The Failed Reader

Rating systems for books are ridiculous. It does not matter if the reviewer is a professional or an expert for sunday reviews of a petit bourgeois papers. It projects a one-sided notion of reading of how 'good' the book is, as a passive object awaiting judgement, if the text has failed and disappointed the reader, but failed to take into account of their own ability as reader, the chances of their own inadequacies that made them, often the consumer-readers, failed the text. [...]

Even in the worst text, an active reading beyond passive reception of plot and content to structure and form could produce an effective reading. [...]

The issue would not be if this is a good book but if one has read the worst book well. This also demands the reader to question their position when they approach the text. Stop judging if you are reading a failed writer but start thinking if you are a failed reader.

The Tragedy of an Honorable Man - Roberto Arlt

The Tragedy of an Honorable Man

(from Aguafuertes Porteñas)

Roberto Arlt

Every day I witness the tragic life of an honourable man. This honourable man has a cafe valued at thirty thousand pesos or more. Well, this honourable man has an honourable wife.

By putting his honorable wife in charge of the Victrola, he saves eighty dollars per month, instead of paying for a victrolista. From this system of management, my good guy saves, at the end of the year, the respectable sum of nine hundred and sixty pesos excluding interest. After ten years he will save ... 

But my honourable man is jealous. So what if I understood it as jealousy! Keeping on guard behind the counter, monitoring, not just the consumption of his customers, but also how they look at his woman. And he suffers. Suffershonourably. Sometimes turning pale, sometimes his eyes gleam. Why? Because how could anyone be duller than to look at the plump calves of his spouse. Under these circumstances, the honourable man looks up to ascertain whether his wife responded to the arousing glimpses of the customer, or is entertaining herself, reading a magazine. He suffers. I see him suffering, suffers honourably; but what he suffers is forgotten the moment his wife hands him the account book of two pesos and sixty-five centavos; when his legitimate wife made deposits to the bank, of  nine hundred sixty dollars annually. He suffers.  The honourable heart of this man of prudence, in terms of money, is disturbed and forgets his interests when a butcher, bus driver or caregiver, study the anatomical contour of his also honourable wife. But suffers more, when the person who enjoys contemplating her charm is a sturdy lad, with moustache as stiff as his back, powerful enough to withstand any extra work. Then my honourable man looks up desperately. The jealousy that Greek gods had immortalized, upsets his sense of economy, cast into the stillness, undermining his joy of saving two pesos and sixty-five centavos per day; desperate and grinding his teeth as if wanting to bite a huge chunk off the customer’s kidney.

I understand him, without having spoken a word with this man, the problem that his honourable soul is facing. I understand, with sympathy, it eats into me [lo ‘manyo’]. The man is faced with Hamlet’s dilemma, the problem of Balaam's donkey, before ...before the awful problem of saving eighty bucks monthly! They are eighty pesos. Do you know the packers, las canastas, work how many days of eighteen hours to earn eighty dollars a month? No, no one can imagine.

Thus, I understand. At the same time he loves his wife. How not to?! But cannot reduce the work – like the famous miser Anatole France who never fails to cut some barbs with the gold coins offered to the Virgin: remaining true to his habit.

And eighty pesos is eight ten pesos bills, sixteen of five and… sixteen bills of five pesos for five dollars, they are money ... money...

And the proof that our man is honourable is how he suffers when they start to look at his wife. Suffering visibly. What to do? To give up eighty pesos? Or to resign oneself to a possible marital disappointment?

If this man was not honourable, he would not mind if his wife was being courted. All the more, he would devote himself to it like the famous Monsieur Bergeret who endured the misery stoically.

No, my cafe has no money for the too obliging husband. In him, it is still El Cid, don Juan, Calderon of the Barca and all the glory of the race, mixing with the voracious greed of people of the land.

They are eighty pesos a month. Eighty! Why would one renounce eighty dollars a month? He loves his wife, but their love is not comparable to the eighty pesos.

He loves the front to be cleared of all adornments, and he also loves his trade, well-organized finance, the deposit slip at the bank, cheque book. How this honourable man loves money! Fucking honourable!

Sometimes I go to his cafe and stay for an hour, two or three. He believes that when I look at his woman I'm thinking about her. But he is wrong. The one who I am thinking about is Lenin ... Stalin ... Trotsky ... I am thinking with the profoundest joy of the devilishly contorted face that this man would have if tomorrow a revolutionary regime told him:

'All your money is worthless.’

Translated by J. Loke (Nov 2014)

 


https://www.academia.edu/9217735/The_Tragedy_of_an_Honorable_Man_-_Roberto_Arlt

The Sadness of English Saturday (from Aguafuertes Porteñas) Roberto Arlt

The Sadness of English Saturday (from Aguafuertes Porteñas)

Roberto Arlt

Could it be that because I have been wandering throughout the week that Saturday and Sunday became the most boring days of my life? I think Sunday is pure old boredom and English Saturday is a sad day – with sadness characterized by the name of the race.

