The last week or so I have been reading John Le Carre again – and early Le Carre, before real world politics and social critique get prominence in his work, and back when he was just writing short little yarns. I’ve written on Le Carre before and don’t intend to get into it again, other than to say – read this guy, particularly his more recent stuff, cause it’s bloody amazing both as story and as political commentary.
No, today’s not about what I’m reading, but about what Meg is writing. We’ve both embarked on a love affair with Jose Saramago in recent months – for ongoing satisfaction and ever-growing anticipation, certainly the stand-out menage-a-trois of my life. I first heard of him a few years back, when a member of the faculty union executive passed on his novel Blindness among a stack of natural history and biology books she recommended. Took me ages to read Blindness, but when I finally did I was simply blown away. Some of the very best writing I’d ever come across – unique in style and tone, gripping as story, fascinating characters and both a breadth and depth of intellectual engagement that very very few writers or thinkers display.
Portuguese communist, devout athiest, living in self-imposed exile from his home-country after a run-in with the Chuch, outspoken critic of Zionism and thoroughly unrepentent revolutionary. He wrote a book as a young man, then waited some thirty years before his next, after which came a wave of brilliant novels that collectively earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. But, like all writers for whom English is not the language of their text, Saramago has been largely unheard of in North America, a huge loss for all of us and one only beginning to be rectified now because someone decided to turn Blindness into a feature film – and not a very good one, if the reviews are to be trusted. Because this writer, more than anyone else I can think of, deserves to be read. Because this writer deserves to be read, in particular, at this particular historical and political moment.
Saramago is all about crisis. He’s all about what happens to people when something fundamental about their identity as people suddenly evaporates. What happens when those things that fundamentally ground us to the world, but which we simply take for granted, are just no longer there. What happens when the touchstones of our humanity – not our individual identity, but our collective, social body – are no more? This seems to be the common thread, whether the specific scenario is a mass and contagious blindness, a sudden change in the physical landscape, a destablization of our uniqueness as persons, or an invitation to join the gods. Doesn’t matter what Saramago touches, it is gold.
Me, I’m not going to get into it any further than this. But I write this today because I’m thinking of Saramago, and because Megan has started a series of blogs on him that I hope everyone will take a look at. So far just two are on-line – an intro here and a discussion of Blindness here. Titled Reading Saramago During the Collapse, these posts say everything I could and so much more. And the posts leave me asking, “How could I not be so head-over-heels-in-love with this woman”.
So do read them. Me, I’ll carry on with my Le Carre yarns, pondering that very different writer’s blend of politcs and story-making. And I’ll keep adding more Saramago novels to the list of to-be-reads until I get through them all. And I’ll be watching Meg’s blog closely, and waiting waiting waiting for more from her on this old man we are both so turned-on by.
