A Heart So White - Javier Marías

        In the last weeks of July as I was getting ready to leave my life in London and head begrudgingly home to Australia, I started to prepare myself for travel. I'd given myself six weeks to flit about Europe, but had made no specific plans past that other than telling people that I was going to do the Camino de Santiago, which as far as I could tell was “some pilgrimage walk in Spain.” One of the regulars at the cafe I worked in was Spanish, and when I mentioned it to him he told me he'd walked it with his Dad a few years earlier and could help me out with tips and info. I said “I'd love that Jon you're great,” and asked if, while he was thinking about all the practical things I might need on the walk, he'd also be able to recommend me a book by a Spanish author that I could read in his country. Jon set me a really helpful message with everything I could have ever wanted to know about the Camino, and that same day bought me a new copy of A Heart So White by Javier Marías. I didn't read either until the trip was almost done.
        I actually think I may have started reading the book at the airport in Santiago as I was waiting for the plane to take me back to London the day before my final flight home. Jon had made a point of hyping up the first sentence to me, which begins, “I did not want to know, but have since come to know...”. He told it to me in Spanish initially, which upset me, because I didn't understand it, and that injured my fragile pride.

        The book is translated from Spanish - Javier Marías is actually fluent in Engish and Spanish, and has translated books between the languages in the past, but in an interesting decision chose to have someone else translate his own work for him. Actually now that I think about it I can't believe they didn't mention that in the introduction – who ARE these people?
        The themes of language and understanding are almost absurdly obvious considering the story is basically a young man newly married to his wife trying to figure out who the fuck his Dad is and what it means that he's married now.
        The young man (Juan) works as an interpreter, as does his wife Luisa (although she doesn't work so much anymore, as Marías' protagonist keeps insistently reminding us). Juan is fluent in four languages, and works for the UN as one of a horde of faceless translators and interpreters ironically translating things so mundane that no one will ever read or hear. He cynically disavows his own profession as a pandering instrument of vanity for politicians who believe that having their words translated is what gives them meaning.
        The sentences that Marías uses to construct his story are long and winding, often stretching out for half a page and rarely finishing within a single line. They're not the kind of convoluted constructions that ever become tangled though, and when I found I was able to get through their intimidating length with little to no problem, it actually made me feel smarter. I don't know whether he did that on purpose, but those long sentences allowed me to flatter myself into thinking I was accomplishing something more than I actually was in navigating his prose... and look at the effect it's had on me haha. “Navigating his prose”, who the fuck do I think I am? Dickhead.

        One thing that the introduction mentioned was Marías' tendency to jump about in time at the start of his sentences. He'll often start out like that friend of yours who can't seem to get to the point of their dumb story: “The time I learnt about this one thing that happened a few years ago, just after this other thing, was when I was younger, but not as young as I was before then, but still younger, and indeed less old, than I am now, and younger than I will be at any point in the future, or henceforth from this moment...” – you'd think the whole time you'd be screaming in your head “OKAY! YES! I GET IT, YOU KNOW ABOUT COMMAS!” But you're not though. After the first few chapters you can see the way he kind of circles about his point for a while before embarking on whatever story he's chosen to illustrate it. That becomes the rhythm of the story. Each chapter is almost disconnected from the others, and they all serve as little individual vignettes from different times in Juan's life, but are connected by the way that he refers back to them, linking everything together in those circling passages before and after the action.
        My favourite scene is towards the start when Juan – the narrator... the main character is also the narrator... is that important? Eh fuck it – describes the way he met his wife. He was translating between two heads of state, and his future wife was acting as a second translator, kind of a fail-safe to check his own translation and interject if she thought anything was incorrect or unclear. Only Juan stops translating the mundane conversation and instead starts putting his own questions and words in the mouths of these heads of state, who in turn start to engage with what they think the other had said, but was in fact invented by Juan out of boredom. Luisa sits behind him and doesn't say anything, obviously enthralled and excited by what only she knows he is doing. It sounds convoluted and incredibly pretentious, but in reading it I felt the same giddy excitement, like I was getting away with something. I felt like the book was smarter than me, but I was somehow, by the skin of my teeth, getting away with understanding it..
        These ideas of deception, of what constitutes a secret and what constitutes a lie, this is what the book is really concerned with. Language and meaning, saying and not saying, hiding and omitting, it's all there, repeated over and over, drilled into your head. Juan is trying to figure out what it means to be married and share his life with someone. How much should they share? How much can they share? Does he even want to know everything about his new wife, and the vague past of his father? Once you know something, you can't un-know it, so maybe it's better to remain in the dark?

        I'm going to give this book to my cousin for his wedding in a few weeks. I'm going to give him money too DON'T WORRY – and fuck you if you just called me cheap in your head. Or sorry if you didn't, I guess I just got a little defensive there... I'm giving it to him because he's getting married, just like Juan in the book. I don't know whether he'll connect with it, and a part of me feels kind of embarrassed by just how pretentious it feels to be reading a book like this, but I think once you get past that initial dismissive reaction, it's actually surprisingly approachable.
        I feel a little bad for giving away the present that Spanish Jon gave me, but then again it's also kind of nice, right? I've read it, and I've remembered it here, and I can't think of a nicer way of telling my soon-to-be-married little cousin that I've been thinking about him. And hopefully it'll make him feel smart as well, like it did for me. Javier Marías does a great job of using an incredibly simple story to make us think about abstract ideas in a way that feels like we've had those ideas ourselves.
        I just remembered I actually did start reading this book while I was in Spain. On the third or fourth day of the nine I spent on the Camino de Santiago, I arrived in a town an hour before the hostel opened, and met a father and son from Valencia, who I spoke to (in Spanish – ey?!!) about this book and it's author. Apparently he's a well known columnist in Spain and writes about this complicated life shit all the time in the newspaper. Spanish Jon, you absolutely nailed it with the book recommendation, man. And how nice is this message he wrote for me in the cover:

        Dear Taco,

        They Say that if happiness exists it is achieved by the contribution of these four things: sports, sex, music, and conversation. I believe all of these are achievable by travelling. So keep travelling, man.

