Death with Interruptions and Twilight

I'm doing a bit of a mash-up this time because, really, Jose Saramago's book, Death with Interruptions, was something of a tidy segue into Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire romance novel Twilight.

Saramago, a Nobel prize-winning novelist, seems to write books with as few paragraph breaks as possible, little capitalization (unless it's to further confuse the reader), and no dialogue indicators. I had already abandoned his novel Blindness because of this style, but I was really intrigued by the premise of Death with Interruptions. On the first day of the year, at the stroke of midnight, in an unnamed country, people simply stop dying. Unfortunately, good health does not necessarily follow immortality and instead there continue to be people on the very brink of death--some horribly mangled, some merely comatose, and most somewhere in-between. They simply fail to progress to the next logical step in human existence.

The book is split into two parts. In the first, the populace and the government, as well as the institutions that had hitherto been involved with the "commerce" of death deal with both the promise and the threat of immortality. As Saramago writes, they are "a society torn between the hope of living forever and the fear of never dying." I liked that the down-sides of immortality were addressed. People don't want to be perpetually dying without actually succeeding at it, so they start smuggling themselves or their relatives over the border where death continues to ply its trade. Professional smugglers make a fortune and funeral homes and insurance companies adapt in their own creative ways to the drying up of business. The goverment and the old folks homes seem under the most threat from future overburden and the book bogs down a bit on details.

In the second section of Death with Interruptions, death (with an assertive lower-case d) gets creative, and tries to remedy her mistake of offering immortality by promising to send letters ahead of time so you get a heads up about the date (although not the exact circs.) of your demise. This was kind of funny, I thought, as I pictured newly-powerful Posties (because, of course, she used the Postal Service) chasing unwilling recipients through the streets, brandishing the violet-colored letter that no one can refuse.

Ah, except that one letter is refused. This was the most confusing part of the book, though I think I was kind of giving up by the time I got this far. It's incredibly exhausting to sort through unmarked dialogue, besides which, Saramago never met minutiae he didn't want to dissect. In any case, one of the letters is never delivered and death sets off on a quest to discover why. I never did quite figure out why, except that there are hints that the target was already immortal for some reason.

Which brings us to Twilight where immortality is seen as romantic with none of the awkward what-will-we-do-with-old-people business from Saramago. Vampires mythology reassuringly assures eternal youth (well, depending how old you are when you cross over) as well as eternal life. Um, except that should really be eternal death.

I didn't have a problem with the mythology in this book. Sure, vampires are sexy, don't actually turn to a pile of ashes in sunlight (instead they glow--kind of cool), are incredibly fast and strong, great drivers...etc. Apparently they're attracted by smell (not blood) the way some people prefer chocolate ice cream to strawberry (one of the strangest analogies made in this book). I'm okay with all that, and, as promised by friends Alyssa and Denise (not teens, mind you), Twilight rips right along. A seventeen year old of Adonis perfection as both boyfriend and saviour, a human in peril from rival scary vampires, hints of a werewolf clan--All great.What I hated was the writing, and the thought that all this could unfold around THE PROM. Okay, I know it's a teen book so I'm not too harsh on this, but there's no excuse for lazy dialogue. Please, make me believe kids are talking. Vampire dialogue, I'll give more of a pass on because some of them are over 300 years old in this book. They can have strange turns of phrases if they want.

I thought the scenes of Edward and Bella trying to hold themselves back (too much intimacy could cause Edward to literally rip off Bella's head. Ooo! Awkward!) worked really well in a Jane Austen kind of way, while also echoing the X-Men character Rogue who can never touch anyone without killing him. The enforced chastity for Rogue is just depressing, but in the case of Bella and Edward, it's incredibly romantic. Yep, I get it.

Still, I guess Bella is a seventeen year old, smitten by her first boyfriend, who happens to be a vampire, and she sees nothing wrong with wanting to become immortal to ensure a "life" with him. Yikes! really? Barring that in her future, I see a sad little echo of Eos asking Zeus to grant Tithonus eternal life, but forgetting to ask for eternal youth, thereby cursing her handsome lover to eventual crickethood. That's a myth that always freaked me out as a kid.

