Being Entertained by Sadness

I may have mentioned this before, but my friends and I have a “book club.” I use scare-quotes here because of two reasons: First, we don’t so much meet, as we discuss the books we read using Gmail and the like. Second, no one really seems to do it.

I think the second reason is the biggest problem this club is facing.

As it is, I’ve read every book that’s been proposed, and I’ve enjoyed some, and disliked others—but read them all. The latest book proposed (and I can almost guarantee the proposer, which for some reason isn’t a word to Microsoft, hasn’t read it) was Days and Nights of Love and War, by Eduardo Galeano. Before I get into my review of the book, I would like to point out this one thing:

The book was originally written in Spanish, and in my case, was translated by Judith Brister. I’ll explain why this is important in a minute (unless, of course, you know exactly why I claim it’s important, in which case: GET OUT OF MY HEAD!).

(I also just realized I wrote “I’ll get to this in a minute,” as if I can gauge typography in terms of time and not space, and not in the lovey-dovey, theory-of-relatively time/space, but clock-time and inches-space. Just another idiom gone awry, although this is specifically a disuse, as opposed to a misunderstanding).

So, Galeano. This book is both brutal and beautiful in its portrayal of the world that was (and perhaps still is?) Argentina and Uruguay in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. Brutal, because these are not vacation-destination South America, including Buenos Aires. Repressive regimes meant secret police, a world of bribes, struggles just to eat, and arrests without cause. Galeano shows the ubiquity of murder, and the sense of weariness in his tone belies a sadness and acceptance, even while trying to run a magazine dedicated to resistance. Every time we meet someone new, it is only a matter of time before we find out that he or she is dead, and this repetition bears on the reader relentlessly, and yet isn’t completely numbing (which is a good thing).

Because you want the pain. When Adorno gave us the idea that there should be no poetry after the Holocaust, the idea is that any representation will never do justice to the pain and horror that was Auschwitz, so it would only belittle that moment by trying to replicate it. In other words, for people to watch Schindler’s List, and think: That was so real, are automatically re-situating the context of the Holocaust in thinking that the images and acting (although excellent), give us an accurate idea of what the Holocaust was like (I need to point out here that you should really check out the link I provide for Schindler’s List, because it kind of perfectly illustrates Adorno’s point—take note of the top of the screen on the web-site). Even when we know it’s not real, the perception of reality is such that we can come away from the movie with the belief that we can understand the Holocaust.

But at least people know about the Holocaust. Galeano is not writing from a position in which his situation is well-known. I’m not claiming it’s the same thing as the Holocaust, either, but then again, we may never know the numbers from these South American civil wars. And Galeano is doing his best to make sure that if we don’t know the statistics, at least we are aware of the “feel” of the time.

One way he does this is by setting up the book with the snapshot-stories. Each segment is short (at the most, a couple of pages), and the language moves from poetic to journalistic. In every case, a picture is drawn, and whether it is happiness or despair, it is fleeting. As the title implies, this is not a single moment, but a process, a turning of the Earth, and as such, the ethereal, picaresque nature of the vignettes bring us in and out of the times, places, and emotions.

And that’s why it’s so beautiful. Because Galeano, when he points out dinner with a friend, isn’t doing it to say what happened, but to let us know that he understands how important such encounters are. Especially because those friends could be dead any day (and often that is the case. Since he is writing this in hindsight, I can only imagine the ache he felt writing about these happy times, knowing that they can never happen again). It is also beautiful for its bravery, which is perhaps the reason why Galeano can “ignore” Adorno. He’s not writing after the oppressive times, he’s writing during. This isn’t history, this is blog.

But what does beauty mean, at least for me (and, I would contest, most of my four readers)? Because we are reading a translation, so how can I claim any motive or intention on the part of the author? Sure, Brister’s book is beautiful and sad, but is Galeano’s? Is it even the same story? Did he mean to be so poetic, or are these translational stylistic choices?

And, just as important, does it matter?

I’m not sure it does. Yes, on the one hand, I am analyzing a book with no true reference and little authority. But on the other, I am still a reader, and what I read made me feel these feelings and think these thoughts. It is therefore powerful nevertheless. Whether it is Galeano’s power or the power I’m attributing to Galeano, the fact remains that this is a book worth reading.

Now if only I could get my friends to agree that we’d all read the same book and then talk about it . . .