Another Pleasant Surprise

Wherever life takes us, there are always moments of wonder.
Jimmy Carter

Last Sunday, November 26, I received an email from Carolina Proaño Wexman, a journalist who works for La Prensa, here in Panama. Among other things, Carolina writes the column “¿Qué está leyendo?” in which she explores people’s reading preferences. Earlier this year, in April, Bernardo and the Virgin had appeared as the featured reading in “¿Qué está leyendo?” I wrote about this in the entry "A Pleasant Surprise."

This time, Carolina Proaño Wexman requested an interview so that I could be the featured reader. I agreed, and at once she sent me a list of questions—to which I immediately responded. Within two short days, I was a local celebrity, if only for a day.

My apologies to those who struggle while reading in Spanish.


LIBROS. AUTOR DE ‘BERNARDO Y LA VIRGEN’.

¿Qué está leyendo?

El escritor Silvio Sirias recomienda leer En el tiempo de las mariposas de Julia Álvarez.

CAROLINA PROAÑO WEXMAN
carolinap@prensa.com

Como profesor de literatura en inglés y en español en el Balboa Academy, el escritor nicaragüense Silvio Sirias, autor de Bernardo y la virgen, disfruta mucho la tarea de releer sus libros favoritos.

Actualmente, en el salón de clase, discute Siddartha de Herman Hesse, The Princess Bride de William Goldman y Bless Me, Última, obra del escritor méxico-americano Rudolfo Anaya.

En español, paralelamente, están revisando Núñez de Balboa, la novela de Octavio Méndez Pereira. Y como si fuera poco y "para divertirme", dice Sirias, está atrapado en la novela González & Daughter Trucking Co. de María Amparo Escandón, una novelista méxico-americana.

¿De qué se trata?

"Es sobre una joven méxico-americana que está encarcelada en México. Para pasar el tiempo ella, al igual que Scherezada en Las mil y una noches, les cuenta historias a las demás prisioneras y, supuestamente, estas fábulas van, poco a poco, revelando la identidad de la atractiva y misteriosa narradora. González & Daughter es una magnífica novela, inteligentemente estructurada y narrada con mucha compasión; pero a la vez los cuentos revelan el genial sentido de humor de Escandón".

Entre sus autores favoritos, Sirias incluye a Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende, J.R.R. Tolkien y a Graham Greene, "entre muchos, muchos otros". Pero admira en particular "los escritores de herencia latina quienes, mediante sus creaciones literarias en inglés, han abierto campo en Estados Unidos para autores latinos. Entre ellos Oscar Hijuelos, Cristina García, Ana Castillo, Virgilio Suárez, Sandra Cisneros, y mi favorita, Julia Álvarez".


Carolina Proaño Wexman, in my estimation, did an excellent job gleaning through my answers. Still, I think the original questions and answers were interesting. Thus, I'm including these as well.


¿Qué está leyendo?

Como profesor de literatura—en inglés y en español—tengo el placer de releer mis libros favoritos. Actualmente, en mis clases de inglés, estamos discutiendo Siddartha de Herman Hesse, The Princess Bride de William Goldman, y Bless Me, Última, del escritor méxico-americano Rudolfo Anaya. En la clase de español estamos disfrutando de Núñez de Balboa, la novela de Octavio Méndez Pereira. Y en estos días, para divertirme, estoy leyendo González & Daughter Trucking Co. de María Amparo Escandón, una novelista méxico-americana

¿De qué se trata el libro?

González & Daughter Trucking Co. trata de una joven méxico-americana que está encarcelada en México. Para pasar el tiempo, ella, al igual que Scheherezada en Las mil y una noches, les cuenta historias a las demás prisioneras y, supuestamente, estas fábulas van, poco a poco, revelando la identidad de la atractiva y misteriosa narradora. González & Daughter es una magnífica novela, inteligentemente estructurada y narrada con mucha compasión para mujeres privadas de libertad; pero a la vez los cuentos revelan el genial sentido de humor de Escandón.

¿Cuáles son sus autores favoritos y/o sus influencias literarias?

