This novella, from 1955, is considered a Mexican classic of magical realism. Reading it also supposedly cured Marquez of a stubborn case of writer’s block. The story begins hauntingly, “I came to Comala because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Paramo. That’s what my mother told me. And I promised her I’d come see him as soon as she died….—Don’t ask him for anything. Just insist on what’s ours. What he was obligated to give me but never did . . . Make him pay dearly, my son, for the indifference he showed toward us.” Before long, real ghosts and spirits make there presence felt in the town of Comala. “If only you could see the horde of souls that roam the streets. They come out as soon as it gets dark, and we’re all afraid of seeing them. With so many of them and so few of us we no longer plead for them to be freed from their torment. There just aren’t enough prayers to go around. Maybe we could say a few lines of the Lord’s Prayer for each one, but what good would that do? And then there’s the matter of our own sins. There’s not a one of us still alive who enjoys the grace of God. We can’t even look toward Heaven without feeling our eyes soiled with shame.” The plot is almost as depressing as it is strange. “—This world grabs onto us so tightly it squeezes out fistfuls of our dust here and there, breaking us into pieces as if to douse the land with our blood. What did we do? Why have our souls rotted away?”
Friday, March 28, 2025
Friday, March 21, 2025
“The Mind is Flat” by Nick Chater
Friday, March 14, 2025
“Vita Nuovo” by Dante Alighieri (translated by Joseph Luzzi)
This is a short book written by Dante about the love of his life, Beatrice. “The sun had already circled the earth nine times since my birth when the glorious lady of my mind appeared before my eyes. Many called her Beatrice, she who blesses, even if they did not know her name…. So she was in the beginning of her ninth year when I saw her, while I was at the end of mine…. Then this awestruck animal spirit, which lives in the brain that receives he perceptions of all the other sensitive spirits, directed its words to the eyes and said to them in Latin, “Your bliss has now appeared.”” The personification of Love then speaks directly to Dante, “And since Beatrice has actually known the gist of your long-held secret for quite a while, I would like you to write some verses that describe the power that I, Love, have over you because of her, and how you have devoted yourself to her ever since you were a boy.”
This book is mix of prose and verse sprinkled together. However, as the chapters build in momentum the verse takes prominence, while the prose becomes explanatory. Dante begins a poem, “My lady brings love to the eyes,/ To see her is to feel her grace./ All men stare where she passes by,/ Her greeting causes trembling heart,/ So that, eyes down, a man turns pale,/ Lamenting over his defects,/ As she dispels all pride and wrath./ O ladies, help me sing her praise.” Dante has a premonition of his love, Beatrice’s, death. “Lord Love then said, “I hide no more:/ Now come to see your lady’s rest.”/ My wild fantasy conveyed/ Me to my lady’s sad remains,/ And when I found her body there,/ I saw her face covered by veil,/ She wore a look of modest grace,/ As if to say, “I am in peace.”” Alas, his foreboding proved all too prescient, “Time was, her beauty shed such joy—/ And now it’s fled the eyes for good,/ Transformed to loveliness of soul,/ Sending to heaven up above/ A light of love that angels see,/ Causing their lofty minds to stare/ In wonder at such female grace.”
Friday, March 7, 2025
“In Praise of Floods” by James C. Scott
In this short book, Scott uses the Ayeyarwady River in Burma as a lens to discuss the evolution of rivers across geological time, as well as, particularly, the effect that humans have had on their path and their health. “If we consider a river to be an assemblage of life-forms dependent on the flow of water, silt, sand, clay, and gravel—all the elements that we call a river—then our conception of the entity must necessarily include all of its upstream tributaries and all of its delta distributaries. Not only are they all connected as a system of moving water and floodplains, many of the life-forms that depend on the river migrate between the many watercourses and rely on the flood pulse for their nutrition and reproduction…. The annual flood pulse is the most consequential movement of a river for all the life-forms dwelling in and around it. Whether impelled by monsoon rains, snow or glacial melt, or seasonal rains, the flood pulse represents that part of the year during which the river overflows its channel banks and inundates the adjacent floodplain. It may, year by year, vary in its amplitude, its timing, and its duration. But it is a completely natural part of the annual cycle of a river’s hydrology.”
Over the centuries, agriculture has been, arguably, the largest source of anthropogenic destruction to a river’s natural flow. “Only rich, annually renewed alluvial soils could, given the constraints of transport in the ancient world, provide the concentration of manpower and taxable, storable foodstuffs that made even modest state-making possible…. The most common form of early agriculture is known as “flood recession agriculture” (in French: cultivation decrue). It is still practiced throughout the world because it has been shown to be the most labor-saving form of agriculture…. The flood does almost all the work…. All that remains for the cultivator to do is broadcast or insert seeds in the prepared soil, giving the crop a head start on other plants…. Along with clearing the land for crops (deforestation), the second founding act of floodplain agriculture is drainage. This is, in effect, the war to exterminate mud and replace it with well-drained soil. What remains are watercourses (drainage and irrigation ditches) and arable land.”
The formation of the nation-state was an integral part in the course of river modifications. “The early state is an ecologically invasive, artificial order. Fixed-field agriculture, irrigated wet rice, and aboveground simultaneously ripening cereals all require a simplification of the landscape…. The state is constantly modifying its environment, simplifying it…. Whereas the hunter-gatherer adapts to the complex rhythms of the natural world to subsist, the early state strives to subdue this movement and complexity—to create a state-serving habitat. A state-serving habitat is one stripped down to a narrow band of domesticated crops and domesticated animals…. The key to the nexus between cereals and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation and appropriation: they grow aboveground; their yield can be assessed; they are storable, portable, and can be used as rations; and most of the crop ripens at the same time. This last characteristic is crucial, for it means that tax and tithe gatherers can appropriate all or part of the harvest.”
Scott concludes his paean to the natural wild-flowing river, “The river is a living hydrological community that helps spawn, feed, and shelter large numbers of flora and fauna, from algae to insects to dolphins. The life-sustaining watershed system, if allowed to move as it will, is more productive of life and biodiversity than virtually any other natural system. Any intervention by hard-path engineering to maximize the return from a river is likely to damage its life-giving properties, making it far less productive over the long term…. The hubris embedded in cost-benefit analyses and their cousin ecosystem services is nothing short of staggering. Given our wealth of ignorance about the environment and interspecies connections, it seems presumptuous to assume that hard-path engineers know more than the river…. Soft-path engineering has the singular advantage of intellectual modesty with respect to what we actually know about river movement and its environmental effects…. Soft-path engineering accepts variability in the river’s movement as valuable until proven otherwise. Meanders, backwaters, ephemeral wetlands, braids and channels, swamps—all anathema to hard-path engineering—are presumed by soft-path engineers to be biotically important.”