Locos - Felipe Alfau

One must bear in mind that these people are creating their own life and standards, and are still novices at the game. In other words, the reader is expected to sit back and watch this procession of strange people and distorted phenomena without even a critical eye. To look for anything else, or to take seriously this bevy of irresponsible puppets and the inconsistency of the author, would not be advisable, as by doing so and imagining things that might lend themselves to misinterpretation, the reader would only disclose, beneath a more or less entertaining comedy of meaningless gestures, the vulgar aspects of a common tragedy.

Let us, then, take the author at his word, and consider this book of stories without even a critical eye, treat it as an amusement akin to watching a TV show of which you are not particularly fond, heedlessly dipping into a narrative arc of which you are unaware, considering each episode as a self-contained thing, the characters and the events imprisoned within the small portion of time that you bestow upon each story your disinterested attention. So, one day, you might read the story of a professional beggar, who goes out each day dressed in his uniform of rags, only to come home at night not to some hovel on the street, but a well-appointed apartment in a luxury apartment building. On another day you might read the story of a fingerprint expert, who is so convinced that fingerprints don't lie, that he allows himself to be put in prison for a murder he did not commit, simply because his fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime. Or on another day you might read the story of the woman who is so obsessed with death that she dies each year for a month or two at a time, only to rise again, until her obsession threatens to leave her dead for more time than she is alive, so she must attempt to commit suicide to cure herself of her obsession. There are eight such stories, each with its own quirky premise, each with strange twists of narrative, each with characters, as the title suggests, who are crazy. And as Alfau asserts, each story can be read alone and not in relation to the others that are told. Careless reading is the preferred mode of consumption. If you read the book in this way, the stories are entertaining, original in their conception and amusing in execution, a warm entertainment for some cold and lonely evening, bed time stories perfect for passing the time before sleep. In other words, light reading.

But, then, should you take such disclaimers seriously? It recalls Montaigne's blithe ironic pose: "...and there is no reason why you should waste your leisure on so frivolous and unrewarding a subject." Alfau admits that there is some method to the book's madness, and that the "pages have been numbered clearly and the stories arranged less clearly in a conventional order" which he finds more or less appropriate. So what is the reader to make of the fact that the stories tend to share the same characters, that they each reference a shared pool of events, that there is a tenuous thread that seems to connect each of the narratives? Most curious of all, though, is the author's presence in every story, his insistence on the distinction between real people and the characters he sets in motion, his frequent protestations that he is not to blame for his characters' actions. He admits in the prologue that he has completely lost control. All of this seems to beg for a more careful reading of the book, an attempt to get at what, exactly, he means by the common tragedy that underlies this comedy of gestures.

Complications set in immediately. If you step back and try to consider the work as a whole, attempt to see the novel that is constructed of these eight stories and the curious prologue, the impression made is one of a mound of pieces from several disparate puzzles. Nothing fits. Characters shift. Time, seemingly, does not exist. In one story a woman named Lunarito is a murderer, in another she is the victim of some murder. In one story a poet named Garcia is a crass and opportunistic young man, in another, in the same time period, he is an unhappy and sensitive child. One character actively takes over the telling of one of the stories and becomes confused, wondering whether he is a real being or some fictional entity, and despairs when he comes to the conclusion that he is neither. In another, a real person seeks to become more real by becoming a character in a story. There is a curious logic at work, a vague understanding on the part of the reader that although nothing seems to make sense, there is a key just waiting to be found. But as you, the ambitious reader, try to sort and sift the puzzle pieces, and unlock this curious jewelry box of a novel, just as you think you discover a key to the lock, the lock disappears. It is not dream-like, though it shares that uneasiness of purpose that dreams seem to embody. It is not a mystery, although you feel like a detective tracking down leads, establishing alibis, positing schemes.

Ultimately, it seems the tragedy Alfau refers to is one of creating stories, of crafting coherent tales, but that statement seems to miss the mark in so many ways. It is not a story about stories, it is not a novel about writing. In the end, in much the same way that At Swim-Two-Birds, the Flann O'Brien novel in which characters band together and plot against their author, it is an amusing tale of the richness of the imagination. And even that sentiment, in the face of this wonderful book, seems to fall flat.

