Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
The Strange Workings of TimeThe act of telling a story takes up time, it prolongs time and, in doing so, prolongs life.It preserves memories while we are alive, but it can also preserve them beyond our death. Paradoxically, story-telling might even help us to accept death. As Marias’ protagonist, Victor, says:"I can tell the story and I can therefore explain the transition from life to death, which is a way of both prolonging that life and accepting that death."Expecting to ReignVictor’s story starts with an "unconsummated infidelity" and the unexplained, but natural, death of his new paramour, Marta.Marias and Victor get the death out of the way in the very first sentence:"No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms, a woman whose face they will never see again, but whose name they will remember."A life has to be extinguished, so that the story may commence. Man Ray, "Natasha", 1930Committed to MemoryProust and Joyce have likewise been concerned with the nature of memory and its ability to preserve both time and place in minute detail.However, moreso than them, I feel, Marias is also interested in what happens to the memories of someone after they die.Just as Marta dies in Victor’s arms, he wants to find out what really happened that night and why.He tries to keep her memory alive by investigating her death.So he starts to tell a story, a metaphysical detective story. He wants to flesh out his few memories of Marta, detail by detail, clue by clue, and we watch him, fascinated, as he pieces it all together.Towards Our Own DissolutionMarias offers us a mental snapshot of Marta at the point of death.We hear her plead, "Don’t leave me...Hold me, hold me, please, hold me," as she lies foetus-like, half-naked and vulnerable on the bed. Then she exclaims, "Oh God, the child", thinking of someone else, her two-year old son, at the very end.Soon Victor discovers that Marta’s husband is on his trail, and the progress of the novel concerns how their two stories come together in a slow-build denouement.The novel flows towards this end in the same almost stream of consciousness manner that the narrative of Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs Dalloway" moves inexorably to its conclusion.As time goes by, we move unwittingly closer to some sort of understanding, some knowledge, completion, closure, just as in life we move towards our own death. In Marias' words, "We slowly travel towards our own dissolution", our own end, the end of our memories and stories.How Little Trace RemainsTime itself has no interest in memories. Memories are passengers, a burden to it. They’re not the main game. Life is a sequence of actions and thoughts. Once each of them happens or occurs, they are, in time’s eyes, spent, gone:"How little trace remains of anything."Just as we have to make an effort to keep love alive, we have to make an effort to keep memories alive.The Passage of TimeTime just wants to move forward, openly, in the light, its own source of light, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible.What has occurred in the past is of no consequence to time, its goal is the future, which it gets to via the present.Time has neither a goal, nor a purpose nor even a direction, other than the movement forward, ahead, which is really no more than a measure of the elapse of time, the passage of time.So, perhaps, time is nothing, really. Time is nothing, in reality. It has no value, it is worthless:"All time is useless..."Darkness and LightMarias suggests that there are two sides to time. The light and the dark.The light is time itself. The darkness, the reverse side of time, the absence of light, is what we humans bring to it, what we make of it, the shadows that are created as time shines on and around us.It takes us to impose utility on time, to make it useful, and one of the ways we do so is memory.Memories are Made of ThisMemory is a conscious act. We memorise things, in order to preserve them:"I will try to remember, on the reverse side of time along which you are already travelling."Literature is a record of other people’s memories, both fictitious and real.We read so that we can experience and preserve these memories, perhaps so that we can enjoy them vicariously, so that we can experiment and explore and learn, without scope for personal error or embarrassment.Likewise, a photo captures a person’s soul at a particular time, which soon recedes into the past, but the photo remains.What we remember, what we memorise is the things we think and do. And what we think and do revolves around our desires.Man Ray, "Femme Endormie" or "Sleeping Woman", 1932 Seeking and WantingMarias explores how we "seek and want" in our lives. We pursue pleasure. We eschew pain. We chase others and occasionally catch them. We present ourselves as the answer to their desires:"Tell me what would be best for you."It’s implicit in this command or plea or request that we might be able to provide what is best for the other.Perhaps, we do so in order to experience a moment or more of unreality, of fantasy, of enchantment.We put enormous energy into our desires, our seeking and our wanting. They exhaust us, they haunt us, they make us weary. We spend our lives oscillating between "weariness and desire".A Ridiculous DisasterFrequently, we become the victim of our own desires, and perhaps the desires of others.Marias doesn’t shy away from the absurd in his description of the life and death experiences of his characters:"Marta’s death wasn’t just horrible, it was ridiculous."There is something farcical about the way Marias tells aspects of his story (Victor’s meeting with the King, the indecorous, scoundrel nature of his friend and double, Ruiberriz de Torres, their hilarious visit to the racecourse). Initially, for me, the sense of farce undermined the gravity of Marias’ novel (and is ultimately why I have given it four stars rather than five). Perhaps, I was taking him too seriously, or only seriously? Perhaps, my essentially Anglo perspective was getting in the way of this literary version of Pedro Almodavar?From the Ridiculous to the SublimeUltimately, however, I think Marias' story had to incorporate these farcical moments, because life and love do. We do things that embarrass ourselves. We do things of which we are ashamed. We do things that horrify ourselves and others.We endeavour to hide our flaws, so that we can protect our self-esteem and our reputation. But life doesn’t just include, it embraces, the horrible and the ridiculous and the shameful. We have to acknowledge it, we have to accept it, we have to accommodate it.Ultimately, we can’t edit the ridiculous and the shameful out of our life, our story or our life story. We know they exist, as do others. Others watch, others know they exist, others remember. The collective knowledge can’t be extinguished:"So much else goes on behind our backs, our capacity for knowledge is so limited."The Collective Consciousness of the PastMemories and knowledge aren’t just individual. We alone can’t know everything.Collectively, there is a reservoir of knowledge about all of us, lodged in our minds and memories. We have to put our heads together, and our minds, and our memories.As a result, the loss of one individual, on death, does not necessarily detract from the collective bank of knowledge.Still, we only live on after death in the minds of others, in their memories. One day, then, when our last friend or relative dies, there will be no one left to remember us, there will be no memory of us, and we will finally be dead to time.This has been the way of all flesh for all of time, for eternity. We are part of a continuum, not of time, but of memories. In this way, "the recent present seems like the remote past".But the past must one day come to an end.The Special Ridiculousness of the Male of the SpeciesMarias frequently describes incidents as ridiculous or a disaster or a ridiculous disaster.There is something peculiarly male in how he goes about this.In Marta’s case, it was her death that was ridiculous. In Victor’s case, it was his desire, the way he and we males go about seeking and wanting.There is something vaguely grubby and vulgar in his lascivious gaze, his analysis of Marta’s too small bra and panties, his unsatiated horniness, his subsequent lust for Marta’s younger sister Luisa (now the only surviving one of three sisters): "I had still not seen that new body that was sure to please me."Victor proclaims, "I never sought it, I never wanted it," but we don’t believe him. It's in his nature. It's in ours.Marias sums it up beautifully:"...only a man is capable of describing as disastrous a night that has not come up to expectations, a night when he had expected to have a fuck, but hadn’t..."Note how a male converts desire into an expectation, an anticipation, a prediction of what time has in store for him, and so recalls the setup of the novel:"No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dead woman in their arms."Back then, it seemed like a tragedy, in fact, at heart it is, but Marias’ skill is to make us realise that, at least as far as Victor is concerned, there is an element of farce in this tale of folly and failure as well.A Time for ShameIf memory is intrinsically linked to desire, then it must embody expectation, just as much as actuality. A memory is not necessarily true, nor does it necessarily reflect well on us. Memory, true memory, captures the past, our "folly and failure", warts and all:"We are ashamed of far too many things, of our appearance and of past beliefs, of our ingenuousness and ignorance, of the submission or pride we once displayed, of our transigence and intransigence, of all the many things we proposed or said without conviction, of having fallen in love with whoever it was we fell in love with and of having been a friend of whoever it was we were friends with, our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial."An End to Shame and RidiculeOnly death brings relief to the shame and ridicule we have brought upon ourselves:"Goodbye laughter, goodbye scorn." However, death also takes everything that was good about a life, the effort, the achievements, the rewards, the friends, the family, the love, so Marias adds:”And goodbye ardour, goodbye memories.”Death is inevitable, and one day the present must come to an end."Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me"The title of the novel comes from Shakespeare’s "Richard III":"Tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword: despair and die!" It is reiterated many times throughout the text, although there is no clear explanation of its significance.In the play, the lines are spoken to Richard by the ghosts of his previous victims, who forsee his fate, death in battle.They contrast with the message to Richmond:"Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster/The wrongèd heirs of York do pray for thee/Good angels guard thy battle. Live and flourish."Perhaps there is a suggestion that Evil will be divinely punished, and Good will be rewarded.However, elsewhere in the novel, Marias questions this inference.He seems to suggest that we are the sum of our desires and expectations, which are founded in our memories:"No one ever ceases to be immersed in life as long as they have a consciousness and a few memories to ponder, more than that, it is a person's memories that make every living being dangerous and full of desires and expectations."Clearly, he thinks that our desires and expectations can be misguided, but is it wrong to be misguided, is it wrong to be dangerous?Is it an inevitable consequence of Free Will, even if we purport to believe in Fate or Determinism?"The living also believe that what has never happened can still happen, they believe in the most dramatic and most unlikely reversals of fortune, the sort of thing that happens in history and in stories, they believe that a traitor or beggar or murderer can become king and the head of the emperor fall beneath the blade, that a great beauty can love a monster or that the man who killed her beloved and brought about her ruin can succeed in seducing her, they believe that lost battles can be won, that the dead never really leave but watch over us or appear to us as ghosts who can influence events, that the youngest of three sisters could, one day, be the eldest."There is a skepticism about Fate and Divinity here. Yet, it has to be weighed against the fact that, in the novel, Marta’s youngest sister does end up being the oldest of the three.Perhaps then Marias’ message is that our desires and expectations might be misguided, they might be subjective, but at least they are ours, and they might just happen.As long as we are alive, as long as we hold our swords aloft, as long as there is ardour, as long as there is effort, there is hope. Memories are made of this. And stories."Don’t leave me...Hold me, hold me, please, hold me."SOUNDTRACK:Nick Cave – "Into My Arms"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG0-cn..."...I believe in loveAnd I know that you do tooAnd I believe in some kind of pathThat we can walk down, me and you"So keep your candles burningMake her journey bright and pureThat she will keep returningAlways and evermore"Into my arms, oh LordInto my arms, oh LordInto my arms, oh LordInto my arms" Man Ray, "Natasha", 1929Original Review: April 03, 2013
‘It is unbearable that people we know should suddenly be relegated to the past.’Death is inevitable. From the very first page of Javier Marías’ flawlessly executed novel ‘Tomorrow In the Battle Think On Me’, death becomes a constant companion to the reader, always whispering in our ear the truths of our impermanence and the endless variety of possible deaths that await us – horrible deaths, ridiculous deaths, death that may make a stranger laugh when they read it in the paper. ‘Any dead life lasts longer than an inconstant lived life’ and our time spent beneath the sky leaves such a tiny trace once we are transferred to our time beneath the soil. However, every single moment of our living actions are intertwined with those around us and bear down in their memory. Through a narrator whose tightly knit, yet meandering ruminations serve as an exquisite investigation into the implications of storytelling and language, Marías examines the permanent marks the departed leave on our consciences, the voids their absence forms in our lives, and our endless interconnectivity as we are flung forward towards oblivion. ‘How little remains of each individual in time, useless as slippery snow, how little trace remains of anything…’ This chilling sentiment is often pondered by the narrator throughout this incredible novel. After a potential fling with a married woman is suddenly extinguished by her sudden death, our narrator must bear the burden of her memory, her name, and that of her young child whom he sets out a plate of food for before slipping away into the night, is forever etched into his conscience. ‘What a disgrace it is for me to remember your name, though I may not know your face tomorrow’ The lives of those lost slowly slip into ‘the reverse side of time, it’s dark back’, their features slowly fade in our memory; their belongings become redundant and useless - their personal charm washed away with the fleeting spirit; and slowly they dissolve from the world as we look to those alive and think on the dead less and less as time assuages the pain of their loss. While Marías often leaves the reader flailing in a vacuum, facing their inevitable oblivion, there is a sense of hope. There is hope in the fleeting ways we leave our living on the lives of those we encounter, cradled in their memories to cling to the world through them. In this way, Marías presents a Madrid characterized by its ghosts. The living slip through the streets