Daily reminiscences of novels: oranges in 1930s Depression, onions during World War II, artificial flowers in a sci-fi future

I always enjoy small daily actions that remind me of some favourite scenes in great novels. The hero Rick Deckard in Phil K Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" in his apocaliptic future sees artificial life imitations all around him, from the electric sheep in his home to the frog he offers his wife at the end. It is a bit too bleak to own robot animals, but I am often pleased to have artificial flowers both at home (in picture) and in the office. Originally, the novel was supposed to be  in 1992 or 2021, but despite the pandemic we still have animals all around us. But I believe that actually my artificial flower vases are quite ecological and mood soothing, since they spend no water, unlike the robot animals of Deckard.

There is also the onions that I always eat plentiful in every salad buffet, which remind me of the scene when Bendrix first meets Sarah in The End of the Affair during the years just before World War II, "Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love."

But my favorite literary reference to a daily item or activity is in John Fante's book, where the young author Arturo Bandini living in poverty in his rented LA room has been eating oranges as meals for month, a sweet liquid sunlight that fills up his stomach, the cheapest food he can find. Orange peels pile up with cigarette ashes in his room. Other creative solutions for his poverty is to use the strings from the cereal boxes as a belt and shoe laces, then applying the carton box paper to fix up his shoe sole. Arturo reflects upon looking at the nice ladies arriving to the luxury hotels in LA that their shoes are worth more than everything he ever owned... But Arturo - despiste his rough philosophy - is in fact a soft-hearted boy and ends up using his first check as an author to pay a beef meal to a senior neighbor. Arturo also adds extra sugar to his coffee in order to get a bit more taste and calories. The same choice of taking several bags of sugar in a coffee cup is admitted by a character in John Steinbeck's novel "The winter of our discontent".

I just really love the Arturo Bandini character, because of his so many flaws and realism, his cowardice, made up lies even to himself, lack of success and inability to talk elegantly to people. Yet Arturo's deep honesty and resilience makes him rise up above the poverty around him. 

I have a great taste for sweet oranges and enjoy eating 2 per day in winter while looking at the city of Santiago in the mid-afternoon with its smog-filled horizon. In some ways it is a bit like the smoggy LA. That is why eating oranges - fortunately, for me a food choice - always makes me think of Bandini and his so many flaws, yet always painted with the colored sincerity of a good heart.

Inequality of life during the pandemic today: a Dostoyevskian society!

This Easter there was media coverage in Chile about the quarantine of the Covid pandemic not being the same for everyone, with millionaires leaving high scale neighborhood Vitacura by helicopter for their summer mansions on the coast. A bit of what is also happening in other countries like the US, China, UK, France...

That Easter Friday’s afternoon, I was reading Dostoyevsky’s "White Nights". This short novel (about 60 pages) right on page 3 has a scene that looks like today’s image of inequality. The narrator is a middle-class young man in Saint Petersburg that enjoys strolling around the wealthy and beautiful mansions. An early spring weekend he realizes that all the wealthy left town for their country houses or the nearby islands. Then he describes quite well the exodus of the privileged: the men carry flowers next to their wives in an elegant carriage, while behind go servants with wagons full of things or even a second carriage with all the furniture and kitchen items. But the richest of all send their things by boat over the Neva river!

Therefore we live in a Dostoyevskian society! No Czars in power, but quite a few oligarchs enjoying their country mansions!

Roaring 20's and Great Depression novels: The Great Gatsby and its awkward opposite!

The characters in the Great Gatsby and Arturo Bandini novels are true opposites in wealth and sophistication. However, they share one trait: persisting in their romantic dreams until the end!

The Great Depression left a profound image on the memories of people. Until today, perhaps the strongest impression on people's minds is the contrast between great wealth and abject poverty from the mass unemployed living in big cities or wandering the countryside in search of work. It also captures the human spirit with irony by contrasting the golden years, peace and prosperity of the previous decade with the despair, misery and loneliness of the 1930s.

Los Angeles hill, a setting similar to Ask the Dust

One of the great literary pieces out of the Roaring Twenties is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, as popular (or more) today as in its first 1925 edition. It touches so many enduring emotions. For the American soldiers in WW2 it probably reminded them that their girlfriends may not be waiting at the end of the war. For the younger generations that did not live a military conflict, it reflects that romantic ambitions are not always fulfilled even if someones gives it all its effort. The novel's unrequited love story also tells us about class and family origins. Talent, effort and merit do not always get recognized. The main character Jay Gatsby is ashamed of his family to the point of abandoning his loving father and changing his name. Finally, the story teaches us that great wealth and luxury only feed snobbism and vanity. Noisy parties do not buy us friends. The pursuit of happiness is as elusive now as it was for the great Greek-Roman philosophers like Aristotle or the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The novel already has four amazing movie adaptations, of which I only saw the Robert Redford's and Di Caprio's versions. These movies, obviously are not exactly similar to the book, but are faithful enough to preserve all of its main motives and even lots of the same phrases and dialogues.

