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?
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