Let’s see. The prologue…. in case I had any doubt of my role as a reader of this book, I was put in my place from the very first sentence: This is the story of the USA, non-American, and deep inside, this folk is full of hope. Ok. And it continues with a black kid feeling threatened by his distinguishability in the mass of white people, a baseball game, a bunch of characters some recognizable only by Americans. Is this true? Are the characters real people? Am I supposed to know them? Did that game really occur?
Do I exist? I admit that I was bothered at the beginning; I don’t like to be left out. There was also something weird about the writing, it sounded arrogant, disdainful to the reader. The feeling changed though after reading BK’s post because I started to think really that the author is speaking to himself. And that turns it around, he is not excluding me, he is allowing me to listen to his soliloquy. Is that it?
Anyway, I enjoyed the prologue despite my little knowledge on baseball games and all that I miss because of the language. But let me know if the rest of the book takes place in a baseball field because I will have to start studying the rules and history of that sport. I like the detail in the description of the moods and the significance given to weather as a reality and as a metaphor (and language, but that has already been pointed out by BK), “all these people formed by language and climate”, “What a year hey? This weather, I don’t know, it is bad for the trailing”, “the sun’s own heat that swallows the cities”, “you create the weather”, “It should have rained in the third or fourth inning. Great rain drenching down. It should have thundered and lightining’d.”…
I wonder how/whether this chapter, which is not a chapter but the prologue (and I suppose that there is a reason for that) has any continuity through the rest of the book. Although I got the impression that the catch of the baseball is the most remarkable episode, my favorite one is Edgar’s entrancement by Brueghel’s painting. I just saw it a week ago in el Prado in Madrid (I love these coincidences!). I guess I overlooked the title of the prologue the same way I overlooked BK’s instructions for the reading schedule (I apologize again although, where are you all?), so it was a pleasure to gradually find out that he was describing something I could recognize because I had just enjoyed it. The idea of a piece of art providing a new position for the understanding of the surrounding reality is something I adore, specially when it is accidental.
3 comments:
Hey M,
You are right that the catch of the baseball will be the most significant part of the prologue. And there isnt too much baseball in the remainder of the novel so you dont need to study the rules (that particular ball, however, will haunt the novel).
Yes the game was a real game. In fact, it is the most famous baseball game ever. THat homerun is known as the "shot heard around the world". And it did really happen on the day that the Soviets tested the bomb. The front page of the newspapers the next day had a line running straight down the middle, with the baseball game on one side and the bomb on the other. I'll try to find this picture and post it. It's really quite remarkable.
Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Toots Shor, were famous entertainers during the time, though Sinatra especially remains legendary. J Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI and was pretty notorious. He was considered by insiders to be more powerful than even the president.
I am glad to have you in the bookclub to give a non-american perspective to a book that is so fundamentally rooted in the american experiance. So yes, it might require some patience with the things that dont seem as natural to you.
Besos!
Bk
also,
i wonder if someone could find an image of that painting and post it.
B, thanks for the explanations. That with the front page of the newspapers is soo cool. I will dream with it. Find the pic!
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