with carrying the ghosts of others in their minds and hearts, streets are named for famous fallen heroes, parks named for bombing mishaps during the war – the whole city is entrenched in its history. However, it is not only the dead who are faced with their dissolution, and all throughout the novel we are presented with characters slowing dissolving into oblivion despite the beating of their hearts. The narrator is a political ghostwriter who writes for another ghostwriter – a mere ghost of a ghost, a political leader that enlists his aid fears being forgotten and not leaving a mark on the memory of his people, and characters shroud themselves in mystery and shadows to avoid connection to a death. While it is unbearable to know another has died, it is equally unbearable to dissolving while still alive. Memory is the only way they can cling to the world as well, such as a sullen speech by the political figure, Solitaire aka Only the Lonely aka Only You etc., where he expresses fears that ‘the more reviled the person, the more memorable they are’. Those who hold secrets inside feel so burdened by them that they must eventually bring them out into the light, not because of a growing shame eating away at the soul, but because ‘they have merely been overcome or motivated by weariness and a desire to be whole.’ It is the bonds we form with others that builds a sense of permanence, by sharing memories or sharing our stories, we pass them on so that we can forge a space in the hearts of others that will continue after our own departure. Sometimes our ghosts can be a heavy burden, such as the film seen by the narrator (a film of Richard III) in which an old King is visited by the ghosts of those who lost their lives in his name, mocking him, cursing him: ‘tomorrow in the battle think on me, and fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die.’ The world is but a history of ghosts seeking remembrance in the hearts of the living, sometimes out of love, sometimes out of malice. Yet how much of another can be imposed upon us, since much is ‘of no interest to the person receiving it, who is busy forging his or her own memories.’ The real irony, however, is that even our sense of permanence, the fragments that do find their way into the minds of others, is just another form of fleeting impermanence. Those who hold us in our hearts will eventually rot away as well, taking our ghost to the grave with them.’[E]verything is continually travelling on, everything is connected, some things drag other things along with them, all oblivious to each other, everything is travelling slowly towards its own dissolution the moment it occurs and even while it is occurring…’The way our lives are connected is illuminated brilliantly through Marías. The way others are etched into our hearts like names on a tombstone only cracks the surface. Marías uses language in a unique and compelling way to tie everything together. Using repetition to revisit many of the narrator’s luscious meditations when they apply to a new situation, it is as if he doubles back to stich a new fold together in the narrative, carefully sewing all the events and ideas together to form one large potent message on life and death. i>When we go back to a very familiar place, the intervening time becomes compressed or is even erased and cancelled out for a moment as if we had never left, it is that unchanging space that allows us to travel in time.’ The way Marías juggles his themes and pulls all the vast array of ideas together in the closing scene makes for one of the most impressive conclusions to any novel I have ever read. It is nothing short of genius. Through this connection of ideas, Marías reminds us that this is a story being told to us, a story from one perspective turning the reality around him into a cast of characters to move about a narrative to express the way he perceived it, which opens up an incredible examination on language. Not only is all of humanity connected, but words as well. Each word drags with it an assortment of connotations, which he examines in detail, each change from the usted to the tu and vice versa is dissected to extract a wealth of hidden meaning, and every word ‘is at once one thing and its contrary’ (an idea that Derrida would be pleased to see put to good use). It is our language that allows us to interact with one another beyond the purely physical, and while both leave us forever altered by any interaction with another, it is only through language that we are able to examine and express the ineffable impact of our collisions with the bodies and consciousness of others. ‘What a strange contact that intimate contact is, what strong, non-existent links it instantly forges, even though, afterwards, they fade and unravel and are forgotten…but not immediately after establishing those links for the first time, then they feel as if they were burned into you, when everything is fresh and your eyes still wear the face of the other person’The physical contact bonds us to others, and not only to those we immediately make contact with, but all those with whom we are now linked to by the process of our minds acknowledging that the other has contact with people beyond us and now we are linked to them through this chain of interaction. The