn't cocked. Even if it's not loaded.’
“He used what was to me an unfamiliar, seemingly old-fashioned word for 'guard,’ ‘guardamonte,' but then Miquelin was himself in the process of becoming old-fashioned too, a relic, like his generosity. I didn't need to ask any questions, though, because he showed me what to do and I could see where he placed his forefinger. Then he handed the pistol to me, so that I could do the same, or copy him. I had forgotten what a heavy thing a pistol is; in the movies, they hold them as if they were as light as daggers. It takes an effort to lift one, and still more of an effort to hold it steady enough to aim.
“And then the Maestro taught me how to use it.” (p. 344)
If I have a criticism it’s that Jaime’s interiority can irritate at times; he’s a deep thinker who never seems to pass up an equivocation. His second guessing at just the moment he kidnaps his wife’s boyfriend is one particularly annoying example.
Be advised, Marias is not light reading; this is not a book to take on a flight or to the beach. The sentences are long and often Proustian. I was far too tough on Vol. 2, which I discuss elsewhere. But If you want to know more about the trilogy’s plot, that’s the review to read.
———
*Review of Sabbath’s Theater, The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000.
June 4, 2025
This book superbly closes the 'Your face tomorrow' trilogy. This final work is the most exciting volume, except for the author's revelation about his father in the first one.
You have to be in love with Proustian phrases. What brilliance! Personally, I don't get bored.
You have to be in love with Proustian phrases. What brilliance! Personally, I don't get bored.
July 15, 2021
“Yo soy mi propio dolor y mi fiebre.”Siendo posiblemente la más entretenida de las tres entregas, esta es la que menos me ha satisfecho. Será que el veneno que Javier Marías me ha ido inoculando en las tomas anteriores me ha vacunado para esta nueva dosis de menor toxicidad, algo que intuí desde su inicio, mucho menos potente que el de sus dos hermanas mayores.
No faltaron impactantes imágenes de violencia en las dos primeras novelas, pero es en esta donde el tema toma protagonismo, una violencia a muchos niveles, empezando por la institucional que, según Bertrand Tupra, ese oscuro jefe del grupo encargado de vislumbrar los rostros mañana para el que fue captado nuestro protagonista Deza, no solo es consustancial y necesaria para el buen ejercicio del poder, sino que es una consecuencia inevitable de la ley de la selva que todos llevamos en nuestro ADN y a la que nos abandonamos a la menor oportunidad.
“… la aplicamos mucho más de lo que nos reconocemos, sólo que disimuladamente, con un barniz de civilidad en las formas o bajo el disfraz de otras leyes y regulaciones respetuosas, más lentamente y con numerosos rodeos y trámites, todo es más trabajoso pero en el fondo es la ley que rige, es la que manda.”¿Por qué no se puede ir por ahí pegando y matando?, pregunta Tupra. Muchas respuestas nos vienen a la mente, como le vinieron a Deza, todas ellas aprendidas, sin una gota de pensamiento propio: porque no está bien, porque la moral lo condena, porque la ley lo prohíbe, porque se puede ir a la cárcel, o al patíbulo en otros sitios, porque no se debe hacer a nadie lo que no quiero que a mí me haga nadie, porque es un crimen, porque hay piedad, porque es pecado, porque es malo, porque la vida es sagrada… pero que, a poco que lo meditemos seriamente, ninguna de ellas parece incuestionable ni definitiva. Como tampoco lo es la que aporta el protagonista, la suya, la pensada: Porque no podría vivir nadie, una respuesta que él mismo se encargará de refutar sin mucho asombro tras convertirse en sombra. Una transmutación que ni él, con sus grandes poderes de interpretación, supo anticipar. Una prueba más de lo tuertos y tontos que nos volvemos cuando se trata de mirarnos a nosotros mismos, siempre prestos a la autojustificación y al autodescargo.
“Fue necesario y evité así un mal mayor, o eso creía; otros se habrían encargado de hacer lo mismo, sólo que con mucha más crueldad y más daño. Maté a uno para que no mataran a diez… defendía a mi Dios, a mi Rey, mi patria, mi cultura, mi raza; mi bandera, mi leyenda, mi lengua, mi clase, mi espacio; mi honor, a los míos, mi caja fuerte, mi monedero y mis calcetines. Y en resumen, tuve miedo… fue la época, quien no la haya vivido no puede entenderlo. Ah no, fue el lugar, era malsano, era oprimente, quien no haya estado allí no puede ni figurarse nuestra enajenación y su hechizo… yo no quería, yo fui ajeno, ocurrió sin mi voluntad, como en las humaredas tortuosas del sueño, eso fue cosa de mi vida teórica o entre paréntesis, de la que en realidad no cuenta, no pasó más que a medias y sin mi consentimiento pleno.”La responsabilidad de lo hecho, de lo no evitado, de lo dicho y de lo callado, hasta de lo pensado (Nos convencemos de no haber tenido tal pensamiento indigno ni tal otro maligno, de no haber deseado a esa mujer o esa muerte), toreada tan aseadamente por algunos, sufrida trágicamente por otros. Una responsabilidad que no se disculpa por el veneno que nos inocularon, aquello que vimos y hubiéramos deseado no ver, que oímos sin quererlo. En fin, ambas, la inclemencia y el dolor y la fiebre, son, han sido y serán siempre parte del estilo del mundo.
“Una vez que una idea nos entra en la mente es imposible no haberla tenido y resulta muy arduo expulsarla o borrarla, lo mismo da cuál sea: quien concibe una venganza es muy probable que intente cumplirla, y si no puede por pusilanimidad, o por su vasallaje, o ha de esperar largo tiempo por las circunstancias, entonces lo más seguro es que viva ya con ella y que le amargue las duermevelas con su latido nocturno.”Junto a este asunto de la violencia, anidado en este monólogo interior con otros muchos temas, subtemas y corolarios, está el del relato de nuestra vida, el que nos hacemos a nosotros mismos, el que queda para los otros tras nuestra muerte o el que se olvida y desaparece como si no se hubiera producido, como si no hubiéramos existido (somos todos como nieve sobre los hombros, resbaladiza y mansa, y la nieve siempre para) presente también en toda la trilogía y coronado aquí por las muertes de dos personajes fundamentales, Peter Wheeler, su mentor, y Juan Deza, su padre (trasuntos de Peter Russell y Julián Marías).
“La gente detesta ser omitida o pasada por alto y prefiere siempre ser vista y juzgada, para bien o para mal o aun para fatal, incluso lo necesita y lo ansia… Es como una doble necesidad contradictoria: quiero que se sepa qué soy y qué he sido, y que se conozcan mis hechos, lo cual me causa pavor al mismo tiempo, porque puede arruinar para siempre el cuadro que me estoy pintando.”En fin, me separo, pues, con cierta pena de Deza, este esnob, arrogante, muchas veces pedante, cansino en su insistencia filológica, obsesivo en sus reflexiones, reflexivo con sus obsesiones, pero siempre hipnótico en sus espirales discursivas. Me separo sí, pero por poco tiempo y sabiendo que se llame Deza o se llame como se llame no tengo ninguna duda de que me volveré a topar con esta voz narrativa, que no es la de un personaje sino la de todos ellos, la del autor.
“Para qué hizo esto, dirán de ti, para qué tanta zozobra y la aceleración de su pulso, para qué aquel movimiento, y aquel vuelco; y de mí dirán: por qué habló o calló y guardó tantas ausencias, para qué aquel vértigo, tantas las dudas y tal tormento, para qué dio aquellos y tantos pasos. Y de los dos dirán: por qué se enfrentaron y para qué tanto esfuerzo, para qué guerrearon en lugar de mirar y de quedarse quietos, por qué no supieron verse o seguirse viendo, y a qué tanto sueño y aquel rasguño, mi dolor, mi palabra, tu fiebre, nuestro veneno y la sombra, y tantas las dudas, y tal tormento.”
January 28, 2022
Yarınki Yüzün üçlemesine geçtiğimizi yılın nisan ayında başlamıştım. Yaklaşık olarak dokuz aya yayılan bir serüvendi. Zaten çok kısa zamanda da okunup geçilebilecek kitaplardan değil açıkcası. Zira yazması da sekiz yıla mal olan 1144 sayfalık bir yolculuk. Çünkü Marias okuyucusuna karşı talepkar yazarlardan ve eylemlerden-hikayeden çok karakterinin zihnindeki dolambaçlı yollarda gezinip zengin bir metin sunmayı tercih ediyor.
Jaime Deza çok dilli bir çevirmen olarak, eşiyle boşanma arifesindedir. Bu süreci kolay atlatabilmek için Madrid’den ayrılıp Londra’ya gelir. Burada BBC radyosunda çalışmaktayken, Oxford’daki akıl hocalarından birisi olan Peter Wheeler’ın aracılığı ile Bertram Tupra ile tanıştırılır ve kendisini gizli servisin içinde “insan tercümanlığı” yaparken bulur. Ana hikayemiz bu olsa da Marias’ın anlatmak istedikleri ise bambaşka. Birinci kitap genel olarak Deza’nın Wheeler’ı ziyareti ile geçiyor. Sanırım serinin en iyi kitabı da birinci kitap. İspanya İç Savaşı’ndan, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nda İngiltere’deki “careless talk” kampanyalarına uzanan ve insanlık tarihi ve insanı muazzam bir şekilde irdeleyen bir iç dünya yansımasını takip ediyorsunuz. İkinci kitapta ise Deza’nın eski -henüz boşanmadıkları-karısı Luisa imgesi ön plana gelmeye başlarken hikaye olarak ise sizi sadece diskotekte geçen bir gece bekliyor. Bir çorap kaçmasına on sayfa yazabilen bir yazarın size böylesine önemli bir geceyi anlatması için 296 sayfaya ihtiyaç duymasını yadırgamamayı öğreniyorsunuz ve öğrendikçe daha da fazla büyüleniyordunuz.
Özetle evet takip edilmesi zor bir seri. Zira okurken adeta hipnotize oluyorsunuz, kayboluyorsunuz. Sarkaç gibi ileri geri sallanan bir hikayede zaman zaman sonsuza kadar gidecekmiş gibi hissediyorsunuz. Hatta bazı noktalarda hikaye tamamen duruyor ve tarihin gerçekliğine geçiş yapıyorsunuz. Marias Deza’nın biten evliliği, isimsiz kuruluştaki görevi, iş arkadaşlarının gizemli hayatları ve ilişkileri ile sizi baştan çıkarırken üzerinize asıl derdi olan varoluşsal düşüncelerini saçıyor. Sadakat ve güvensizlik, geçmiş ve gelecek, bencillik ve cömertlik üzerine uzun uzun düşünmenizi sağlıyor. Ama kendi vermek istediği mesajı gayet açık: insan kötülüğe meyilli bir canlıdır ve çoğunlukla - bazı istisnai kişiler haricinde- bundan utanma gereksinimi dahi duymaz. Bu mesajını da bireysel kötülükten kitlesel kötülüğe; gizli arşivlerin derinliklerinde bulunan kişisel kötülük videolarından, kitsele; Ispanya İç Savaşı’na, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’na, edebiyatta çok fazla yer verilmeyen Franco diktatörlüğü döneminden, gizli servislerin manipülasyonlarına uzanan büyük bir liste ile sözünü sakınmadan- acımasızca örneklerle destekliyor.
