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Author:
• Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Javier Cercas was born in Ibahemando in Caceras in Spain in 1962. In 1980 he was a teacher for two years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA. Since 1989 he has been a lecturer in Spanish literature at the University of Gerona in Spain where he lives.

He is a constant contributor to the Catalan edition of El Pais newspaper and the Sunday supplement. Javier Cercas is a novelist and essayist. He received several literary prizes for his book about the Spanish civil war, Soldiers of Salamis, published in 2001. It was translated into fifteen languages, sold about half a million copies and was made into a film. He also wrote:
The Motive in 1987
The Tenant in 1989
The Belly of the Whale in 1997
True Tales in 2000
The Speed of Light in 2006

The Speed of Light (La Velocidad de la Luz) is a short book covering a period of sixteen years, in which the author deals with many themes: Guilt, the impossibility of redemption, the difficulty of forgetting the too painful past, the true significance of success and failure and how success can be a source of corruption, the suppressed evil in human nature, psychological trauma due to the Vietnam war and also the valuable legacy of a writer. “I write novels about the adventure of writing novels” Cercas said.

The novel begins with the quiet and uneventful life of the nameless narrator in Barcelona, then his life in Urbana in the USA where he becomes a teacher of Spanish for two years. The climax is reached towards the middle of the book, with the discovery of Rodney Falk’s involvement in the Vietnam war, which will shed a light on Rodney’s solitude and peculiar behaviour. The story comes full circle at the end of the novel, when the narrator concludes that fame like war, can destroy a person’s life. That is the main strong tie that linked Rodney to the narrator, and what made the narrator obsessed with Rodney’s mysterious past, in particular about what happened in My Khe by the elite fighting unit called Tiger Force, of which Rodney was a part.

The book is not about the Vietnam war only. The Vietnamese war was used to illustrate the author’s message, about how a healthy-minded and ambitious young person (like the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness, which takes place in the Belgian Congo and the same Kurtz in the Francis Ford Coppola film about the Vietnam war, Apocalypse Now), can turn into a monster due to harsh circumstances. Like success and fame can also be strongly damaging to a man.

It’s “the reality of evil, the impossibility of redemption” and the catastrophe of fame. Cercas suggests in his novel that one can be successful without falling into narcissism. The narrator analyses himself as well as his friend Rodney throughout the novel and enjoys his lengthy literary and witty conversation with him.

Although the novel never reveals the narrator’s name, the narrator in The Speed of Light is none other than the author himself. Like the narrator, Cercas has also taught Spanish in Urbana for two years and while he was living there he met a Vietnam war veteran who was sitting on a bench, watching some children play ball. Cercas then asked himself: “What does that man’s look hide? What is he doing there?” That image, which refers to Rodney Falk’s character, was the starting point of the novel. Cercas, like the narrator, had also a very big success with his book about the Spanish civil war called Soldiers of Salamis. Too many similarities.

Like the French novelist, Marcel Proust, Javier Cercas, in The Speed of Light, has a heavy style of writing long sentences, some of which can extend to almost a page.

Cercas said in one of his interviews: “Most writers, or at least myself, don’t have motivations before writing a book. I decide to write a novel to solve a question that I have asked myself, and as I write the novel, I begin raising moral, political, and other types of issues… Novelists aim at persuading their audience that what they are reading is true… I invite my readers to join me in the process of writing the novel. So on one hand I tell them, “this is a novel”, and on the other, “this is completely true; this has happened to me and it could happen to you”. It’s all about shaking the reader’s conscience”.

Cercas, when asked why he likes to write books about wars, answered: “There is a story my mother has told me hundreds of times that’s always fascinated me. The beginnings of my interest in the war may well stem from this. It’s the story of the family hero, her handsome sixteen-year-old uncle”. He went to war, died as a hero, and was never forgotten by his niece.

The narrator mentioned twice in the book about traveling at the speed of light in order to uncover the future, once towards the middle in page 106, and the second time towards the end in page 253. He said: “I had the impression that everything had accelerated, that everything had started to run faster than usual, faster and faster, faster, faster, and at some moment there had been a blaze, a maelstrom and a loss, I thought I’d unknowingly traveled faster than the speed of light and what I was now seeing was the future”.

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Author:
• Sunday, February 03rd, 2008

Paul Scott was born in the north London suburb of Southgate in 1920, from a Yorkshire commercial artist father and a South London mother Frances Mark, a former shop clerk. He was the younger of two sons.

Paul Scott was educated in Winchmore Hill Collegiate, a private school where his education was abruptly ended at the age of 16 due to his father’s business being in financial difficulty. He decided to make a career in accountancy.

