Customer Reviews

When I Was Mortal

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In fairness to Mr. Marias, I think an alternative view of this collection should be offered to the book-buying public so that they can decide if they wish to purchase this item.

Although this collection does have its faults and is sometimes uneven--I think a couple of entries could easily have been left out--it offers an interesting and entertaining literary voice and suggests a universe that is uniquely cohesive and disturbing. Indeed, one could posit that in Mr. Marias's universe little true empathy exists between persons, be they husbands and wives, childhood friends, or even casual or business acquaintances. A general, undefined antipathy permeates the boundaries of most human interaction in these stories, suggesting that modern society is lacking some basic interconnectedness at its core; yes, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but just what is not so obvious as in Shakespeare's tales.

This is not to suggest that everyone is alone and riddled by angst, anger, or fear--and spouting off about them--but merely that modern relationships display some palpable sense of absence rather than a unity at the core. The sense is that fate or accident has thrown people together--or blinded them--and that this condition of unexpressed unease is allowed to exist until, one day, it emerges in sudden flares of violent action.

Indeed, violence can be found in almost all of these twelve tales, but not the overt violence of today's movies and TV news. These tales are rarely graphic or disturbing in that sense. The violence is often suggested and its reasons masked rather than explicitly shown. One story asks, Have two women worked together with a "foreign" doctor to quietly eliminate their husbands? Another depicts a bodyguard who now seems compelled to kill the person he has been hired to protect, but we are left to ponder the reason. Still another leaves us wondering about the suicide of a main character. Indeed, Marias takes us along the path of Yeats' poems, where we are often left with questions rather than defined answers, and in that sense the tales can be confounding if you are not willing to read closely, and reread, to unearth the subtleties of the elegant prose and the barely revealed clues. Little is directly stated in these stories, and I am sure that will cause consternation among those who want clean-cut, easily defined tales that have a neat beginning, a logical progression, and an inevitable or shocking end. That is not Marias's way. More often, you are left to fill in the subtext. Fortinbras does not waltz in neatly at the end to restore order.

Was I always pleased with these stories? Nope. But did I learn from them and find some small truths about people and the way we are mortal? The answer is defintely yes. And because the prose is refined and subtlely ironic, because the viewpoint is often detached and analytical, and because Marias presents an unsettling world that truly reflects our own, I was curious enough to read them as befits their merit. They peeked my interest enough to even attempt a novel by Marias, and that may well be my next Amazon purchase.

By the way, the story "When I Was Mortal," the centerpiece of the work, is among the best conjectural narratives I have read. It may not be worth the price of admission alone, but it goes a long way toward making this volume a worthwhile purchase.

A reader should consider the possibility that Marias' introduction to the book is also fictive, including the details about commissions.

I'm slightly surprised that this is the first five-star review of this collection, but I am happy to provide one. I picked up When I Was Mortal - it was my first exposure to the work of Marias - after seeing his named lumped together with W. G. Sebald, Michel Houellebecq, and Vladimir Sorokin, all writers I have devoured and returned to again and again. It was not a useless comparison (though, of course, those writers are all very different, and Marias isn't exactly quite like any of them; still...). I read the entire book on a return flight home - though I had only intended to read a story or two and then fall asleep - I was so entranced by the narrator's voice(s), the compelling characters, the twisted situations.

I enjoyed the experience so much that I sought out a number of his other works - A Heart So White, the recently-concluded Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, all of which I have enjoyed; however, I'm someone who generally prefers chamber music to symphonies, the intricately-crafted miniature to the densely-woven panoramic. That's what I found in these Marias stories and, in a way, they helped to teach me how to read the longer works. (I've heard Marias compared to Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, etc., perhaps simply because of the sheer length of Your Face Tomorrow, but I don't see it.) When I Was Mortal is the perfect introduction to this important contemporary writer; if nothing else, it will allow the curious reader to gauge whether or not to seek out his other works. For my part, I felt compelled to read more - in the same way I felt compelled to seek out the orchestral work of Marias's compatriot Cristobal Halffter after hearing Halffter's string quartets. These stories convey the same intimacy - and intensity - of chamber music, and I'm excited to see that another collection of stories will soon be available.

Javier Marías embraces apparently trivial situations and augments their attention value by emphasizing what goes through people's minds prior to engaging in thoroughly climactic experiences, such as killing one's boss or breaking into the world of pornography. Suspense keeps building up, but then it dissolves. After reading a couple of these stories one gets a hold of the trend and expects no suspense breaking. A few tales later the book becomes obviously boring.

I ordered this book on the basis of Mr. Marias's fame as one of Spain's best modern writers; I wished to sample my countryman's fame and enjoy the vehicle of his success. At the very start of the volume the reader is informed that about 300,000 copies of this book have been sold in Spanish speaking countries, and also that Mr. Marias has won numerous prizes for his writing.

Also at the start of the book is an author's foreword, in which he explains himself. For it is true that this little volume of 12 short stories needs to be explained, and that is my main criticism of the book: the stories cannot (and therefore do not) stand on their own feet. The author has to bring the reader into a back room and tell him about his creations (even though, I for one, fiercely resist invitations to back rooms); to explain that 11 of the 12 stories were "commissioned" (that is, someone offered to pay for a story of so many words, or one containing "the sea, a storm, and animal..," or one taking place in Madrid); to explain his philosophy about the creative process; or to tell about how some of the stories had been modified in order to appear in this volume. The trouble is that an artist should either let his productions speak for themselves, or (if they are mute) let them remain silent.

Most, if not all, of these stories should have been editorially returned to the author for finishing or for banishment. At some level the author surely understands about his propensity to produce stunted creations, for he has this to say about other short stories of his: "There are still a few scattered elsewhere, written very freely or without commission: it seems advisable to me, however, that they should either remain in obscurity or else scattered." That radical prescription should have been applied to these twelve also.

There are twelve short stories in this volume, and none seems to have been finished: they either lack a proper beginning, a decent middle or a completed end. Perhaps the future of the short story is going to be this: incomplete musings, wobbly sketches, outlines, unfinished plots, half-baked ideas. An introduction to this volume tells us that 300,000 copies of the book have been sold in Spanish speaking countries, and lists the many prizes won by its author Javier Marías. Obviously someone has enjoyed these stories, but not I.

There is no question that the author is capable of churning out lovely sentences and pretty paragraphs; but this is like laying bricks beautifully, but having no construction plan, or a defective one: the final product will be pointless and not pleasing to the eye.

I do not believe that an artist should need to explain his work; having to explain indicates a recognition by the craftsman that his work is defective, or incomplete, or in need of being propped up, or excused, or forgiven. Mr. Marías prefaces this short volume with an introduction explaining his stories. This introduction does not enhance the stories at all and probably detracts from them.

He has this to say about other short stories he has created: "There are still a few [short stories] scattered elsewhere, written very freely or without any commission: it seems advisable to me, however, that they should either remain in obscurity or else scattered." Exactly so. These twelve deserved a similar fate (scattered obscurity) but instead they were gathered together and translated into English and presented in this handsome volume. Not a book that I will recommend to my friends.