Üçüncü kitap ile sorularınızın büyük çoğunluğunu cevaplıyor Marias. Benim çoğu zaman “acaba ben mi kaçırdım, açıkladı mı” diye kendimden şüphe etmeme sebep olan birinci ciltteki kan lekesinin cevabını dahi üçüncü cildin son sayfalarında verdi yani. Upuzun yollardan geçip kendisini, karakterlerini ve zehrini içinize akıtan, hapseden ve sizinle yaşamaya devam eden yazarlardan birisi Marias. Bu üçleme muhtemele hayatım boyunca en sevdiğim kitaplardan olacak ve dönem dönem geriye dönüp yine aynı heyecanla, keyifle okuyacağım. Şimdiye kadar hala Nobel verilmemiş olmasını Isveç Akademisi’nin, kendisinin deliliğinden korkmasından kaynakladığına yormayı tercih ediyorum. Zira başka açıklaması olamaz.
Jaime Deza çok dilli bir çevirmen olarak, eşiyle boşanma arifesindedir. Bu süreci kolay atlatabilmek için Madrid’den ayrılıp Londra’ya gelir. Burada BBC radyosunda çalışmaktayken, Oxford’daki akıl hocalarından birisi olan Peter Wheeler’ın aracılığı ile Bertram Tupra ile tanıştırılır ve kendisini gizli servisin içinde “insan tercümanlığı” yaparken bulur. Ana hikayemiz bu olsa da Marias’ın anlatmak istedikleri ise bambaşka. Birinci kitap genel olarak Deza’nın Wheeler’ı ziyareti ile geçiyor. Sanırım serinin en iyi kitabı da birinci kitap. İspanya İç Savaşı’ndan, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nda İngiltere’deki “careless talk” kampanyalarına uzanan ve insanlık tarihi ve insanı muazzam bir şekilde irdeleyen bir iç dünya yansımasını takip ediyorsunuz. İkinci kitapta ise Deza’nın eski -henüz boşanmadıkları-karısı Luisa imgesi ön plana gelmeye başlarken hikaye olarak ise sizi sadece diskotekte geçen bir gece bekliyor. Bir çorap kaçmasına on sayfa yazabilen bir yazarın size böylesine önemli bir geceyi anlatması için 296 sayfaya ihtiyaç duymasını yadırgamamayı öğreniyorsunuz ve öğrendikçe daha da fazla büyüleniyordunuz.
Özetle evet takip edilmesi zor bir seri. Zira okurken adeta hipnotize oluyorsunuz, kayboluyorsunuz. Sarkaç gibi ileri geri sallanan bir hikayede zaman zaman sonsuza kadar gidecekmiş gibi hissediyorsunuz. Hatta bazı noktalarda hikaye tamamen duruyor ve tarihin gerçekliğine geçiş yapıyorsunuz. Marias Deza’nın biten evliliği, isimsiz kuruluştaki görevi, iş arkadaşlarının gizemli hayatları ve ilişkileri ile sizi baştan çıkarırken üzerinize asıl derdi olan varoluşsal düşüncelerini saçıyor. Sadakat ve güvensizlik, geçmiş ve gelecek, bencillik ve cömertlik üzerine uzun uzun düşünmenizi sağlıyor. Ama kendi vermek istediği mesajı gayet açık: insan kötülüğe meyilli bir canlıdır ve çoğunlukla - bazı istisnai kişiler haricinde- bundan utanma gereksinimi dahi duymaz. Bu mesajını da bireysel kötülükten kitlesel kötülüğe; gizli arşivlerin derinliklerinde bulunan kişisel kötülük videolarından, kitsele; Ispanya İç Savaşı’na, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’na, edebiyatta çok fazla yer verilmeyen Franco diktatörlüğü döneminden, gizli servislerin manipülasyonlarına uzanan büyük bir liste ile sözünü sakınmadan- acımasızca örneklerle destekliyor.
Üçüncü kitap ile sorularınızın büyük çoğunluğunu cevaplıyor Marias. Benim çoğu zaman “acaba ben mi kaçırdım, açıkladı mı” diye kendimden şüphe etmeme sebep olan birinci ciltteki kan lekesinin cevabını dahi üçüncü cildin son sayfalarında verdi yani. Upuzun yollardan geçip kendisini, karakterlerini ve zehrini içinize akıtan, hapseden ve sizinle yaşamaya devam eden yazarlardan birisi Marias. Bu üçleme muhtemele hayatım boyunca en sevdiğim kitaplardan olacak ve dönem dönem geriye dönüp yine aynı heyecanla, keyifle okuyacağım. Şimdiye kadar hala Nobel verilmemiş olmasını Isveç Akademisi’nin, kendisinin deliliğinden korkmasından kaynakladığına yormayı tercih ediyorum. Zira başka açıklaması olamaz.
December 11, 2018
Yazdığı herşeyi merak ettiğim Marias’ın Yarınki Yüzün üçlemesinin son cildi serinin en iyi kitabı bence. İkinci cildin sonundaki etkileyici şiddet sahnesinin yaşandığı gece bırakılan yerden başlıyor. İnsanları tanıma konusundaki yeteneğini İngiliz gizli sevisinin hizmetine sunan Deza’nın karanlık patronu Tupra, kahramanımıza bu sefer videodan da olsa çok daha sert ve gerçek şiddet sahneleri izletiyor. Deza daha sonra bu tecrübelerden özel hayatındaki bir hesaplaşma için yararlanıyor. Şiddetin sıradanlığı, korku salarak insanlar üzerinde yaratılan etki Marias’ın pek kaçınamadığı temalardan. Keza İspanya iç savaşı. Bu seride İkinci Dünya Savaşında özellikle istihbarat alanında yapılan acımasız mücadelenin sıradan insanların üzerinde yarattığı yıkım da çarpıcı bir şekilde işleniyor. Bu üçleme günümüzde geçse de geçmişle bağlantılar ustaca kuruluyor. Kurmaca eserlerde pek rastlanmayan şekilde reprodüksyonlar, fotoğraflar kullanılması ve bunların ele alınan temaları bağlamında analiz edilmesi de kitabın hoşuma giden yönlerinden oldu. Kitapta kadın-erkek ilişkileri üzerinde de bol miktarda dikkat çekici tespitler, savlar var; Marias’ın olmazsa olmazlarından bu tabii. Netice itibarıyla, herkesin kaldıramayacağı sertlikte bölümlerinden, bol miktarda sapmalarından, belki kısa geçilebilecek bazı konuların uzun uzadıya anlatılmasından ötürü birçok kimseye hitap etmeyebilir. Ama karşınıza Marias gibi bir dil ustası, keskin bir gözlemci ve müthiş bir zeka da pek sık çıkmayabilir, biraz sabır göstermekte fayda olabilir.
June 20, 2021
Sessizliğe övgünün binlerce sözcüğü.
January 17, 2016
Poison, Shadow and Farewell is the valedictory volume of Javier Marías's spy novel whose prose style represents a calcification of the novelist's poetic images, lines, phrases, and symbols, all unfolding in slow motion in the pedantic mind of its narrator. In the 1,200-page opus Your Face Tomorrow, we find Jacques Deza, recently separated from his wife Luisa in Spain and employed in London as an interpreter and as a kind of behavioral consultant under the tutelage of his boss Bertram Tupra, an enigmatic and strong character of an unidentified national descent - we find Deza afloat in a thick fog of reminiscences and observations, endlessly conversing with people, with his father and with his mentor Peter Wheeler, both old and ailing, involved in some shady adventures with his superior, and finally involved in his own personal battle. What started as a mental bloodbath among spy-wits in the previous two volumes ends as a voluble political treatise on actual physical violence of wars and conflicts: the recent and modern wars between nations and the intimate personal conflicts between two men.
Despite its obvious quarrel with a straightforward plot, there is an actual linear progression of story that builds from its feverish beginning, to the point of spear and a bloodstain, to dancing and dreaming, and in this volume, to the injection of poison, to the transformation of a person into a shadow-character, and to a final farewell. Here is how Deza's corruption began:
The passage of course runs for longer than that, but Jesus, how weird it is for the man to still invoke the etymology of a word when he is strapped helpless and forced to view some graphic images. Beyond the vocabulary lesson, there is an insistence on the part of the narrator to capture the most suitable word to describe the increasingly envenomed state he's entering. Stumbling upon the word "inoculation", as a conscious or unconscious translation of his condition, almost provides a comic relief, almost relegates the process to comedy. Deza's acceptance that he is being 'inoculated' proceeds from a linguistic recognition ("that last term is spot on etymologically") to a validation of that recognition ("it contains at its root the Latin 'oculus', from which it comes") to a final recognition that he is now infected. Awareness of what is happening to him brings with it a certain comfort since he is able to interpret the situation at the level of language at least. His command of language is used as defense mechanism to 'process' images of unspeakable horrors into recognizable shapes, into a semblance of comprehensibility. He detects evil in what he sees and it is being passed on to him.
It is innate in humans to try to act rationally in the face of the irrational. And so the pedant Deza continually corrects the charismatic Tupra in their long-drawn-out conversation that culminates in the video showing. For instance, he corrects Tupra on the correct attribution of a quote (Rimbaud), on the right pronunciation of "Coahuila", and on many other linguistic matters which are seemingly at odds with the issue at hand, the issue of the moral and ethical justifications of the "use of force". Deza's obsession with the precise application of language seems to him the very act that will restore order in the increasing imbalance against peace and good that the latest events are undermining. But what practical and lasting use are one's powers of perception and linguistic skills in the face of an increasingly violent, intolerant world? In the face of bloody wars?
Through the videotaped images of atrocities, the implications of 'careless talk' which Marías introduced in the first two volumes are now, for Deza, coming closer to home. The book has traced the gradual progression of plot from talk to live action, from language to reality. The flood of words - consistent in its unchecked spilling - becomes the very material of the novel's movement and resolution. Words betray. Words sink ships. Words can be instruments of one's undoing. On the other hand, words warn. Words can be a ticket to salvation. Words console. Words memorialize. For spies, the exchange of words becomes both necessary and suspect, a paradoxical situation whose balance a speaker constantly strives for whenever she opens her mouth, whenever she decides with finality to finally communicate, to finally speak out and declare a simple fact.
The plot is thin, and the book thick. The ideas are plentiful. The writing style has crystallized and hardened to such an extent that it almost rivals the exquisite and delicious boredom of Henry James's last three poetic masterpieces. However much the charismatic Tupra plead for our narrator not to "linger and delay", linger and delay he did, in every significant incident, as if the injunction is just the thing he needed to hear so he can disobey and freely follow his thoughts. The narrative style is that of free thinking, of freezing the frames of action and dwelling in them at leisure, and then to branch out to other frames, to go off tangent in the freedom of space.
The work of translation, according to Paul Ricoeur (after Freud), is an act of remembering and of mourning. Throughout YFT, readers are treated to Deza's constant allusion to the past, to "the things as they were" before his separation from his wife, a separation which decisively marked his life. In the novel's store of stories, readers are made privy to the reminiscences of Wheeler and Deza's own father. In translating and interpreting, Deza constantly goes back to the sources of language, the etymology, the idiomatic and popular uses of a word or phrase, the puns and the historical-cultural contexts behind words. He remembers and at the same time he mourns, with a sometimes tragic sense of loss, for "what might have been". He mourns for what more faithful meaning could have been substituted to some slippery word or statement. Atmospherically, the novel is so suffused with tones of elegy and melancholy as to be draped in black cloths of mourning.
Marías interfaces historical wars with an individual's private wars and demons. This he made to bear on an "ancient and modern" conundrum, a concern of the past, present, and future (tomorrow's unknowable face) - how to tolerate the 'other'. Why should one not hurt or kill people? On hearing this brazen question, the value system starts to rebel. Our order-loving sensibilities are offended. Yet in YFT, the novelist forces the reader to confront naive questions like this. To consider the larger implications of using violence in desperate times. The reader may as well listen in rapt attention since these questions, as the poet Wisława Szymborska noted, are "the most pressing" ones. By giving it a proper context and narrative grounding in the novel, that 'innocent' question turned out to be as guilty as it sounds.
Full review at: http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2011/08/...
