Clandestine In Chile

While I was waiting for a train at Kings Cross, I began looking for a bookstore. A quick google maps exercise showed me several within five minutes walk, so I was thrilled. Unfortunately google maps did not tell me that the kind of book shop you get in this area doesn’t sell books… Luckily after making my way through the bondage (seriously - book store?) I found a socialist book store. Much better, I’m sure you’ll agree. The result of this was that I bought the first book by an author whose name I recognised: Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Marquez is much more famous for ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ and ’One Hundred Years of Solitude’, his fiction. This book takes a completely different path and tells the true story of Miguel Littin, a Chilean film director who lives in exile from Chile. Deciding to make a documentary of how General Augusto Pinochet’s fascist government has affected his country, he sneaks back into the country in a disguise and begins filming.

The book is fairly entertaining, though would probably have a much bigger impact for someone more familiar with Pinochet’s reign than myself. To get the full force of the book you have to know, or assume, that the country is under a repressive, murderous regime. Although you are reminded of this throughout the book, there aren’t any scene’s to back this view up. On the contrary, whenever Littin gets close to authority figures, as happens frequently, he always escapes without too much danger. To me, the length’s he goes to in order to maintain his secret identity seem rather extreme. Of course, this could just be my own ignorance. It could easily be the case that it was necessary, and Littin does constantly feels endangered. My point is that the book lacks evidence to back up its assertions, it assumes you have a prior knowledge yourself.

The disguise does make for some of the most touching moments in the book though. Towards the end Littin makes his way home, only to discover his own mother does not recognise him. The stories of resistance can also hit home. One man, finding out that his daughter has been sentenced to death, burns himself to death in front of the church to demonstrate against this. His sacrifice gained such public support that his daughter is saved from execution.

All of this goes to show, that while this book may fail on the bigger picture, it’s the human stories that are brought to life. The author’s most famous works are the ones that focus on people, rather than events, so perhaps this is no surprise. If I ever end up in a socialist book store again (and I would much rather this happened than ending up in a bondage store again), I think some fiction from Gabriel Garcia Marquez may be just the trick.

Glamorama

About 2 years ago I read American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis’s satire on banking culture. Afterwards I really wasn’t sure if I would read another book by him. There’s no doubt he has a fantastic writing ability, but I really couldn’t decide if it was worth reading more by an author whose main achievement (to me) was that he was pushing literature to an extreme I hadn’t experienced before. For those of you who don’t know what I mean, let me explain: Graphic violence, graphic sex, and quite a lot of both at once. It was not enjoyable, it was extremely tough going at times, and it really took a lot out of me.

That I ended up reading Glamorama should come as a shock. Especially so, considering the advice I had from two friends who had read it. One said that they stopped reading halfway through because it was too much, the other advised they seriously considered stopping (although they remain a fan). As it turned out, I loved it.

The style is similar - all his novels are narrated in the first person, and the narrator is always excessively vain. The endless celebrity name dropping has been taken to an extreme, with frequent lists of them intentionally placed as a reminder of the narrators priorities. Victor Ward is obsessed with his own identity. The idea that forms the story is a gem: He is caught in a thriller but is too vain (and stupid) to either narrate the story coherently, or realise the importance of what is going on. Terrorist plots are unfolding in the background while he worries which nightclub to go to. The plot cleverly plays within the thriller structure, with the underlying satire of Wards sense of identity being teased throughout.

So why do people think it pushes things too far? I don’t feel it does. The scenes in American Psycho felt so shocking because they were narrated by a sociopath. In this book the shock value of the terrorist plot is largely filtered out by the narrators self obsession, it blurs the violence from the reader. The sex, while as graphic as ever, lacks the violence that made American Psycho so disturbing. I should note that there is material to offend the casually homophobic among you, although I have little sympathy for such people. I mention this more to describe that yet again, I found my self reading Bret Eason Ellis and thinking ‘I’ve never read anything like this before…’, except, this time it was kinda fun.