The need for a Marias book is a physical uncompromising yearning, . A novel 1,200 pages long broken down into three volumes. Can you imagine, three volumes of Marias magic to quell the need. A magic carpet ride for a month or more.Marias jumps in right away through his main character Deza, can the truth be derived at from the gathering of facts rather than the circumlocutions of impressions. Does one, after memorizing all the detail and facts of a painting, aware of each brushstroke and its assimilation into the overall painting before us, capture the painting, its essence? A problem with this mode of viewing a painting is that it exists then only in the past or a presumptive future when the past will be recounted. It may be all that is left if one cannot trust anyone. Then, one cannot give oneself over to anyone or anything, a painting included. Gathering facts by those removed from self-intrusion either through will or an absence of self will theoretically lead to an assessment of who people are and who they will be in the future. Their face tomorrow.Deza and his elderly mentor Wheeler, both from Oxford, are working for British Intelligence, due to their uncanny ability to see within a person something closer to their essence by their tics of behavior and gesture. All is recorded without the perturbance of emotion. This is deemed a necessary attribute for the post war British spies of this clandestine unit. Possibly a detriment in social life, their life is their work. Little else exists beyond it. Our life is to read about them. In this Intelligence process the impossibility of pure assessment of another, no matter how isolated one is removed from one self and others is impossible. There are always blinders on no matter how shaved and small. We human’s are limited to some degree by our history, culture, and unwittingly need to project our conflicts, weaknesses, etc. onto others. But we may be getting down to the crust of the book. These agents and main characters are so terminally isolated from their own feelings and experiences, they may be removed from projection. Good for them bad for me. The rest of the 386 pages were painfully lived within their minds. This is where they lived. An unexciting, bland, gloom ridden aperture into lives lived alone and apart. A robotic quality persists. By the last 100 pages I was seeking help. I phoned 911 but they refused to come. They were tied up with others in the area reading this book but would eventually get back to me. I didn’t care. At least I heard another human’s voice and one that relayed feeling. Inhales and exhalations.My own problem rests within my pair of blinders with the inscriptions of the many Marias novels I loved. Other than his last book, I have enjoyed his books immensely and went into this expecting the learned voice, aura of the adventure of intellectuality, the repetitiveness creating a rhythm and lingo of his own. An irrefutable voice needing nothing but its own authorial tone. In this book these strengths flattened. Overused his easy hum of digressions spawned lectures. It was a book of lectures. I don’t enjoy being lectured to or at, especially for 386 pages and by one dimensional people who have been rewarded by their entrance into the Intelligence community for being one dimensional. I would have enjoyed it if told in the third person where the narrator, a more rounded human might relay the story with some texture of feelings for these others.I can’t believe I’m talking about Marias like this. If you are a true Friend you will stop me. Right?If taken as a lengthy case study on the life of those profoundly isolated from themselves-Deja finds a folder on himself where the conclusions were that he had no interest in himself, exploring himself, but only on others, (A means of protection for not looking, seeking himself?)-it might be interesting in an Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, University Department. From the beginning of the book it is made clear that no one is to be trusted. Therefore the best mode of action is the non-action of not speaking to anyone including oneself, to say nothing, to forget or lose ones own language. Even in a book about spies this is gloom, dreariness. Having it take place as a means of relating to oneself is frightening. More frightening is the possibility of one’s language gone still, and these agency people having no self. This is precisely what makes them effective in their job and Marias goes the 386 pages to tell us that. An un-admirable marathon. A strange quest. I believe his initial quest was to show not tell. Then, he got caught in the netted web of his style. Previously, its warm solemn tone, its repetitions, the explaining in alternative words, concocted into a meditative softened chant where the material of the work grew from, and its magical stew. In, Your Face Tomorrow, he seemed to have a story idea then attempted to fit it into his style. It didn’t work in reverse. The style wore thin quickly and soon became painful. I would much rather think of YFT this way than Marias having run through his material to be written and now is left with the worn out remnants of what previously worked so well. Much like aging athletes having difficulty letting go and hanging on too long. Remembered then for their fading years. I would like to remember Marias for his Oxford novels where his style proved vital and the text thrived.There was no pulse. I checked it three times. CPR proved fruitless. It was a painfully long slog taking much out of me that I wouldn’t choose to put myself through again. So, why didn’t I choose to close the covers and toss it? The idea of having hope that something would happen never entered my mind since nothing had happened. There was no indication that these mechanical stand-ins for characters, with their cogs and gears monotonously churning, had the capability of responding to any stimuli. Their only destination was a rigid straight line. If it led to walking into a wall they turned until the next wall sent them back to their original spot. I went on out of respect for Marias. A strange case of loyalty to a man who provided me so much. The fact that he will never know, unless someone here tells him, does not matter. It is more important that I know and that I gave him what I consider a fair shake, All that I could give.It is important to note that I am a reader who enjoys experimental writing, who often sees plot as a threat to the texture and weave of style within a book I am reading. I wish I could say this was an experimental attempt. Also, I wish I could say I am not ranting but I am. I think this comes from the disappointment of a writer I so respected and enjoyed. Thus, I have been hoodwinked by my expectations. I don’t expect the next two volumes and its some 900 pages to be much different. No way I would explore if this is true or not. I know that my reading of this book, my impressions and responses, for myself is accurate but I am open and hope that in some court of deciding the value of works of literary fiction I missed something and Marias did come through with a gem. Until then I will shelter in place.