Despite its obvious quarrel with a straightforward plot, there is an actual linear progression of story that builds from its feverish beginning, to the point of spear and a bloodstain, to dancing and dreaming, and in this volume, to the injection of poison, to the transformation of a person into a shadow-character, and to a final farewell. Here is how Deza's corruption began:
As I looked and half-looked and saw, a poison was entering me, and when I use that word 'poison', I'm not doing so lightly or purely metaphorically, but because something entered my consciousness that had not been there before and provoked in me an immediate feeling of creeping sickness, of something alien to my body and to my sight and to my mind, like an inoculation, and that last term is spot on etymologically, for it contains at its root the Latin 'oculus', from which it comes, and it was through my eyes that this new and unexpected illness entered, through my eyes which were absorbing images and registering them and retaining them, and which could no longer erase them as one might erase a bloodstain on the floor, still less not have seen them.
The passage of course runs for longer than that, but Jesus, how weird it is for the man to still invoke the etymology of a word when he is strapped helpless and forced to view some graphic images. Beyond the vocabulary lesson, there is an insistence on the part of the narrator to capture the most suitable word to describe the increasingly envenomed state he's entering. Stumbling upon the word "inoculation", as a conscious or unconscious translation of his condition, almost provides a comic relief, almost relegates the process to comedy. Deza's acceptance that he is being 'inoculated' proceeds from a linguistic recognition ("that last term is spot on etymologically") to a validation of that recognition ("it contains at its root the Latin 'oculus', from which it comes") to a final recognition that he is now infected. Awareness of what is happening to him brings with it a certain comfort since he is able to interpret the situation at the level of language at least. His command of language is used as defense mechanism to 'process' images of unspeakable horrors into recognizable shapes, into a semblance of comprehensibility. He detects evil in what he sees and it is being passed on to him.
It is innate in humans to try to act rationally in the face of the irrational. And so the pedant Deza continually corrects the charismatic Tupra in their long-drawn-out conversation that culminates in the video showing. For instance, he corrects Tupra on the correct attribution of a quote (Rimbaud), on the right pronunciation of "Coahuila", and on many other linguistic matters which are seemingly at odds with the issue at hand, the issue of the moral and ethical justifications of the "use of force". Deza's obsession with the precise application of language seems to him the very act that will restore order in the increasing imbalance against peace and good that the latest events are undermining. But what practical and lasting use are one's powers of perception and linguistic skills in the face of an increasingly violent, intolerant world? In the face of bloody wars?
Through the videotaped images of atrocities, the implications of 'careless talk' which Marías introduced in the first two volumes are now, for Deza, coming closer to home. The book has traced the gradual progression of plot from talk to live action, from language to reality. The flood of words - consistent in its unchecked spilling - becomes the very material of the novel's movement and resolution. Words betray. Words sink ships. Words can be instruments of one's undoing. On the other hand, words warn. Words can be a ticket to salvation. Words console. Words memorialize. For spies, the exchange of words becomes both necessary and suspect, a paradoxical situation whose balance a speaker constantly strives for whenever she opens her mouth, whenever she decides with finality to finally communicate, to finally speak out and declare a simple fact.
The plot is thin, and the book thick. The ideas are plentiful. The writing style has crystallized and hardened to such an extent that it almost rivals the exquisite and delicious boredom of Henry James's last three poetic masterpieces. However much the charismatic Tupra plead for our narrator not to "linger and delay", linger and delay he did, in every significant incident, as if the injunction is just the thing he needed to hear so he can disobey and freely follow his thoughts. The narrative style is that of free thinking, of freezing the frames of action and dwelling in them at leisure, and then to branch out to other frames, to go off tangent in the freedom of space.
The work of translation, according to Paul Ricoeur (after Freud), is an act of remembering and of mourning. Throughout YFT, readers are treated to Deza's constant allusion to the past, to "the things as they were" before his separation from his wife, a separation which decisively marked his life. In the novel's store of stories, readers are made privy to the reminiscences of Wheeler and Deza's own father. In translating and interpreting, Deza constantly goes back to the sources of language, the etymology, the idiomatic and popular uses of a word or phrase, the puns and the historical-cultural contexts behind words. He remembers and at the same time he mourns, with a sometimes tragic sense of loss, for "what might have been". He mourns for what more faithful meaning could have been substituted to some slippery word or statement. Atmospherically, the novel is so suffused with tones of elegy and melancholy as to be draped in black cloths of mourning.
Marías interfaces historical wars with an individual's private wars and demons. This he made to bear on an "ancient and modern" conundrum, a concern of the past, present, and future (tomorrow's unknowable face) - how to tolerate the 'other'. Why should one not hurt or kill people? On hearing this brazen question, the value system starts to rebel. Our order-loving sensibilities are offended. Yet in YFT, the novelist forces the reader to confront naive questions like this. To consider the larger implications of using violence in desperate times. The reader may as well listen in rapt attention since these questions, as the poet Wisława Szymborska noted, are "the most pressing" ones. By giving it a proper context and narrative grounding in the novel, that 'innocent' question turned out to be as guilty as it sounds.
Full review at: http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2011/08/...
June 23, 2021
Muazzam üçleme muazzam bir son kitap ile sona erdi.. En baştan söyleyeyim Marias'ı ayakta alkışlıyor bu üçlemesine şapka çıkarıyorum..
Bazı edebi eserler vardır görev bilinciyle okuruz onları, dört sayfa süren paragraflara konsantre olmakta zorlanır, her zaman kendimizi metne veremez ve yazarı anlamak için yoğun çaba sarfetmek zorunda kaldığımız için çok yoruluruz. Sonunda da genelde (kendi adıma) kitabı tamamlayamadan araya başka kitaplar alır, sonra devam ederim diye kendimizi kandırıp bir daha elimize almayız. Javier Marias romanları da işte bu okuması zorlu, okuyucuyu yoran romanlardan. 500 sayfalık bu kitabı okurken araya baska kitaplar sıkıştırdığım da oldu. Fakat işin ilginç yanı bu romanı (aslında üçlemedeki bütün kitapları) her elime alışımda yukarıda bahsettiğim hezeyanlara kapılmadan, Marias'a hayran ola ola, kitabı yarım bırakmayı bir an olsun bile düşünmeden büyük keyifle okudum bütün sayfaları. Yer yer zorladı evet ama hep keyifliydi.
Marias büyük bir yazar. İnanılmaz yetenekli. Ya da yetenek deyip kendisine haksızlık etmeyelim inanılmaz çalışkan olduğu ve hayatını okuyup yazmaya adadığı da çok belli. Bilmediği hiçbir şey yok gibi. Bizim emeklemeye çalıştıgımız yolları defalarca turlamış sanki. Hayran olmamanın imkansız olduğu gözlem ve çözümlemeler yapıyor. İnsanları çözümlüyor, olayları çözümlüyor, karakterlerdeki en ufak detayları derinlemesine çözümlüyor, yeri geliyor tabloları ya da afişleri çözümlüyor. Bunlar arasında da kimsenin aklına gelmeyecek bağlantılar kuruyor.
Genel olarak şiddet kavramını ele aldığını söyleyebiliriz bu üçlemede. Zor sorular soruyor. Savaş zamanında her şey mubah mıdır? Kötü bir insana (kötülüğü bilinmediği için ceza uygulanamıyorken) şiddet uygulamak etik midir? şiddet karşıtı olmak teoride kolay ama pratikte her birimiz elimize sebep ve fırsat geçtiğinde bunu uygulamaktan kaçınacağımızdan emin miyiz? gibi zor soruların pesinden gidiyor. (Yaptıkları hırsızlıklar ayyuka çıkınca siyasetçilere kızıyoruz hepimiz. Peki biz bu işlerin içine girsek ve kapılar ardına kadar açılsa hatta sistem bizi buna zorlasa sahip olduğumuz -sahipsek tabii- masumiyeti koruyabileceğimizden ne kadar eminiz?) Ve bunu yaparken de o kadar inandırıcı ve etkileyici ki insanı şaşırtıyor. Bana göre edebiyatın zirve yaptığı harika bir seri. Son olarak da Roza Hakmen her zamanki gibi harika iş çıkarmış. Çevrilmesi çok zor bir metni çok çok iyi çevirmiş. Çok emek verdiğine eminim.
Bazı edebi eserler vardır görev bilinciyle okuruz onları, dört sayfa süren paragraflara konsantre olmakta zorlanır, her zaman kendimizi metne veremez ve yazarı anlamak için yoğun çaba sarfetmek zorunda kaldığımız için çok yoruluruz. Sonunda da genelde (kendi adıma) kitabı tamamlayamadan araya başka kitaplar alır, sonra devam ederim diye kendimizi kandırıp bir daha elimize almayız. Javier Marias romanları da işte bu okuması zorlu, okuyucuyu yoran romanlardan. 500 sayfalık bu kitabı okurken araya baska kitaplar sıkıştırdığım da oldu. Fakat işin ilginç yanı bu romanı (aslında üçlemedeki bütün kitapları) her elime alışımda yukarıda bahsettiğim hezeyanlara kapılmadan, Marias'a hayran ola ola, kitabı yarım bırakmayı bir an olsun bile düşünmeden büyük keyifle okudum bütün sayfaları. Yer yer zorladı evet ama hep keyifliydi.
Marias büyük bir yazar. İnanılmaz yetenekli. Ya da yetenek deyip kendisine haksızlık etmeyelim inanılmaz çalışkan olduğu ve hayatını okuyup yazmaya adadığı da çok belli. Bilmediği hiçbir şey yok gibi. Bizim emeklemeye çalıştıgımız yolları defalarca turlamış sanki. Hayran olmamanın imkansız olduğu gözlem ve çözümlemeler yapıyor. İnsanları çözümlüyor, olayları çözümlüyor, karakterlerdeki en ufak detayları derinlemesine çözümlüyor, yeri geliyor tabloları ya da afişleri çözümlüyor. Bunlar arasında da kimsenin aklına gelmeyecek bağlantılar kuruyor.
Genel olarak şiddet kavramını ele aldığını söyleyebiliriz bu üçlemede. Zor sorular soruyor. Savaş zamanında her şey mubah mıdır? Kötü bir insana (kötülüğü bilinmediği için ceza uygulanamıyorken) şiddet uygulamak etik midir? şiddet karşıtı olmak teoride kolay ama pratikte her birimiz elimize sebep ve fırsat geçtiğinde bunu uygulamaktan kaçınacağımızdan emin miyiz? gibi zor soruların pesinden gidiyor. (Yaptıkları hırsızlıklar ayyuka çıkınca siyasetçilere kızıyoruz hepimiz. Peki biz bu işlerin içine girsek ve kapılar ardına kadar açılsa hatta sistem bizi buna zorlasa sahip olduğumuz -sahipsek tabii- masumiyeti koruyabileceğimizden ne kadar eminiz?) Ve bunu yaparken de o kadar inandırıcı ve etkileyici ki insanı şaşırtıyor. Bana göre edebiyatın zirve yaptığı harika bir seri. Son olarak da Roza Hakmen her zamanki gibi harika iş çıkarmış. Çevrilmesi çok zor bir metni çok çok iyi çevirmiş. Çok emek verdiğine eminim.
February 23, 2012
There's a select group of novels in my reading history: the first time I read them, I would occasionally become deeply envious of people who hadn't started them, because that meant they had something amazing to look forward to. The first time it happened was with War & Peace. It also happened with The Magic Mountain, Gravity's Rainbow (although I was sick when I read it, so it might have just been a fever), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Gerard Woodward's sort of memoir trilogy. That's not to say all of these books are equally good, and certainly not that they have much in common. Anyway, I got that feeling with this volume of Your Face Tomorrow.
