The Dark Labyrinth... post dos...

Like so many Latin dictators I seem to be alternating between stages of good and bad behaviour... I'm attempting to be good for the final stretch though...

After finishing the General and his labyrinth I still have a soft spot for Bolivar. As he continues on his journey he becomes a shell of what he used to be. The General is an idealist, but not necessarily a bad man. In this respect he is very different than the other dictators in the other books we have read. Of course in most of the other stories, the “dictator” is currently in a position of power, where as here he has been disposed and humiliated. Mentally strong, but emotionally and physical weak and broken, the General soldiers on. As his health continues to deteriorate one can’t help but feel for the guy. He seems so sad and lonely. Dreams, and ego shattered, he tries to escape but fails. The “General’s labyrinth” refers to his winding journey.


Growing up with hippies in ludicrously small Northern Californian village my interpretation of a labyrinth is a maze either flat on the ground, painted or tiled, or made out of plants or hedges. One might walk such a labyrinth as a spiritual exercise in self-reflection and meditation. The metaphorical labyrinth that the General follows here is also a journey of self-reflection, but poor Bolivar dies in the centre. The labyrinth here seems dark, as if he is walking in toward his impending death. This dark labyrinth seems somewhat the antithesis of the kind of labyrinths the hippies I grew up with used to walk. Instead of building spiritual strength and enhancing life, this “dark” or “reverse” labyrinth is a metaphorical spiral to the end – one last walk of self-reflection, as one’s life flashes before their eyes… The poor old General...


This is so far my favorite of the book out of the four… one more to go…

The General in His Labyrinth... Post one...

So I’m already enjoying this one more than the others. I was waiting for a book that takes place in countries that I have spent time in. It might be a little self-centered, but it’s easier to get into a story when one can directly relate with the landscapes and geography. Plus I’ve been using a Veinte Boliviano bill as a bookmark throughout this course. I love Bolivia.

I have to say that after I The Supreme I really appreciated seeing the small margins, large font, and overall shortness. Quotation marks, hallelujah! I feel like writing an Ode to the Quotation Mark instead of this… “Oh quotation mark, quotation mark, how I…” Well enough of that… I digress…. This novel really does read like one would expect of a typical novel; the prose is a nice change of pace.

The general is described as being very weak physically but still strong willed. He doesn’t not appear, on the surface (thus far) to be necessarily evil. My image of the typical Über-macho egotistical dictator does not have him frequently meditating in bathtubs. There’s something about the General so far that seems sort of warm and fuzzy. Although I may regret saying this later…

When the long narrow precipice from Chuquisa to La Paz was mentioned I couldn’t help but to think of the still very scary roads out of La Paz. Take a look for yourself… Although these pictures were heading down into the Amazon side of the Andes, where as the General was traveling from “Chuquisa.”















I couldn’t figure out where Chuquisa was so I plugged it into trusty wikipedia and found out (well if you can trust any information on that site... hehe…) that it’s an old name for Sucre, the modern capital of Bolivia (still fairly high in elevation). The road there is still bad but nothing compared to the one heading into the Amazon basin.

When the General arrives in the warmer climate I loved the "'eternal cliché:' “It’s so hot here the hens lay fried eggs.” The heat down there can be truly oppressing. The General shows great bravery and mental strength by not using a mosquitero when he sleeps. I do speak from experience here… let’s just say that it’s not that great an idea to fall asleep out in a hammock deep in the Amazon. I wondered at first why so many locals wore long pants so fashion consciously tucked inside their socks in such stifling heat… then I figured it out… there are stinging insects a big as birds down there and bats that catch fish (granted they do you no harm – it’s just freaky)… but again I digress…

The one major thing I am picking up from this book is my severe lack of knowledge of Latin American history in general. I have such a basic understanding of what happened down there, mostly from what I picked up traveling. I knew that Bolivia at one point had a coastline which they lost to Chile (hence the still prevalent animosity between some Chilean’s and Bolivians) but this was more recent event. As I was reading this book I found myself looking up brief some brief information about the founding of Bolivia and several other countries in the region. Eventually I think I need to read more Latin American history then come back and reexamine all of these books again…

