Reading Oscar Hijuelos

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme:
Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will
be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads
to hate and nearly always leads to love.
John Steinbeck

I’ve just finished reading A Simple Habana Melody. Because Oscar Hijuelos’s most recent novel revolves around music, as does his best known work, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, my first instinct was to search for common ground between the lead characters. Indeed, Israel Levi, the quiet hero of A Simple Habana Melody, shares much with the passionately intense César Castillo, the central protagonist of Mambo Kings. They both possess gargantuan appetites—for food and drink, in particular (allow me to leave aside, for this post, César’s insatiable craving for women).

Moreover, by way of their artistic endeavors, Israel Levi and César Castillo achieve fame: César with the song “Beautiful María of My Soul,” and Israel with “Rosas Puras.” But Israel’s eminence is lasting—unlike the ephemeral celebrity of César Castillo, which acquires a ghostly quality thanks to I Love Lucy reruns.

César’s music, as with everything else in his life, is instinctual, visceral, and firmly rooted in the present. He is an exuberant, outgoing individual who constantly seeks to be the center of attention. On the other hand, Israel’s creative inclinations are classical, cerebral, and intended to last through the ages. And, in opposition to César, he is an extremely inhibited, modest, formal man who shies away from the limelight and prefers the quiet solitude of his mystical reflections. These traits, then, makes it more appropriate for the reader to compare the protagonist of A Simple Habana Melody to another of Hijuelos’s memorable characters: the very proper and spiritual Mr. Ives, of Mr. Ives’ Christmas.

Both Mr. Ives and Israel Levi are devout Catholics, but they complement their desire to understand their place in God’s grand design by learning about other faiths. And, ultimately, it is their belief in a loving, almighty being that helps them survive the greatest traumas of their lives—Mr. Ives’ tragic and senseless loss of his son, and Israel Levi’s three-year internment in Buchenwald, which happens because he is mistaken for a Jew while living and performing in Paris during WWII. Because of the horror of their tribulations they eventually find themselves standing at the edge of a dark precipice, ready to cast themselves into the void because they’ve lost their faith in humanity.

In due time, though, their belief in a loving God is restored and they’re able to set aside the overpowering sadness that had been tearing away at their souls. They also recover their faith in the better angels of human nature—to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s beautiful expression—and they choose to abandon despair and, in the process, once again find peace.

I believe this is the greatest lesson a reader can take away from Hijuelos’s novels. In every one of his works, like those of one of his literary heroes, Charles Dickens, the Cuban-American Pulitzer Prize winning author shows us that in spite of suffering excruciating losses, we can always find redemption in the power of love.