Like many of the above books, it'll probably take three or four reads before I really have any idea what this is even about, but my best guess so far is: 20th century 'total' warfare leads us to be suspicious of language and thought. Thanks to this suspicion, and a possible cultural decline, we are decreasingly able to use these things properly, and those who are able to use them properly often end up using them for pretty obviously evil or self-interested acts.
This gets very self-reflexive for a novelist, particularly one like Marias who (accurately) believes that he can use language and thought well. In the hands of a lesser man or woman, the book would end up feeling like a novelist's lament for the art of the novel, in which the real world is little more than a tool used to talk about books. With Marias, though, we're given a book which reminds us that novelists are people too; like the rest of us, they're concerned with ideas and thoughts and knowing other people. Instead of being another navel-gazing disquisition on the impossibility of modernist literature in a post-modern world, then, we get a book about what it's like to *live* in a world that makes it difficult to take important things - including, but not limited to modernist literature - seriously. But just by *being* one of those important things, Your Face Tomorrow reminds us that we can be serious people.
Also, Maria Jull Costa is the best translator I know. Amazing work.
Like many of the above books, it'll probably take three or four reads before I really have any idea what this is even about, but my best guess so far is: 20th century 'total' warfare leads us to be suspicious of language and thought. Thanks to this suspicion, and a possible cultural decline, we are decreasingly able to use these things properly, and those who are able to use them properly often end up using them for pretty obviously evil or self-interested acts.
This gets very self-reflexive for a novelist, particularly one like Marias who (accurately) believes that he can use language and thought well. In the hands of a lesser man or woman, the book would end up feeling like a novelist's lament for the art of the novel, in which the real world is little more than a tool used to talk about books. With Marias, though, we're given a book which reminds us that novelists are people too; like the rest of us, they're concerned with ideas and thoughts and knowing other people. Instead of being another navel-gazing disquisition on the impossibility of modernist literature in a post-modern world, then, we get a book about what it's like to *live* in a world that makes it difficult to take important things - including, but not limited to modernist literature - seriously. But just by *being* one of those important things, Your Face Tomorrow reminds us that we can be serious people.
Also, Maria Jull Costa is the best translator I know. Amazing work.
January 2, 2023
CRITIQUE:
Parentheses and Tangents
In this, the third, final and longest section of Javier Marías' 1,274 page novel, he continues to both entertain and stimulate readers with his stylistic adventures.
Once again, the narrative doesn't consist of a conventional or sequential plot. Instead, he selects six or seven separate episodes or deeds (e.g., Jacques Deza's visit to Madrid [to see his estranged wife, Luisa, and their two children], a confrontation with Luisa's new boyfriend, a nocturnal rendezvous with one of his co-workers, a viewing of some violent videotapes with his boss, Tupra [a la "Clockwork Orange"], a discussion with his father, and a last meeting over lunch with his mentor, Peter Wheeler), which he delineates and then fills the gaps between, as if joining the dots.
The text in between is an interstitial, the function of which is to join or glue the narrative segments together. It doesn't necessarily elaborate on any one of the episodes, or point them all in the one direction or towards the same outcome. Instead, it enables Marías to "open a parenthesis or invent tangents." Still, his parentheses and tangents coax or entice us to read on to the end, fascinated by his sentence-craft and what he's trying to accomplish.
Spanish pistol Source
Breaching Chekhov's Gun Principle
Two of the episodes (there is much Nabokovian doubling in the novel) involve a major character about to kill a minor character with either a sword or a pistol.
This alludes to Chekhov's gun principle.
Chekhov believed that, if you introduced a plot element (like a gun), then it should eventually perform a role in the plot:
This principle has also been construed as an argument against extraneous detail:
Marías seems to argue against the gun principle, by positing that the reason for not firing the gun (or brandishing the sword) might be just as compelling as its opposite. The purpose is to make the minor character (and the reader/audience) believe that the minor character will be shot or beheaded. Marías is able to invent a moral dilemma for the major character, and draw out the tension in the scene, by delaying or denying us the outcome that we expect to occur.
At the same time, Marías makes an almost Proustian virtue out of the extraneous.
Poisonous Words, Deeds and Violence
It's worth recalling at this point that the whole of the novel is set in the context of Jacques Deza's work as a translator and "interpreter of lives" at MI6 in London. Many of the characters are (or have been) important cogs in the UK's military intelligence machine.
Tupra asks Jacques once (but the text of the novel returns to the question several times):
The question is never definitively answered. However, I suspect that the answer is that, if you work in the secret service (whether it be the wartime PWE [the Political Warfare Executive] or the post-war MI6) you can do so, and get away with it:
By employing him on Wheeler's recommendation, Tupra effectively poisoned Jacques, and compromised his morality and sense of decency. Wheeler cautions that you can't judge wartime action by post-war standards:
Marías gives us a detailed history of the black propaganda or black game section of the PWE (for which Peter Wheeler and his wife, Valerie, worked). What they/you did during war-time might not be acceptable during peace-time. Wheeler himself had direct experience of the impact of propaganda on the German population. Yet he still suggests that:
You have to wonder whether this proposition applies equally to the writing and reading of fiction. In the first volume, words (i.e., [the use of] language) are described as "that fierce contagion" and the spear that causes the fever. Is Marías' novel, therefore, a poison, "a plague of talking (and telling), the antithesis of discretion and silence, "an inexhaustible contagion," a virus with which Jacques (and the reader) has been injected? After 1,274 captivating pages, I'd rather say that it's something tastier, more analeptic, and more edifying.
Mastery and Mystery
If there is anything that is distinctive about Marías' style (other than his mastery of long sentences and paragraphs), it's his ability to dispense with conventional narrative devices, without giving the impression that his fiction lacks action or tension. Just as I maintain that a book isn't read until it's reviewed, Marias seems to believe that a deed (and therefore a novel) isn't complete, until it's observed, contemplated and interpreted, by author and/or reader.
REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES:
Fever and Spear
Dance and Dream
AN HOMAGE CALLED OPPORTUNITY:
SOUNDTRACK:
Parentheses and Tangents
In this, the third, final and longest section of Javier Marías' 1,274 page novel, he continues to both entertain and stimulate readers with his stylistic adventures.
Once again, the narrative doesn't consist of a conventional or sequential plot. Instead, he selects six or seven separate episodes or deeds (e.g., Jacques Deza's visit to Madrid [to see his estranged wife, Luisa, and their two children], a confrontation with Luisa's new boyfriend, a nocturnal rendezvous with one of his co-workers, a viewing of some violent videotapes with his boss, Tupra [a la "Clockwork Orange"], a discussion with his father, and a last meeting over lunch with his mentor, Peter Wheeler), which he delineates and then fills the gaps between, as if joining the dots.
The text in between is an interstitial, the function of which is to join or glue the narrative segments together. It doesn't necessarily elaborate on any one of the episodes, or point them all in the one direction or towards the same outcome. Instead, it enables Marías to "open a parenthesis or invent tangents." Still, his parentheses and tangents coax or entice us to read on to the end, fascinated by his sentence-craft and what he's trying to accomplish.
Spanish pistol Source
Breaching Chekhov's Gun Principle
Two of the episodes (there is much Nabokovian doubling in the novel) involve a major character about to kill a minor character with either a sword or a pistol.
This alludes to Chekhov's gun principle.
Chekhov believed that, if you introduced a plot element (like a gun), then it should eventually perform a role in the plot:
"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."
This principle has also been construed as an argument against extraneous detail:
"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
Marías seems to argue against the gun principle, by positing that the reason for not firing the gun (or brandishing the sword) might be just as compelling as its opposite. The purpose is to make the minor character (and the reader/audience) believe that the minor character will be shot or beheaded. Marías is able to invent a moral dilemma for the major character, and draw out the tension in the scene, by delaying or denying us the outcome that we expect to occur.
At the same time, Marías makes an almost Proustian virtue out of the extraneous.
Poisonous Words, Deeds and Violence
It's worth recalling at this point that the whole of the novel is set in the context of Jacques Deza's work as a translator and "interpreter of lives" at MI6 in London. Many of the characters are (or have been) important cogs in the UK's military intelligence machine.
Tupra asks Jacques once (but the text of the novel returns to the question several times):
"Tell me now, why, according to you, one can't go around beating people up and killing them?"
The question is never definitively answered. However, I suspect that the answer is that, if you work in the secret service (whether it be the wartime PWE [the Political Warfare Executive] or the post-war MI6) you can do so, and get away with it:
"Almost anything that occurs to anyone as a way of harming the enemy finds an outlet, although it might not be publicly acknowledged afterwards."
By employing him on Wheeler's recommendation, Tupra effectively poisoned Jacques, and compromised his morality and sense of decency. Wheeler cautions that you can't judge wartime action by post-war standards:
"We all had war minds, there are no healthy minds in wartime, and some never recover...
"[Your] life had been twisted out of shape forever and could never be made straight again."
Marías gives us a detailed history of the black propaganda or black game section of the PWE (for which Peter Wheeler and his wife, Valerie, worked). What they/you did during war-time might not be acceptable during peace-time. Wheeler himself had direct experience of the impact of propaganda on the German population. Yet he still suggests that:
"You can't control what use other people might make of your ideas or words, nor entirely foresee the ultimate consequences of what you say. In life in general. Never."
You have to wonder whether this proposition applies equally to the writing and reading of fiction. In the first volume, words (i.e., [the use of] language) are described as "that fierce contagion" and the spear that causes the fever. Is Marías' novel, therefore, a poison, "a plague of talking (and telling), the antithesis of discretion and silence, "an inexhaustible contagion," a virus with which Jacques (and the reader) has been injected? After 1,274 captivating pages, I'd rather say that it's something tastier, more analeptic, and more edifying.
Mastery and Mystery
If there is anything that is distinctive about Marías' style (other than his mastery of long sentences and paragraphs), it's his ability to dispense with conventional narrative devices, without giving the impression that his fiction lacks action or tension. Just as I maintain that a book isn't read until it's reviewed, Marias seems to believe that a deed (and therefore a novel) isn't complete, until it's observed, contemplated and interpreted, by author and/or reader.
REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES:
Fever and Spear
Dance and Dream
AN HOMAGE CALLED OPPORTUNITY:
SOUNDTRACK:
October 25, 2021
Şahane bir üçlemeydi gerçekten. Jacobo'nun Londra'dan Madrid'e, Madrid'ten Londra'ya hem içsel hem de fiziki yolculuğunu takip etmek benim için de keyifli bir yolculuktu. Jacobo'nun kendi sınırlarını keşfetmesi, "şiddete meyyalinin vallahi dertten" olması, herkesin içinde sebepli sebepsiz şiddete eğilim olduğunu tam da kendinde tecrübe ederek anlaması belki de kendi muammasını çözmeye yarayacak. Jacobo'nun babası ve Wheeler'la geçmişe yine yolculuklara çıkıyoruz ve bu kez tüm gizemler çözülüyor. Kitap o kadar güzel çözülüyor ki sonunda, tüm aksiyon ilmek ilmek örülmüş ve bir örümcek ağı gibi sonunda yine birbirine bağlanıyor ( Wheeler'ın merdivenindeki kan lekesinin meğer hem metaforik hem de gerçek anlamı varmış ve ne basitmiş!). Tupra ise yine bir gizem olmayı başarıyor ama bu kez kendisinden hoşlanmıyoruz; belki de baştan beri öyle biriydi ama biz onun içindekini görememiştik, De La Garza'ya yaptıkları ise (sürprizi bozmak istemem) adeta bir Tarantino filminden fırlamış gibiydi.
Sözün özü, okuyun, okutun ama sabredin. Kitapları arka arkaya okumanız hem olayları hem de karakterleri takip edebilmeniz açısından elzem. Ara vermemenizi şiddetle tavsiye ederim.
