The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez

García Márquez wrestles with El Libertador's ghost in his historically-inspired fictional account of Simón Bolívar's final journey -- from Andean Bogotá down the Magdalena river to the Caribbean coast.

I have previously read One Hundred Years of Solitude and News of a Kidnapping -- one a magical realist fantasy, the other a journalistic account. This novel strikes an odd sort of middle ground: García Márquez researched the General's life, but filled in the blanks in the historical record as needed for dramatic effect. He hopes to achieve is a psychological portrait of a once-virile man who changed the face of a continent through his own will, but who is now consumed by the failure of his grand plan. At times the General seems unwilling to accept his defeat, at other times he is consumed by spite, and is possibly more prescient than those around him -- he can feel the weight of history crushing him, forsaking him, abandoning him. The character, while historically inspired, fits a certain García Márquez model, from what I can tell -- Pablo Escobar, though not a central figure to News of a Kidnapping, is similarly depicted as having a commanding presence who built an empire, but was unable to escape his ultimate fate, dying in the street and on the run. Similarly, the men of the Buendía family fit a dichotomy embodied in the General -- stubborn and masculine vs. sullen and contemplative. Like the Buendías, the General's amorous history is impressive.

There are no magical realist elements, but García Márquez describes the General's physical state as almost grotesque. As he nears death and becomes more like a walking cadaver, Bolívar sometimes summon a strength and resolve from his past that none of his entourage anticipate. One theme in common with One Hundred Years of Solitude is the connection to the past in explaining the present. When the General or one of his men reference an incident from a past campaign, García Márquez embarks on an investigation of the details surrounding that incident and what it reveals about the man's current state, at the same time illustrating how far he has fallen from his former glory. One impressive moment is a historical fact -- while hiding in a swamp from Spanish troops, the General and his men spent the night standing in water. At a low point in their campaign, the General predicted exactly how he would drive the Spaniards back and eventually unite the colonies. His aides were stunned by his diatribe, and worried that his voice would attract the enemy. In a method very similar to News of a Kidnapping, the book slowly chronicles in unadorned language these small, separate incidents that reveal some part of the larger picture without giving away the meaning. This detached, journalistic style builds its case fact by fact and detail by detail until the end, where García Márquez makes his presence felt and the meaning of the work rushes at you, fulling revealing the meaning, which is simultaneously terrifying and beautiful.

Some other Gabo touches: in dealing with incidental characters, he takes pains to reveal a few small but decisive incidents from their past which characterize their entire being. He especially loves depicting Caribbean culture; Bolívar was from the Venezuelan coast and maintained a certain rough quality despite his ability to adopt genteel European codes of conduct as needed. His outsider, Latin American character is also represented racially -- he is described as having some vaguely African features, despite his membership in the Venezuelan aristocracy. Other characters which capture the author's imagination are the eccentrics in the countryside; one doctor who provides unorthodox, counter-intuitive prescriptions, for example.

Though I don't necessarily think of García Márquez as an overtly political writer, he is aware of his position as a Latin American and a Colombian, and just as the village of Macondo represents the nation and the region, Bolívar in some way represents the spirit of Latin America as well. Seemingly doomed perpetually to a failed idealism, besieged by infighting, and unable to communicate his visions to those around him, the General is lost in the labyrinth of his own past, where the meaning of a life spent pursuing an elusive dream became the foundation myth for a continent. Being equal to the task of exploring a personage of such importance, García Márquez creates the General -- a fully realized creation which may capture some of the man, but Bolívar himself still remains obscured in the fog of history.

The Wire: Seasons 4&5

Social realism is a tricky genre to deal with because it makes a claim to reality while necessarily constructing a world and obeying the laws of drama. Compared to more moralizing works, The Wire achieves the aim that its genre aspires to, perhaps because its creator comes from a journalistic background.

I came late to The Wire and have watched only the final two seasons, but they were full enough appreciate on their own terms. The show uses Baltimore as a case study in how a dysfunctional system continues to operate -- or, rather, how an unhealthy system continues to function. Each season focuses on a particular aspect of the city, setting it against the backdrop of the overall fight against street crime and drug trade. Season 4 examines the school system and questions at what point troubled students can be saved from becoming "corner kids" -- the first position within a career in the drug trade. Season 5 centers on the Baltimore Sun, a manufactured serial killer case, and an illegal wiretap run by vigilante cops. Both were intertwined with plot threads about a reformist governor compromising his campaign promises once in office, a street thug's rise to power in defiance of the established drug kingpins, and the surveillance case against that particularly ruthless thug (among other myriad subplots).

I appreciated Season 4 more perhaps because it showed the world of children who must face the dangers of home, street, and school life with very little assurance that things will work out. More than with the adult characters, you pitied the kids because they didn't have many paths open to them -- they could only choose survival, and being good isn't always the best way to survive. Season 5 perhaps would have been more effective for me if it had used the newspaper as an opportunity to question why or how certain stories are covered and given more attention, which they did touch on, but they wanted to demonstrate a different point. With the level of intricacy and views of the city from every angle, the show made me consider the modern meaning of the polis -- whether we are all part of a community even if we do not interact with people outside of our sphere and what the meaning is behind a those divisions.