The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan by Ivan Morris

"It is essential that the hero be prepared for this sublime end so that when the moment comes he will know precisely how to act and not be swayed by his instinct for survival or other human weakness. His final, blazing meeting with his fate is the most important event of his life. To continue fighting against all odds and to acquit himself properly at the end will give validity to his previous efforts and sacrifices; to die badly will make a mockery of everything that has lent meaning to his existence. 'Think constantly of your death!' were the last words that the loyalist hero, Masahige, is said to have spoken to his son before committing harakiri in 1336..."

The notion that one must die well is not confined to the Japanese. Montaigne once wrote that "all the other actions of our life ought to be tried and tested by this last act. It is the master-day, it is the day that is judge of all the rest..." But no country on earth has absorbed this notion so deeply as Japan, whose obsession with the art of dying has become as familiar as the words harakiri and kamikaze. And while Montaigne imbues death with a life-affirming humanism, seeing in it an opportunity to "speak plain" and to show what is "good and clean in the bottom of the pot," the traditional Japanese concept of death, with its perverse focus on suicide, can be so impassioned that it verges on religious ecstasy. As Morris writes: "Hagakure, the most influential of all samurai treatises ever written, combines the characters for 'dying' (shini) and 'going mad' (kurui) into a single word, shinigurui ('death frenzy'), and enjoins this ardent state on the warrior; for he cannot hope to accomplish any great deed until he has first 'surmounted himself' by discarding the cautious dictates of reason and self-interest."

Death, the ultimate failure, is the focus of Morris's book. He recounts the tales of nine of Japan's greatest heroes, each of which is used as a lens to view historical periods stretching from the fourth century to the nineteenth. (There is also a final chapter discussing kamikaze pilots, who drew much of their inspiration from these legendary figures.) Their stories are strikingly similar: they experienced a meteoric rise in fame and influence before dying a glorious death in the face of certain defeat, which invariably came at the hands of those in positions of power. Furthermore, whatever agendas these heroes championed, whichever side they chose, were brutally crushed by their enemies in martyrdom's aftermath. In fact, as Morris shows, their deaths often hastened the destruction of their causes, and redounded to the immense benefit of their oppressors, who went on to do the less romantic business of ruling Japan.

For the most part, the men who ended feudalism and established the military government of the shogunate, who later transformed Japan into a world power during the Meiji Restoration, who engineered all the major changes that would define Japan's historical course -- these are the country's villains. The heroes are the ones who died in futile gestures, attached themselves to lost causes, and were on the wrong side of history from the very beginning. If it were to play out this way in America, there would now be national holidays on General Lee's birthday, and a widespread disdain for that worldly striver, Abraham Lincoln.

What could explain this reverence for total failure? What does it say about the Japanese psyche? Morris, often citing the writings of the heroes themselves, many of whom had a penchant for poetry, highlights certain hallmarks of the Japanese hero. He is, above all, a man of sincerity, so wedded to his beliefs that he cannot deign to take the practical measures and compromises that will offer him a chance of success. He obeys only the impulses that stem from his deepest emotions, which makes him appear irrational and rash to the outside world. He recognizes the ephemeral nature of human life, which, like the iconic cherry blossom, blooms vividly just before its petals are scattered to the wind. And it is through death, particularly suicide, that the hero expresses his purity of intention, and his rejection of the debasing machinations of the material world.

It is, at first glance, a worldview that is horribly nihilistic. What would Montaigne, the probing rationalist of his inner life, say to this sweeping dismissal of human experience? But as you read Morris's book, it becomes less perverse, more human, and almost poignant. The strongest chapter in the book deals with the kamikaze pilots, who eagerly volunteer to sacrifice their lives even though they know that the war is lost, and that their flimsy aircraft will do nothing more than plop in the ocean. They write farewell letters to their parents, and drop in the envelopes fingernail parings and locks of hair -- all that will remain for their burial. The devout fealty expressed in these letters, as well as the intense gratitude they feel toward their parents, sheds a more noble light on the Japanese consciousness and its relation to the outer world. As one ardent suicide bomber puts it:

"You attach too much importance to life. Imagine that the whole world were to disappear except for you. Would you really want to go on living? If a human life has any important meaning, it is because of some relationship with other human beings. From this springs the principle of honour. Life rests on this idea, as exemplified by the conduct of our ancient samurai...who consciously devote their lives to serving something outside themselves."