Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear: v. 1

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Javier Marias ile böyle görkemli bir tanışmayı hayal etmiyordum. Evet seveceğimden emindim ancak bu denlisini beklemiyordum. Öncelikle söylenmesi gereken şey şu: Bir başlangıç, bir son, bol olay var sanıyorsanız; yanılıyorsunuz. The first person narrator, Jacobo Deza, is just divorced. He’s about forty and until recently lived in Madrid with his wife Luisa, but they have separated for reasons unknown and he has now come to London working for BBC on programmes about Spain and its culture. He has academic connections at Oxford where he once taught. There the history professor/spy Peter Wheeler introduces him to the suave Mr. Bertram Tupra who in turn hires him for his business of clandestine intelligence assessment. He become a kind of consulting spy, paid to read and interpret people. He's also known for his formidable memory and intelligence.

Sin embargo, Peter Wheeler eligió justo lo contrario; formar parte del misterioso grupo para el cual ha captado a Deza y ganarse la vida sabiendo, anticipando, adivinando el rostro mañana de cuantos pudieran, con un cambio de rostro, de lealtad o de comportamiento, suponer una amenaza o una oportunidad —una oportunidad, porque entre saber cómo reaccionará alguien ante un determinado estímulo y manipularle para controlar sus actos solo hay un breve paso. ciltte dramatik dönemeçler pek yok. Baş karakter, Peter Wheeler ve yine Oxford'da tanıştığı Toby Rylands hakkında yeni bilgiler öğrenirken İspanya İç Savaşı ve İkinci Dünya Savaşı dönemlerinde yaşanan çeşitli olaylara ilişkin tarihi bilgiler, yorumlar ve tabii ki Marias'ın ele almayı sevdiği temalar üzerine uzun tiradlar okuyoruz. Yine ihanet, insanları gerçekten tanımanın, sır tutmanın ve gerçeği bilmenin imkansızlığı, pişmanlık öne çıkan temalar.

Marías operated a small publishing house under the name of Reino de Redonda. He also wrote a weekly column in El País. An English version of his column "La Zona Fantasma" is published in the monthly magazine The Believer. So yeah, I suppose that if you write an actionless, multi-volume novel with a vulgarly high comma-to-period ratio and no actual events save a party and stuffy rich erudite people yakking, you must be consciously placing yourself in a specific European literary tradition, and inviting certain comparisons to some celebrated, endless plotlessness that has come before. So yes, to answer the question blazing in everyone's mind: if Marcel Proust were Spanish and writing a twenty-first-century spy novel, I suppose it might be at least vaguely like this. bu kitaba başlayacaksanız kesinlikle serinin en azından 2. kitabını elinizin altında bulundurun. ben kitabın ilk 100 sayfasını okuduktan sonra kitabın çok heyecanlı bir yerde biteceğini fark ettim ama aksiyon almam için çok geçti artık kfgddsj

I can’t help it, Javier Marias’ voice seduces me. It’s a purely cerebral seduction, but still sexy in its smooth (& feverish) unspooling of its own explorations of itself inside my head. Admittedly, to actually read the whole of this book requires a seduction, and a willingness on the part of the reader to cede control of his/her own reading experience to the overwhelming, unrelenting voice; for this voice's self-love (a self-love that is also selfless) to be loved by another. ha bir de, nuh nebiden kalma ispanyolca sözlüğümü raftan indirdim bu kitap için. öyle bir kitap. dil öğrenme şevkinizi tetikliyor. hani bazen, "iyi ki bu yazarı türkçe okuyabiliyorum" filan deriz ya; bu kitapta iki "iyi ki"m vardı: birincisi, iyi ki anadilim ingilizce değil. zira kitabın büyük bir kısmı ingilizce'ye çeviriyle ilgili. ikincisi, iyi ki, iyi ki, iyi ki roza hakmen gibi bir çevirmenimiz var ve bu kitabı o çevirmiş. ne büyük şans bizim için. Extremely hard to read, as every sentence is beautifully crafted but to the point of being over-written and elaborate, often piling on a series of repetitions; as an example (which could actually be referring to large parts of the book) Clearly Marias is an accomplished stylist. This shows even in translation. He can roam from Proustian meditation to Bond-like adventure. But the shifts can become somewhat disconcerting and ultimately even tedious. Then there's the fact that these readers of people see themselves as an elite. With the exception of Dezas, who knows he is creating fictions, they believe themselves to be seers of a kind, possessed of a very rare human gift. Though there's nothing supernatural about it, it is rather a deeply intuitive gift.

This is one of those books that makes me confused about my own literary tastes, which is something that I certainly appreciate. I think of myself as a girl who needs robust narrative and appreciates a certain down-to-earthiness in my novels, but I guess I'm not, or I wouldn't get into shit like this.

The title comes from a comment half-way through made by Deza in an attempt to explain his father's betrayal. "How can I not know today your face tomorrow...?" he says. In other words: Isn't the real character of a person obvious long before he acts? Shouldn't one be able to see betrayal before any overt act to betray? One might assume therefore that this is the central theme that brings the four complex threads together. Una y otra vez se cuestiona la palabra, su significado, las diferencias que en los mismos se da entre distintos idiomas, la relevancia de aquello que tiene su palabra en uno pero no en otro, el hecho de que tanto lo que decimos como lo que nos decimos está influenciado por el propio idioma elegido o solo puede ser bien expresado en él; una y otra vez Shakespeare , una y otra vez los mantras de la novela, “No debería uno contar nunca nada”, “Nada de lo que hubo se borra jamás del todo”, “Todo tiene su tiempo para ser creído”, “A veces resulta imposible explicar lo más decisivo”, “Hoy se detesta la certidumbre”, “Uno olvida mucho más lo que escribe que lo que lee, si le va dirigido; lo que envía que lo que recibe, lo que dice que lo que escucha, cuando agravia que cuando es ofendido”… El padre de Deza, traicionado por su mejor amigo días después del final de la Guerra Civil y represaliado durante décadas, eligió confiar, no ver, no saber; no por ignorancia o dificultad, sino porque saber abría la puerta a un mundo demasiado terrible; desconfiando antes de ser traicionado se condenaba a sí mismo a una vida entera de desconfianza; tratando de vengarse después hubiera supuesto prolongar la traición y darle la razón al delator. My next line of inquiry was to try to determine the significance of certain themes: e.g., translation and interpretation; and recurring phrases: e.g., fever and spear (which appears in the title of the first volume). Cuando se publicó Fiebre y lanza, el primer volumen de la trilogía, yo ya había leído, y releído, todo lo que Marías había publicado anteriormente, incluidos infinidad de artículos. Además, el narrador de Tu rostro mañana era en muchos sentidos un alter ego del autor, no solo por su biografía sino por muchos rasgos de su carácter. En suma, estaba un poco saturado de Marías.Its humour, too; aside from being one of the most poised and cultivated of fictional narrators, Jacques Deza is also one of the most amusing. His defiantly snobbish asides on the trashiness of our times are priceless, while the situations he finds himself in, however unpleasant, almost always have something farcical about them that keeps laughter in play along with horror. A little patience, in other words, is required of the reader, but it is amply rewarded. By the second volume all cylinders in its large and powerful engines are purring smoothly. And with this triumphant finale – the longest and best of all three – it becomes impossible to resist the thought that this deeply strange creation, with its utterly sui generis methods, its brilliant disquisitions on love and loss, its dark playfulness, may very well be the first authentic literary masterpiece of the 21st century.