Raised from the Ground by José Saramago

First published in Portuguese in 1980; published in translation by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on December 4, 2012

José Saramago’s death in 2010 was a sad loss for the world of literature, but his novels endure.  It is often difficult to know what to make of a Saramago novel.  He infuses drama with humor so as to make them indistinguishable, relies upon fantasy to illuminate reality, distorts history to help us understand the present.  Saramago merges philosophy with storytelling.  With keen observation, he chronicles moral failings while remaining an extraordinarily forgiving writer.  Unlike nature, which “displays remarkable callousness when creating her various creatures,” Saramago displays compassion and understanding when creating his flawed characters.

Raised from the Ground is the story of the latifundio, the Portuguese landed estates and those who toil upon them. The laborers are the victims of "infinite misfortune, inconsolable grief, both of which lasted from the nineteenth century to the day before yesterday." Plagues, famines, wars, and the cruel overseers of the latifundio are the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the "great evils" that devastate the working poor. The workers spend their lives as if "tethered to a stake," governed by arbitrariness, and in a state of perpetual hunger. Is death the only escape, or is change possible? Fighting for a minimum wage and an eight hour day may seem futile, but futility is a way of life in the latifundio. It is the need to fight for change that compels the narrator to proclaim: "we are not men if we do not raise ourselves up from the ground."

With their meager possessions loaded onto a donkey cart, the shoemaker Domingos Mau-Tempo and his wife (Sara da Conceição) and son (João) make their way to their new home in São Cristóvão, the first of several relocations Domingos will impose upon his family. Domingos' miserable story (briefly interrupted in 1910 by the arrival of the Portuguese Republic and the end of the monarchy) segues into Sara's sad story and eventually becomes João's. Circumstances turn João into an unwitting labor leader, or at least he is mistaken for one; his support of a strike becomes the defining event of his life. The meandering story eventually introduces João's son António, who is drafted into the army despite his illiteracy, his daughter Gracinda, who wants to marry João's friend despite her poverty, and his granddaughter Maria, who shares his blue eyes. In 1974, the Carnation Revolution overthrows Portugal's dictatorship, an event that brings the living and dead together in celebration, a fitting end to a powerful story.

The novel's run-on sentences, assembled from words seemingly poured from buckets, flow with a rhythm that is uniquely Saramago's. Dialog is buried haphazardly in the text, always in keeping with the rhythm of the narrative, never set off by quotation marks, and while it's usually easy to understand who is speaking, some readers will be put off by the unconventional style. Although the narrator's identity is neither clear nor consistent, the narrator's chatty editorial voice is always present. As if conversing with a friend, the narrator will mention a town and say "you probably know the place." The narrator sometimes professes not to understand the mysteries of life that he is relating, sometimes says "let's see how things turn out." He gives the reader information that, he says, won't contribute to an understanding of the story, but will let us "know each other better, as the gospels urge us to do." He reminds us that "the seemingly unimportant and the seemingly important form part of the same narrative," and all of it, taken together, is "as good a way as any to explain the latifundio." He suggests that people who might take a different view of the latifundio "clearly don't know much about life." All of this is vintage Saramago: tongue-in-cheek, playful commentary masking profound wisdom shaped by boundless compassion.

Compassionate wisdom is abundant in this haunting story. Saramago reveals the dignity and tribulations of the working poor and the indifferent cruelty of those who exploit them. He explores poverty and charity and the great equalizing force of death. He bemoans wars that tax and kill the poor while benefitting the rich. He ridicules the labeling of striking farm workers as terrorists and exposes the true terrorists: the government agents who have the power to brand those who speak for the powerless as "dangerous elements." He describes the torture of a man from the standpoint of an ant that, unlike the torturers, has a conscience. He lampoons priests who pray for the landowners and lecture the poor. Most importantly, amidst all the agony and suffering that his novel documents, he wryly acknowledges that "life has its good points too." Travel and beauty and sex and birth bring joy and renewal, even if only for a moment. Yet if "each day brings some hope with its sorrow ... then the sorrow will never end and the hope will only ever be just that and nothing more."

Saramago's matter-of-fact presentation of the absurd is filled with deadpan wit and goofy digressions. He treats the reader to hilarious descriptions of peasantry sex ("they huff and puff, they're not exactly subtle"), a political rally ("Where do I go to take a piss?"), middle age ("if this is the prime of life, then allow me to weep"), and the revolution ("what kind of name is junta for a government, there must be some mistake"). António's tall hunting stories, including his technique for catching a hare with pepper and a newspaper, are reason enough to read the book. Yet even the funniest stories are in some sense allegorical. They illuminate life in the latifundio, which isn't much different for rabbits and men.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