narrator often tries to recall an old Anglo-Saxon term that failed to be adopted into the languages that stemmed from it, a term describing the bond between those who have shared a bed with the same person. The narrator feels an unbearable burden to acknowledge all the men he may ‘be related to Anglo-Saxon-style’, and posits that the word has not survived because ‘it isn’t easy to accept the act that it describes and it’s therefor better not to name it’, a ‘connection based on rivalry and unease and jealousy and drops of blood’. It is language that ties us together the most; language binds us with those around us and with those throughout all of human history. Having repeatedly drawn our attention to language, Marías uses the entirety of his story to examine the act of storytelling. ‘I am the one who counts,’ he tells us, ‘the one telling the story and the one who decides who will speak… therein lies the pathetic superiority of the living, our temporary motive for triumph.’ It is not the victors who write history, but merely those who survive the events. ‘People are interpreted by other people’ and it is through language that we interpret others and our surrounding events, and language is ultimately a fallible device. Every word we utter drags its weight in connotations and the debris of both the teller and the listeners perceptions further taint each word. Marías gives us not only an unreliable narrator, but a narrator openly admitting to his unreliability while insisting upon it at the same time. ‘[N]o one does anything convinced of its injustice,’ he remarks as well as that ‘everything depends on the end result doesn’t it, and that includes everything, even if it’s only an instant in time, one particular action varies depending on the effect it has.’ This presents a reality in which truth and morality is subjective to an individual, and the reader must be ever conscious to see through the narrative as it is delivered by a mind utterly convinced of the validity of each action. What may come across as endearing could be viewed as creepy from an outside perspective, which is something we must all take to heart, remembering to think outside ourselves in our everyday interactions. If we do act in acknowledgement of the injustice of our actions, our soul buckles under the weight, and visions of ghosts may haunt us in our sleep. We become enshrouded in shadows, burdened by our desire to become whole again through the act of storytelling. The most impressive idea is that once a story has left the lips of the teller, it becomes the property of all those that have heard it. While it may seem improbably that each speaker in the novel should be so well equipped to deliver such moving and poetic monologues as they do, it must be remembered that it is the narrator’s story, and there words are now his property to use and shape as he sees fit, to elaborate and polish. It is in his right to ‘forget what really happened and replace it with fiction’. He is by trade a ghostwriter, and wouldn’t it be only natural to ghostwrite the words of those he interacts with? However, what is most important is that this is a story being delivered unto us, the reader, to take hold in our hearts and minds, finding its own sense of immortality by being passed from one to another. When we seek meaning, entertainment, joy and solace in the words of a story, it isn’t the events that matter and why should it matter if they are fact or fiction, because it is how the story reverberates within us that matters most. It is how we internalize and reshape it to fit our ourselves so we can pass it on again.’Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial’This novel simply blew me away. It came highly recommended from an extremely trustworthy source, and managed to not only reach, but to jump leaps and bounds over my expectations. It is one of my favorite novels now. Marías is a master of language, meandering at every possible chance to cast a loquacious flashlight into each crevasse of thought along the way, yet keeping an incredible intensity as he builds this psychological masterpiece. The text is dense and macabre, yet darkly humorous and uplifting at the same time. His ability to tie such a wide range of ideas together is staggering, from large themes and motifs to clever repeated actions such as shoelaces coming untied to emphasize the idea of a life coming unraveled despite all attempts to hold it together. I confess I had an extremely difficult time putting together this review, there is too much to discuss and the only method of tying it all together into a feasible and comprehensive manner is to just read the novel. Or perhaps this book took such a hold on my heart that I feel any attempt to turn it over would spoil and tarnish it with my fingerprints. This novel is truly amazing, and a truly amazing portrait of our struggle to find handholds in eternity while being sucked into oblivion.5/5‘When things come to an end they have a number and the world then depends on its storytellers, but only for a short time and not entirely, they never fully emerge from the shadows, other people are never quite done and there is always someone for whom the mystery continues.’
What do You think about Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me (2001)?
