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The House of the Spirits

I am so sorry that I didn't bring my laptop with me, because I ended up working late and know once I reach home my energy will give out, and there will be no editing. I have assigned myself instead a portion of The House of the Spirits, my third attempt on Isabel Allende.

I listened to Portrait in Sepia on audio. I liked it, but I think I would have been too fatigued by the prose to read it. Daughter of Fortune, of which Sepia was the sequel, I never could advance past page 10. I am taking on The House of the Spirits, and have reached page 20. Since it is part of my writer's assignment to myself, I'll read it on days like today, when I can't manage to work on writing.

Comments.

The South-American fantasists, Isabel Allende and Jorge Luis Borges.

So much narrative, so much back story, so much past-perfect tense. It's exhausting. What is the intent? I have often felt demeaned by the constraint of present convention, of describing the scene as it unfolds, movie-style. Allende is flaunting opposition to this openly, regressing perhaps to the style of the 18th-century gothic, where back-story, "telling," and long paragraphs make for an exhausting read. Now that I have read so many more of those, I think I am having an easier time with The House of the Spirits.

What is "telling?" Am I less engrossed in the story because so much of it is narrative? Unlike the 18th-century stories the narrative is punctuated by startling similes and details that capture my attention. I feel removed from the characters, not engrossed.

Fantastical beasts provide an apocalyptic sense. Clara's sister embroiders fantastical beasts into a tablecloth, while Clara has visions and owns a dog that grows to enormous size, with a very long tail. Borges wrote an encyclopedia of fantastical beasts. Characteristic of South American fantasists?

The only thing I have finished of Allende's is a short story called "The Goat-girl," about a girl who was part-goat and put to live in a yard. I edited a photo of myself with my goat into a smeary black and white and put in on MySpace some time ago, calling it "The Goat-girl," but no one really attended that.

In conclusion, I love the South American fantasists, want to read more of them, but their work is very hard to read. Borges' nonlinear fiction, The Garden of Forking Paths, I'm not sure I can take on. When I opened it it looked a lot like Finnegans Wake to me.

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