So yeah, I suppose that if you write an actionless, multi-volume novel with a vulgarly high comma-to-period ratio and no actual events save a party and stuffy rich erudite people yakking, you must be consciously placing yourself in a specific European literary tradition, and inviting certain comparisons to some celebrated, endless plotlessness that has come before. So yes, to answer the question blazing in everyone's mind: if Marcel Proust were Spanish and writing a twenty-first-century spy novel, I suppose it might be at least vaguely like this.This is one of those books that makes me confused about my own literary tastes, which is something that I certainly appreciate. I think of myself as a girl who needs robust narrative and appreciates a certain down-to-earthiness in my novels, but I guess I'm not, or I wouldn't get into shit like this.I'm totally obsessed with the opening lines:One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world, or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end, become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.What I love here is the jolt of that language and the ideas there that shocks me into a completely foreign mode of thought. It's a fascinating beginning, which does demand a little work to read. I mean, it's pretty obvious that this is going to be a highly interior, idea-heavy novel, and that's not the sort of thing I really think that I like.But I guess sometimes it is, because I did like this very much, and I'm planning to read the next one whenever -- yawn, scratch, facebook status update -- I get the time. I think what I realized is that I don't just read for the diversion and entertainment that comes from a plot; I also read to get outside my own head, to sublet, as it were, somebody else's, and what this book succeeds so well in doing is in abetting that flight: I moved out of Jessica and into the mind and life of a multi-nombre-de-pilaed Sr. Deza, estranged from his wife and kids back in Madrid, living on his own in London. The transition to this guy's brain wasn't effortless, but maybe felt better earned and all the more real for that. Marías didn't swing in through the window on a vine and grab me and drag me off by my hair, it was a much slower wearing down, like an awkward but persistent courtship, but it never felt difficult or unpleasant, more just cautiously slow.So I guess I don't really have one kind of book that I like. All I ultimately care about, I've realized -- in books yes, but more generally in life -- is not being bored. This book didn't bore me -- which isn't at all to say that I'm sure it's not boring, so don't get mad if you check it out and find that it is -- so I thought it was terrific, and I'm not sure any more needs to be said.Anyway, I know this isn't much of a review or a convincing recommendation, but I wish more people on here would read this so we can dork out about it together. If you enjoy Proust or other stuff that's mostly just people thinking long, comma-spliced thoughts without a full stop to breathe, and might be interested in a killingly slow spy novel (there is blood! and a naked lady! I'm exaggerating the boringness!), then you ought to look into this, because it's pretty fucking great.
What do You think about Fever And Spear (2005)?
I read a review of this years ago, and vaguely thought about reading it, then opted not to. When I read a review of the third volume I finally caved in and decided to buy it. I only got round to reading it when Philip Roth had made me so disgusted with writers of English that I felt the need to clean out my brain. I originally thought I wouldn't read it because people said it was like Sebald. Well yes, inasmuch as Marias is concerned with style and ideas. The difference is that Marias' ideas and style are good, rather than fatuous. Who would have thought that would make all the difference? A beguiling narrator, devastating criticisms of contemporary thought and culture (post-war Europeans becoming simultaneously terrified of and obsessed with certainty; simultaneously suspicious of and enamored of language), and a fabulous cliff-hanger 'ending'... it's great. But there are also real barriers to enjoying this book. Proust, for instance, starts with story and then, after a while, gets into philosophy; this starts with the philosophy and then gets into story. There's no time-line at all; nearly 400 pages of text includes only three real scenes- a party, a conversation and a walk home. But the narrator's memories and thoughts are truly gripping. It's entirely possible that the rest of the novel (in three parts) will betray me, and this will turn out to be some kind of sub-Pynchonian, sub-Borgesian eye-roll inducing garbage. But right now he seems to be treading the thin line of genius quite well. And I particularly want to praise the translator. One of the reasons I avoid non-English language novels is that so few translators manage to make their source-authors sound like human beings rather than journalists. There are a few exceptions- John Woods' Mann, for instance- but generally... it's just pain. Margaret Jull Costa has done an incredible, amazing job here. It's up there with the Moncrief/Kilmartin/Enright Proust; and there are French people who think Moncrief improved on the original. All hail Costa! Thankyou!
—Justin Evans
Not much of a plot development so far. A Spanish intellectual named Jaime Deza has separated from his wife and moved to London to work for the BBC. His father was imprisoned by the Franco regime for a period after the Spanish Civil War. He’s getting involved with a group within the British intelligence service who is in charge of “reading the character” of various individuals. That’s pretty much it so far. But who cares for plots. Plots are for those who can’t write. Deza knows some old intellectuals from Oxford. They just sit around and shoot the shit. And they do it really, really well. One idea is analyzed and beaten to death beyond what you think was possible: trust. Great writing and amazing insight into whatever these guys end up talking about. This is the sort of book that you want to read because you want to tap into the streams coming out of a few brilliant minds. The trilogy adds up to a big volume – so I imagine the plot will thicken. I’m going to read the rest, and I’ve already decided that the plot is irrelevant here. I read a short novel by Marias a couple of months ago (The Man of Feeling) and I knew I had stumbled upon a great writer.
—Jafar
A relentlessly cerebral book, consumed with treading over the same intellectual territory through a serious of long, equivocating interior monologues and conversations on telling people things, reading people's behavior, secret histories, aliases, the nature of horror, the effect of loose talk during wartime, the Spanish Civil War (with an interesting digression into Ian Fleming's James Bond novel, From Russian With Love)... It's essentially a spy novel without any spying, and although I am intrigued enough by *not* enjoying Fever and Spear to want to continue on with Vol. 2, Dance and Dream (mostly because the mysterious Mr. Tupra apparently does something 'appalling' with a sword in a nightclub), I do wish Marias was able to encapsulate things in single, deft images--essentially putting trust in the reader to understand what he's getting at--rather than pouring over the same idea in all its various permutations and iterations, so that not only can we not fail to get what he means, but we are also put in a position where the thread of meaning is jeopardized by the monotony of what passes for story. I don't recommend it, but in a way, I do.
—Robert Stewart