English Saturday is a colourless and tasteless day; a day "with neither kicks nor pricks" [no corta ni pincha] in the routine of the people. A hybrid day, without character, without gestures.

It is a day for marital brawls to thrive, and for drunkenness which are more lugubrious than the "de profundis" in the twilight of a cloudy day. A grave silence hangs over the city. In England or Puritan countries, that is.  The lack of sun, which is surely the natural source of all joy. And when it rains or snows, there is nowhere to go, not even to run. So people stay at home by the fire, and tired from reading Punch, they browse the Bible.

But for us the English Saturday is a very modern gift that failed to convince us. We already have plenty of Sundays. Without money, nowhere to go and no desire to go anywhere, why would we want Sunday? Sunday was an institution which humanity could live without very comfortably.

Daddy God rested on Sunday, because he was tired of having made this complicated thing called ‘world’. But what has been done during the six days, all those slackers out there walking around, to rest on Sunday? Besides, no one has the right to impose a day of idleness. Who asked for it? What for?

Humanity had to impose a day from the week dedicated to doing nothing. And mankind was bored. A ‘lean’ day is suffice. Here comes the British gentleman, what a great idea! Let’s add another day more, on Saturday.

Regardless of the amount of work, one day off per week is more than enough. Two are unbearable in any city in the world. I am, as you see, a sworn enemy of English Saturday.

The necktie used for a week left in the trunk. Suit with ostensible stiffness well-kept. Boots creaking. Glasses with gold frame, for Saturday and Sunday. And this is the self-satisfying aspect that made you want to kill him. Like the kind of boyfriend, one of those couples that bought a house on monthly installment. One of those couples kssing to fixed term.

So carefully polishing his boots when getting out of the car that I did not forget to step on one of his foot. If there are no people the man would kill me.

After this fool, there is another man on Saturday, the sad man, the man grieves me deeply every time I see him.

I've seen him numerous times, and he has always given me the same painful impression.

I was walking down a sidewalk one Saturady, under the shade, by Calle Alsina - the most dismal street of Buenos Aires, when at the opposite sidewalk, along the path of the sun, I saw a hunchback employee, walking slowly, carrying a three year old child.

The creature exhibited her innocence with one of those little hats with cintajos, already deplorable without being old. A freshly pressed pink dress. Some shoes for the holidays. The girl walked slowly, and the father, even more slowly. And suddenly I had a vision of the room in a lodging house, and the mother of the child, [urea] young woman wrinkled by hardship, ironing the baby’s hat with cintajos.

The man walked slowly. Sad. Bored. In him I saw the product of working twenty years by the sentry box, of fourteen hours a day and with starving wages, twenty years of deprivation, of stupid sacrifices and holy terror being fired and left unemployed in the street. Saw him at Santana, the character of Roberto Mariani.

And in the city centre, during Saturday afternoon is horrible. When businesses are exhibited with hideous nakedness. The metal shutters have aggressive rigidness.

Basements of importing houses vomit the stink of tar, benzol and overseas items. Stores stink of rubber. The hardware stores by paint. The sky seems so blue, which is illuminating an inconspicuous factory in Africa. Taverns for stockbrokers remain empty and dismal. A gatekeeper playing mus with floor cleaners by the edge of a table. Guys procreated by the spontaneous generation from the moss-house benches, appearing at the door of "employee entrance" of the cash deposits. And has experienced the terror, the awful horror of thinking that at the same hour in many countries people are forced to do nothing, but are willing to work or die.

No, no turning back, no day sadder than English Saturday, and those employees on a Saturday, still checking, at twelve o'clock, for a company that has seven million of capital, the two cents discrepancy of the end of the month balance.

Translated by J. Loke (Nov 2014)

借问 jio men

At GM Tower, an old man walked towards our table. Spoke in Hokkien say 'jio men zi le', he was asking for direction, it is not the first time I heard this phrase, but after some years, my sensitivity towards language, especially my real mother tongue, has changed. The first word of the sentence 借 (borrow) has a different ring. He had to 'borrow' me to ask me a question 借问. He had to loan my time or use me, perhaps. The usuage when I was a teenager has already degenerated into ruffians challenging ruffians from another area. When a friend called to say he was 借问 (jio men) somewhere, it implies he ran into trouble, asking which 'number' he is from. The questions that follow would be if he was outnumbered, was he beaten up, or he was so courageous and heroic and escaped unscathed. So literally, I was jio men at Golden Mile not by some street hooligans but an Ah Pek who walked slow and unsteadily. He could have used 请问 qi' ah men (invitation/to ask). I told him I do not belong here,  I am just as unfamiliar. In a larger sense, more than just the building,  this could also mean my sense of estrangement with the island, its inhabitants, and their ideologies, I have developed unwittingly over the years. I am not sure if jio men is originally considered a formal or an informal term, but I am sure people who used in the non-Ah Beng sense are dying out.