Thursday, June 16, 2005
whiteheartbeats
Javier Marias, probably one of the best writers that are still into breathing, is a narrator of interiority. Linear thinking and one-way narratives go out the window for intense psychological analysis and tangents the size of London. To read pages of pure thoughts is like listening to white noise. A Heart So White--his first novel I've read--shouldn't be by most (voting) Americans: it doesn't really go anywhere, rarely moves or looks the other way. Endings are here to make us feel warm, but for Marias (and most writers) they're impossible. The last sentence reads like any other in the novel. And considering Spanish novels are meant to be read in Spanish, this translation is the closest an English reader will ever get to español. Fidgety vowels, Autobahn sentences and thick meaning is something most living American writers (sans Delillo, Delany and a handful of others) rarely articulate.
Plus, someone shoots themselves in the heart. What drama queens, these Spanish.
