05 Bad Nature, Or With Elvis in Mexico-Javier Marías

I’m finding ways to cheat in this quest to 50. This may be a novella of 57 pages but it is a thing of beauty. Marías is an elaborator, with sentences of largess that somehow seem tight. Maybe the length of the book allows for this feeling.

“…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 more bearable, easier to retrieve, much less virulent and somehow less pressing, while hatred is always in a tearing hurry, always urgent: I want him dead, bring me the son of bitch’s head, I want to see him flayed and his body smeared with tar and feathers, a carcass, skinned and butchered, and then he will be no one and this hatred that is exhausting me will end.”

Poetic right? And this is only the second half of the first paragraph, a paragraph with two sentences (I’ll stop with the sentence talk in subsequent posts, please forgive me, and fuck you Stanley Fish).

The short version: An old man reflects on his life of running from murderers, and it all started with Elvis’s hubris.

The long version: this story is of a Spaniard who has been hired to travel through Mexico in the 60’s as Elvis Presley’s translator during the production of Fun in Acapulco. I love that this book was translated from Spanish, yet it's about a Spanish translator. Dizzying. The narrator is Ruibérriz, but the Elvis entourage calls him Roy Berry since we Americans can’t get shit right. Brilliant.

Since Elvis can’t sit still for a second, he goes out every night with his translator and at least 3 others. If they fly to Mexico City only five people can fit in the plane and come along with him. If he parties in Acapulco he is followed by packs of EP monogrammed shirts and jackets. Ultimately they end up in the wrong bar in Mexico City and one among the Elvis crew starts dancing and insults a mean crew of Mexicans with his terrible moves and subsequent theft of a green silk handkerchief.

Then the party goes sour. While Roy is translating what the gauchos in the bar say, Elvis gets pissed and has Roy say some not so nice things in return. The Gauchos only know Spanish, but they don’t want to kill Elvis, so now Roy is the object of their ire, because, you know, the words came out of Roy’s mouth.

Marías does a lot well. The observations of Elvis as a person are unique and heartwarming. I can only imagine how cool Elvis really was, but Marías makes me believe that Elvis sings his way through each moment of the day, like an Elvis sing-a-long, but Elvis is really there singing your favorites.

Marías packs so much into this short work that I’m on the prowl for more from Spain’s greatest living author. Any suggestions?

04 Seven Plays Sam Shepard

This collection is all about two plays for most people: True West and Buried Child. I recommend Curse of the Starving Class too, but I’m just going to post about True West, it’s my favorite. Buried Child won the Pulitzer in ’79, so, you know, check this collection out.

While critically acclaimed, Shepard writes damn good works of drama. He creates perfect dialogue. He also writes gritty scenes that find a way of remaining real in a setting I like to imagine being surreal. The settings of his plays recreate various locales of the Southwestern United States. If you’ve ever been there, you know how enchanting and mysterious the land can be. Shepard captures that enchantment.

True West is about Lee and Austin. Austin, the younger brother, is staying at his mother’s house (she’s vacationing) trying to finish a screenplay for a Hollywood producer. Lee is a petty thief looking for an easy payday as he runs from his debts. There is little respect between these two. The fighting brother dynamic is thrown into full effect as Austin is trying to take care of the house and finish his play. The conversation centers around how each brother survives. Each thinks they have life figured out. Austin writes, and he lives on the straight and narrow. Lee has a life of crime, but he also has “true to life” stories to tell:

Austin: Nobody can disappear. The old man tried that. Look where it got him. He lost his teeth

Lee: He never had any money.

Austin: I don’t mean that. I mean his teeth! His real teeth. First he lost his real teeth, then he lost his false teeth. You never knew that did ya’? He never confided in you.

Lee: Nah, I never knew that.

Austin: You wanna’ drink? Yeah, he lost his real teeth one at a time. Woke up every morning with another tooth lying on the mattress. Finally, he decides he’s gotta’ get ‘em all pulled out but he doesn’t have any money. Middle of Arizona with no money and no insurance and every morning another tooth is lying on the mattress. So what does he do?

Lee: I dunno’. I never knew about that.

Austin: So he locates a Mexican dentist in Juarez who’ll do the whole thin for a song. And he takes off hitchhicking to the border.

Lee: Hitchhiking?

Austin: Yeah. So how long you thing it takes him to get to the border? A man his age?

Lee: I dunno.

Austin: Eight days it takes him. Eight days in the rain and the sun and every day he’s droppin’ teeth on the blacktop and nobody’ll pick him up ‘cause his mouth’s full a’ blood. So finally he stumbles into the dentist. Dentist takes his money and all his teeth. And there he is, in Mexico, with his gums sewed up and his pockets empty.

Lee: That’s it?

Austin: Then I go out to see him, see. I go out there and I take him out for a nice Chinese dinner. But he doesn’t eat. All he wants to do is drink Martinis outa’ plastic cups. And he takes his teeth out and lays ‘em on the table ‘cause he can’t stand the feel of ‘em. And we ask the waitress for one a’ those doggie bags to take the Chop Suey home in. So he drops his teeth in the doggie bag along with the Chop Suey. And then we go out to hit all the bars up and down the highway. Says he wants to introduce me to all his buddies. And in one a’ those bars, in one a’ those bars up and down the highway, he left that doggie bag with his teeth laying in the Chop Suey.

Lee: You never found it?

Austin: We went back but we never did find it. (pause) Now that’s a true story. True to life.

Ultimately Austin wants to write these true to life stories but never experienced anything himself. When the producer Saul comes to check on Austin’s screenplay, Lee pitches him a story and Saul decides that Lee’s story is what Austin should be writing. Through nine scenes, this play allows the brothers to believe they should be living the life of the other. Fighting is the only way to solve this problem. Actually, fighting is the only way to solve any problem. Three cheers for Sam!