The Write Thing

Buenos Aires, Saturday afternoon, 6.00 pm:
La Giralda. Came downtown for a good walking exercise and a tour of bookshops along Corrientes Avenue. Nothing to die for, so far. Got hold of a copy of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on DVD as a debt I had with the Swedish master. Stopped here, for a quick “cortado” at a cafe that seems to be one of the few traditional things still standing in this city where progress equals monumental tower buildings and sterilized glass-clad coffee shops. La Giralda is still one of the few places in town where you’ll pay five pesos for a sizable cup of white coffee…yes, perhaps I should have gone for the submarino con churros, a classic here.

There are quite a few people at the bar. A threesome at the table next to mine are engaged in passionate platitudes, and make a raucous scene once every five minutes, startling my pen off the lined pages of my Moleskine…I can even smell the salami of the sandwich the bulky boy next to my chair is having. But that’s part of the deal in this place, so I find it somewhat charming.
The book tour so far is proving hard. I walked similar streets to those I prowled over ten years ago. Zivals is now a tango store as well, and the classical jewels I used to marvel about in the old nineties are now dusty leftovers of those days, when you could choose between at least two different versions of Wagner’s Der Ring. Unknown singers now beckon from their dim-lit racks, offering exciting — and challenging — renderings of Schumann’s lieder.
I crave for rarity. Where is that book that will bring me a glimpse of the odd, magical city where you could find the weirdest things, like a postcard of Patty Duke’s 1960 TV show? Where is the city in which Bolshevik-oriented youngsters would flock to see Streisand’s On a Clear Day instead of a Fassbinder’s retrospective that played in the next room? Where is the all-encompassing Buenos Aires, apocalyptic but shining with the charm of rare movies? Where is the unexpected pleasure, the purpose of the quest? It seems I belong now to the small group of outcasts left to ponder and waltz around our own thirst for more.

One more hour is left to my wanderlust to see a hopeful outcome. I have the hunger inside. The hunt will go on.

I belong to the group of people who believe that the reader gains from the knowledge of the context that shapes the writing process. We live
what we write and write what we live, so severing the verbs to extract the final work that results from this unique combination is like seeing only a piece of the pie.

I have been thinking about a universal human feeling these days — jealousy. Here’s how the English and the French would put it:

Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West’s husband, to Vita in a letter after she had eloped with Violet Trefusis and seemed unreachable:

…but I know how extremely busy you are and how much of your time is taken up by playing tennis and talking to your dirty little friend. At times I get racked with longing for you, and the slightest thing gives me a crise de jalousie, not jealous of your loving other people (you know I am calm about that), but jealous simply of your being with other people dont je ne connais pas la puissance sur ton coeur.

[January 8, 1919]

But perhaps my favorite definition of jealousy is given by Proust in La Prisonnière:

D’ailleurs la jalousie est de ces maladies intermittentes, dont la cause est capricieuse, impérative, toujours identique chez le même malade, parfois entièrement différente chez un autre. Il y a des asthmatiques qui ne calment leur crise qu’en ouvrant les fenêtres, en respirant le grand vent, un air pur sur les hauteurs, d’autres en se réfugiant au centre de la ville, dans une chambre enfumée. Il n’est guère de jaloux dont la jalousie n’admette certaines dérogations. Tel consent à être trompé pourvu qu’on ne le lui dise, tel autre pourvu qu’on le lui cache, en quoi l’un n’est guère moins absurde que l’autre, puisque si le second est plus véritablement trompé en ce qu’on lui dissimule la vérité, le premier réclame en cette vérité, l’aliment, l’extension, le renouvellement de ses souffrances.
Bien plus, ces deux manies inverses de la jalousie vont souvent au-delà des paroles, qu’elles implorent ou refusent les confidences.

Interestingly, Proust defines jealousy as a “maladie”, whereas Nicholson seems surprised to feel something of the kind — or maybe it’s simply a form of English understatement. What Proust points out very well — à la Proust, without being too explicit — is that no matter what the jealous heart decides to do, suffering will not cease.

Yesterday night, perhaps in anticipation of the never so globalized Saint Valentine’s celebration, I watched a movie that, apparently, was quite successful in the US a while ago. It is called The Jane Austen Book Club, and it is based on a book by the same name written by Karen Joy Fowler. The action basically takes place in book club meetings between six people who gather around the task of analyzing six of Jane Austen’s novels. Unlike many of the reviews I read after seeing the film, I simply loved it. There’s nothing to do about it: we all like or dislike things according to our mood. My mood yesterday was exactly the mood that could go with this movie. It is a comedy, romantic, full of unbelievable and poignant characters…what else can you ask for in Saint Valentine’s eve?

I think that, once more, the reason why I particularly liked a movie that many people might find slightly basic or superficial was because of Dame Jane. It brought back memories of the good old days when I made literary discoveries as I prepared for my university graduation. One of those discoveries was, precisely, Pride and Prejudice. No matter what you think of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, I certainly found out in my teen years that Ms. Austen and I had lots of opinions in common. In literary terms, perhaps the major value of this movie to me was that it put me in touch with Jane Austen again, and made me plan a strategy to get hold of a new novel of hers to read.

This morning, I got myself a copy of Austen’s Emma. They say that we do not choose books, but that books choose us. Let’s see if Emma made a good choice. Probably she did.