        Jon.

Why The Fuck Do I Read?

        Why the fuck do I even keep reading books anyway? Half the time if I'm trying to read a book while sitting down I'll fall asleep, or I'll read a whole page and realise when I get to the end that I've spent the entire time thinking about washing my clothes tomorrow. Last year I discovered – I mean I don't know if this counts as a discovery but still – that if I don't have anywhere in particular to be, I can walk on the street and read while I do that. I don't fall asleep that way, and I barely ever walk out into oncoming traffic.
        I've read a fair few books I guess. In the years since I left school in 2008 I've probably averaged just under one a month. It's easier to get through a few when I'm travelling and have more time, but then during other periods when I've been working 5-6 days a week I might be stuck on one for four or five months, so it averages out. A lot of the books I've read I can't remember. I've read enough books at this point that I definitely couldn't make a complete list of them all, and that feels nice when I say it like that. On the other hand, I think of the hours and hours I've spent struggling through this or that impenetrable volume that I bought one afternoon because I was feeling insecure and wanted to prove to myself that I'm a Smartyboy – I know those hours have been wasted. Once I bought some book by a Danish guy that compared itself to Dante's Inferno – which I absolutely have not read but HEY IMPRESSIVE! – and after reading the first 100 pages of the 800-page behemoth, then going back to the start and reading 50 of those pages again, I gave up and shelved the thing. That's happened way more times than I'd like to admit.
        When I think about why I read... I guess it has a lot to do with that idea of proving something to myself. For some reason I've got it in my head that reading is what smart people do, and I'm a smart person (duh) so of course I'm going to read. And the books are almost always 'classics', because as much as it's been a struggle to admit to myself slowly over the years, I'm not a fast reader, so I figure that if I'm going to invest all this time and effort into something, it better be worth it. I'm not going to spend those hours struggling to hold my head up in a beam of sunshine reading something that's NOT going to change my life ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Every book had better be a fucking revelation – that's what I believe, I think? I know, I know, that's crazy... and way too much pressure.

        I've started to get into this thing recently where when I finish reading a book, rather than put it on my bookshelf like a trophy of the month or so I spent reading the thing, I just give it to someone else. Recycling – innit! We all know how quickly those fanciful 'To Read' lists can balloon out into laughable implausibility, and as fervently we people might implore each other to read the books we love - “You HAVE to. you HAVE TO! IT'S INCREDIBLE!!” – it's almost always ends in broken promises. Unless the book is literally within reach, then suddenly it's real, and we have to – that's the only way to get shit done. The only problem with this approach though is when I give it away, suddenly I've lost my trophy.
        That's why this blog. I'm going to write reviews of each book I read, along with the story, if there is one, of how I came to have it in the first place. Most of the time it's the fact that I can't walk into a book shop without buying something, but sometimes they're given to me by friends, or even by other random people I meet in the world.
        Not exactly reviews I don't think – to be fair I have no idea if this is even going to be something I stick with for any length of time so what am I talking about trying to categorize the things I've not even written yet... What I want this to be though is just a way to make myself reflect on the book that I've just read, maybe think about what it might mean, what the author wanted me to feel, and then allow those thoughts to pass, and move on. The stories are a way of putting it into perspective and contextualizing it within my own life, and then the entries themselves will be like the trophies on my bookcase that doesn't exist any more because most of my non-clothes shit is in boxes at Mum's place. I'll be able to use these entries as a way to remind myself of the things that I've read, and hopefully tell other people about the great things that are out there – or alternatively the garbage that made me angry and that no one should ever look at again.
        I won't be putting any spoilers in there, so don't worry about that – as if there were actually people out there worried that I might give away the Big Plot Twist and ruin The Great Gatsby for them...
        I feel like in just about everything, but books especially, it's pretty much impossible to give away a 'spoiler' piece of information. In some books okay there are maybe one or two pivotal plot points that you probably want to find out for yourself, but even then if you somehow come to know them before reading the book, it's hardly going to diminish your enjoyment of it. The time spent reading it is so much more than just one or two moments – it might take days, weeks, even months, to get through a good book, and in that time the ebb and flow of feeling creates something more intangible and dare I say it (GASP) valuable than just, “Gatsby has no hands!” OOH SO SCANDALOUS!! It's about the journey, it's about the way there, and while it's easy to get caught up on the incidental details of something that are easy to remember after the moment has passed, that moment is what's really important. I feel like that's what reading is all about.

        I'm excited now, I think this is a good idea. It's simple, and maybe even distracting enough that I'll stop thinking about it as “An Idea” and remember to just enjoy the moments spent writing it, just like I'm trying to learn to do with reading. Stop thinking about it so much you idiot – that's what I say to myself always, before running back to those same deafening thoughts LIKE A COWARD. No, it's getting better. I'm learning to read just for pleasure, to enjoy the act itself, rather than focussing on the end-point, the finishing of the thing, which is of course meaningless. The joy is in the doing. I'm trying to remember that, and in doing so, stop calling myself an idiot.

        Peace, Taco.