The Favorite Game (by L. Cohen) – intro
Read the book. It’s hard to write about it in one note, so this is just an intro, or something like the first impressions… The favorite game of leaving footprints in the snow made by accidental figures – that’s all that remains… for some reason i need to bring these Octavio Paz’s lines:
...the unreality of the seen
transparency is all that remains
Your footsteps in the next room...
…
Was L. B. only a faker, a lost personality, stretched between different cultures and demands of society… or was he driven by the realization of the value of moments and their disappearance once they are prolonged, shaped into a socially acceptable form, extended into what we are or what we become once we let it all roll down… or was he someone who couldn’t accept the fact that he wasn’t what he hoped he’d be or maybe he just wanted to watch himself from a distance, leaving things as they were and himself involved in them as it all was… a bit like Orasio Oliveira from Cortazar’s Hopscotch… home – away – back home, but home isn’t home anymore, and you are not you and it’s all good as long as it remains untouched, just a trace laying in a snow, until it melts or the new snow falls over it.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:45 am
This is seriously one of the novels I enjoyed the most one long, hot summer long ago. He can seriously write well (and do more than moan about sex, women and death, haha) :) The Julio Cortazar novel was more about Oliveira being a very ‘bon chic bon genre’ bohemien if i remember correctly… So I beg to differ on that point.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Yes, there is indeed a difference between L.B. and O.O. But somehow, there is some similarity too, I think… you know in what: in their passivity, this watching from a distance everything, including yourself, like it’s all a movie happening in front of your eyes and you either can’t bother or just *cannot* (re)act. But I still have to think about that :)
P.S.
So cool you know both of the books! :D
September 14th, 2007 at 10:47 am
just to add to this previous remark on the comparison between two of them. you know this point when oliveira can’t do anything but follow berta trepa (or however her name should be spelled :), and then it starts getting just worse and worse, culminating in his return to argentina. there’s a similar path here with breavman: he can’t bother to act in different situations, he hurts others, he does things that seem to be against “himself” and so on…
September 14th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
That’s quite true, but I think thats a rather classic theme actually. If you’ve read James’ ‘Portrait of a lady’, I think they’re both a hell of a lot like Isabel Archer… But then again she’s probably the stereotype of the seemingly mad anti-heroine. Any thoughts? :)
PS. Thanks for your mail! The mix isnt anything special, more like something I plan to do a lot from now on. But I still hope you’ll enjoy it ofcawz… heh!
September 19th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Unfortunately, I haven’t read ‘Portrait of a lady’ :( But yes, now when I think of this theme, it might be quite frequent in literature. It’s also one of the major themes in Eliot’s Love Song of A. J. Prufrock (which I am fascinated by, as you might have already noticed :) – but what is specific for this poem, is that the main character is wondering about this very fact, he’s totally obsessed by it, he knows it makes no sense to “act” (what exactly means “to act” here depends on an interpretation of the poem), and that bothers him… ahh, i always end up with Eliot or Cortazar – that’s probably cause their works are so genius that they are able to cover millions of questions, and cause my scope of read literature is so poor that not much of other stuff falls to my mind :d