Sözün özü, okuyun, okutun ama sabredin. Kitapları arka arkaya okumanız hem olayları hem de karakterleri takip edebilmeniz açısından elzem. Ara vermemenizi şiddetle tavsiye ederim.
September 2, 2012
Allow me to be cinematic. Imagine me with a Montepulciano handy; my right leg could be pistoning (but I am not the type); my soul is on fire ( I am that type). Have you been there, after you close the book, but before you shelve it: wanting everyone to read it right now; wanting to start again from the very first page; not wanting to let go?
tis, tis, tis
This is an old man's story, and a younger man's life. There was a drop of blood in Vol. 1. There was a drop of blood in Vol. 2. In Vol. 3, the first drop is explained. But it takes all three volumes to explain it all. For Blood is a wound; but it is also history, and it is also genealogy.
The old man, Peter Wheeler, is an old spook. The younger man, our author as protagonist, is guided by Wheeler's avuncular wisdom, his Socratic dialogue. The younger man, Jacques Deza, has extraordinary interpretative skills. And he is well paid for them. So was Wheeler, in the day. The day being the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Wheeler was friends with Ian Fleming. (Intrigued yet?). But this is not just some spy novel. The 'Z' in 'Deza', is pronounced in Spanish as 'TH'. So he is 'Deatha'. There is death here, and rank violence. There are references to the killing of women in Ciudad Juarez (cue Bolano's 2066) and a compilation DVD of the worst of human nature. But the history, in Wheeler's genteel, cardigan reminiscences, are every bit as cruel; and just how the Hell do we stop that?
Tell me now, why, according to you, one can't go around beating people up and killing them? You've seen how much of it goes on, everywhere, and sometimes with an utter lack of concern. So explain to me why one can't.
I can't or won't give you a summary. There are two acts of violence and a lot of dialogue fueling three volumes. In Volume 2 it takes our protagonist 150 pages to go to the men's room. Such are the tangents.
I want you to read this. If, one-third through the first volume, you hate me and pitch this out the window, I completely understand. If you trust my reviews, stay with it.
I now own certain Spanish idioms.
A saying: It is easy to be wise, a toro pasado -- once the bull has passed.
And to you: te conosco, mascherina -- you don't fool me.
What are the prizes? Give them to Marias.
tis, tis, tis
tis, tis, tis
This is an old man's story, and a younger man's life. There was a drop of blood in Vol. 1. There was a drop of blood in Vol. 2. In Vol. 3, the first drop is explained. But it takes all three volumes to explain it all. For Blood is a wound; but it is also history, and it is also genealogy.
The old man, Peter Wheeler, is an old spook. The younger man, our author as protagonist, is guided by Wheeler's avuncular wisdom, his Socratic dialogue. The younger man, Jacques Deza, has extraordinary interpretative skills. And he is well paid for them. So was Wheeler, in the day. The day being the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Wheeler was friends with Ian Fleming. (Intrigued yet?). But this is not just some spy novel. The 'Z' in 'Deza', is pronounced in Spanish as 'TH'. So he is 'Deatha'. There is death here, and rank violence. There are references to the killing of women in Ciudad Juarez (cue Bolano's 2066) and a compilation DVD of the worst of human nature. But the history, in Wheeler's genteel, cardigan reminiscences, are every bit as cruel; and just how the Hell do we stop that?
Tell me now, why, according to you, one can't go around beating people up and killing them? You've seen how much of it goes on, everywhere, and sometimes with an utter lack of concern. So explain to me why one can't.
I can't or won't give you a summary. There are two acts of violence and a lot of dialogue fueling three volumes. In Volume 2 it takes our protagonist 150 pages to go to the men's room. Such are the tangents.
I want you to read this. If, one-third through the first volume, you hate me and pitch this out the window, I completely understand. If you trust my reviews, stay with it.
I now own certain Spanish idioms.
A saying: It is easy to be wise, a toro pasado -- once the bull has passed.
And to you: te conosco, mascherina -- you don't fool me.
What are the prizes? Give them to Marias.
tis, tis, tis
August 10, 2023
don't linger or delay.
içinde en sık tekrarlanan cümlelerden biri şu yukarıdaki olan bir kitabı en fazla bu kadar uzatabilirdim herhalde. ama aslında marías'ın şimdiye kadar okuduğum nesi varsa, ve bunları neyle övdüysem aynı şey bu kitap için de geçerli: it lingers AND delays. kelimelere takılıyoruz, kelimelerin kökenlerine, çevirilerine, çeviride kaybolan anlamlarına, başka bir dilde düşünmeye başlamamıza, bunun anadilimizi düşünmemizi nasıl değiştirdiğine; sonra mimiklere takılıyoruz, bakışlara, bakmayışlara, imalara, ses tonundaki değişikliklere... tarihe, tarihin tarih değilken nasıl yaşandığına ve şimdiden geriye dönüp bakınca bunu buradan değerlendirmenin ne kadar anlamsız olduğuna... takılıyoruz da takılıyoruz. her marías değerlendirmemde söylediğim gibi -ve bunu övünmek için söylemiyorum- düşünme şeklimle, takıldığım, düşünmemi aksatan şeylerle çok benzeşiyor marías'ın anlatımı. bunu okumaktan aldığım hazzı başka hiçbir yazardan alamıyorum. o yüzden uzatabildiğim kadar uzattım, yazdım, çizdim, notlar aldım, dönüp tekrar okudum: i lingered and delayed.
seriyle ilgili de şunu düşündüm: aslında en güzel kitap bu gibi geliyor, ama okurken en çok ikinci kitaptan zevk aldım. belki ikinciyi madrid'de okuduğum için de hazzı katlanmış olabilir. bu kitapta da serinin sonuna gelirken o rüyadan uyanma hissini çok güzel vermiş marías, çok güzel toparlamış; hikaye olmayan bir hikayeyi çok güzel sonlandırmış. dört başı mamur bir seriye dört başı mamur bir son. bunun üstüne uzun uzun düşünmem ya da seriyi okuyan biriyle uzun uzun konuşmam lazım, karar veremiyorum.
son not: prado müzesi'ni herhalde dünyada en çok senle ben seviyoruz marías. tablolardan bahsedişlerine ayrı, arada hikayeyi anlatırken gönderme yaparak hatırlattığı yerlere ayrı bıraktım kalbimi.
yani şöyle bir bakıyorum... dil ve resim: kafayı en çok taktığım, üzerine düşünmekten, okumaktan, konuşmaktan en çok zevk aldığım iki mevzu. bunu edebiyata dökebilen bir ruh eşim yaşamış bu dünyada, ne güzel, ne şanslıyım. iyi ki denk geldik. iyi ki yaşadın marías.
içinde en sık tekrarlanan cümlelerden biri şu yukarıdaki olan bir kitabı en fazla bu kadar uzatabilirdim herhalde. ama aslında marías'ın şimdiye kadar okuduğum nesi varsa, ve bunları neyle övdüysem aynı şey bu kitap için de geçerli: it lingers AND delays. kelimelere takılıyoruz, kelimelerin kökenlerine, çevirilerine, çeviride kaybolan anlamlarına, başka bir dilde düşünmeye başlamamıza, bunun anadilimizi düşünmemizi nasıl değiştirdiğine; sonra mimiklere takılıyoruz, bakışlara, bakmayışlara, imalara, ses tonundaki değişikliklere... tarihe, tarihin tarih değilken nasıl yaşandığına ve şimdiden geriye dönüp bakınca bunu buradan değerlendirmenin ne kadar anlamsız olduğuna... takılıyoruz da takılıyoruz. her marías değerlendirmemde söylediğim gibi -ve bunu övünmek için söylemiyorum- düşünme şeklimle, takıldığım, düşünmemi aksatan şeylerle çok benzeşiyor marías'ın anlatımı. bunu okumaktan aldığım hazzı başka hiçbir yazardan alamıyorum. o yüzden uzatabildiğim kadar uzattım, yazdım, çizdim, notlar aldım, dönüp tekrar okudum: i lingered and delayed.
seriyle ilgili de şunu düşündüm: aslında en güzel kitap bu gibi geliyor, ama okurken en çok ikinci kitaptan zevk aldım. belki ikinciyi madrid'de okuduğum için de hazzı katlanmış olabilir. bu kitapta da serinin sonuna gelirken o rüyadan uyanma hissini çok güzel vermiş marías, çok güzel toparlamış; hikaye olmayan bir hikayeyi çok güzel sonlandırmış. dört başı mamur bir seriye dört başı mamur bir son. bunun üstüne uzun uzun düşünmem ya da seriyi okuyan biriyle uzun uzun konuşmam lazım, karar veremiyorum.
son not: prado müzesi'ni herhalde dünyada en çok senle ben seviyoruz marías. tablolardan bahsedişlerine ayrı, arada hikayeyi anlatırken gönderme yaparak hatırlattığı yerlere ayrı bıraktım kalbimi.
yani şöyle bir bakıyorum... dil ve resim: kafayı en çok taktığım, üzerine düşünmekten, okumaktan, konuşmaktan en çok zevk aldığım iki mevzu. bunu edebiyata dökebilen bir ruh eşim yaşamış bu dünyada, ne güzel, ne şanslıyım. iyi ki denk geldik. iyi ki yaşadın marías.
August 27, 2023
Conclusion to this 1250-pages long, 3 volume novel was unexpected and the strongest from all the three parts. As always with Marías we get beautifully crafted, long sentences and Proustian style, filled with digressions and thoughtful observations on human beings. I liked the focused explorations of origins of human aggression, choices driven by unwanted circumstances and long-lasting consequences of such choices. We also delve deeper into earlier discussions on morality and ethical conduct. This opus magnum of Javier is definitely worth the time, especially for the patient readers inherently curious about troubled history of the 20th century and its repercussions on people living in current times.
November 9, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
"A mí me estaban ocurriendo cosas que había callado en la distancia: había perdido pie sin duda, o asideros, o juicio [...] Y en efecto llevaba una existencia más fantasmal cada día, inmerso en el estado onírico del que vive en país ajeno y empieza a no pensar siempre en su lengua, muy solo allí en Londres aunque rodeado de personas a diario, eran todas del trabajo y no cuajaban como amistades puras."
"¿Por qué te digo estas cosas? Ni siquiera estás aquí.
(Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here)."
Por fin se ha completado el ciclo de este Tu Rostro Mañana, una lectura que realmente no tenía planeada, pero se coló de repente, no sé por qué, imagino que por alguna frase o algo que me recordó que hace ya mucho que no leía a Javier Marías, así que se entrometió ahí de pronto entre mis lecturas,. Una trilogía, que ahora recién terminada, la considero una de estas lecturas vitales que ya me han marcado, al igual que me pasó con los "Relatos Autiobiográficos" de Bernhard o "En busca del tiempo" de Proust: sin ninguna duda tengo que encajar Tu rostro mañana entre estas lecturas, porque entre otras cosas, una vez acabé, veo a Deza por todas partes, al igual que sigo viendo a Marcel o al narrador de la autobiografía de Bernhard. Proust decía en La Recherche que “Cada lector es, cuando lee, el propio lector de sí mismo" y realmente esto se cumple también aquí en Tu Rostro Mañana, porque en estas lecturas tan vitales y conectadas con uno mismo por la forma en que el autor escarba y rastrea en el interior de sus personajes, si te reconoces en ellas, en aspectos, momentos reflexiones, aquí es dónde surge el milagro. Finalizar este tercer y último volumen de Tu Rostro Mañana admito que ha creado un vacío tras la ausencia de alguien conocido que se marcha. A Marcel todavía lo sigo echando de menos y lo sigo viendo en todas partes después de meses de haberlo terminado, y ya me está pasando también con el Deza de Javier Marías: lecturas que acaban emergiendo casi como un espejo de uno mismo, Jacobo, Jaime, Jacques, Jack…Deza, podría ser cualquiera de nosotros. Leyendo a Javier Marías siempre tengo la impresión de que es de sí mismo de quién habla, y en este Tu Rostro Mañana más que nunca, y él mismo confiesa en el epílogo que sin la vida prestada de su padre, Julián Marías, este libro no se habría podido escribir.