First published in 1956

There are more ideas in The Stars My Destination -- profound ideas about human potential -- than you're likely to find collectively in the next dozen novels you read. The Stars My Destination begins as a tale of obsession and vengeance. The protagonist is an anti-hero, not the sort of person for whom a reader would normally root, but he is sympathetic compared to most of the novel's other characters, including a powerful corporate executive who makes Gordon Gecko seem like a mischievous boy. In Alfred Bester's future, people have acquired the ability to teleport over long distances, the colonized planets are at war with each other, and cities are filled with people who belong in carnival sideshows. But that's all window dressing for Bester's deeper exploration of a man who is "nothing but hatred and revenge," an Ahab of the twenty-fourth century chasing his own version of a white whale, a spaceship called Vorga. Ultimately, The Stars My Destination is a novel about the limits of idealism, the meaning of justice, the nature of power, and the transcendental ability of the human species to overcome its self-imposed limitations.

Gulliver Foyle, a common man who lacks ambition, a brute raised in the gutter school and "among the least valuable alive," is a crew member on the Nomad when it is attacked during the war between the inner and outer (colonized) planets of Earth's solar system. Foyle, the only member of the Nomad to survive, lives for months in an airtight tool locker not much bigger than a coffin. On his way to madness, he becomes obsessed with a rhyme that ends: "Deep space is my dwelling place/And death's my destination." When a ship called the Vorga ignores his distress signal, Foyle makes it his mission to repair the Nomad's engines so he can track down and destroy the Vorga. He manages to get himself to the asteroid belt (populated by descendants of stranded scientists who tattoo a grotesque tiger-design on Foyle's face) before he makes his way back to Earth. Once there, however, he's captured by employees of Presteign, CEO of the company that owns the Vorga. Presteign wants to know where to find the Nomad and its valuable cargo, a weapon that could shift the balance of power in the interstellar war. Foyle's captivity brings him into contact with Jisbella McQueen, with whom he falls in love -- but love is a small emotion compared his consuming hatred of the Vorga. He later falls in love with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who sees the world in infrared. But love is a cruel emotion, particularly when it clouds the overwhelming desire for vengeance.

New and strange twists appear regularly as the story progresses. Foyle creates the ability to move at accelerated speed. An entity called The Burning Man pops up from time to time, a fiery creature who looks like Foyle. While Foyle wonders if The Burning Man is his guardian angel, a more creative and satisfying explanation for the entity eventually comes to light. After a series of adventures that lead Foyle back to the Nomad, Foyle reinvents himself, becoming Fourmyle of Ceres, an illusionist and circus master whose clout matches Presteign's own. Foyle uses and abuses telepaths in his attempt to track down the person who ordered the Vorga to ignore the Nomad's distress call. The truth, when he finally learns it, shocks him.

Bester gives the uneducated Foyle a unique dialect that is a joy to read. Bester's vivid prose is well-suited to the story, but the novel was ahead of its time in its unconventional use of font placement, creating pictures with fonts to emphasize the confusion that besets Foyle's mind.

The Stars My Destination is a seminal work of science fiction that succeeds on a number of levels. It is a rollicking adventure story and an imaginative tale of the future, but it is more fundamentally a psychological exploration of a troubled soul in need of redemption. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of leadership and the virtue of restoring power to the people. Finally, it is a touching story about acceptance and self-determination and the possibility of achieving greatness. To achieve his ends, Gully Foyle must remake himself, and that is where the novel's genius lies. Foyle is no Ahab, incapable of change, consumed by a hatred that will eventually destroy him. Foyle's obsession motivates him to acquire knowledge and strength to serve his need for vengeance, but once he has those new resources, he begins to see the world anew -- as does the reader. Foyle recognizes that he is a freak, but so what? "Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." We're all freaks, but we all have the ability to become something glorious.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

First published in 1953

More Than Human explores what it means to be human, a question made relevant by the evolution of an entity that Theodore Sturgeon calls Homo Gestalt, a group of individuals who reach completeness only by functioning together as a single being. The 1953 novel is written in three parts. The middle (and weakest) section first appeared as a novella in Galaxy magazine. Sturgeon, whose writing career focused on short stories, turned the novella into a novel by adding the first and third sections. Of the few novels he produced, More Than Human is by far the best.

The first section introduces most of the principle characters. Lone is feeble-minded but has the ability to control the minds of others. Jane can move objects with her mind. Mute twins named Bonnie and Beanie can teleport. While appearing to be developmentally disabled, Baby has the intellectual capacity of a supercomputer. The characters can barely survive as individuals; linked together they constitute a superior form of humanity.

In the first section, Sturgeon uses lush and riveting prose to remind the reader, primarily through the character of Lone, what it means to be human: to know the joy of anticipation and the pain of reality; to accept the necessity of loss as a condition of growth; to be loved and reviled; to lose friends and connect with strangers; to experience the awakening of compassion and empathy after years of comfortable numbness. There are deeper and more profound lessons in this novel than in any ten self-help books. One of my favorites has to do with the continuing struggle for self-realization: "So it was that Lone came to know himself; and like the handful of people who have done so before him he found, at this pinnacle, the rugged foot of a mountain."

