Thursday late afternoon---just
posted this on Facebook --- might be dumb to have done so.  

I was 19, freshman in college, second year in the monastery. Sunny afternoon. Came back from a jog around the grounds, as I approached the mansion, Chuck S ran along the house, saw me and yelled "The President has been shot.”

Thinking much less about The Infatuations but enough still to imagine re-writes that would tinker with the telling much more drastically.  Take out all or most of the literary gameishness.  Take out even Macbeth or maybe especially Macbeth.  Marías makes fun of writers who fill their books with historical info or local detail but his mode of referencing other literary works is just as pretentious at least potentially so, and just as filler-like in some ways.  Think of how Knausgaard would “translate” Marías’s story into something that fits into his narrative or novel.  

Tuesday morning around 10:30

“I only mention it as proof that even the most transient and trivial of infatuations lack any real cause, and that’s even truer of feelings that go far deeper, infinitely deeper than that. ‘ “ d-v  265

“and all feelings are idiotic as soon as you describe or explain or simply give a voice to them,”  266 

---------

by page 268 (of 346) I wonder if María will kill Diego--have him killed?  

“He knew exactly how I felt, the loved one always does, if he’s in his right mind and isn’t himself in love, because in that case he won’t be able to tell and will misinterpret the signs.”  269

“ ‘It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten.’  Perhaps he thought the same applied to real events, to events in our own lives.  That’s probably true for the person experiencing them, but not for other people.  Everything becomes a story and ends up drifting about in the same sphere, and then it’s hard to differentiate between what really happened and what is pure invention.  Everything becomes a narrative and sounds fictitious even if it’s true. And so he went on as if I had said nothing.”  (283)

“We do tend to believe things while we’re hearing or reading them.  Afterwards, it’s another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking.”  292

The novel finishes up in ways very different from what I thought.  So my imagination was way too American about the whole thing.

Brilliant, though.  As soon as I finished it I slipped it into the mailer, walked a block from the cafe to the post office and sent it off to Phil in Washington, DC.  

"Once you've finished a novel," says Díaz Varela to Dolz, "what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.”  

Dropping the book into the mail felt like I was getting rid of a virus or an infection.  It was such a relief.  I was glad I had managed to finish reading it in the time I had today with time to get it into the mail.  I was glad I enjoyed it so much even though what I had expected to be the final turns of plot or revelation did not happen.  But then as I drove over to the town where I was to pick Virginia up from her appointment, I realized that indeed the story had possibilities I had not yet considered and the pleasure was all the greater.  Diaz-Varela may have set into motion the events that killed Miguel but are we not sure now, as Maria herself seems not at all to be, that it is Louisa who had delegated the task to Varela.  Maria has been blinded by her infatuation with Varela.  She does not see as clearly as she thinks she does.  Louisa matches the woman in the Three Musketeers story, the woman hanged by Athos, Anne de Breuil, later called Milady de Winter.  

Why would it not work with genders reversed?  Louisa > Louis is married to Miguel > Michelle.  Louis and Michelle have breakfast every morning at the same cafe on Newbury Street.  Mark Dolzet, who works in publishing, also goes there every morning.  

Why even speculate in this way?  Is it homage or envy or both?  The book is wonderful and powerful.  Reviewer for the Guardian or Observer says it is Marías’ best.  Hmm.  Maybe.  Always skeptical of that sort of claim by reviewers.  

 What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events do and to which we pay far more attention.

el enamoramiento -- the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I'm referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, though not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning ...

Wednesday 11:17 in Concord at the Subaru dealer for an oil change.  Diving in to the Createspace site to continue work on the book.  Still rehashing Marías and thinking about whether to really undertake a re-write.  Can always start the book at once and write the book about writing the book.  Vanity publishing thy name is Jubilation! 

Sunday night Nov 17  

Rain and very warm.  Last night we saw the Julia Louis Drefus and James Gandolfini movie, Enough Said.  Pleasant enough but afterwards lots of flaws turn up and really it is not important enough to even talk about.  On Rotten the difference between critics--95% and audiences 82% tells the story and you can tell here who is closer to the truth of the matter.  Sweet movie and all that.  

Much more intrigued by Infatuations.  Learned one new phrase---to be “on a hiding to nothing”  --to be getting a victory of sorts but of not much importance especially given how much it has cost you---if I understand the phrase.  From horseracing.  