"Y se convertiría de pronto en el vínculo de mi olvido Descubriría que me había acostumbrado del todo, quiero decir, hasta el punto de no extrañarme al abrir los ojos ni preguntarme más por ninguno de ellos. Serían mi cotidianeídad y mi mundo..."
A todos los efectos soy español, y estoy aquí solo temporalmente. Bueno, eso creo, así me siento, aunque vete a saber si no acabaré por quedarme.”
Veo toda la trilogía de Tu Rostro Mañana como el punto de inflexión en la vida de un hombre que se convierte en una especie de sombra o fantasma de sí mismo, colgado en un limbo e intentando sostenerse y dilucidar si cruzar el límite y pasar a otra vida alejada de todo lo que conocía hasta ahora, o también se podría decir que es una novela en torno a la crisis existencial de un hombre, que tiene que repensar todo lo que ha sido y en quien quiere convertirse. “Cada mañana me enfrentaba a nuevos rostros o ahondaba en los conocidos, y era un reto desentrañarlos. Apostar por sus probabilidades, vaticinar sus comportamientos, era casi como escribir novelas, o por lo menos semblanzas”. Mientras lo decide, se busca un trabajo en Londres y comienza a juguetear con una posible ocupación involucrándose con el servicio secreto británico. Deza se siente español y tiene el temor de que aunque se encuentre en Londres temporalmente, igual acabará quedándose en tierra extranjera ya para siempre a menos que Luisa, la mujer de la que acaba de separarse, no le diga: Ven… Deza, que ha decidido poner tierra de por medio, en una eterna espera de ser llamado de nuevo a casa porque él mismo se define demasiado orgulloso para imponer su presencia, permanece en el limbo de una eterna espera. Esta es la premisa principal de Tu Rostro Mañana. No puedo negar, y ya lo dije en las reseñas anteriores, que los momentos más atractivos de esta novela, más que la trama argumental, que casi sirve como excusa, serán aquellos en los que Deza rastrea en su propio interior.
“Ella me conocía. Sabía que era respetuoso y que no era un pelma, que aceptaba lo que se me daba de buena gana y que no luchaba por lo que se me negaba, mi orgullo me impedía darle mucho la lata a nadie y actuaba sibilinamente para conseguir mis propósitos, entreteniéndome y esperando, lingering and delaying cuanto hiciera falta. Pero era a todas luces anómalo que no hubiera hecho algo más por verla a solas.
...y la baldía espera de algo acaba por hacerse acuciante y por dominar todo el tiempo y ocupar todo el espacio, se aguarda el timbrazo de un momento a otro y cada momento se torna muy oprimente y muy largo, la rodilla hincada en tu pecho y plomo sobre tu alma, hasta que el agotamiento nos vence y nos da un cierto respiro.”
Este tercer volumen de la serie está dividido en tres partes:
- Veneno, comienza dónde acaba el segundo volumen: Deza conducido a casa de su jefe, el misterioso Bertram Tupra. En casa de su jefe, Deza es enfrentado cara a con la violencia más extrema a través de una serie de dvds de grabaciones de violencia que dejan a Deza escandalizado: "A medida que miraba y entreveía y veía, un veneno me fue entrando, y si utilizo esta palabra, veneno, no es del todo ligera ni solo metafóricamente, sino porque se introdujo en mi conocimiento algo que nunca había estado allí antes y me provocó una sensación instantánea de estar enfermando gradualmente, algo ajeno a mi cuerpo y a mí vista y a mí conciencia, en verdad una inoculación..." Resulta fascinante que en este interludio en casa de Tupra, Marías haga una especie de parón o de elipsis y vuelve atrás al momento en que Deza recibe en su casa a la mujer con el perrito, en el que ella le hacía una petición. Justo en medio de la conversación con Tupra, Marías da este giro en un flashback que había ocurrido en su apartamento en la que la petición de ella no había sido desvelada, y es desvelada justo aquí, mientras Deza en casa de Tupra, lo recuerda, una conversación con ella que le remite a la conversación que está teniendo con Tupra en torno a la violencia, conexiones. Y admito también que pocas veces se ha descrito una escena en torno al sexo como la que describe aquí Marías, y es tan difícil escribir bien sobre sexo, que suene natural y auténtico. Marías consigue crear una escena sublime porque en ningún momento la narración se detiene, todo lo contrario, crea un momento de intimidad, atmosférico y totalmente erótico: “Fue todo silencioso y tímido, en verdad fue fantasmal y no hubo apenas más cambios.”
“Pero si la voz no llegaba nunca, por teléfono o por inesperada carta, o en persona cuando iba por fin a visitar a mis hijos, habría un día en que me despertaría con la sensación de ya no estar esperando.(Anoche todavía sí, pero ¿y hoy? Soy una jornada más viejo, es la única diferencia y sin embargo mi existencia ha cambiado. Ya no aguardo).
...se había producido ese leve tanteo previo y el mínimo desplazamiento que nos había hecho coincidir en el espacio y en el tiempo, eso es lo que determina y cuenta en los hechos importantes, y por eso es tan vital a veces not linger or delay, no esperar ni entretenerse."
- Sombra, en esta segunda parte, Deza se toma unas vacaciones y viaja a Madrid a visitar a su padre, a su ex mujer y sus hijos. De repente la novela se ha convertido en algo dinámico y lleno de acción porque Marías ha cambiado completamente el ritmo. Tras los dos primeros volúmenes de reflexiones y de autoanálisis, de repente todas estas teorías en torno a la violencia de las que solo había sido testigo, se convierten en acción y en práctica. Esa máxima que ya había surgido en el segundo volumen, Baile y sueño, “Don't linger or delay, just do it.” será un concepto al que Deza le dará mil y una vueltas en esta tercera novela de la serie. No lo demores ni lo retrases, no te lo pienses, no te entretengas, ni esperes, hazlo, toma las riendas, enfréntate…, son los diferentes contextos en torno a lo que revoloteará una y otra vez esta frase que se le quedará ya grabada a a Deza y que cuestionará en la teoría, pero cuando llega el momento, tendrá oportunidad de ponerla en práctica… “don’t ever linger or delay”, “Y seguía sin perder el tiempo, I did not linger or delay or loiter or dally”, “y por eso es tan vital a veces not to linger or delay, no esperar ni entretenerse, aunque eso pueda ser también lo que nos salve, nunca sabemos lo que nos convendrá y qué es lo bueno...”
“Resulta que que quienes más quisimos, aun queremos,, se han convertido en gente de otra época, o perdida por el camino, en seres casi pretéritos a los que no apetece volver porque ya nos son consabidos, y el hilo de la continuidad se ha roto con ellos.
"Es extraño e incongruente el proceso de las nostalgias, o del echar de menos, tanto si es por ausencia como por abandono o por muerte. Uno cree al principio que no puede vivir sin alguien o alejado de alguien, la pena inicial es tan afilada y constante que se siente como un hundimiento sin límite o como una lanza interminable que avanza, porque cada minuto de privación cuenta y pesa, se hace notar y se nos atraganta, y uno solo espera que pasen las horas del día a sabiendas de que su paso no nos llevará a nada nuevo sino a más espera de más espera. Cada mañana abre uno los ojos -se ha beneficiado del sueño que no permite olvidar del todo, pero que confunde-, con el mismo pensamiento que lo oprimió justo antes de cerrarlos."
- En la última parte, Adiós, Marías cerrará ya todos los misterios que se habían abierto y que había enredado como en una madeja que aquí ya se ha terminado de desenredar por completo. Deza vuelve a Londres siendo ya otra persona, con decisiones tomadas, y siendo más él mismo que nunca. A través del personaje de Tupra, Marías ha conseguido cuestionar ese sistema que hace funcionar el mundo y del que Tupra, personaje en la sombra, se puede decir que forme parte del engranaje que puede hacer que un gobierno se tambalee o un personaje con imagen pública acabe desterrado para siempre. Deza se planteará a lo largo de la serie de hasta qué punto querrá formar parte de esta rueda en la sombra, de hasta qué punto el fin justificará los medios, en el tercer volumen se desvelará. Marías lo deja todo atado y muy bien atado.
“..de repente uno se encuentra prendido como en una tela de araña, sin ser capaz de imaginar otra vida distinta de la que lleva…
"La mayoría de la gente no es capaz de imaginarse otra vida que la que lleva y ya solo por eso no la cambia, ni se mueve, ni se lo plantea: pone parches, aplaza, Busca distracciones, se echa una amante, se convence de que lo que hay es llevadero, se encomienda al tiempo; pero no se le ocurre intentarlo. Al sentimiento solo lo vence el cálculo, y solo a veces."
El estilo de Marías es lento, pausado y muy hipnótico, y aunque algunas disgresiones y reflexiones son largas en un ir adelante y atrás en la historia, una vez que se entra en su bucle, es imposible no conectar y verse reflejado como en un espejo. El tema que domina Tu Rostro Mañana es el de la violencia, y sobre todo el de la traición. Deza que en un principio bajo la mentoría de Tupra se siente escandalizado por la violencia generada en las sombras, llegado un punto cuando pone en práctica esta violencia, se hace consciente del poder que supone poder controlar la violencia a su antojo, del morbo que puede suponer el miedo tras una mirada. El peligro que suponen también las palabras cuando transmiten ese miedo a los demás, es otra de las cuestiones que Javier Marías abordará una y otra vez durante la trilogía y que terminará por definir en su personaje en este último volumen.
“La gente cree lo que quiere creer, y por eso es tan lógico y fácil que todo tenga su tiempo para ser creído. A pie juntillas: hasta lo manifiestamente falso y lo contrario de lo que estamos viendo, también eso es creído en su tiempo de credulidad, cada suceso en el suyo y todos en el tiempo ido. Todo el mundo está dispuesto a volver la vista y distraerse, a negar lo que está delante y a no oír nada de lo que se grita, y a sostener que no hay alaridos sino un inmenso y apacible silencio…
...pero uno nunca tiene la absoluta seguridad de nada, de casi nada relativo a los otros, y puede que ni a uno mismo.”
Javier Marías toma una idea y la desglosa, la deconstruye y la examina desde diferentes perspectivas, ideas relacionadas sobre todo con la traición y dependiendo de los diferentes puntos de vista conseguirá que el lector se enfrente a ciertos dilemas morales y éticos. La previsibilidad del comportamiento humano y de hasta qué punto podremos predecir ciertas acciones futuras: el mismo Deza se da cuenta de que personas creía conocer como serán Luisa, su ex esposa, son impredecibles en ciertas decisiones que tomen, con quienes se relacionen (Te ha borrado, en todos estos meses ha limpiado tu mancha y ahora ya solo lucha contra tu cerco, lo único que se le resiste), e incluso Marías nos enfrenta al conflicto moral que puede suponer controlar la vida de otras personas, para protegerlas, la ética del comportamiento humano se ve cuestionada una y otra vez. Deza es consciente, lo analiza desde distintas perspectivas pero llegado un punto no duda ni un momento: “y por eso es tan vital a veces not to linger or delay,”
"- Te veo muy inconforme, y tienes que conformarte. Si alguien ya no quiere estar con uno, uno tiene que aguantarse. A solas, y sin estar pendiente de la observación o la evolución de ese alguien, a la caza de señales y a la espera de vuelcos. Si se produce uno de estos, no será porque tú estés mirando, ni preguntándome a mi ni sondeando a nadie. No se puede estar encima, no se puede aplicar una lupa ni un catalejo, ni recurrir a espías, ni agobiar, ni por supuesto imponerse. Tampoco fingir sirve de mucho, no sirve hacerse el displicente ni tan siquiera el civilizado, si uno no se siente civilizado ni displicente al respecto. Ella te lo notará, ese fingimiento."
