I have generally thought of Fuentes as a poet, whereas he clarifies to the world as a glass full of beautiful stains in the colors of the essay, the novel, and of course the poem... all of which allow our eyes to focus as much on Carlos the man as on Fuentes the writer. His new non-fiction book, *This I Believe,* treats of all the various colors of the literary glass a writer or a man might stain our eyes with, quite marvelously, as these various reviews by readers charmed by the magic and reality of 76 years of life show us.

[www.washingtonpost.com]

Here Michael Dirda funnels a few Fuentes nuggets our way, as if to tease us into wanting more, which of course some of us do.

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"[W]e remain decrepit, ruined prisoners of the last great cultural revolution, which was Romanticism . . . ."

"Perhaps we will die knowing all the things that there are to know in the world, but from then on, we will only be a thing. We came and were seen by the world. Now, the world will continue to be seen, but we will have become invisible."

"In the university, everyone can be right, but nobody has the power to be right by force, and nobody has the force to insist upon one single way of perceiving what is or is not right."

And then there's that peculiarly Latin American take on memory and forgetfulness, perhaps itself a subset of that country's penchant for magical realism. Dirda speaks on Fuentes' thoughts on Shakespeare in this regard, and then quotes Fuentes on Cortazar's story, "Instructions for John Howell" where he writes:

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Julio Cortázar offers us yet another clue to the question of memory and forgetting. The eponymous character attends a play in a theater. A look of sheer terror comes across the face of the actress, who whispers to Howell, the spectator: 'Save me. They are trying to kill me.' What is happening? Has Howell entered the play, or has the heroine entered the daily life of Mr. Howell?"

The précis of this story suggests another virtue of This I Believe: It will send you out to read, or re-read, the stories and authors that Fuentes mentions.

Dirda also finds himself particularly glamoured by Fuentes on the cities, under "U" for Urbanities, where Carlos offers us the lens of what he saw there as a man and the multi-stained glass of what he saw as an artist, as Dirda observes when he says:

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There's really no end to the varied intellectual plenitude of This I Believe. A glimpse of Thomas Mann in Zurich, intently watching a beautiful young man play tennis. An elegy to the author's son who died young. Reflections upon "the impossible dream of simultaneity" in modern literature. The ardent plea for serious aid for education in the so-called Third World. Not least, a quotation from Conrad's Under Western Eyes: "Remember, Razumov, that women, children and revolutionists hate irony."

*This I Believe* sounds like quite a book, if only for observing precisely what Conrad said about those with an antipathy for irony. The Greeks certainly knew this as well.

Another review can be found here:

[www.mercurynews.com]

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Stephen Spender's life also has developed a bit of caché as depicted in a new biography called *Stephen Spender: A Literary Life* by John Sutherland. I haven't read much of Spender myself, so that all I know and remember about him is the way he used to run around campus when I was a post-bac student in the seventies. His hair and dress were casual and rumply; he was rather short and a bit pudgy; and he always looked frazzled, running around like the White Rabbit as if to say I'm late I'm late for a very important date.
You can read a review of Sutherlands biography of Spender here:

[www.washingtonpost.com]

Sue



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2005 11:19AM by Sue.