Morpheus sister from the Sandman series reminds us at one point (in Brief Lives I think) that we all know how every story ends. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable. She is the avatar of Death, so I guess she knows what she's talking about. Javier Marias protagonist of this here story has all the pretending stripped off from his life when a casual romantic encounter ends with the woman dead in his arms. He becomes obsessed not so much with the fragility of existence, but with the transience of memory and with the fake identities we present to the outside world. What is left after we are gone? How much is lost from one's inner thoughts? Can we really say we knew another person? It's just that something horrible and ridiculous happened to me and I feel as if I were under a spell, haunted, watched, revisited, inhabited, my head and body inhabited and haunted by someone I only knew in death and by a few kisses we could just as easily not have exchanged. In order to solve the puzzle of the sudden death of Marta Tellez, Victor follows the people she left behind : her boy who sleeps under a canopy of toy airplanes from past wars, her aging and lonesome father, her little sister Luiza, her absent husband Dean. The physiological explanations of the event are insignifiant. What counts is the residue Marta leaves behind, the way she is reflected and remembered in the lives of her family and in the conscience of the stranger, the outsider, the 'ghostwriter' Victor.The identity of Victor as a ghostwriter is reiterated in the text at every turn, both in the literal sense , as he is engaged to write a speech for the King of Spain, and in the metaphoric one, as he is the one who feels obliged to reveal the truth of Marta, the one who preserves her story for posterity before it is lost in the inevitable multitude of similar stories. It's tiring having always to move in shadows, having to watch without being seen, doing one's best not to be discovered, just as it's tiring having to keep to oneself a secret or a mystery, how wearisome clandestinity is, constantly having to bear in mind that not all your friends can be privy to the same information, that you have to hide one thing from one friend and something else from another, something the first friend already knows about, you invent complex stories for one woman and, in order not to betray yourself later, you have to fix the details of those stories for ever in your memory, as if you really had experienced them [...] Inevitably, in describing the quest for the truth of Marta Telez, Victor begins to tell about his own life, in particular his relation with his enstranged wife Celia: the lack of trust, the lack of communication, the jealousy and the regrets that haunt him still: "That wretched Celia, thy wife, that never slept a quiet hour with thee, now fills thy sleep with perturbations." This last quote is a paraphrase from Shakespeare, a fragment from the play Richard III that repeats itself through the text like the leitmotif in a piano sonata or like a hit song refrain that refuses to go away from your mind. The title of the novel is taken from the same scene in Shakespeare, with ghosts and impending death coming to haunt the cursed king: Tomorow in the battle think on me,and fall thy edgeless sword.Tomorrow in the battle think on me,when I was mortal,and let fall thy pointless lance.Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow,let me be lead within thy bosomand at a bloody battle end thy days. Similar repetitions of themes as musical motifs abound in the text, reinforcing my analogy with a classical sonata, with Victor endlessly decontructing and speculating on every detail and possible interpretation of clues and trivial gestures : a recorded phone message, a dialogue at the funeral between two friends of the family, a siluette framed in the window of Marta's empty apartment. Some of his theories may seem far fetched or flights of fancy, but isn't this what we all do when we first meet somebody new? We construct stories about the other person in our head, often with little bearing on his or her actual inner self, which remains stubbornly hidden. And are we any better at revealing our true image, or are we adept at hiding behind safe walls of dissimulation and pretense? We are ashamed of far too many things, of our appearance and of past beliefs, of our ingenuousness and ignorance, of the submission or pride we once displayed, of our transigence and intransigence, of all the many things we proposed or said without conviction, of having fallen in love with whoever we fell in love with and of having been a friend of whoever it was we were friends with, our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial. Victor, in the midst of the existential crisis provoked by the death of Marta, sets out to fill in all the blanks in her, and in his own, story. The narrative is rendered almost in real time, flowing in stream of conscience mode, jumping from one subject to another in free association and passing from observation to philosophical musings in a blink of an eye. The extra long sentences that go from one page to the next in vain search of a stop point may be daunting at first and may require more than the usual concentration on the part of the reader to follow through, but they have a rhythm and an elegance I have rarely encountered. Despite the rambling structure, never once did Marias loose the thread of his argument or fail to deliver the punchline. I have no reservations about mentioning the name of Marias in the same breath as