Para Marías, es casi imposible predecir las consecuencias una vez conseguimos liberarnos a través del lenguaje, de una idea, de un acto, pero ¿seremos capaces de controlar las consecuencias de lo que hemos desatado? “Nadie sabe nunca lo que desata, en ninguna circunstancia, y todo puede servir para cualquier cosa, para esta y la contraria.” Javier Marías en este Tu Rostro Mañana nos enfrenta a los retos de una vida impredecible: dejamos una huella en los demás, aunque la memoria sea un dedo tembloroso, y la escritura de Javier Marías es el vivo ejemplo de ello. Maestro.
"La memoria es un dedo tembloroso. Descubrimos que nuestro dedo ya no atina, o que lo logra cada vez menos, y que quienes nos absorbieron la mente noche y día y estaban fijos en ella como un clavo amartillado y hundido, se desprenden poco a poco y comienzan a no importarnos; se tornan borrosos, temblorosos ellos mismos, y hasta se puede dudar de su existencia como si fueran una mancha de sangre ya frotada, lavada y limpiada, o de la que solo queda el cerco, lo que más tarda en quitarse, y ese cerco va cediendo."
♫♫♫ The River - Chromatics ♫♫♫
September 21, 2024
Okuduklarım içinde en sevdiğim Javier Marías kitabı hâlen Acı Bir Başlangıç Bu. Yarınki Yüzün ustalık eseri kabul edilse de yazarın ego tatmini yaptığını düşünüyorum bu seriyle. 500-600 sayfada bitirilecek romanı uzatmış da uzatmış. Biraz klasiklere saygı duruş da var tabii. İnsan ruhu ile ilgili bu kadar çözümleme yapmak isteniyorsa deneme yazılmalı. Üç yıldızı dil ve çeviri ile ilgili bölümler için verdim. Dil ve çeviri deyince Roza Hakmen Hanım'a bir kez daha hayran kaldığımı söylemem lazım. Kitabı çeviri dersi olarak okutsalar yeridir.
Yazarın eserlerini okumaya devam etmek istiyorum ama uzun bir ara vereceğim kitaplarına. Özellikle Yarın Savaşta Beni Düşün'ü merak ediyorum. Belki seneye okurum.
Yazarın eserlerini okumaya devam etmek istiyorum ama uzun bir ara vereceğim kitaplarına. Özellikle Yarın Savaşta Beni Düşün'ü merak ediyorum. Belki seneye okurum.
July 2, 2019
Third and final part of the trilogy 'Your Face Tomorrow', another 500 pages and again but 1 single real scene of action. As in the previous parts Jacques Deza keeps on observing, registrating, interpreting and above all reflecting, pages and pages on end. Yet something has changed. In the previous part his boss Mr. Tupra confronted Deza with the use of bold violence (the intense scene in the toilet for the disabled) and the suggestion that there are no real moral laws. In this part Tupra adds something to this and Deza feels how a 'poison' filters into his brain. This will encourage him to do a bold act himself (the only action scene in this book), but in the end he will keep on doubting.
This short summary again does injustice to this book. Mostly because it does not honour the multi-layered character of the story, but foremost because it doesn’t honour the slow, meandering writing style, with continued side paths, comments on comments, reinterpretation of findings and conclusions and so on and so on. Marias really drags you into an mesmerizing swamp. He rewards your reading effort in this third part by clearing up some storylines (such as the intriguing blood stain on the staircase in part 1), but above all by leaving you after the last page in a kind of trance, and with the feeling not to know for sure where you are, never to know for sure again what you see, to know what you know, to be what you are. Brilliant!
See also my review of the complete trilogy: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This short summary again does injustice to this book. Mostly because it does not honour the multi-layered character of the story, but foremost because it doesn’t honour the slow, meandering writing style, with continued side paths, comments on comments, reinterpretation of findings and conclusions and so on and so on. Marias really drags you into an mesmerizing swamp. He rewards your reading effort in this third part by clearing up some storylines (such as the intriguing blood stain on the staircase in part 1), but above all by leaving you after the last page in a kind of trance, and with the feeling not to know for sure where you are, never to know for sure again what you see, to know what you know, to be what you are. Brilliant!
See also my review of the complete trilogy: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
September 22, 2021
"O que não tinha tão assumido, ou simplesmente ignorava, é que aquilo que a pessoa faz ou não pode depender não só do tempo, das tentações e das circunstâncias, como de parvoíces e ridicularias, do pensamento fortuito e supérfluo, da hesitação ou do capricho ou de um estúpido repente, das associações inoportunas ou do vesgo esquecimento ou das volúveis recordações, da frase que nos condena ou do gesto que nos salva."
January 23, 2022
javier marias'a üç yıldız verebilmek için kendisiyle kıyaslamak gerek. büyük yazar, büyük romancı. fakat okur hakkı da var. bu üçleme yaklaşık 1100 sayfa ve çok zaman demek zira.
kabaca gerekçelendirmek gerekirse, bu üçlemenin her şeyden önce ve her şeyden çok marias'a olabildiğince geniş ve rahat bir alan sağlamaya hizmet ettiğini söyleyebilirim. hikayenin akışı, karakterler, ritim, tempo, her şey. her şey marias adına kahramanında bulunan "insan yorumculuğu" yetisine indirgeniyor. hikaye, insan yorumlarının temsili gibi. hatta canlandırması ve bazen parodisi.
insan yorumcusu kahraman jaima deza değil, yazar javier marias ve marias'ın yorumculuk performansı, tam da rahatlık ve geniş alan sebebiyle belki, gücünün altında. buradaki yorumlarda geçtiği için söyleyebilirim, "acı bir başlangıç bu" bu üçlemenin çok üzerinde bir roman mesela. bu üçleme, sadece en güçlü yanlarını değerlendirsek bile, marias'ın başyapıtı değil bence.
kabaca gerekçelendirmek gerekirse, bu üçlemenin her şeyden önce ve her şeyden çok marias'a olabildiğince geniş ve rahat bir alan sağlamaya hizmet ettiğini söyleyebilirim. hikayenin akışı, karakterler, ritim, tempo, her şey. her şey marias adına kahramanında bulunan "insan yorumculuğu" yetisine indirgeniyor. hikaye, insan yorumlarının temsili gibi. hatta canlandırması ve bazen parodisi.
insan yorumcusu kahraman jaima deza değil, yazar javier marias ve marias'ın yorumculuk performansı, tam da rahatlık ve geniş alan sebebiyle belki, gücünün altında. buradaki yorumlarda geçtiği için söyleyebilirim, "acı bir başlangıç bu" bu üçlemenin çok üzerinde bir roman mesela. bu üçleme, sadece en güçlü yanlarını değerlendirsek bile, marias'ın başyapıtı değil bence.
October 11, 2025
Foarte bunã trilogia lui Javier Marias, în special acest (ultim) volum. Se leagã / se dezleagã aproape totul ṣi chiar apreciez cã autorul nu a dezvãluit în întregime toate rãspunsurile, ci cã a lãsat în aer sã pluteascã anumite nerostite (*pe care am senzația cã le reia sârguincios în romanele lui ulterioare). Dar atât cât a zis (*scris), a fãcut-o foarte bine, antrenant, bogat, puternic ṣi da, solicitant uneori. Trei volume nu numai despre rãzboi, spioni, viclenie sau curaj, ci, mai ales, despre prietenie, despre încredere ṣi despre maturizarea venitã nu atât cu vârsta, cât cu conṣtientizarea la nivel intim ṣi individual .
"- Ce-i cu tine? m-a întrebat. S-a întâmplat ceva?"
But please not one word of all this shall you mention, when others should ask for my story to hear."
Sau acelaşi lucru în limba mea:
„Însă nici o vorbă despre toate astea să nu sufli, te rog, când alţii au să-ţi ceară să-mi asculţi povestea“.
— Nu, nimic rău.
mai 2007
"- Ce-i cu tine? m-a întrebat. S-a întâmplat ceva?"
But please not one word of all this shall you mention, when others should ask for my story to hear."
Sau acelaşi lucru în limba mea:
„Însă nici o vorbă despre toate astea să nu sufli, te rog, când alţii au să-ţi ceară să-mi asculţi povestea“.
— Nu, nimic rău.
mai 2007
August 24, 2020
"Language is a virus from outer space."--William Burroughs
This book is the third volume of a novel called Your Face Tomorrow. The three volumes as a whole are a masterful exploration of the processes by which we imprint each other, for better or for worse. The imprinting can happen through language, through action and the power of example, or through visual media. At the novel's center is the perception that when we release something from ourselves, an idea, an inspiration, a thought, a vision, whether through utterance or other means, there is no telling the consequences of this release, and no controlling them either.
The narrator is Jacques, a native of Madrid, recently estranged from his wife , who has come to London to live, to allow the air between him and his wife to clear. Through a friend, he gets invited to go to work for a mysterious group connected to British intelligence that engages in observing people in interviews and then assessing them, evaluating their trustworthiness and their potential for violence. Working at this place, he has a harrowing experience that serves to prepare him for a matter which arises in his personal life.
At one point in the story, the narrator and his boss visit the home of Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, and this is significant, as the author draws heavily on the digressive discursive procedures of that work. The novel sometimes seems like it is digression through and through, but it always returns to the central lines of inquiry eventually. The prose is complex and eminently readable, musical even. It seems that it is sometimes compared to that of Proust or Henry James.
Many of the digressions are concerned with the some of the older characters' experiences in the Spanish Civil War and WWII. The choices made by people in wartime provide a significant counterpoint to the choices being made by the characters in the novel's present.
The book proceeds slowly, but it is not without significant events, and even violence at times. It's definitely worth bearing with it; its rewards are substantial.
This book is the third volume of a novel called Your Face Tomorrow. The three volumes as a whole are a masterful exploration of the processes by which we imprint each other, for better or for worse. The imprinting can happen through language, through action and the power of example, or through visual media. At the novel's center is the perception that when we release something from ourselves, an idea, an inspiration, a thought, a vision, whether through utterance or other means, there is no telling the consequences of this release, and no controlling them either.
The narrator is Jacques, a native of Madrid, recently estranged from his wife , who has come to London to live, to allow the air between him and his wife to clear. Through a friend, he gets invited to go to work for a mysterious group connected to British intelligence that engages in observing people in interviews and then assessing them, evaluating their trustworthiness and their potential for violence. Working at this place, he has a harrowing experience that serves to prepare him for a matter which arises in his personal life.
At one point in the story, the narrator and his boss visit the home of Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, and this is significant, as the author draws heavily on the digressive discursive procedures of that work. The novel sometimes seems like it is digression through and through, but it always returns to the central lines of inquiry eventually. The prose is complex and eminently readable, musical even. It seems that it is sometimes compared to that of Proust or Henry James.
Many of the digressions are concerned with the some of the older characters' experiences in the Spanish Civil War and WWII. The choices made by people in wartime provide a significant counterpoint to the choices being made by the characters in the novel's present.
The book proceeds slowly, but it is not without significant events, and even violence at times. It's definitely worth bearing with it; its rewards are substantial.
