Get Between Eternities Assembled By Javier Marías Contained In Copy

don't know if we'll ever be able to see a film about an artist or read a book about his or her life without it making us wonder if our admiration for the work of such a creature hasn't been a big mistake too true of course so perhaps we should be especially thankful a biography or documentary film about javier marías has heretofore not been made the great spanish writer in addition to his exceptional body of fictional offerings and like so many non american authors has also accumulated a significant output of essays newspaper columns and other feature articles between eternities collects some two decades worth of such writingsany fan of marías's novels will find much to enjoy in this newly translated non fiction collection perhaps most of all his resplendent prose yet overall between eternities leaves a little to be desired though it ought to be said that the bar for marías's writing is already so demonstrably high given how exceptional so much of his fiction is nonetheless king xavier of redonda could pen nearly anything and it would command the attention of many this reader included between eternities explores alights and muses upon a rather wide swath of subjects including film european cities most notably venice which makes up the collections's longest piece books his own and others authors the writerly profession aging passing time death etcwhile marías has always seemed like a deliberate careful and observant writer there's a whiff of haughtiness to some of these pieces for such an erudite and learned fellow one might expect a healthy and necessary dose of iconoclasm or even irreverence yet surely none is to be found the collection eschews politics almost entirely nonetheless there's much within between eternities to slake even the most ardent marías devotee's literary thirst though it surely does not make one any less impatient for the next novel any feeling of pity arises at least in my case from the contrary idea far from carrying a child around inside us which would it must be said be a terrible nuisance what we think we see in our photos or in our oldest memories is that the adult we are was already contained in the child that we were and wasn't very difficult to spot either often in order to get a sense of someone with whom sooner or later i'm going to have dealings i try to imagine what they would have been like as a child and how we would have got on whether we would have been good friends or have hated each other's guts one comes to realize that if anyone contains anyone it's the child who contains the future adult and not the other way round and when one looks at old photos it's hard not to think in a way of the burden this implies not that there's any place for self pity here either throughout all of history children have always been adults in the making and the reason childhood has been seen as important is because of the way it shapes and influences what will come later which is what matters nowadays on the other hand people give importance to childhood itself as if humanity's sole crazy aim was to shape and create eternal perennial children not a good idea but that is how it is translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa saramago pessoa de ueirós vila matas cardoso atxaga carrasco et alJavier Marias is justifably best known in the English speaking world as a uite magnificent novelist but in his native Spain he is also a prolific essayist and newspaper columnistHis Spanish pieces have been collected into a number of collections fromamong others Pasiones Pasadas Vida del Fantasma Literatura y Fantasma Mano de Sombra but have only been sporadically translated into English So this English language collection published intranslated by his long term collaborator Margaret Jull Costa and selected and edited by Alexis Grohmann is to be welcomed Spanning such a long period the earliest was written inand one piece was written inand wide variety of topics the result isn't totally coherent although Grohmann has done a good job of grouping pieces under broad themesThe vast bulk of the pieces arepages with one a few longer than this by far the longest piece on Venice has already been published in English earlier inas the slightly disappointing as not terribly insightful Venice An Interior my review Also published inwas Marias contribution to The Cahiers Series To Begin at the Beginning my review Again I was a little underwhelmed and arguably the cof the essay here on writing rather remove the need to read that book with many of the same themes repeatedThe one postpiece here Writing a Little Moreexplains whyof Marias fictional works and indeed one of his essay collections take their titles and concepts from Shakespeare There are so many ideas that he merely noted in passing but left unexplored you feel tempted to go down them to venture along paths he merely signalled the energy the rhythm the glow of his images and metaphors all drive us on and create in is an illusion of intuition revelation or even sudden wisdom Then when you emerge from the wave and look back you realise that there is still much to explore to develop to puzzle over and think about What further encouragement does an author need to write a little Those are thenovels A Heart so White Macbeth Tomorrow in the BattleRichard III Dark Back of Time Tempest Your Face Tomorrow Henry IV part II Thus Bad Begins Hamlet the story collection When I Was Mortal Richard III and Seré amado cuando falte Coriolanus 'I Shall Be Lovd when I am Lackd See there is little specific commentary on his own books although he does in one essay comment on the auto fiction nature of All Souls not that he accepts that label “another ridiculous concept currently in vogue and in particular the issue he had with the character of the narrator who was almost entirely based on himself but not actually him an issue he ultimately resolved by having the narrator looking back on the experiences in Oxford that he shared with the author being unlike Marias married with children The other issue raised by All Souls was the characters that were inspired albeit much less closely based on real life characters from Oxford often combinations of

