Blog: You used to update me like every other day!
Me: I know, Blog, I'm sorry I've been slacking.
Blog: Do you-- like-- (sniffles)-- not like me anymore?
Me: No, Blog, shut up, I love you, you know that! I just have to work on my screenplay, and my pilot, and my webisode series, and all these plays I have going up...
Blog: What do they have that I don't?
Me: Well, they have due dates.
So, I have been sickeningly busy, but to make my blog (and myself) feel better, am going to try to update this sucker twice a week.
Blog: All right, guilt-tripping!
Yes, Blog, it's a compromise, but hopefully one that can be, if not agreeable, then at least acceptable to all parties involved.
(All the writers getting ready to go off strike are like "Gee, that sounds familiar.")
But back to the subject of the post. So I have been getting a little bit of time in for reading this quarter--
Blog- Wait- what? You had time for reading but you didn't have a measly hour to update--.
Me: Shh, Blog, shhh. It's for you.
Blog: Oh. Right. Oh.
So anyway, I think most people can agree that a book serves one of two purposes, if not both. It...
a.) Educates you.
b.) Helps you escape and lets you experience things you either temporarily or permanently can't attain in your own life.
Let's focus on B for the time being. I really like my life. I love my family, boyfriend, friends, where I live, my school work, my writing work, my work work. Life is awesome. I have so much.
But this is what I don't really have. I don't have far-flung world travels. I don't have adventure oozing out through every pore in my body. I don't have that.
That's why I read "The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll," by Alvaro Mutis.
This book, you guys, this book. So good. More like a collection of novellas then a traditional beginning-middle-end novel, "Maqroll" is the story of the same-named sailor also called Gaviero, or "The Lookout", who travels around the world, constantly encountering misadventure and tragedy when he stays on land for too long. A sailor that is doomed to constantly wander the sea, a man that is incapable of forming roots. The novellas, if you will, jump back and forth in time, as we follow Maqroll through his misadventures that include tangles with brothels, drug cartel, military coups, murder and mayhem, the list goes on and on. Pretty much almost everything I'm not getting in my life right now. Mutis' "Maqroll" novellas have been compared to the works of Miguel Cervantes and Joseph Conrad, though Mutis insists his influences are more along the lines of Charles Dickens and Marcel Proust.
Is this literarily appetizing to you? Because it is to me.
Yes, the book can sometimes be a little bit dense, as are all books that are not Goosebumps, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, or written by Dan Brown. But it's worth the slight push sometimes, because once you get going in the world of Maqroll, the mix of vicariously living through Gaviero's adventures and schadenfreudenly being grateful for not living through is misadventures is unbeatable, people, for reals.
This is a picture of el Maestro Mutis. Ay, ay, ay!
A note on the origins of Mutis and "Maqroll." So, as John Updike puts it in his Times review of the book, "Bogota-born, Brussels-raised, Mexico City-dwelling poet and prose writer Alvaro Mutis" spent much of his youth on the sea, much like his main character Maqroll, going from port to port, reveling in the wonders of the world and reviling the respective horrors as he travelled along. Originally a poet, Mutis was writing about el Gaviero since he was 19 years old, only at the time, Maqroll was a character in his poems. It was only when Mutis was in his 60's that he began to write a poem about Maqroll that was so long he realized it was a novel. This "poem" became the first novel in "Adventures and Misadventures, "The Snow of the Admiral."
I note this because it's interesting, but also because I want to make a point. This character of Maqroll stayed with Mutis for over 40 years. This is the power of this character, and the stories that Gaviero inspires have a similar far-reaching magic and staying power. It's just good, smart reading people.
And the intellectual elite will love you for it. Seriously, the password is "Mutis." Say it and you're in.
Also, Mutis is known to be life-long best friends with Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. He got the GGM seal of approval! Seriously guys, what are you waiting for!
So if you need a little more adventure in your life, or if you're like me, and just need adventure period, then "The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll" is for you, fools!
Happy travels, everyone! And for the record, whether your life is as action-packed as Maqroll's, as non-action-packed as mine, or somewhere in between, know that I am always..
Affectionately Yours,
Kit
