Tuesday, December 24, 2002

Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat, the latest airport bookstore acquisition. The reviews say most of what I would want to say, and better. (I don't agree with the site's own review. Although I agree that there are some structural and editorial flaws, and that some of the fictional characters are sometimes a bit flat, the question of why the dictator was followed is addressed better than I've seen just about anywhere, as are the long-term after-effects of the dictatorship: destruction of any sense of the common good, of personal ethics, infantilization.) It felt very real. Painfully real. Trujillo's domestic violence was more intense than Salazar's, but the trajectory of a "national savior," the corruption of everyone he touched, and the destruction of independent thought and morality, were what we lived growing up in Portugal pre-1974. The book's cross-cutting structure works very well for the most part, although some of the later sections are almost reportorial, stylistically and descriptively impoverished. Balaguer is the most interesting real figure: how to gain power and defuse the aftermath of the dictatorship without seeming to want anything. And the ethical question: was it justifiable to allow six months of violent revenge by Trujillo's family to make the transition possible? The English translation is awkward in places. Unfortunately, my Spanish vocabulary is not good enough to read the original. 9:45:48 PM

New 1GHz TiBook. Better wireless performance makes it easier to use everywhere in the house. Maybe I'll write more now. 9:15:31 PM