Every world that the show explores has its old guard and new guard. The new jacks are usually ambitious and must deal with the established rules of the game in some way. The street thug spills blood, the politician appeases the established city figures, the reporter fabricates his stories. Each world also carries its own language -- the politico's back room deals, the gangster's slang, the policeman's crime scene shorthand -- and the series never offers a decoder or interpreter, but makes you catch the gist of who has been betrayed, deceived, or saved in each scene. Each world also operates by numbers -- the drug dealer needs to gain more corners, the schools need to score on the standardized tests, and the police need to make crime go down (or cook the books to make it look like it did) in order to make the mayor's approval go up. One particularly poignant theme is the distance between poverty and a middle-class success. At more than one point, characters from the street find themselves in a situation that they had looked forward to -- out to a fancy dinner, meeting legit business contacts -- and find themselves uncomfortable, stripped of their confidence. They don't know how to play by those rules. Their families didn't train them, the schools didn't train them, and the corners taught them very different ways to succeed.

These cycles and parallels imply that nothing fundamentally changes in this society. Individuals will succeed or fail, but the city keeps on grinding. If the American Empire is indeed nearing its fall, I think this show will serve as a document of our deteriorating infrastructure.

Sonic's Rendezvous Band: Box Set

70's Michigan supergroup Sonic's Rendezvous Band released only one single, but this six disc set of bootlegs and basement recordings establishes them as one of the great shoulda-made-it-big bands. Featuring members from The MC5, The Stooges, The Rationals, and The Up, they are the unwritten chapter in Detroit/Ann Arbor Rock. Continuing to preach the Bible of balls-to-the-wall high-energy rock of the late 60's Southwest Michigan scene, they tried to rewrite their destiny by refusing to play anything from their previous bands and only do originals or covers. As this box set documents, they had some great songs that went unheard for three decades.

Most of the songs are at the same amp'ed up energy level, which can wear on you, but some subtleties keep things interesting. The band's personality veers between Scott Morgan's blueswailing delivery and Fred "Sonic" Smith's sloppy Jagger/junkie rock vocals. There's some rip-roaring guitar solos, and you can tell that they were an amazing live act. A few songs venture into the noise/freakout territory that The MC5 dabbled in, though they keep their feet firmly in rock territory. Their covers make this explicit -- a few obscure R&B oldies and a couple Stones songs. Smith edged Morgan out after a few years, left him behind for a stint as Iggy Pop's backing band (I wish there was a recording of that!), and eventually settled down with Patti Smith to raise a family and seemingly gave up the elusive dream; as loud as they played, the world never listened.

One of their songs contains the lyric "You're gonna succeed if you really try" -- it's unfortunate that this band petered out in a backwater of rock history but, thankfully, this box set serves as their testimonial. Unlike The MC5/Stooges, they're not cited as a proto-punk touchstone, but they could still have influence today if given more exposure. If so, they may succeed after all.

There Will Be Blood

I think the problem I had with this film is that it regarded itself as a Great Film. It takes its cue from most great American films in dealing with an ambitious, alienated man's rise to power and his ultimately hollow victory (offering handy parallels to the director's own task). It seems like these stories, out of their own import, eventually speak about the nature of America (its dark nature, its flip side, the cost of the Dream, etc.), and this one especially takes on that significance, as it is set at the closing of the West.

Daniel Day-Lewis' character is shaped by the West -- a rugged, antisocial man. His modern contemporary might be the ruthless CEO or stocktrader. I was left a little frustrated by his performance. He's undeniably compelling to watch, but I wrestled with whether or not he truly dug into the character or was perfectly mannered. However, considering how defensive the character was, perhaps it is fitting that I never felt that I got into his head.

One element that felt incongruous was the use of avant-garde classical music, mixed with original music by Radiohead's guitarist. Some people felt it worked, but to me there were times where it felt a little too tacked-on, more a conceptual move than artistically integrated.

One other sticking point was a time jump in the third act. To me, it felt a little like cheating. It's easy to compare to Citizen Kane: I feel like Welles captured the totality of his character's life in less time, but Anderson resorted to a time lapse in order to tie up his story.

There were definitely exciting moments/sequences (the oil burst) and interesting decisions (framing the action/dialogue in such a way that the audience picks up character developments that other characters in the scene miss), and definitely represents a step forward in Anderson's filmmaking. His apprenticeship with Altman obviously did him good. I just hope that his next film has a less palpable sense that he is competing with The Greats for a place in the pantheon.

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Orwell's account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. He details the particular absurdities of that particularly absurd war and explains the infighting between the various bickering political factions on the Republic's side (Russian-backed Communists, Trotskists, trade union militias, anarchists, Socialists, et al.) from a grunt's point of view. His direct, plain-speaking style cuts through the jumble of political rhetoric to reveal his personal disappointment in the failure of liberal Spain to unify and defeat the Fascists, not to mention the indifference abroad (he blames the international for failing to deliver the reality of the situation). One can see his concerns developing from his real-life experience -- the lack of humanity involved in the political parties/theories that govern people's lives and the role of the media in twisting perception play a role in both Animal Farm and 1984.

The homage is to a brief vision of an truly alternate system, a worker's society that functioned in Barcelona before Stalin's influence corrupted the effort. While Orwell is mystified by the foreign-ness and exoticism of Spain (alternately frustrated and enraptured), he never romanticizes it. His basic love is for the integrity of the human individual, lost amid economic and political systems.