To me the greatest contrast comes from comparing the Great Gatsby in relation to the novels of the Great Depression such as John Steinbeck's. One such novel is Ask the Dust by John Fante, a story of sticking to one's own values and dreams in the face of adversity. It is purported to be a fictional version of some autobiographical events in the author's own life and rightfully so. Historians often say that any human persons enjoys to make up sublime versions of himself (or herself), heroic interpretations of ourselves. However, admitting to our own faults and humilliations is much more difficult! And yet the faults and humilliations are much truer to life. Fante's novel is full of humilliations inflicted upon its main character, Arturo Bandini.

If Jay Gatsby is elegant, sophisticated, wealthy, charming and a successful man, then Bandini is its very opposite. Arturo Bandini is a young and jobless writer in Los Angeles. The little money that he receives from his Mom is spent on oranges, the cheapest food he can afford, which he eats under a sorching heat while thinking that its sweet huices resembles liquid sunlight filling his empty belly. Gatsby has fame and money, but Bandini only gets a small check and his literary reputation only impresses a 14 year old neighbor and a divorced woman full of uneasy emotions. If Gatsby has the most expensive clothes, then Bandini uses the rope from cereal boxes as a belt and applies the box carton to repair his old shoes. Gatbsy throws money in luxurious parties, yet Bandini uses the little money he has to pay a steak to his neighbor. If Gatsby is the most admired person, then Bandini is utterly ignored and poor, something that he cruelly observes when he looks at the rich ladies arriving in limousines to LA's expensive hotels and then remarks that those beautiful women wear shoes that are more expensive than all the things he ever owned.

Even their personalities contrast, Gatsby being brave and noble, while Bandini is often rude and cowardly. Bandini flees from a prostitute after paying her because he feels the abject act would degrade his Christian faith. Bandini flees during the 1933 earthquake and afterwards feels so ashamed that he invents tales of brave acts and having rushed to save others, tall tales that lack such realism that none of his neighbors believe and just reveal his lack of courage more glaringly.

Yet Bandini's flaws always shine with the sincerity and simplicity of those who are poor, young, but with big dreams and loving intentions. Bandini is awkward and unable to play the seductor to his love interest, Camilla Lopez. Camilla is a waitress and a down to earth character, not at all like the attractive and dreamy socialite Daisy that is pursued by Gatsby. But Bandini shows great character and nobleness even in the most despairing situations. In fact, perhaps Bandini's lowest point is reached when Camilla reveals that she loves Sam, a waiter suffering badly from tuberculosis and a failed writer of western novels. Sam is rude, violent, and even poorer than Bandini is, yet he manages to capture Camilla's passion. Camilla tramples on Bandini's love with her feet, but Bandini is noble enough to ignore his own feelings and to be concerned for her situation. Bandini gives confort to the dying Sam, then searches the desert for Camilla and just leaves his new novel in the sand when the scorching heat forces him to give up hope.

Cuentos de desigualdad: Chile hoy y la Rusia de Dostoyevski

Esta Pascua hubo una cobertura mediática en Chile al respecto de que la cuarentena de la pandemia Covid no eres igual para todos, tal como todo en la vida, con millonarios saliendo de Vitacura en helicóptero hacía sus mansiones de veraneo en la costa.

Bueno, en la tarde de ese viernes de Pascua estaba a leer Dostoyevski “Noches blancas”. La novela (corta, solo unas 60 páginas) justo en la página 3 tiene una escena que se parece a la imagen de desigualdad de los helicópteros de Chile hoy. El narrador es un joven de clase media en San Petersburgo y le gusta pasear a ver las mansiones de los ricos. Un día al inicio de la primavera se da cuenta que en el fin de semana todos los ricos se fueron de la ciudad para sus casas de campo o en las islas cercanas. Ahí describe muy bien el espectacular éxodo de los acaudalados: los hombres van con flores junto a sus esposas en un coche elegante, pero detrás de ellos van sirvientes con carromatos llenos de cosas o a veces un coche mayor donde la cocinera o sirvienta mayor de la casa va sola con los muebles, utensilios domésticos, sofás y hasta las ollas de cocina. Pero los más ricos, ricos de todos, envían sus muebles y cosas por barco en el río Neva!!!!