Proust, Faulkner or Joyce, both in style and in the thoroughness of analysis of human nature. This is only the first book of his I've read, but I can already join the chorus of people who hail him as one of the greatest writers active today.The same long stream of conscience phrasing and elaborate argumentation make it difficult to extract significant quotes from the text without truncating the ideas and loosing the original flavor of the artist vision. But I fell in love with the text (excellent translation, by the way) and I ended up with quite a long list of bookmarks. I considerthem significant for the repetition of the major themes touched by Victor : memory, death, being a writer, love, marriage, the power of stories to alter reality.First a riddle that is like a second musical theme in the sonata, taken from an inscription on an ancient grave: none that speak of me know me, and when they do speak, they slander me; those who know me keep silent and in their silence do not defend me;thus all speak ill of me until they meet me, but when they meet me they find rest, and they bring me salvation, for I never rest. (Leon Suarez Alday, 1890-1914) (view spoiler)[ the answer is Death (hide spoiler)]
—Algernon
Thomas Hobbes When a Body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something els hinder it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by degrees quite extinguish it: And as wee see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rowling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion, which is made in the internall parts of a man, then, when he Sees, Dreams, &c. For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, wee still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it, the Latines call imagination, from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it Fancy which signifies appearance, and it is as proper to one sense, as to another. IMAGINATION therefore is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men, and many other living Creatures, as well sleeping, as waking. From The Leviathan (New York: Prometheus Books, 1988 {1651]), p. 5.Fittingly, I think, I read the first two-thirds of "Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me" during my own bouts of wakefulness between 2 and 4 am. A witching hour. An in-between-time. When anything is possible. Anything believable. I wasn't always in love with this tale. I reminded myself repeatedly that I simply had to close the book to step out of Victor's unsettling thoughts and bizarre terrain. I didn't. He grew on me. I became sympathetic. Even empathetic.The last 100 pages I devoured in one sitting...in the brilliant light of mid-day. Unblinking...and by now a true believer. It was elegant. It was amazing.
—Ce Ce
I can see the attraction of the first person narrator. The risk, it must be said, is considerable: confinement to a single point of view can be rocks in the pockets of a plot that is trying to swim free. The exclusive and unrelieved company of a strident or grating voice can swiftly turn potential reading pleasure to pain. But a writer must find a certain tone of voice, an attitude towards the tale to be told that remains consistent. There is nothing more jarring than a sudden collapse into a different register. So yes, I can see how finding the person to tell the tale might bring a living, breathing voice with it. When it works, it is a glory. With a knowing little nod to Lolita, Marías here gives us Victor, a man whose actions we cannot condone. Surely? No. Even if it is three in the morning and you have only met young, attractive Marta twice before this rendezvous in her flat, even if you do not know any of her family or neighbours, when she dies, unexpectedly, ludicrously, in your arms, then you can't just go and leave her and her two year old son asleep in the room next door. And take the note of her husband's phone number at his hotel in London too. (And that is not the worst of it).Victor can. And what's more, he weaves a marvellous spell which captivates and holds us in his power. Here is a thinking man, one who gives us a rich and heady feast in long sweeping sentences that stretch and ease their way over life interrupted 'nel mezzo del cammin', memory, the power of words, the vagaries of time, the tenuous bands that connect us to our fellow humans; over interlopers and usurpers, Falstaff and Richard III, monarchy, war, over haunting and enchantment, over storytelling and agency. Here is a man who sees, observes, recognizes. Scrupulous, discreet, tender. Wry. Warm. Even playful, those little nods of acknowledgement to the reader.Action, inaction. Neither are to be condemned or condoned. The repercussions of what we do are unpredictable and any judgement is entirely relative. I didn't seek it or want it. Nothing was planned. By what criterion should we judge? By intent or by the actual result of the action? These are the questions that remain. Was it forgivable to leave a two year old alone overnight because, in the end, nothing dreadful resulted? Is it preferable that Marta at least did not die alone in the arms of a virtual stranger, or might she have phoned her sister or father if she had been alone and unwell? And in a truly wondrous final chapter, there is the husband, who also has the burden of a story to tell. A dizzying twist of irony means that Victor, the interloper, the usurper, is the only person he can tell his story to. No-one but Victor, the ghostwriter. Who can then take possession of his story too. The story belongs to the person who tells it. Victory.
—·Karen·
