World Books Review: The Early Doom and Gloom of a Spanish Genius

In this story collection mostly made up of tales written early in his career, Spain’s greatest living author, Javier Marías, wears his influences, particularly Jorge Luis Borges, on his sleeve.

While the Women Are Sleeping, by Javier Marías. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. New Directions, 129 pages, $21.95.

Reviewed by Tommy Wallach

In a recent review of two French novels, I gingerly broached the subject of national literary characteristics (in the case of the modern French novel, I suggested ‘seemingly normal people doing awful things to each other for inexplicable reasons’ as one of the more common tropes). I say ‘gingerly’ because I recognize the reductiveness of trying to nail down trends, even national ones, in a medium as diverse as literature. However, While the Women Are Sleeping, Javier Marías’ new collection of older short stories—published between 1968 and 1998, with an emphasis on the early side of the range—seems to so perfectly embody what I think of as the Spanish and South American short story genre, that I figure it might be worth revisiting the notion of literary stereotypes.

As far as I can see, modern literature in the Spanish-speaking world begins and ends with Jorge Luis Borges, who published his best work in the 1930s and 1940s. Nobel Prize winning author J.M. Coetzee wrote that Borges, “more than anyone, renovated the language and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.” Indeed, Borges’ influence can be seen in dozens of writers from dozens of countries. For the writers who have fallen under his spell, this influence is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Borges is deservedly recognized as one of a handful of true innovators writing in the 20^th century. A curse because his style is so recognizable, imitable, and ultimately, played out. This is the feeling that much of Marías collection inspires: admiration for his ability as an impersonator, but overall, a not un-Borgesian frisson of having seen it all before.

Stories written on the Borgesian model have a number of qualities in common. The overall tone is that of a fairy tale gone dark. They often invoke a framing device at the beginning of the story, drawing attention to the fictional, narrative element of the work (‘The Garden of Forking Paths’). A majority of the time, the subject is, blatantly or obliquely, the act of writing itself, and the author commonly appears by his own name or a pseudonym (‘The Book of Sand’, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote’). Finally, Borgesian stories often revolve around the notion of authenticity, and are rife with doubles, triples, lookalikes, soundalikes, similar things with different names, and different things with similar names (‘The Library of Babel’, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote’).

What Marías brings to the table is his own central preoccupation: doom. I choose this word over the more common “fate” or “destiny,” because in Marías mind, any predetermination is inherently unfortunate. His masterwork, entitled Your Face Tomorrow (recently published in English by New Directions) concerns a group of men and women in London with the ability to see ‘people’s faces tomorrow’—to extrapolate outwards from a subject’s way of speaking, walking, and thinking to his or her capability for everything from murder to suicide to existential despair and joy. This power is not meant to be realistic—the characters in YFT are a bit like psychoanalytical superheroes—but it carries great metaphorical weight. Marías believes that we are all doomed to pretend not to know we are doomed.

Javier Marías: In his fiction he explores the concept of doom with the same depth and zeal that Proust brought to his exploration of memory.

This theme appears in the best stories in While the Women Are Sleeping, such as the title story, in which the protagonist observes a man on the beach constantly filming his beautiful young lover. The cameraman eventually explains that he films her because his entire life has been bent to achieve her love, and now that he has achieved it, he is only waiting for it to end. He wants a record of her as she was, in those last moments. He then admits that when her love or her beauty is gone, he’ll have to kill her, to maintain the purity of his adoration. He believes himself the rare man who has achieved his true desire, and thus is doomed now to a life of loss. This, however, is better than the alternative doom; as he explains it, “…the norm is for people to think they desire whatever comes their way, whatever happens to them, what they achieve as they go along or what’s given to them, and they have no original desires.”

In “Gualta,” a man meets his exact double at a party, and despises him. He thus resolves to change himself in every possible way, in the process becoming something of a monster. When he meets the man again, he finds that the other man has changed as well. Both of them are doomed to be exactly who they are.

Yet even as this story is indelibly Marías’, it invokes many of the Borgesian tropes discussed above, which  makes the tale seem derivative and predictable. “Gualta” is one of two stories in which a man meets his exact double, and the other feels like a dull retread. In “What the Butler Said,” a character named Javier Marías is stuck on an elevator with a butler practicing black magic against his mistress. Though the story the butler tells is creative enough, I was already rolling my eyes after the three-page italicized opening in which Marías describes the circumstances surrounding his meeting the butler, as if it had actually happened. Another story, “Lord Rendall’s Song”, also features an italicized opening, a short biography of the ‘author’ James Ryan Denham, who is actually an invention of Marías’ (surprise!).

The truth is I’m jaded. I spent my time with Borges in both high school and college, and though he is certainly one of the most brilliant literary tacticians of all time, I find his work far more intellectually stimulating than emotionally resonant. Marías’ work suffers from the same malaise, only without the originality or erudition of the master himself. Compared to Roberto Bolaño’s most recent story collection, The Return, which plays many of the same games (i. e. magical realism, author as character), Marías work feels like juvenilia. Of course, if asked to compare the two author’s recent mega-novels (2666 versus Your Face Tomorrow), I would choose Marías’ tome in a heartbeat, both for its surfeit of ideas and its emotional heft.

It seems to me that the novel form is where Marías really shines. The ten stories spread out across only 130 pages in While the Women Are Sleeping all feel like exercises of one sort or another. Half of them are simply decent mimicry of other writers’ ideas. The other half are studies in which one can see Marías beginning to formulate and execute his own style, to pursue his own themes. These stories are the more interesting, but they don’t hold a candle to the novels, where Marías explores the concept of doom with the same depth and zeal that Proust brought to his exploration of memory.

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Tommy Wallach is a writer and musician, and more of his work can be found here