{"id":5412,"date":"2011-03-14T13:36:54","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=5412"},"modified":"2016-06-29T17:53:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:53:35","slug":"javier-marias-bad-nature-or-with-elvis-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/03\/14\/javier-marias-bad-nature-or-with-elvis-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Javier Mar\u00edas: Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby Javier Mar\u00edas (Mala Indole<\/em>, 1996)<\/span>\r\ntranslated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (1999)<\/span>\r\nNew Directions (2010)<\/span>\r\n57 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
There is concern that New Directions is perceived as an “eat your vegetables” publisher. You might not enjoy them, but the\u00a0books are healthful and good for you in the long run, even if\u00a0they don’t exactly hit that spot that just craves giddy satisfaction.\u00a0This is wrong:\u00a0New Directions books\u00a0can satisfy the most\u00a0self-indulgent\u00a0pleasure.\u00a0 For one thing, the funniest book I read last year was the wild\u00a0The Literary Conference<\/a><\/em>, by C\u00e9sar Aira, and I was thoroughly charmed by Gert Hofmann’s Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Okay, okay, so doubters are going to say, “Come on!\u00a0One’s called The Literary Conference<\/em>! I want excitement and intrigue and you’re telling me to read a book entitled\u00a0The Literary Conference<\/em>? And I don’t even know who this Lichtenburg<\/em> is, but . . .\u00a0really? You’re telling me to read these?”\u00a0To which I respond, “Yes, I am. And I also recommend An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter<\/em>.” And now I’ve just read another New Directions book that\u00a0belies\u00a0any claim that New Directions books should be reserved for\u00a0a more sober time in\u00a0life. It’s another of their great Pearl Series, and it’s title shouldn’t stand in the way: Javier Mar\u00edas’s Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico<\/em>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was putting off reading this book because I have yet to tackle the third volume of Mar\u00edas’s Your Face Tomorrow Trilogy<\/em>. I have a stack of his books at home, unread because I feel I should finish what I’ve started first. Why haven’t I read the third book of a trilogy I highly recommend? Because it’s a big book, and I do most of my reading on a train. I still haven’t figured out how to pack it around with me. I’m sure, though, that once I begin it I won’t be sorry. Just as I wasn’t sorry when I finally opened up this Pearl due to its placement on the Best Translated Book Award longlist<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It was delightful to read the first lines and find myself back in Mar\u00edas territory. An as yet unnamed narrator jumps into the action head first. How? By iterating and reiterating around a slightly abstract concept. In this case, wrath and fear of revenge.<\/p>\n
No one knows what it is to be hunted down without having lived it, and unless the chase was active and constant, carried out with deliberation, determination, dedication and never a break, with perseverance and fanaticism, as if the pursuers had nothing else to do in life but look for you, keep after you, follow your trail, locate you, catch up with you and then, at best, wait for the moment to settle the score.<\/span><\/p>\n
. . . vengeance is extremely wearying and hatred tends to evaporate, it’s a fragile, ephemeral feeling, impermanent, fleeting, so difficult to maintain that it quickly gives way to rancor or resentment which are much more bearable, easier to retrieve, much less virulent and somehow less pressing, while hatred is always in a tearing hurry, always urgent.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before we get even a sense of who’s speaking or why, Mar\u00edas gives\u00a0us around 5 pages of this delightful meandering. Of course, we may not know who is speaking or why, but all the time we’re getting a nice look at this speaker’s mind. For some time he has been running from someone whose sole purpose — he thinks — is to avenge some foul deed. From the title we know that this deed probably took place in Mexico . . . with Elvis. Soon,\u00a0our suspicion\u00a0is confirmed.<\/p>\n
It all happened because of Mr. Presley, and that is not one of those idiotic lines referring to the record that was playing on the night we met, or to the time we were careless and went too far, or to the idol of the person who caused the problem by forcing us to go to a concert to seduce her or just to make her happy. It all happened because of Elvis Presley in person, or Mr. Presley, as I used to call him until he told me it made him feel like his father.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It isn’t a spoiler to explain a little bit about the mishap in Mexico, though I completely understand if some readers simply intrigued about the prospect of Mar\u00edas writing about Elvis in Mexico want to turn their eyes here. For the others, this gives a glimpse at one theme Mar\u00edas is playing with: the power of words, the power (or ills) of translation.<\/p>\n
Elvis is making a movie, at least a part of which will be filmed in Mexico. However,\u00a0Elvis “says he found out they\u00a0pronounce the letter c<\/em> differently in Spain and that’s how he wants to pronounce it.” Since our narrator happens to be the only person from Spain employed by the movie studio, he goes along to help Elvis with his accent (he’s going to sing one of the songs entirely in Spanish — err, but he hopes\u00a0without the Mexican accent) and to act as a translator.<\/p>\n
One night in a cantina, there’s a scuffle between Elvis and some shady characters.\u00a0 Our narrator gets caught in the middle:<\/p>\n
“\u00bfQu\u00e9 ha dicho?” now it was Roland C\u00e9sar’s turn to ask me. Their inability to understand each other was enraging them, a thing like that can really grate on your nerves in an argument.<\/span><\/p>\n
“Que qui\u00e9n es usted para decir que nos vayamos.”<\/span><\/p>\n
“Han oido, Julio, muchachos, me pregunta el gachup\u00edn que qui\u00e9n soy yo para ponerlos en la calle,” Montalb\u00e1n answered without looking at me. I thought (if there was time for such a thought) that it was odd that he said I was the one asking who he was: it was Presley who was asking and I was only translating, it was a warning I didn’t pay attention to, or that I picked up on too late, when you relive what happened, or reconstruct it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Bad Nature<\/em> is funny (I hope that is apparent), but it is also surprisingly intense and psychologically acute. Mar\u00edas trademark, nearly obsessive analyses are a part of that. Also, I think it is important to note that, for this reader, Esther Allen’s translation didn’t stand in the way at all. The prose flowed perfectly, allowing me to satisfy my craving in one sitting. I recommend this to any and all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews Javier Mar\u00edas’s Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico<\/em>, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,107],"tags":[886,901,969,579],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-5412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-javier-marias","tag-1990s","tag-901","tag-new-directions","tag-spanish"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Bad-Nature-or-With-Elvis-i.jpg?fit=345%2C530&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1pi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5412"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18989,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5412\/revisions\/18989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5412"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}