Here's a picture of modern La Paz for good measure… I love the juxtaposition between the old and the new. La Paz is a great town… I recommend it to all…
Oh and about the General’s plan for supersized Latin American country? Somehow throw California in the mix and that would have been something truly amazing. I’d immigrate… (but then that wouldn’t be the first time… lol)…

I The Supremely Difficult Book… Post dos…

I actually finished "I The Supreme" over the weekend but just couldn’t think of something to say that would add anything more to my last post. Just making it through that book seems like a major accomplishment. It was confusing, and way too long. I think I get it… the Supreme was another narcissistic madman obsessed with power, yet at the same had some strange, almost endearing qualities. It seems that this concept could have been expressed in slightly fewer pages, but then maybe I still don’t understand entirely.

Like I discussed in my last post this book requires one read in an entirely new way. I made it through but feel as though I could not devote the time needed to truly understand. I guess I still don’t see why it’s such an important book. I won’t lie and say that I would ever have read a book like this if I were not forced to. That said, I’m not returning it, so I’m hoping sometime I’ll leisurely pick it up again and give it some more attention, when I don’t have a reading load that averages around 100 pages a night...

On another note... I hereby pledge to become a “good” person once again…

First post - I The Supreme

I’ve been very bad, but now I’m attempting to become good again... It’s taken me absolutely forever to get through this book, and I didn’t want to fake a blog entry without having completed the reading. I’m more than half way through the book now, and will finish it tomorrow and then make my final entry.

This book actually makes me miss the prose of The President, and puts Facundo in a whole new light. Out of the three books so far Facundo is my favorite. It’s not that I haven’t tried to read this book... It even came with me to Whistler during reading week, where it sat on the coffee table at the condo. Periodically I would try to read for a bit, but would quickly get bored. I blamed this at first on the environment at Whistler that is undoubtedly distracting, but now I realize the true reason and I feel the need to explain exactly why I have had and continue to have such a difficult time with this book. It is directly linked with its unusual prose.

I’ve always had a difficult time reading phonetically, and I learned to read by simple memorizing words as images. This makes it more difficult when coming across new words, but in the long run I have developed some quite effective speed reading techniques. I read to myself a lot differently then when I read aloud. I do not hear a voice in my head reading each word like a narration, as recognize and understand content much faster than this. The idea is to train the eye to look at text on diagonals instead of left to right, and understanding content in blocks of information, instead of word by word. This works well for me with one exception. I’ve always found it extremely difficult to read dialogue using this method, so when I see lines of dialogue I must slow my reading down to “hear” each individual voice in my head. These strategies become almost impossible to implement when there are no quotation marks or any other form of demarcation that identifies who is speaking. This is the long explanation for why I am finding this book so incredibly difficult, as I’m having a really hard time understanding what the heck is going on half the time, and I find myself reading pages over and over.

The unusual writing style also has the effect of eliminating any real development of sympathy for any of the characters, as I find it difficult to get to know any of the characters in my near constant state of confusion. It’s usually either the Supreme himself talking or his faithful servant Patriño who I can’t stand. His constant groveling is simply annoying. Calling the Supreme an egomaniac would really be the under estimate of the century. He’s clearly obsessed with himself and his power.

The Supreme is a paranoid madman constantly thinking that everyone everywhere is out get him. Foreign states are “rapacious governments, insatiable grabbers of what belongs to others” (76). Even his prisoners are plotting against him, training rats to elude his authority. I can’t tell if the Supreme’s story about finding the talking skull on page 81 was supposed to be some form of allegory or if it was just the ravings of a mad man, I did like this section though at least once I figured out which voice was Patriño’s and which one was the Supreme’s. The people the Supreme rules are meek, and only he is strong.

Natives are mentioned as becoming “a perfectly domesticated species” after a hundred years, thus showing the pervasive racism towards natives that has repeated itself through all the books we have read thus far.

I’m still not sure why there are no chapter demarcations either, and what does the “(Perpetual circular)” thing mean exactly?