Anyway--enjoying Marías again after a session of doubt last night (when I was tired).  Especially so because what he does is so very far from the sort of novel Phil writes which even though he never took a writing course still has the earmarks of the way fiction should be in the American late 20th C mode. Whereas Marías presents works that would not last one week in the creative writing classroom, nor in the magazine or newspaper cultural Inbox.  The other thing is JM gives me the sense of wanting to do that---to write a book like this one even to copy it and “translate” it somehow, to pull out the frame of the story and embellish “my own” variations on it in my own language.  That is an old fantasy and I have even started to try it a few times years ago.  Could I make it even slightly work somehow? even as my first worst attempt to write fiction?  Now Phil’s book didn’t make me think these things.  His is about Cumberland and characters he made up and his voice is so familiar to me I know I can’t imitate it and I know I don’t want to, nor do I want to write a detective crime novel like that one at all.  Marías’s book, however, excites me to think of trying some sort of imitation.  Is that the response of readerly appreciation or something else, some things else?  Imitation highest form of flattery; flattery the highest form of envy?  

The car dealer put a new calendar in the front seat after the routine oil change yesterday.  “Motivaltional Visions” for 2014.  Those hyper sharp colorful images framed in serious heavy black glossy borders that have been motivating office workers for twenty years now.  Part of what biz people used to call our pursuit of Excellence.  Sure enough, June of next year has a beautiful hummingbird over a pine bough and “Excellence” in Roman Cut Stone Font, all caps.  Under that the softcore sermon for the month:  “What really matters is what you do with what you have.”

I threw it into the trash when I got home.  But a few minutes later I gazed gratefully at it because it had solved a recent puzzle that had been troubling my noggin.  In the same small city for the oil change, our state capital, there are two handsome new five story office buildings side-by-side on south Main, sort of a new development area of town.  On my second or third walk-by and visit--a big new version of the local bookstore is now in one of the buildings---I noticed two amazing features of the buildings.  As you enter one (home to the biggest law firm in town) carved in the brick-rimmed sidewalk entrance rectangle/welcome mat are the words “Love Your Neighbor.”  As you pass by the next building, if you look up to the top floor where there used to be on the cornice a keystone there is a large stone tablet with the word “Smile ! “ exclamation point included.  

Motivational, soft-core sermonic architecture.  Wow, who knew?  “Architecture” is too lofty a name here---business office style brick structures is what they are, neat and trim but hardly architecture.  Nevertheless they have Messages.  The Smile ! building houses the new offices of the town’s Chamber of Commerce.  Of Course ! and a gallery for the State League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, a fine organization of long standing. 

At first I thought the whole thing seemed a bit Disneylandish.  But the motivational calendar has cleared things up.  Maybe I will used it after all and get with the program.  Maybe I will frame one of the months even.  For the Ishmael-ish month of November next year I will have golden leaves against white birch trees with “Change” in caps and the cutline “The best is yet to be.”  Ahh, boosterism, thy favors float down upon us like manna in the desert.  

“. . . what were shaving brushes made or hairpins made of, when was such and such a building put up or a certain film first shown, the kind of superfluous stuff that bores readers, but which writers think will impress.”  Infatuations (186 UK) 

Monday  November 18

Maria (Dolz) has overheard Díaz-Varela talking with Ruibérriz and knows now that he had Desverne killed in hopes that he could then get Louisa to love him.  But my guess is at this point that (given the Balzac tale about the dead colonel ghost) Diaz-Varela will have the shock of learning that Louisa engaged his services not to join with him but because she had another lover he had no knowledge of and hence he will end up being the ghost, no, the returned dead man, condemned to crime and guilt and having no chance of being in her life.  Our narrator will have to learn this too, first.  what will happen to her?  Maybe she will find love with ?

I had a professional editor give me some help on my Amazon review of the novel by J P Jones.  Here's the result--tighter, more clear, more effective.