I'm probably not going to read the rest of the books in the Twilight series, but I kind of like the idea of a 38 year old Bella still trying to hang onto her 17 year old vampire boytoy (who has only just succeeded in kissing her without killing her).

I'm also done with Saramago (ow! my brain hurts), but I'll probably watch the Twilight movie as well as Blindness (a nod to Saramago). The dialogue will probably be worse or just as bad in Twilight, but in Blindness at least I'll know who's talking.

Honorable Bandit.A walk across Corsica

The GR20 route that more or less crosses the Mediterranean island of Corsica is apparently the toughest long-distance hike in Europe, but you wouldn't know it from Brian Bouldrey's diverting account of his attempt. While he doesn't make it seem like a walk in the park, he makes it seem like a person in decent shape could wander along at leisure. He doesn't exactly advocate this, but admits that he himself has often "happened upon" some of his toughest extreme trail hikes, like the one in the Dolomites that he more accurately translates as "the Way of the Rusty Ladders Precariously Nailed into Sheer Cliff Walls Half a Century Ago and in Great Need of Repair." The GR20 also has its share of affixed ladders, but the guide book recommends a snorkel and a compass as neccessities (which he ignores) so Bouldrey doesn't worry too much about the mention of ladders. Until he is chased down the ladders by "extreme sport" types. Oh, and a friendly labrador. Oh yes, and the perverse guy going South to North instead of the usual route. In fact, it's quite crowded on the trail, inversely related to the difficulty of the particular passage.

Like the Appalachian Trail in the States, you can leave parts of the GR20, and occasionally Bouldrey can hear traffic from the roads, but having experienced Corsican roads (and, more specifically, Corsican drivers), I'm sure it's safer on the trail-- sheer cliff laddered walks and wild pigs be damned. But the proximity to the occasional road and the appeal of the wild scenery brings all sorts of people to the hike.

The "types" Bouldrey meets, or his descriptions of them, make up a lot of this book. He says trails offer all sorts of Dickensian characters. There are, of course, the extreme sport guys who seemingly can't function with shirts on and leave each campsite before daybreak, eschewing fortifying coffee in favor of coffee-flavored goo sucked out of a packet. There are the teen girls who are in waaaaayyyy over there heads. The day-trippers, joyfully under-equipped, and sliding down scree in an effortless way. The foreigners (though not many Americans), very few Corsicans hike themselves, though Bouldrey meets them running the gites along the way, the chatters, the taciturn, the bickering couples. I suppose it's like any travel destination--just more physical work.

The hike through Corsica is merely a vehicle for Bouldrey to talk about why he walks and some of this was interesting and some of it wasn't. I think he went on a bit too much about his past and his relationships, but when he stays in the present, it's quite entertaining. He has amusing repartee with his German walking partner and he makes fun of her, himself, and various other events or fellow-hikers, but never in a mean-spirited way. Mostly, it's about himself, so he talks, for instance of failing to live up to most hikers/writers who claim to do their best thinking while walking. He mentions Rousseau, Rimbaud, Kierkegaard as examples. Bouldrey is more of the obssessive bad thought walker or, if he's lucky, he merely thinks inane thoughts, like "Where is a water source?/God I'm thirsty./ Where is a water source?/That guy has one of those high-tech canteens./ Did I mention I was thirsty?/...Why does that Belgian need two walking stick and why is he making all that clicking noise with them?/Why that annoying clicking?/The clicking!/ That damnable clicking!/ Now I must kill somebody!" If he's not lucky, he's stuck singing "I know an Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly" ad nauseum. In fact, this song becomes short hand throughout the book for bad hiking moments.

