Forest Friends in the Cottage

 Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. 

I feel as though I've said this about every book I read so far, but I hope that it does not come off as disingenuous when I say that this was an intriguing read. 

Tragically, the Spanish Civil War is not my strongest suit in history--although, I've had to grapple with the discipline many times in order to remember the most basic facts--so I read this novel almost as if it were entirely a work of fiction, accepting the historical facts of the matter as Cercas put them and taking everything in stride as if they were the rules of the story. 

So instead of following the historical thread of events, I entertained myself by identifying several, somewhat arbitrary connections to previous books that I read throughout our literary journey together--and there were a good few. For instance, Cercas always comes back to the concept of writing--it ties the novel together a bit loosely, I think, because while it seems clear that it is an overarching theme and a point of commonality between Cercas and Mazas, the frequency and times that it crops up feels like separate pieces and individual, singular events that Cercas just happened to bring up because he was suddenly reminded of it. 

That brings me to another interesting thing I noticed about the story. Cercas doesn't bring it up quite as often--or perhaps it is as often, and it is simply more implicit in appearance--but he also thinks about creating connections between things that appear related. For example, early on in the novel when he decides to write about both the commonly told story of Machado and Mazas in his article "An Essential Secret" (Cercas, pg. 10), Cercas theorizes that 'if I could manage to get across the substance of each [event] within the same article, the strange parallel might perhaps endow them with a new meaning' (10). 

He expresses this desire to derive something new from drawing a connection between what we learn are two very well-known events, which to me was the first exciting sign after seeing Cercas introduce himself as recovering from arguably one of the lowest points of his life--which brings me back to his father, which in turn brings Cercas back to writing when he connects the idea of keeping someone alive by writing about them. This is its own parallel, when Cercas thinks that 'when even [he] doesn't remember [his father], [his father will] be completely dead' (Cercas, pg. 36) only to expand on that very thought when he observes that 'Figueras was thinking if someone wrote about his father, his father wouldn't be entirely dead' (pg. 41)--again reinforcing how Cercas generates something new from two similar factors. 

Now, as Cercas forgot to ask after the appearances of both Aguirre and Figueras before meeting with them, I've forgotten to talk about the more arbitrary observations I made--for one, that the prominence of writing as a theme reminded me somewhat of Calvino and his emphasis on the relationship one can have with writing--which Cercas certainly seems to have. Another was that the amount of 'truth' and history in this novel was highly reminiscent of our encounter with Piglia and the question of literary truth just last week, with Cercas (supposedly) weaving 'a true tale, a tale cut from the cloth of reality, concocted out of true events and characters' (Cercas, pg. 40). Though, this was made more interesting by the way Cercas split the novel into three parts that presented different takes on the same events. 

Lastly, during one of the more lighthearted moments of the novel (in my opinion), I was reminded strongly of Nadja and her near-fateful drive with Breton when Cercas shares that 'any car journey with my girlfriend, who needless to say loved to drive, entailed a gamble I was only willing to undertake in very exceptional circumstances' (Cercas, pg. 34). I like to imagine that Cercas had actually written Soldiers of Salamis for this particular course, having read all the texts with us over our shoulders and taking down references. 

That was quite a long entry--especially considering that this is (I believe) the first one that I've written prior to watching the lecture. I felt that it was only right to go in blind this time around, after relying so heavily on the lecture for Piglia--and while I don't regret it right now, having produced a fresh impression of the novel--I suspect that I may wish to return to this entry afterwards.

Perhaps it is a bit unrelated to the entry--or maybe underwhelming might be the right word?--but this week's question is one that stuck with me since the first section of the novel: What do you think distinguishes a good writer from a great writer? (Or: what do you think Cercas thinks the difference is?) Is being a good--or great--writer different from being a good (or great) artist, or any other occupation? How so? 

One last thing before I leave you all to it: in my introductory entry, I mentioned that you could come up with a fantastical woodland persona for yourselves when interacting with my blog (only if you'd like, of course) and I think that it's somewhat fitting to re-emphasize this for this week in particular. 

Looking forward to seeing some forest friends in the comments!

Your local woodland witch, 

June