En mi lista de autores favoritos se encuentran Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende, J. R. R. Tolkien, y Graham Greene, entre muchos, muchos otros. Pero admiro en particular los escritores de herencia latina quienes mediante sus creaciones literarias en inglés han abierto campo en los Estados Unidos para autores latinos. Entre ellos están Oscar Hijuelos, Cristina García, Ana Castillo, Virgilio Suárez, Sandra Cisneros, y mi favorita, Julia Álvarez.

¿Qué libro lo ha marcado, si es que alguno lo ha hecho?

Cien años de soledad, Don Quixote de la Mancha, El señor de los anillos, Los reyes del mambo tocan canciones de amor, y En el tiempo de las mariposas.

¿Qué libro recomendaría?

En el tiempo de las mariposas de Julia Álvarez. Trata del asesinato de las hermanas Mirabal por órdenes de Rafael Trujillo en la República Dominicana de 1960.

¿Qué libro tiraría a la basura?

Ninguno. Tirar un libro a la basura en un pecado porque alguien dedicó incontables horas escribiéndolo. Por malo que sea, a alguien le ha de interesar, así que mejor regalarlo o dejarlo en la sala de espera de su dentista.

On Reading Small Gods

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you can do is give them a meaningful look.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods


The great god Om has returned to the Discworld . . . as a tortoise. This reincarnation—a slow, awkward form that Om finds too close to earth—is far from the raging bull he had intended for himself in order to demonstrate his power and instill fear in the souls of his worshippers. Something is definitely wrong with his godly powers. And, to aggravate matters—as well as to help explain his current predicament—Om discovers that he has only one follower left: Brutha, a novice monk who has been relegated to tending the garden because he is a simpleton. Yet, in spite of his severely limited intellect, Brutha, Om's last genuine worshipper, has two things in his favor: a photographic memory and absolute faith in his god.

Thus begins Small Gods, Terry Pratchett’s masterful parody of how humans construct and deconstruct religious beliefs.

Several years ago, as a birthday present, my good friend, the Oxford philosopher Benjamin Murphy, gave me a copy of Pratchett’s novel. The questions Pratchett raises in this book haunted me; and they continue to do so.

I recently included Small Gods in a literature class I’m teaching. The students, mostly 11th and 12th graders, after getting over the initial shock of being assigned—in a “serious” literature class—a fantasy novel about a tortoise who claims he’s a god, enjoyed the process of extracting meaning from Pratchett’s work.

We accompanied Om and Brutha on their journey to retrace the origins of faith. And we were joined by their nemesis, Vorbis—the cruel and ambitious inquisitor who uses fear, lies, torture, war, and death as his preferred tools in his quest to become the next Great Prophet and head of the Omnian Church.

At the novel’s end, most of us in the classroom arrived to this conclusion: that Terry Prachett’s novel illustrates how, after centuries of repression and fear, humans will start to worship their Church instead of their god.

This revelation stunned me, perhaps more so than it did the students. But, without a doubt, Pratchett’s humorous story, about a tortoise-god, helped us to better understand the nature of the religious conflicts that prevail in today’s world.

Daniel Ortega: A Case of True Repentance?

Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Bad men are full of repentance.
Aristotle

Last October 13, during the final stages of the Nicaraguan presidential campaign, the candidates congregated on a former cow pasture on the outskirts of the town of Cuapa where Leopoldo Brenes, Archbishop of Nicaragua, celebrated a mass in commemoration of the twenty-sixth anniversary of the last appearance of the Virgin Mary to Bernardo Martínez, a local campesino. Every single candidate was in attendance with one exception: Daniel Ortega.

Both Stephen Kinzer, in The Blood of Brothers, a book that details life in Nicaragua during the Contra War, and Mario Vargas Llosa, in his New York Times Magazine essay, “In Nicaragua,” state that the Virgin’s apparition on that Cuapa pasture became the ideological battleground in the fierce rivalry between the Sandinista government and the Catholic Church. This clash represents one of the salient themes of my novel Bernardo and the Virgin.

At the time, former Comandante Daniel Ortega and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo were bitter enemies. But during recent months, as widely reported in the world media, the Cardinal served as Daniel Ortega’s spiritual advisor while Nicaragua’s incoming president publicly repented of his sins and reconciled with the Church.