Así que vivimos en una sociedad Dostoyevskiana! Sin Czares en el poder, pero con oligarcas en mansiones de campo!!!

Poema para una niña con tres nacionalidades (Chile, Portugal, USA): Día de Portugal

En el Día de Portugal y de las Comunidades Portuguesas decidí poner un poema dedicado a mi hija de 3 años en su cumple en los tres idiomas de sus nacionalidades, español, portugués e inglés. Me inspiré en un poema original de Camoes. Desafortunadamente, no tengo la calidad de nuestro bardo, pero le he dado mi cariño y esfuerzo:

http://www.citador.pt/poemas/quanto-mais-vos-pago-mais-vos-devo-luis-vaz-de-camoes




A uma menina no seu aniversário
Bebé, conhecendo a fortuna das tuas manhãs,
se não te entregasse todo o meu esforço,
seria injusto e imerecido.
Tendo feito dos meus trabalhos uma escravatura
e acorrentado sendo teu prisioneiro,
mais daria a alma, o meu sangue, a minha vida.
Tudo o que é meu é agora teu,
uma vez ver-te tem um preço tão elevado,
que se mais pago mais devo.

A una niña de cumpleaños
Bebé, conociendo la fortuna de tus mañanas
se no entregase todo mi esfuerzo y aprecio
sería inferior, injusto, indebido.
Haciendo de mis trabajos una esclavitud
y en cadenas entregándome prisionero,
más daría mi alma, mi sangre, mi vida.
Todo lo mío es ahora tuyo,
una vez verte es tan alto precio,
que siempre más me endeudo.

To a little girl on her birthday
Baby, having experienced the brightness of your mornings,
if I had not given you all my efforts,
it would have been unfair, undeserved.
Having made my labours a slavery
and delivering myself in chains a prisoner,
still I would offer my blood, my soul, my life.
All that is mine is now yours,
for seeing you demands such a high price,
that always higher is my debt.

Reading for Halloween: "The Shining", hauntings at a classical work building

Now that we are preparing for Halloween, I remembered a bit all the dark novels and short stories I had read through the years: Poe, Lovecraft, also the immortal tale about the autumn people in "Something wicked this way comes" by Bradbury, "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Hawthorne, the enigmatic "Olalla" by Stevenson, even some of the scariest biblical passages. However, after reading the novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption" last April, I decided for the first time to try a long novel from Stephen King and chose "The Shining". The book was a second-hand copy given to me by a friend/coworker after his wedding last July.

Well, just two weeks ago after finishing the novel, I was telling my friend and some colleagues at work about my favorite scenes, so I reminisced about how five-year old hero, Daniel Torrance goes around the scary third-floor rooms of the old hotel. Little Danny knows all the hauntings in the hotel can disappear if he concentrates the power of his mind, so he runs and shouts across each room: "False face. I know who you are. You are all just masks and lies." But Danny still fears because the hotel is like a wasps' nest, full of bad spirits and ghosts, shouting and living in it, and one never knew where the next danger would come from. The haunted restaurant? The rooms? The fireplace with the mechanical clock? The elevator, hallways and stairs?

Then I laid back over my chair at lunch and told my colleagues "Know what? We needed a real Danny Torrance in this building." One of them replied "Why? Do you see many ghosts around here?" I just burst "Are you kidding me? Just think about our building - it is a four-floor solid institution from the mid 1920s, early classical 20th century architecture. And just think about all the powerful men that have governed this workplace! All those souls that did not want to relinquish power, still yearning for the status and influence they lost after leaving us. Of course, we have plenty of ghosts here. No wonder we are so often in a bad mood, always uptight and nervous about our tasks, writings and stuff. We suffer the bad influence of all those former governors, managers, board members, still making their aura felt around here!"

After laughing hard at this, people did confess that indeed one hears of ghosts inside the building, like the little girl who cries and the old man on his cane walking the dog. Just for you to have an idea and see what we were joking about, I leave you some pictures of our lovely 1920s work building. It is indeed a pleasure and a privilege to be here at such a solid institution in a great South American country. You can see pictures of the front entrance, the stairway, an office meeting rooms full of paintings from influential people that governed our institution, the hallways, our wonderful cafeteria with its large painted wall, and even a haunted clock from one of our emblematic rooms.