Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marias

• Stream-of-consciousness, entirely in the Victor's mind, seamless movement between past and present.
• Episodes: Death of Marta; Meeting with The Only One; Lunch with Tellez, Lucia, Eduardo; Victoria/Celia; at the Races with Ruiberrez Torres; Following Lucia; Eduardo tells his story. Structural weave, repetition.
• Protagonist, Victor, is a lurker and a watcher, a sneak and dissembler, not necessarily an unreliable narrator, recognizes his cowardice and sliminess but admits of it freely (not without a shrug or a blush of embarrassment).
• His double, Ruiberrez Torres, is an unctuous opportunist and womanizer, manifestation of Victor's worst qualities.
• the Virgin/Whore problem of the Catholic male
• the hilarious scene with The Only One, The Lone Ranger, etc. and his factota pandering to his egotism -- this kind of roast a staple of Catholic/Anglican culture (recently at the Granville Book Store Bob was arguing that Canada is different from the U.S. in that it is primarily a Catholic and Anglican country and doesn't have the Puritanism of the U.S.; he said that it being mainly Catholic and Anglican it is more tolerant, but at the same time more respectful -- and mocking -- of authority, in Catholicism the word of god is interpreted by the church authorities. Blasphemy reinforces the power of the authority -- Tabernac! etc.)
• Tireless observation of women's legs, their stockings and their shoes, the length of their skirts.
• The desperate need of Eduardo to tell his story to the only person who will understand, to unburden himself of the story
• the last, withheld secret -- that of Marta's continued relationship with a certain Vicente -- withheld by Marta from Luisa (they told each other everything) withheld by Victor from Eduardo -- and the big secret of how Marta died withheld from Tellez, her father, and Eugenio, her son.
• Life lived in a permanent state of delusion because of what is withheld from us, what is not known to us, what we are mistaken in believing. The interval between what happens and when we find out about it, and the deluded time we retrospectively see as falsely lived.
• Elaborate memory of specific streets or neighborhoods in Madrid, loci of significant events
• The "shared" memory of Victor and Marta of the rag and bone cart and the little beggar girl riding on top, passing the bus of bourgeois schoolgirls in their uniforms
• The unsolvable problem of subjective experience.
• The films mentioned -- Chimes at Midnight, Double Indemnity, 101 Dalmations.

LINK | 11:18 PM | TB

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