Jose Saramago's "The Double"
You've got to read Jose Saramago, he's a Nobelist. I like to improve my mind, that means a Nobelist a month at the very least. Nobelists are great writers, tautologically so, and also decent, dignified human beings.
Saramago does reward his readers. "The Double" is about a history teacher, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, who discovers accidentally that he has an exact double, a man whose body is identical to his in every detail. Tertuliano becomes obsessed with tracking down his double, and when they finally do meet the consequences are chaotic and disastrous. The novel is perfectly paced and plotted, starting off with a leisurely examination of Tertuliano's environment and his depressive state of mind, gaining momentum as he pursues his obsession, and ending in a flurry of action as the doubles dissolve into games of oneupmanship, each determined to prove that he is the "original". There is confusion at the end, a loss of focus, but then the path of light when one mirror inclines to another is never simple (and a third mirror has not yet arrived). The novel is really a rigorous working out of the philosophical theme that individuality is what keeps anxiety at bay. However, it's never cold, quite the contrary, because of
Saramago's writing style - unique, happily it translates well. He is a chatty, digressive writer; these qualities find a natural correlative in his famous run-on sentences. Full stops are scarce in Saramago's work. The mind has not much grammar, and Saramago's style allows him to explore the psychology of his characters as well as make frequent authorial interventions (thus to betray the thinking of author as narrator) without the switches and segues seeming contrived. Conversations are reported with minimum discrimination between speakers - a mere capital letter to indicate that the microphone has passed. This makes them rather hard to parse sometimes, but the principled reader will bear the hardship bravely when he considers that it is consistent with the democratic quality of the work.
History is the constant theme, directly or indirectly. The very notion of History with a capital H presupposes the existence of an impartial observer, who distinguishes reliably between the necessary and the contingent. This observer is of course the author, but the author is also the one who sets the globe spinning, so to speak, and often intervenes, or interferes (with a hidden agenda in mind?). This fact is acknowledged and addressed, but the purpose remains dark, and the consequences irrevocable.
Saramago does reward his readers. "The Double" is about a history teacher, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, who discovers accidentally that he has an exact double, a man whose body is identical to his in every detail. Tertuliano becomes obsessed with tracking down his double, and when they finally do meet the consequences are chaotic and disastrous. The novel is perfectly paced and plotted, starting off with a leisurely examination of Tertuliano's environment and his depressive state of mind, gaining momentum as he pursues his obsession, and ending in a flurry of action as the doubles dissolve into games of oneupmanship, each determined to prove that he is the "original". There is confusion at the end, a loss of focus, but then the path of light when one mirror inclines to another is never simple (and a third mirror has not yet arrived). The novel is really a rigorous working out of the philosophical theme that individuality is what keeps anxiety at bay. However, it's never cold, quite the contrary, because of
Saramago's writing style - unique, happily it translates well. He is a chatty, digressive writer; these qualities find a natural correlative in his famous run-on sentences. Full stops are scarce in Saramago's work. The mind has not much grammar, and Saramago's style allows him to explore the psychology of his characters as well as make frequent authorial interventions (thus to betray the thinking of author as narrator) without the switches and segues seeming contrived. Conversations are reported with minimum discrimination between speakers - a mere capital letter to indicate that the microphone has passed. This makes them rather hard to parse sometimes, but the principled reader will bear the hardship bravely when he considers that it is consistent with the democratic quality of the work.
History is the constant theme, directly or indirectly. The very notion of History with a capital H presupposes the existence of an impartial observer, who distinguishes reliably between the necessary and the contingent. This observer is of course the author, but the author is also the one who sets the globe spinning, so to speak, and often intervenes, or interferes (with a hidden agenda in mind?). This fact is acknowledged and addressed, but the purpose remains dark, and the consequences irrevocable.
posted by Cheshire Cat at 11:09 PM
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