Paul Scott was conscripted to the army in 1940, and in 1941 was married in Torquay to Nancy Edith Avery called Penny. He was sent to India in 1943 as an officer cadet and ended the war as captain in the Indian Army Service Corps.

After completing his duty in India, he went back to live in London with his family. His two daughters, Carol and Sally were born in 1947 and 1948.

In 1950 Paul Scott became a director while working for the literary agent Pearn Pollinger and Higham and from 1960 onwards he dedicated himself full time to writing. His books were not recognised until quite late and he died in 1978 in hospital in London from colon cancer.

Paul Scott wrote several novels:
Johnnie Sahib in 1952.
The Alien Sky in 1953.
A Male Child in 1956.
Mark of The Warrior in 1958.
Chinese Love Pavilion in 1960.
Birds of Paradise in 1962.
The Bender in 1963.
The Corrida at San Feliu in 1964.
The Raj Quartet:
1. The Jewel in the Crown in 1966.
2. The Day of the Scorpion in 1968.
3. The Towers of Silence in 1971.
4. A Division of the Spoils in 1974.

The Raj Quartet was made into a television series under the name of “The Jewel In The Crown”.

Staying On in 1977 won the Booker Prize award and was made into a film in 1979 by Granada television. He also wrote reviews for The Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman, and Country Life.

In 1976 and 1977 he was “visiting professor” at University of Tulsa in Oklahoma U.S.A.

Staying On is a sequel to The Raj Quartet set in the Anglo-Indian frame several years after India gained its independence in 1947.

The two main characters are Tusker and Lucy Smalley, a retired ageing British couple, mentioned briefly in The Raj Quartet novels. Married for forty years and living an uncommunicative marriage, they decide to Stay On in a small bungalow in the hills of Pankot, a small town in India. Despite being deprived of their colonial status and despite the changing times in India and the seediness of the place, they opt to stay rather than return home to England due to financial need. “I knew the pension would go further in India than in England” Tusker says to his wife.

The novel is set in 1972. It narrates the present and the past with funny, sometimes sad and sometimes touching style, the poignant silent loyalty and the resentful trust and reliance between the ageing couple (Tusker and Lucy).

The story starts with Tusker’s death. All the events in the book are a flashback till the end when the author brings back Tusker’s death in order to re-knot the beginning with the end.

Throughout the book Tusker is painted as a selfish, inconsiderate, grumpy character, but by the end and before his death, he reveals his soft, hidden, endearing side, which makes his departing deeply moving.

Nothing much appears to happen in the book, but the story is still engrossing due to the vivid description of the characters and the bittersweet subject.

Tusker and Lucy have seen better days during the time of the Raj, but those days are over and now they have to lead a modest life, “hang on”, swallow their pride, and endure the grotesque Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s bad temper. “ ‘Oh, Mrs Bhoolabhoy, Lucy began, we’re expecting a guest on Wednesday. I wonder if you’d kindly book a room-‘ ‘I have already told Colonel Smalley I can’t be bothered with that… I have other things to deal with. All I want to know is about the shears.’ ‘Shears?’ ‘Shears. Shears. Shears!’ Mrs Bhoolabhoy raised her arms and made motions. Snick-snick. Shears!’ she shouted… I will not have my property taken off the premises…She waddled away, leaving behind her a trail of sandalwood perfume which,to Lucy, was like the pungent smell of her own smouldering outraged dignity.”

Ibrahim, the Smalley’s manservant is etched in a funny light hearted way. His conversation with the mali gardener, Joseph, is hilarious : “’Ibrahim,’ Joseph said,’what happens if you are pushed by both Sahib and Memsahib ? ‘Given push, not pushed. Get idiom right.’ ‘what happens if you are given push by Sahib and Memsahib at one and the same time?’ Ibrahim looked at him thoughtfully. He said.’Suddenly you are a philosopher as well as a gardener? You are entering realm of metaphysics ? Joseph Einstein is it ? Versed in the theory of time and relativity? Haven’t I just made it plain that Sahib and Memsahib are always at logger-heads and that sometimes they do not even know what time of day it is, even in Pankot ?”

Paul Scott chose India as a rich and colourful frame work for his books, because since the time he was posted there, he fell in love with the country and wanted to convey his enthusiasm to English people, in particular for those who heard about this vast country but never visited it nor interested themselves in discovering its varied cultures.

In 1972 referring to his whole career to date, Paul Scott told his audience during his British council tour of India : “My proper answer to the question,’why do you, as a modern English novelist of serious pretensions, bother to write about the time-expired subject of the British Raj?’ is, must be, if my novels are novels at all, because the last days of the British Raj are the metaphor I have presently chosen to illustrate my view of life.”