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].