May 24, 2010
The reality is this: if you are lucky as a reader, you will find that writer who is a mirror of yourself, who pens the sentences and stories you would pen, had you the nerve, the time. Marias, for me, is that writer, so it is with great narcissism that I award him five stars and recommend any and all to read him. Of course, many won't, and the pity is that he has such a long eye reaching both back and forward...he understands our sins, and he casts both aspersions and patience on them. I put this book aside mid-read, I confess, and my husband asked me, "Has Marias been replaced?" because a year ago, I read _2666_ and right after, _The Savage Detectives_. It's true I had found a competing love. But then I finished _PSF_. Read these books, for they trace what's left of our humanity even as they question whether or not we had humanity in the first place. Isn't that what a novelist is supposed to do?
January 28, 2015
(segue)
Quando infine si arriva al termine ci si accorge di essersi assuefatti al mondo inventato dalla penna di Marías e si tende a guardare con indulgenza agli eccessi, alle ridondanze e ai momenti di stanca, che pure ci sono, e rimpiangere già la raffinatezza dell'intuizione, la curiosità e lo stupore che suscitano personaggi e situazioni, la ricchezza dell'opera.
Quando infine si arriva al termine ci si accorge di essersi assuefatti al mondo inventato dalla penna di Marías e si tende a guardare con indulgenza agli eccessi, alle ridondanze e ai momenti di stanca, che pure ci sono, e rimpiangere già la raffinatezza dell'intuizione, la curiosità e lo stupore che suscitano personaggi e situazioni, la ricchezza dell'opera.
January 1, 2024
Micidiale.
Parte 3 di 3.
[93/100]
Parte 3 di 3.
[93/100]
October 23, 2011
I was initially excited by the structure of Your Face Tomorrow, seeing in it something like the inverse of Paul Auster's foray into detective fiction in The New York Trilogy: instead of starting with a distinctly framed genre story and then dissolving its conventions, Marías seems to begin in a fog of abstraction and obsession through which the alluring outlines of a spy novel occasionally coalesce (before again being obscured by the narrator's ruminations).
I was also interested to see how the novel's critique of judgment and the consequences of judgment played out. So many of the characters are invested in their supposedly exceptional powers of observation and interpretation--that is, in their own certainty of apprehension--that it would be easy to go along with the theory that they are indeed gifted far beyond the norm of an age in which knowledge and its sure application have, allegedly, fallen into disfavor. But Deza, the narrator, demonstrates how arbitrary his own judgments seem, how they gather force chiefly because he loses the sense that anything he says about the subjects of his interpretation will have repercussions outside his cozy, anonymous office. This dramatic presentation of judgment without accountability is the novel's surest touch; the question of that judgment's necessity is left embattled but open, which is perhaps the only subtle accomplishment in Your Face Tomorrow.
Neither the structure nor the critique wavers in intent or interest throughout the novel's three volumes. What finally wore me down and made finishing the book an exasperating chore was the grinding pettiness and inanity of Deza's narration. His mode of thoroughness seems less like a development of his thoughts and observations than it does an endless restatement of them, a cycling through synonyms, metaphors, and literary allusions that adds little to the narrative except length (and indeed, without them, this 1,200 page novel could be a tidy but still hefty 500 or so). His expressions are often hackneyed or awkward, as if there is no language in which he is fluent and no cultural context to which he belongs (a criticism he often aims at other characters). Even his taste is irritating, as consistently off-putting as it is casually insisted on: he scorns women who subscribe to this modern fad of not shaving their armpits; he regards with horror a middle-aged man who has the gall not only to sport a ponytail, but also to wear a hat at the same time. Nearly every aspect of Deza's narration conspires to inconsequentiality.
And surely all these irritations are integral to the function of his character in the novel: in the context of his job, pettiness translates to attention to detail, alienation becomes objectivity, and taste stands in for judgment. Deza's own manner is the novel's severest critique of the practices of power without accountability. He is inconsequential, his thoughts are inconsequential, but they are both instruments in games of deadly consequence.
This should be very exciting. It should galvanize readers once we understand that the narrator's modes of thought and expression, with which we have been tricked into sympathy, are odious--or at the very least problematic.
(An aside: in this last volume, I thought I had final proof that Deza's tastes are intentionally faulty, as he declares that The Godfather trilogy is a masterpiece, each part of which is superior to the last. That had to be an authorial joke at the character's expense; surely no one of any discernment who has seen all three movies could believe the third was the best, or even that it was any good at all. Yet, this strikes me now as a joke on the reader, who knows and may well vehemently agree with consensus about the films; it is a trap to implicate us in exactly the kind of inconsequentiality that Deza displays.)
But the total effect of all that dithering and arbitrary pronouncement is dullness. By the time Deza gets involved in anything that might be consequential (or exciting), I am already so thoroughly anesthetized by his account that his actual experience moves me very little. And again, frustratingly, this numbness is appropriate to the themes of the novel. It makes sense as an effect of a work that concentrates on the disconnects between expression and action, action and consequence. But in the end, I am overwhelmed by inconsequence: bored.
I was also interested to see how the novel's critique of judgment and the consequences of judgment played out. So many of the characters are invested in their supposedly exceptional powers of observation and interpretation--that is, in their own certainty of apprehension--that it would be easy to go along with the theory that they are indeed gifted far beyond the norm of an age in which knowledge and its sure application have, allegedly, fallen into disfavor. But Deza, the narrator, demonstrates how arbitrary his own judgments seem, how they gather force chiefly because he loses the sense that anything he says about the subjects of his interpretation will have repercussions outside his cozy, anonymous office. This dramatic presentation of judgment without accountability is the novel's surest touch; the question of that judgment's necessity is left embattled but open, which is perhaps the only subtle accomplishment in Your Face Tomorrow.
Neither the structure nor the critique wavers in intent or interest throughout the novel's three volumes. What finally wore me down and made finishing the book an exasperating chore was the grinding pettiness and inanity of Deza's narration. His mode of thoroughness seems less like a development of his thoughts and observations than it does an endless restatement of them, a cycling through synonyms, metaphors, and literary allusions that adds little to the narrative except length (and indeed, without them, this 1,200 page novel could be a tidy but still hefty 500 or so). His expressions are often hackneyed or awkward, as if there is no language in which he is fluent and no cultural context to which he belongs (a criticism he often aims at other characters). Even his taste is irritating, as consistently off-putting as it is casually insisted on: he scorns women who subscribe to this modern fad of not shaving their armpits; he regards with horror a middle-aged man who has the gall not only to sport a ponytail, but also to wear a hat at the same time. Nearly every aspect of Deza's narration conspires to inconsequentiality.
And surely all these irritations are integral to the function of his character in the novel: in the context of his job, pettiness translates to attention to detail, alienation becomes objectivity, and taste stands in for judgment. Deza's own manner is the novel's severest critique of the practices of power without accountability. He is inconsequential, his thoughts are inconsequential, but they are both instruments in games of deadly consequence.
This should be very exciting. It should galvanize readers once we understand that the narrator's modes of thought and expression, with which we have been tricked into sympathy, are odious--or at the very least problematic.
(An aside: in this last volume, I thought I had final proof that Deza's tastes are intentionally faulty, as he declares that The Godfather trilogy is a masterpiece, each part of which is superior to the last. That had to be an authorial joke at the character's expense; surely no one of any discernment who has seen all three movies could believe the third was the best, or even that it was any good at all. Yet, this strikes me now as a joke on the reader, who knows and may well vehemently agree with consensus about the films; it is a trap to implicate us in exactly the kind of inconsequentiality that Deza displays.)
But the total effect of all that dithering and arbitrary pronouncement is dullness. By the time Deza gets involved in anything that might be consequential (or exciting), I am already so thoroughly anesthetized by his account that his actual experience moves me very little. And again, frustratingly, this numbness is appropriate to the themes of the novel. It makes sense as an effect of a work that concentrates on the disconnects between expression and action, action and consequence. But in the end, I am overwhelmed by inconsequence: bored.
November 29, 2015
'and besides, everything has its moment to be believed, isn't that what you think?'completing his monumental 3-volume novel, your face tomorrow, javier marías's poison, shadow and farewell (veneno y sombra y adiós) wraps up the unforgettable story of jacques deza and his foray into the shady, complex domain of secrets, spying, and intelligence. as a whole, your face tomorrow offers a fictional account of espionage (international and interpersonal), propaganda, deceit, violence, and legacy. framed around recollections of both world war ii and the spanish civil war, marías ponders the consequences of action ("do i dare disturb the universe?"). your face tomorrow, with nary a wasted word, considers the individual's role in a world s/he can never possibly hope to control; asking what actions we may be capable of, how we are seen by others, how we see ourselves, and, perhaps most telling of all, how we think we are seen by others.
your face tomorrow — nearly 1,300 pages of literary brilliance — ought to be considered as one of the finest works of our young, tumultuous century. javier marías, as confident, poised, and adroit a writer as any, never fails to impress with his inimitable voice, measured storytelling, and striking insights into the hearts, minds, and motivations of his characters. your face tomorrow is simply remarkable.
'...the idea that people hate being left out or passed over and prefer always to be seen and judged, for good or ill or even for worse, and even need this and yearn for it; the idea that they still cannot do without the supposed eye of god that observed and watched us for centuries, without that companionable belief that some being is aware of us at all times and knows everything about us and follows every detail of our trajectory like someone following a story of which we are the protagonist; what they can't bear and won't allow is to remain unobserved by anyone, to be neither approved nor disapproved of, neither rewarded nor punished nor threatened, to be unable to count on any spectator or witness regardless of whether they are for us or against us; and they seek out or invent substitutes for that eye, which is now closed or wounded, or weary or inert, or bored and blind, or which has simply looked away from what i am doing; perhaps that's why people today care so little about being spied on and filmed, and often even provoke it, through exhibitionism, although that can prove detrimental and draw down upon them precisely the thing they most dread, the conversion of their story into a disaster.'
*translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa (saramago, de queirós, fraile, atxaga, pessoa, et al.)
December 22, 2017
The third part of this macabre drama / spy novel explores the problem of violence and of doing harm unto others. Jacobo Deza, the protagonist, is involved in a series of violent episodes sometimes directly, others indirectly; deliberately or passively according to the occasion.
Javier Marías probes the psyches of his characters scrutinizing in minute detail the effect of their actions on their sense of who they are now and who they are going to become "tomorrow". As I mentioned in a previous review, the title "Your Face Tomorrow" is adapted from a line of Shakespeare's Henry IV, when Hal begins to realize that he is turning against his former companions and friends.
Marías's writing reminds me of Sebald, one of my favourite authors. Like in Sebald, there are photographs documenting historical material and lengthy musings on war and its consequences. His prose has also a similar style: erudite, with ramblings on abstract speculation and little action. However, this long, long novel is so gripping!
Marías requires a patient and intellectually disciplined reader. But the effort is really worthwhile.
Javier Marías probes the psyches of his characters scrutinizing in minute detail the effect of their actions on their sense of who they are now and who they are going to become "tomorrow". As I mentioned in a previous review, the title "Your Face Tomorrow" is adapted from a line of Shakespeare's Henry IV, when Hal begins to realize that he is turning against his former companions and friends.
Marías's writing reminds me of Sebald, one of my favourite authors. Like in Sebald, there are photographs documenting historical material and lengthy musings on war and its consequences. His prose has also a similar style: erudite, with ramblings on abstract speculation and little action. However, this long, long novel is so gripping!
Marías requires a patient and intellectually disciplined reader. But the effort is really worthwhile.
May 23, 2011
Can't really put my finger on the one thing I love about this book. The language of the book is superb, the story moves along at a leisurely pace, but isn't stagnant. There are sections of the book which seem to deviate but are interesting and absorbing in particular the last episode with Wheeler.
I also like Jacques, Jaime, Jacobo call him what you will.
I also like Jacques, Jaime, Jacobo call him what you will.
July 8, 2019
A masterful trilogy of truth, betrayal, coercion and culpability - all too relevant in today's culture of surveillance.
To read my review of the trilogy, please click here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...
To read my review of the trilogy, please click here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2019...
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