In "A Sense of Loss," a moving and thoughtful novel by J P Jones, Detective Mike Cutler tells us about his search for a murderer but what stays long after we finish the story is the depth of his feeling for his hometown Bartonsburg, West Virginia. This once prosperous little city is one of the hundreds of local communities around the country that have experienced great loss over the past fifty years.  The murder victim is a doctor from India, relatively new to Bartonsburg.  Cutler’s search leads him through the back-reaches of the mountain town he knows so well and leads him down paths of reflection on what has happened to it he never expected to explore - racism, drugs, union busting, greed, poverty and ignorance, in-bred clannishness and hunger for urban sophistication and wealth. Bartonsburg comes to life with a disturbing yet satisfying intensity.  We meet a rich set of characters who deftly portray the whole town and region, from unemployed drug-taking youths to a steel mill owner, a wealthy lawyer, and a playboy banker dying of cancer.  The whole town comes to life in the telling and a cold case gets uncovered as well.  Behind the troubles of the dead doctor lies a long history of troubles in Bartonsburg.  

The pleasure of this superb novel, then, is how it gives us a detective story, a crime to be solved, but in terms that are far beyond the boxes we usually associate with that essential plot.  Essential in the sense not of formula fiction but the human story.   Murder cuts into every tie binding any town together.  We see not just how the murder has cut into the quick of their lives but how an unsolved cold case still holds open old wounds for everyone.  A whole age of promise, possibility and expectation has gone.

Review of J P Jones’ A Sense of Loss  CreateSpace 2013

“Buy local” came into fashion in the past few years.  It might apply to this moving and thoughtful novel by J P Jones, his third available here on Amazon.  Detective Mike Cutler tells us about his search for a murderer but what stays long after we finish the story is the depth of his feeling for his hometown of Bartonsburg, West Virginia.  Here is a region not really included in the trendy slogan of buying local.  Rather it is one of the hundreds of local communities around the country that have experienced great loss over the past fifty years.  The victim in the case is a doctor from India, relatively new to Bartonsburg.  Cutler’s search leads him through the back-reaches of the mountain town he knows so well and leads him down paths of reflection on what has happened to it he never expected to explore.  We meet lots of interesting and irritating people, from Peter Bremer whose wife Lisa worked for the murdered doctor, to Hiram Greer the crusty steel mill owner, to Riley Bruce the rich lawyer to Bill Atherton the rich playboy and Nelly Simpson living out her days in a home.  The whole town comes to life in the telling and a cold case gets uncovered as well.  Behind the troubles of the dead doctor lie a long history of troubles in Bartonsburg.  

The pleaure of this superb novel, then, is how it gives us a detective story, a crime to be solved, but in terms that are far beyond the boxes we usually associate with that essential plot.  Essential in the sense not of formula fiction but the human story.   Murder cuts into every tie binding any town together.  

*Haunting murder mystery which explores much more than the killing of a young Indian doctor new to the northern West Virginia town of Bartonsburg.   When experienced detective Mike Cutler sets out to find the killer, we meet a rich set of characters who deftly portray the whole town and region, and we see not just how the murder has cut into the quick of their lives but how an unsolved cold case still holds open old wounds for everyone.  

Racism, drugs, empty factories, union busting, greed, poverty and ignorance, in-bred clannishness and hunger for urban sophistication and wealth, Bartonsburg comes to life with a disturbing yet satisfying intensity.  

Mike Cutler takes us into every hollow and cranny of the town he loves, ever more deeply confronting the way the murders have sliced through the community, and tries to understand what all has happened to them far beyond the murders.  A whole age of promise, possibility and expectation has gone.  

delicious meal in Manchester

Saturday night

We went to the Fox Run mall near Portsmouth.  Dreadful place.  We had forgotten, hadn’t been there for a good while. Walked first at BJs in Tilton, so we did get the 5000 steps after the mall walking at least.   Day redeemed itself after a wander-drive in the dark back to Manchester (I missed that darned exit again off 95 to 101) we had a great dinner at Republic.  Really great. Sole and Monkfish, two separate dishes.  I had a fine two-glass serving of a Côte du Rhone.  We had tried to get reservations at Cava or Moxy in Portsmouth since this is restaurant week state-wide, but they were overbooked.  Whether we try to go back this week remains to be seen.  Doubt it, but who knows.  Monday is the holiday so that may remind us to consider it.  The blueberry tart was perfect, barely sweet and then on the other side of the tray/plate was a compote of cold, sweeter blueberries.  Perfect pairing with the tart.  Plus a spread of heavy whipped cream with a mint leaf and a thinly sliced strawberry.  I should describe the monkfish treatment with the same zeal for detail but I won’t.  Va’s sole was crusted with pistachios.