This week’s reading, Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, was a long but entertaining read. The three parts and the switch between fact and fiction made it stand out from the previous novels we have read.
The fictional Cercas describes his growing fascination with the story in the first part when he learns about the night Sánchez Mazas is to be executed in the forest, and the Republican soldier who hunts for him amongst the trees finds in him yet turns away and lets him live. The second part tells the story of Mazas before his capture and intended execution. The third part is more fiction, where the journalist Cercas is determined to seek out the Republican solider who let Sánchez Mazas go free. These three parts and the switch between fact and fiction, although confusing, made me an attentive reader and helped me remain interested through this long read.
This book had a lot to do with history and took place during the Spanish Civil war. I don’t read many books about war or know much history about the context of this book, so all the content was new. Still, with the book switching between fact and fiction, it had me at parts confused or searching things up to put them in the proper context of the book. However, after reading books that are so different from what I normally read during this class, I have been made more open as a reader and it has also become a learning experience.
Getting closer to the end of this term, it’s hard not to create connections with the past readings. It was interesting to see Bolano make an appearance in the last section of the book, it definitely made reading his name more interesting after reading Amulet last week. Also, memory again was a huge theme in this novel and is a theme that has been brought to attention in most of the books we have read so far. From coming across this theme of memory quite a lot this term, it is interesting to compare and contrast how each author interprets memory in the novels. For W., we are told the memory of childhood can go on affecting life. For Amulet, we are shown the memories of how a single instance of trauma can affect memory and the future. Then in Soldiers of Salamis, we are seeing how memories can be formed by other people’s recollections.
My question for the class is: How do you think the authors in our previous readings interpret memory in comparison to Cercas?
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with Fact, fiction, history, memory, war
This week’s reading, Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, was a long but entertaining read. The three parts and the switch between fact and fiction made it stand out from the previous novels we have read.
The fictional Cercas describes his growing fascination with the story in the first part when he learns about the night Sánchez Mazas is to be executed in the forest, and the Republican soldier who hunts for him amongst the trees finds in him yet turns away and lets him live. The second part tells the story of Mazas before his capture and intended execution. The third part is more fiction, where the journalist Cercas is determined to seek out the Republican solider who let Sánchez Mazas go free. These three parts and the switch between fact and fiction, although confusing, made me an attentive reader and helped me remain interested through this long read.
This book had a lot to do with history and took place during the Spanish Civil war. I don’t read many books about war or know much history about the context of this book, so all the content was new. Still, with the book switching between fact and fiction, it had me at parts confused or searching things up to put them in the proper context of the book. However, after reading books that are so different from what I normally read during this class, I have been made more open as a reader and it has also become a learning experience.
Getting closer to the end of this term, it’s hard not to create connections with the past readings. It was interesting to see Bolano make an appearance in the last section of the book, it definitely made reading his name more interesting after reading Amulet last week. Also, memory again was a huge theme in this novel and is a theme that has been brought to attention in most of the books we have read so far. From coming across this theme of memory quite a lot this term, it is interesting to compare and contrast how each author interprets memory in the novels. For W., we are told the memory of childhood can go on affecting life. For Amulet, we are shown the memories of how a single instance of trauma can affect memory and the future. Then in Soldiers of Salamis, we are seeing how memories can be formed by other people’s recollections.
My question for the class is: How do you think the authors in our previous readings interpret memory in comparison to Cercas?
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with Fact, fiction, history, memory, war
It definitely would’ve been to my advantage to know more about history and especially Spanish history to follow this book better. When I’m reading about historical events and names my eyes tend to glaze over and I find myself finishing a page of the book without retaining anything that was written on it. That being […]
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with fiction, history, memory, narration, Spain, truth, war
I would say my engagement with this novel fluctuated. As the fictional Cercas states to Bolano (fun little cameo by the way), “It’s a story with real events and characters. A true tale” (192), though the lecture video renders it clear that this novel is definitely partly fictionalised. The parts I found the most engaging […]
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with history, memory, romance, war
The novel, “Soldiers of Salamis” by Javier Cercas is an interesting mix of war, memory, and imagination. I enjoyed the novel as a story, especially with its “happy ending” and open end. One of the main aspects of this novel would be its mix of reality and imagination. While it includes real people’s names and … Continue reading Week 11: Cercas’s “Soldiers of Salamis” →
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with fiction, history, Imagination, memory, reality, Romance Studies, story, war, Weekly Posts
Reading Javier Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis was filled with many different emotions. At first, reading about Cercas’ – the narrator – detachment from his literary career made me sad. However, upon quickly realizing that he had found a new impulse to write again, I felt excited for the narrator. This quote in page 55 resonated […]
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with Bricolage, Falangism, fictionality, history, literature, modernism, narrative, recollection, war, writing
Reading through Amulet definitely pulled me in many different directions than I expected! From the beginning it introduced fear and tension, then it quickly delved into a series of memories from Auxilio’s life and the different friends and people she encountered as she hid in the bathroom stalls of her university. It was different from […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with Conflict, history, memories, war
The amulet was a confusing mess of history but Bolano somehow made it a must-read. The suspense was killing me only to realize that the horrors were never really going to appear because the narrator constantly dodged those bullets and got to see the better sides of the stories she shared. The first part of […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with #firstperson, history, illusion, politics
For this week, we were given the task of reading Amulet by Robert Bolaño. I found this to be one of the best books we’ve read in this course so far. This book, like many of the other ones, have the consistent theme of memory, and I think repetition. The story is one long monologue, […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with Chile, history, history of the future, literature, memory, Mexico, narrative, poet, Poetry, poverty, recollection, sad, sadness, trauma, Weekly Book Blog
Out of all of the works that I’ve read so far during this term, I believe that Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet may be my favourite. Despite the novel’s “ordinariness” (as described in the lecture), I really felt that there was something magical about it – not exotic or romanticized, or even anything like the “magic realism” […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with history, memory, violence