The second section takes place several years later. It introduces Gerry Thompson, a disturbed sociopath with an impaired memory. Thompson, like Lone, has the ability to control minds, but it is not an ability that has served him (or humanity) well. He becomes involved with the Gestalt in a less than positive way, losing much of his identity in the process. This section begins and ends with Thompson in the office of a psychiatrist who is trying to help him recover his memory.

Section three takes place after the passage of another several years. It focuses on Hip Barrows, an Air Force engineer who (like Thompson) has lost his memory. Barrows is in jail and likely to be insitutionalized when he meets Jane. With Jane's assistance, Barrows begins to remember the events that led to his incarceration, and ultimately the event that triggered his memory loss -- an event that relates back to something Lone and the Gestalt did in part one. Barrows and Thompson come into conflict when Thompson decides that the Gestalt's behavior need not be governed by human standards.

The third section gives Sturgeon an opportunity to explore questions of ethics. He posits that traditional laws of morality cannot apply to a vastly superior entity, any more than human morals apply to ants, while new concepts of morality cannot arise to govern Homo Gestalt when only one such entity exists. Yet how can Homo Gestalt be complete without a conscience? Sturgeon steers the characters on a path toward self-awareness, much like a Brahmin might act as a spiritual guide to the ways of the universe. There is, in fact, something of a Buddhist or New Age philosophy at work in More Than Human, or at least one that is deeply humanistic (an ironic term, perhaps, to apply to an evolved entity that is more than human).

In many respects, More Than Human is nearly perfect: the dialog is particularly strong, the prose is some of the finest that science fiction has produced, and the message is inspiring. The supporting characters are drawn in finely detailed strokes: a farmer who endures despite losing everything that gave his life meaning; a innocent woman who has been sheltered from life by her deranged, ultra-religious father; a psychiatrist who exemplifies the caring empathy that should characterize his profession.

More Than Human reflects an optimism about the future of humanity that was a common trait of 1950s science fiction, before the genre succumbed to postmodern bleakness. Sturgeon envisioned a destiny for mankind that is not "guided by an awesome Watcher in the sky ... suffused with the pale odor of sanctity," but one that humanity achieves as the inevitable result of progress. Perhaps twenty-first century readers, awash in novels that envision the "posthuman" as a mechanical blend of brain and technology, are too jaded to consider humanity "sainted by the touch of its own great destiny." Jaded or not, the ideas that Sturgeon develops in More Than Human deserve a twenty-first century audience.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Barcelona Brothers by Carlos Zanón

Published by Other Press on August 28, 2012

“Like a black angel of memory, almost every tale, every occurrence finds an echo inside the walls of the barrio.”  The Barcelona Brothers (from which this quotation is drawn) tells a story of intertwined lives, of barrio residents reacting to the echo of a dramatic event that will force them to reexamine their desperate lives.

The novel opens with the mother of all bar fights.  Tanveer Hussein loses.  His assailant, Epi Dalmau, flees.  Epi’s brother Alex, a medicated schizophrenic, witnesses the killing, as does Salva, the bar’s owner.  Rumors spread around the barrio about the cause and perpetrator of the assault on Tanveer, all of them wrong.  As the story progresses, glimpses of the past alternate with snatches of the present, providing clues to Epi’s motive for attacking Tanveer. That Tanveer deserves to die becomes increasingly apparent as his violent life is revealed, yet Epi seems an unlikely assassin.

The story drifts from past to present, from one damaged character to another.  Whether they are central to the story or playing a bit part, the characters are unique and unforgettable.  Tiffany Brisette, Tanveer’s girlfriend, is driven by the need to feel empowered.  She thinks she can control the game when she’s with a man because she’s the only one who knows they’re playing a game.  Her sister Jamelia, a little slow and befuddled by life (and by far the novel’s sweetest character), is convinced that God will eventually punish Tiffany for being mean to everyone.  Aging part-time sex worker Rocío Baeza just wants to stay alive while she supplements her family’s income.  Allawi, like barbers everywhere, is the barrio’s central repository of gossip.

Carlos Zanón writes with insight and sensitivity about hopeless and forgotten lives.  His characters are incapable of planning or of achieving goals because in their lives “one thing knocks away another, like in a billiards game.”  Their aspirations are simple -- a stable relationship, a job, a good life -- but unattainable.  Although they seem destined to make bad choices, it’s not clear that good choices are ever available.  They are prisoners of their own fatalism.  They live together but they are alone, “their hearts withered by solitude.”