And although these men have been far apart—if not downright cold toward each other—for many years, they do have one thing in common: they love the trappings of power.

During the thirty-five years that Cardinal Miguel de Obando y Bravo presided over the Nicaraguan Catholic Church, he became one of country’s most powerful men. But in April of 2005, pressured by several conservative Catholic Nicaraguan leaders (members of Opus Dei) who believed that His Eminence had become far too chummy with convicted former president Arnoldo Alemán, the Vatican accepted his resignation as Archbishop.

Forced out of this sublime position of influence, what better way for the Cardinal to get back at those who had turned against him than to form a close alliance with their greatest nemesis: Daniel Ortega?

Throughout the presidential campaign, the former Comandante often visited the Cardinal; and he could be seen in the front pew at his Sunday masses—and plenty of news photographers were always present to record the scene. What’s more, it was Obando y Bravo who heard Ortega’s long-overdue confession and later performed the ceremony in which the Sandinista leader wed Rosario Murillo, his longtime companion and soon to be First Lady of Nicaragua.

But is Daniel Ortega’s conversion sincere?

Although I make it a point never to try to peer into another person’s soul, I believe that if Ortega was truly at peace with the Church he would have been present at the commemoration at Cuapa, for it was around this issue that his government staged its most virulent attacks against the Church by trying to destroy Bernardo Martínez’s reputation in the Sandinista-controlled media.
The Nicaraguan people have spoken. Whether they believe in the authenticity of Daniel Ortega’s spiritual awakening is irrelevant. Their choice must be respected.

I, however, doubt that the man Nicaragua will have as its president for the next six years is truly repentant. His political and spiritual marriage to Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo is one of convenience, for both men. They are thrilled to be back in power

If Daniel Ortega were genuinely sorry for the sins he committed during the 1980s and beyond, he would have been in Cuapa last October 13—for that’s where he committed his greatest sin by trying to discredit an event that most Nicaraguans hold as sacred.

On Reading Mario Vargas Llosa

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
Hippocrates

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
Mario Vargas Llosa


I first read Mario Vargas Llosa’s La tía Julia y el escribidor twenty-three years ago. I fell completely in love with the novel, and that after reading only a few pages. I was particularly taken with its remarkable display of the author’s sense of humor.

La tía Julia was not my introduction to Vargas Llosa. I had previously read La ciudad y los perros and La casa verde—and these formidable works had already convinced me that the Peruvian was a master writer.

But my delight in reading La tía Julia stemmed from discovering that Mario Vargas Llosa was also a formidable comic writer. The two other novels I had read were dark, somber, and humorless portraits of Perú. But while reading La tía Julia I was astounded at Vargas Llosa’s ability to place his characters in comically absurd situations, and at precisely the right moment. His expert manipulation of the novel’s structure made me shake my head in wonder—while laughing out loud as well—many, many times.

Since La tía Julia y el escribidor, the Peruvian author has written other books that highlight his command over humorous writing—most notably the novel Pantaleón y las visitadoras, and the plays La señorita de Tacna and Kathie y el hipopótamo. But I’m still stunned by his unsettling literary explorations into the murkier side of Latin American politics as La guerra del fin del mundo, Lituma en los Andes and La fiesta del chivo. And the latter is, without doubt, my favorite Vargas Llosa novel—a chilling political thriller based on the assassination of one of the cruelest dictators in the history of the Americas: Rafael Trujillo.

In Vargas Llosa’s literary universe time tends to collapse. Present and past ceaselessly overlap as the characters’ lives and recollections crisscross until eventually they merge to become one in the same. Yet, where one would expect this apparent temporal chaos to result in a complex, nearly impenetrable narrative, Vargas Llosa’s works invariably flow smoothly. He never loses his readers, and his stories serve to illustrate that, ultimately, we are the sum of every act of our lives.

Because of this, every time I read one of Mario Vargas Llosa’s works—and he is skilled in every literary genre with the exception of poetry—I’m obliged to acknowledge that I’m in the presence of a master of the craft of writing.