Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

The saving grace for this library selection is that, at least, everyone else in Sonoma County had to read it as well.  I might use the word “pioneering” rather than “classic” in describing this book.  It’s now 40 years old; more than a decade before “The House on Mango Street”; a quarter century before writers like Ortega y Gasset and Octavio Paz; and long before Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”  I mention Mango Street because we read Cisneros a few years ago.  We also read “To Kill a Mockingbird”.  Each of these three: Mango, Mockingbird, and Ultima were fictionalized memoirs told by pre-teen children.  There is a definite Big Read pattern here.  Of the three, Ultima has the most mystical view of life as seen through the child’s eyes.  The children’s view of adult life is usually mysterious because adults don’t like to (and sometimes can’t) provide explanations that can be related to the child’s view.  Sometimes Antonio creates fantasy explanations for the confusing things around him.  Often the writer drifts into poetic metaphor and too often, delves into polemic.  Certainly the author usually keeps in mind the pre-teen voice in this writing; it’s simplistic and easy to read, painless and relatively short.  A pioneering work, not unlike Ray Bradbury’s, “Fahrenheit 451”, another Big Read book. 

I thought it was a cute gimmick for the author to dribble around smatterings of barrio talk.  Again, simple enough that it fit within the bi-lingual pre-teen view of the world.  Simple enough that an American reader isn’t lost because of expressions like: “Que Paso”, “Cabron”, or “Puta”.  We get the meanings, and puff ourselves up thinking, “Hey, I’m reading a Spanish language book.!”  But Anaya kept his sprinklings out of the main, plot-line thread; it was almost like exclamatory punctuation. 

What didn’t work very well was the author’s self-control at lapsing into adult-voice for his political, philosophical, and theological rants.  He tried to find a niche for himself through the italicized dream-sequences.  Now I don’t remember myself or any of my 8/9 year-old buddies dreaming about the theological issues of one God or many, nor about the place in the world for good and evil; violence and death versus the eternal serenity of balanced yin and yang.  My dreams at nine were about erotic adventures with my “Let’s play doctor” playmate, Beverly Byer.  That’s me at 9, front row left, with Beverly (the only girl I invited to my birthday party).

I’d like to think of this book as a Western (as opposed to Southern) version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  Maybe “El Búho de los Muertos” [The Owl of the Dead].

Padma Catell's Comments on "Bless Me, Ultima"

All I can say is “Bless me for finishing this book.”

Basically I hated many things about it. Perhaps it is because I am not of Hispanic or Latin ancestry but I could not get myself interested in Antonio his relatives, including Ultima, or his friends. I would have liked to have found out more about Ultima; she seemed an interesting character, and less about Horse, Bones, and how far boys of that age can spit or piss. These parts seemed both irrelevant and somewhat nauseating to me.

I also have an objection to the use of vernacular when it is bad English. I would think for the “Big Read” which is supposed to promote reading in young adults, the choice would be one of more literary merit. My husband, Scott, who is an author, tells me it is acceptable to use sentences like, “The entire school was eager to go on Christmas vacation.” But I think this just reinforces bad grammar, which does not need any reinforcement. And what is it about the use of adverbs that seems to be going out of style? Is there something I’ve missed about this?

And another thing, the endless passages about Catholicism did not add anything as far as I could see. I actually found myself groaning aloud in my car while listening to them. I realize the idea was a “coming of age” story of a boy coming to terms (although as far as I could see he never did) with the ideas of god and death, and the meaning of life, but he went on so long that all I wanted was for him to stop with the religious stuff. I did not find what was going on in his head very interesting.

And what did his dreams have to do with anything? And what was it supposed to mean that Florence dies? This really bothered me since Florence was the one character I cared about and he was killed off. I’d have much preferred to see Horse, Bones, or one of the other obnoxious boys die.

OK, I’ve gone on long enough. You all can discern how I feel about this book. But finally, I’m saddened that this was the choice for the Big Read. I’m not sure what kind of example it is setting for the young people who will read it. And it leaves me wondering who makes the choice for the Big Read, and what criteria are used for making the choice.   Big sigh, padma

The 1,001 Winters of Meaningless Asian Stories by David Mitchell

I’m sorry.  ---  For ten years, I’ve prided myself for reading to completion even the worst of library selections.  However, I found this book ssoooooo boring, that I struggled, reading only a few pages a day, to complete all the odd-chapters, the last half of which, I skim-read.  Most times, with a goal of finishing a single 6-page chapter, I fell asleep after two pages.  So, why did I find this book so boring.??

Of course there are the usual quota of reasons we all hate: (-) too much untranslated foreign language.  This book had two: Japanese and Dutch. (-) historical period cultural quirks and culture-clash between nation-state Europe and Empire Asia.  These and other prescriptions from our elite East-coast “betters”, are for our own good: we should know more about foreign cultures and history.

The “300-page” rule that we talked about not more than two months ago, was tortuously violated, causing me, at least, to skip the even chapters.  There is the reason (for hating it) that we don’t talk much about; to wit, what was the point of these 15,000 words.?  The above few points are dictated by our “superiors” because, in their eyes, it’s a good elixir for us, a potion that will make us better people.  But there has to be an explanation of why it is good for us.  Usually we will learn something (like the Korea book or The Wind-Up Girl) or gain an appreciation of an aspect of life we are unfamiliar with (like What is the What or The Lace Reader).  But this book was too scattered (like Cara Black or Eric Weiner) or that Canadian saga.  This book lost focus, broadly covered too much territory, and when this is compounded by foreign names and too many long descriptive scenes, then my feeble, Alzheimer-prone brain just cuts out and says to me, “Take a nap, Peter. You brain is going to overheat.”

Now maybe I’ve seen too many movies or plays, and read too many books, and in my dotage, I think there is nothing new under the sun; but when I sat down to force myself to write something about this book (and was only 2/3 through it [although I sped-read to the end in the subsequent 90 minutes] ), I actually paid attention to what was happening for a brief two minutes.  Lo and behold, I ran into Hamlet (“Oh, but for twenty feet of rope”) and Dickens’ language (“…an’ number the stones proper, too, an’ write down the guests’ names if they said one, an’ if it’s a man or woman, an’ guess their age, an’ whatnot.”); Yorick (Uzaemon in the graveyard) and Henry V on the eve of battle on Crispian’s Day visiting the firesides; Uma Thurman in Kill Bill II (Orito escaping the tunnel by kicking her way out.)

So, I’m thinking, “I guess coming up with original scenes, in a totally fictional book about events 200 years ago in an obscure place, sufficient to last across 500 pages is quite a stretch.  This could take real genius (Dickens and Shakespeare did it); or it could take twenty years, a life’s work; or with a modern publisher and editor breathing down your back, you could pull in a few proven scenes.  And when most characters live happily ever after and all the “good” guys do OK and not too many people are hurt, and even the monkey finds true love, then the book will be published, but booooring.