The barrio itself is virtually a character.  This isn’t the Barcelona of fashion models, art museums, and trendy tapas bars, where happy tourists play on white sand beaches.  It is a gritty place where dreams shatter like the windows of abandoned cars, a locked warehouse that isolates the poor and the mentally ill and the drug addicted, a place where the criminal underclass allies with the Arab immigrants who are shunned elsewhere.

Zanón’s powerful prose builds and maintains teeth-clenching tension as the story moves to a conclusion that the reader will both anticipate and dread.  It seems inevitable that at least one luckless life will end tragically, yet the final chapters leave room for the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps.  Some readers will dislike the uncertainty, the feeling that the novel isn’t quite finished, but I appreciated the respite it offered from the sense of impending doom that pervades much of the story.

Although I loved The Barcelona Brothers, I recognize that many readers will not.  If you are looking for humor and warmth, look elsewhere.  If you do not like a book unless you like the characters, if you believe fictional characters should always learn lessons or experience moral transformations, this is not the book for you.  The world doesn't always work that way, and The Barcelona Brothers reflects that reality.

It is a tribute to Zanón that he made me care so much about such disagreeable people.  If, like me, you appreciate strong and uncompromising writing that examines the hearts and minds of realistic (albeit broken) characters in dark settings, you will find much to admire in The Barcelona Brothers.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 7, 2012

The banyan tree in the courtyard represented a place of safety in war-torn Cambodia for seven-year-old Raami and the royal family to which she belongs -- at least it did until the Khmer Rouge chased the family members from their home.  The Khmer Rouge soldiers are in the vanguard of a “revolution” that, in the mid-1970s, turns Raami’s family into refugees.  Raami’s father, Ayuravann, is a prince and a poet, her grandmother is a queen, but these distinctions merely put the family at greater risk than the displaced peasants they soon join.

In the Shadow of the Banyan is a stirring account of Raami’s young life under the control of the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge leaders do not want any Cambodian to remain rooted; individuals must be replanted, must take on new lives in service to the Revolution.  When her family is divided and forced to relocate to a rural village, Raami begins her life anew, concealing her past and watching as friends and relatives -- the ones who aren’t killed by soldiers -- die of malnutrition and disease.  Having been stricken with polio in early childhood, Raami’s limp saves her from the arduous labor to which most villagers are assigned, but nothing can spare her the grief of loss or the pain of hunger.

Vaddey Ratner’s novel is rooted in her own experience as a child in Cambodia.  It tells an emotionally intense story of courage and sacrifice.  While the story is often tragic, rebirth and transformation are the novel’s strongest themes.  Another striking theme is the commonality of man, the shared dignity of rich and poor, royalty and peasant.   “We are all echoes of one another,” Ayuravaan tells Raami, a truth the novel vividly illustrates.

Images of hope and beauty balance the despair that pervades the story. Despite the devastation she must endure daily, Raami never forgets that she is surrounded by beauty. She discovers that a momentary glimpse of the commonplace -- a dragonfly in flight -- can turn the ordinary into something beautiful. “We are capable of extraordinary beauty if we dare to dream,” says Auyravaan as he encourages Raami to dream of flight, to soar with spreading wings, to overcome her disability and the external strictures that govern her life. Although similar metaphors often descend into cheesiness in the hands of uninspired writers, Ratner avoids crossing that line by anchoring her story in truth while avoiding artistic manipulation.

The novel’s imagery is astonishing.  A farmer carves a calf from wood to hang around a cow’s neck, not to replace the mourning cow’s dead calf but “to give shape to her sorrow” -- the kind of sorrow Raami comes to understand all too well.  Recurring images -- serpents, birds in flight, the moon, gardens, mirthful spirits, an epic poem called Reamker, and (of course) banyan trees -- give shape and context to Cambodian life, connecting past to present.  So do the charming folk tales the characters tell each other.

Despite the well-documented atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, Ratner writes of individual “revolutionaries” with perception:  they are often just kids, too immature to understand the consequences of their behavior, following the Movement only because it is easier to carry a gun than to push a plow.  Big Uncle says they are “like boys playing war.”  They are illiterate, resentful of the educated, unaware of the “cause” their revolution supposedly intends to achieve.  They glorify violence to mask their own ignorance.  Given her experiences, it is a tribute to Ratner that she writes of them with such understanding.

Ratner is a graceful writer.  Her sentences flow with balletic precision.  Her word choice is impeccable.  Even if the story had been less captivating, I would recommend this novel for the beauty of its prose.  Every now and then Ratner includes a word in Raami’s native language.  Its meaning is usually apparent from the context, but even when its meaning is obscure, Ratner resists the temptation to interrupt the narrative flow with an English translation.  That might bother some readers but I’m more bothered by writers who can’t use a foreign word without immediately supplying an English translation.

In short, this is a stunning work, a powerful story skillfully told.  Although grounded in Ratner’s personal experience, it reads like the product of a seasoned novelist.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED