21st Century Literature discussion

When María sees Javier and Luisa in a restaurant, apparently now married, the novel comes full circle. She recalls the statement of the lawyer Derville in Colonel Chabert: "Far more crimes go unpunished than punished, not to speak of those we know nothing about or that remain hidden, for there must inevitably be more hidden crimes than crimes that are known about and recorded". What do you think about the resolution of the plot, and María's sense of the story's ending?

I thought it was perfect. She did not want to take on the agency to do anything about it in the end, and the fact that she was so close, but decided against it in that moment, both felt note-perfect from a dramatic point of view, and also worked well for the character. She stepped forward from her role as watcher in the middle two parts of the novel, but by the end she is back to letting the world run its course, even in her personal life to some extent, as her comments about her engagement suggest. The quote above is very revealing as is the one immediately following it about so many disparate individuals choosing the same methods of robbery, deception, murder or betrayal against those they loved the most, climaxing in her own words:

'Why should I intervene, or perhaps I should say contravene? If I did, what difference would that make to the order of the universe?'

I think it would make a considerable difference to the order of the universe! But she would never win Javier back and she wouldn't have another perfect couple to spy on. Do you think she will haunt these two, as well?

Would it, though? If everything went like a dream, Javier was brought to justice, etc... all those disparate individuals would still be robbing, deceiving, murdering, betraying... I think that's what she's saying. In the grand scheme of things, etc.

Of course, from a personal point of view, I'd go more with Edmund Burke: 'Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little'.

But maybe the philosophising is only justification, rationalisation, in the end. She doesn't want to cause the ripples that such a revelation should cause. She wants to recede into the background, let life flow its own course, not be the one choosing its channel.

I think this is probably the last they'll see of her, but I wouldn't bet against her becoming infatuated with another person or couple in the future, someone who is unaware of her.

Terry wrote: "Of course, from a personal point of view, I'd go more with Edmund Burke: 'Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little'. "

Oh, so would I!

"The strict sequence of events that makes up our lives seems to us, as it takes place, haphazard. A chance encounter, a sudden death, love at first sight, an overheard conversation, all belong, we imagine, not to a tightly plotted thriller but to the erratic jottings of a distracted dreamer. A woman might notice a couple meeting every day in the same cafe, discover later that the man has been stabbed to death by a demented beggar, and decide to speak to the widow the next time she sees her. Each of these events seems whimsical and arbitrary and yet, as Javier Marías shows ... chance is nothing but the result of our own negligent reading. Read in the proper order, from the first to the last chapter, everything we do and everything we witness, however unlikely or disconnected, fits into a story in which we are both narrators and protagonists." - Alberto Manguel, The Guardian

Can this be right? This strikes me as way too tidy!

Sounds like Pope to me:

'All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see...'

The thing I don't like about the quote is the priority given to one side by the phrase 'negligent reading'. For me we're absolutely talking about two sides of the same coin here -- it's just a matter of perspective. The whimsical and arbitrary is life, every life. To say that there is nothing more to it is as absolutely true as saying that such randomness is effectively what makes up destiny; the only difference is your point of view -- down there in it, at the time, versus up above, with the benefit of hindsight, seeing the whole, in perspective.

A story is just a frame, so yes, everything we do can fit a story which we can tell, which makes more than just a set of happenstances, especially when we start to think 'this is my story', when we prioritise our point of view. But that same life unframed, viewpoint not prioritised, is -- at the same time -- just a set of happenstances.

I'm a great fan of happenstances! Life is so much simpler in neutral...

So, do you think the plot essentially a pretext for advancing the skeptical worldview embodied by the style? Would you say this is typical Marías?