than one person this was of course the focus of his magnificent meta fictional false novel Dark Back of TimeHis experience of Oxford leads him in another piece “The Keys of Wisdom” to hail the uniueness of the Oxford method of inuisition of visiting scholars True these crucifixions were carried out with enormous delicacy as if the pain would be lessened if the nails were hammered on very slowly and by someone wearing silk gloves in a litany if hesitant and extremely polite but poisonous uestions “I wonder if” is the usual opening gambit to which no one however well prepared and composed they might be will be capable of giving a satisfactory answer Oxford then almost never states it merely uestions and it does so to perfection Although he admits he is unable to comment as to whether this uniuness isn't in reality shared with Cambridge He himself notes only the extreme superficial likeness of the two great Universities which makes one suspect the existence of enormous underlying differences and notes that in contrast to the instinctive disdain for graduates from any other University in the world Oxford graduates treat those who come from Cambridge with an exuisite respect tinged with deep set loathing I can not resist but insert here the memorable moment in Blackadder when a German spy is unmaskedCaptain Blackadder And then the final irrefutable proof Remember you mentioned a clever boyfriendNurse Mary YesBlackadder Well I leapt on the opportunity to test you I asked you whether he had been to one of the great universities Oxford Cambridge HullMary WellBlackadder What you didn't spot is that only two of those are great universitiesMary You swineGeneral Melchett That's right Oxford's a complete dumpMarias in common with many leading non English speaking authors is also a prolific translator and in “My favourite book” he comments that if a writer is really honest then their favourite book will be the one they themselves have written Which gives him the wonderful pleasure of being able to hand his accolade to Tristram Shandy since he wrote it in Spanish being responsible for an award winning translation In artistic terms Marias argues for the opposite of pretension proclaiming the merits genre fiction notably spy thrillers and of Hollywood movies and Westerns in particular Artistic prejudices are always the most difficult to root out Critics whose duty should be to see beyond the pretensions of artists and the publics passing fancies often allow themselves to be persuaded by the way authors present their work by what they say they have achieved or else are guided by whatever has been a wild success usually in order to take the opposing view and which had been damningly labelled popularAdmirable sentiments and perhaps a uote all Goodreads reviewers myself particularly should take to heart However the resulting section of this book focusing on Westerns and from which indeed the collection takes its title a uote from the made for TV movie Broken Trail and cover picture is perhaps the weakest of the book from my perspective since the pieces don't really without knowledge of the films or actors concerned And having rejected artistic pretension it has to be said that as in his novels Marias writes from a very old fashioned educated upper middle class old fashioned and almost fusty stance towards almost anything modern “vulgar” is perhaps to his mind the greatest of insultsThe two main deliberate omissions from this English language selection are Marias' extensive writing on politics and football which feels rather a shame particularly given the uality of the two pieces that are included Albeit one wonders if his pieces on smoking see eg have been deliberately omitted as out of step with UKUS attitudes'No Narrative Shame' was written inas a sort of spin off of Your Face Tomorrow one of a number of reports in the style of that book on real life figures But it could well have been written inEssentially the man is a bore even when hes merely a guest he has to dominate Whenever he gets together with other heads of state its obvious that deep down he feels like an intruder and its precisely his jaunty carefree manner that betrays his deep seated insecurity this man is unscrupulous but in the most real and radical sense of the world he has never rejected scruples for the simple reason that they are beyond his imagination and have never been part of his thinking let alone his valuesThe subject no not who you are thinking but Silvio BerlusconiAlthough even this piece betrays a certain amount of snobbery as Marias is delighted to reveal that Berlusconi started as a cruise ship entertainer shades of John Prescott and reminds Marias of an old style caretaker or porter the kind who kowtow to the owners and to the wealthier tenants but treat delivery men and servants like dirtAnd the one piece on football included is essentially Marias' take on the 'only as good as your last game' cliche which he endorses He reveals that he temporarily but uite seriously fell out with his Barcelona based publisher and also vowed never to again set foot in Tenerife after the dramatic finale of theLa Liga He observes that while a writer an architect or a musician can rest a little after having written a great novel designed a marvellous building or made an unforgettable record some have been deemed to be good right up to their death thanks to one estimable work written fifty years before in sport generally and football in particular having been the best yesterday doesnt count today let alone tomorrow Past joy is as nothing compared to present anxietyOverall this was certainly a significant improvement on Jose Saramago's another great southern European peer of Marias rather embarrasing NotebooksAnd Marias completists aside ie me this is myth Marias book this is best read in place of not just Venice An Interior which it subsumes but also the Cahiers Series To Begin at the BeginningHowever this still feels like something to fill the time while one waits for Berta Isla which seems to be garnening critical acclaim to make its way into English.