My father-in-law, who is planning his first trip to Corsica this May (to visit my relatives) was disappointed that Honorable Bandit didn't give him enough sense of the culture, but I thought there was quite a bit. You get the landscape, of course, which is so amazing that it is hard to describe. As one of his friends remarked on a photo Bouldrey showed later, "This looks like the place where you made an appointment to see the Devil." That sort of sums it up on some days. Bouldrey also remarks on the chronic Independence movement in Corsica. He attempts to explain his love of Polyphonie, the peculiar Corsican musical style, and of course, the food and the beer! My mouth watered from the mention of brocciu cheese and lonzu smoked ham. Even Pietra beer gave me a case of nostalgia, and I'm not much of a beer person. He does get some of the French wrong which always bugs me in books, though I don't blame the authors. I just wonder what editors are for if they can't get languages right.

I'm sure I'll never walk the GR20, though perhaps I'll be a day-tripper someday. Bouldrey gave me that much confidence, at least. I'll be sure to wear the right shoes--the debate is open in this book--, bring my snorkel, and be prepared to micro-analyze just why that old lady swallowed so many animals.

America America

The setting for this great novel by Ethan Canin is so idyllic that it feels more like the 50s than it does the early 70s. Corey Sifter is a working class teen who is befriended by the benevolent patriarch of the upstate NY town in which he lives. Bit by bit he becomes drawn into the seemingly enchanted world of the entire Metarey family until the line blurs between Corey's real family and that of his benefactor. Okay, yes, disaster strikes later (it is the 70s, after all), but I just wanted to cozy up with this book and live out my happy little life in Saline.

Normally, I hate a book that starts with the death of the main character and then works backwards. but in this one, the important character is old and you know you won't regret the story. The story is this: As part of the Metarey circle, Corey ends up running errands for a presidential campaign and occasionally driving the somewhat dubious senator who is running against Nixon (aiming for 1974, though we know how that went). Then all things go to hell (as do the 70s, really).

Senator Bonwiller is the "great liberal hope." It's hard to read about this character without immediately thinking of Senator Ted Kennedy. Bonwiller is a large man of many, um, appetites, just like the Teddy of old, and he's a champion of the "working man" and the undertrodden, much as Kennedy is viewed these days. Even the scandal (or one of them) that envelops Corey and the entire Metarey family and eventually begins the implosion of Bonwiller's campaign evokes Chappaquiddick, though it's not as messy.

And here's where the narration becomes interesting. Or maybe annoying. The story is told in flashbacks by a fiftysomething Corey in present day. We get his reminiscence as well as his explanations of the events unfolding around his job for Senator Bonwiller (he's talking about it to his intern--his protege--at the paper he publishes). But we occasionally also get flashbacks that jump back and forth by a few months or years. That's a little weird. Sometimes he's 17 and a few pages later he's in college at Haverford. Pages later it's back to Corey and his intern, than whoops! he's 17 again and in thrall of the Metarey girls.

Corey is also a somewhat unreliable narrator. I mean, he's believable, and certainly likeable enough. He doesn't seem false, but if the reader is hoping for some sort of resolution to the big mystery/accident that begins the end of the Bonwiller campaign as well as the Metarey family, well, the author is stingy. I never did quite figure out if Corey was lying to himself about what he knew when or if he simply, honestly wasn't sure and wanted to keep a reporter's open mind. Most likely, Corey does not want to wreck the pedestal upon which he has set Liam Metarey by digging too deeply into what his benefactor may or may not have done. And who can blame him? Liam Metarey is a perfect, novelistic creation. He's the one you believe should be running for president except that he's too busy being unassumingly perfect.

Author Canin's slipping back and forth in time makes us patient as readers and the payoff is worth it in the details. As I've said, we begin with the death of Senator Bonwiller, but the identity of the one weeping man comes to us slowly, as does the identity of Corey's wife, though I had my suspicions early on that one. He calls her "my wife" too often for us to not figure out that using her name would spoil the slow discovery. These identities, like the purpose of the bathrobe Liam Metarey gives Corey as a parting gift, come casually and slowly, but it's a fun little puzzle to work everything out.

The book does read a bit like a time of innocence dashed by human greed and corruption. People and the cozy town are wrecked--either literally or figuratively-- and then replaced by better (or the same) and life moves on gently.