Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

This book for quite some time escaped my attention, but finally I got hold
of English original.

I feel Raymond Carver coming here, in the Capote's style. Telling a story seems so
easy in his execution. I also feel Boris Vian here, probably because of the
lightness of being of a main character.

It is a woman, a young girl in most of the story, escaping definition. Being
orphaned early and married at 14 (not in India, but outback USA, we are
speaking period just before the WWII), and later sweeping the world with
unbearable, youth irresponsibility, it is a perfect character. Not a beauty,
but an attractive personality, she is the one who could capture imagination.
And so she does, for some people who met her, and follow her story as much
as it is possible to follow.

I will not be re-telling the story here, it is a short one and charming to
read. I will rather ask myself why it is that such a character would halt our
mind in admiration? Is it because it is a personification of youth? Freedom
itself wandering the world?

Is it? She did not, obviously, have an easy life. But she kept the
lightness... so, is it the vitality, which captivates us? Eternal longing
for child in us, re-discovering good in the world every day, and ignoring
the bad?

I will leave it to you to decide, book is a good read.

I will only add here that Capote's short stories, of which there was an
example in four stories added to the thin volume I had, also seem to be
worth attention. It was a pleasure to read them, little jewels.

Coetzee's Barbarians

Reading J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" one can not escape the
reverend precursors: Cavafy and Buzatti.

The first wrote a poem which imprinted the Barbarians for ever in the stone
of our culture. The second played magnificently with the waiting itself,
Barbarians lost the importance.

Coetzee bravely put his foot in the door, already closing, to down on us his notion
of the Barbarians. No, it is not the tribes who are to smithen us into the
dust of our cities. No, it is not the wind hurling through crumbling
pyramids, after the last of the defenders falls. Not the flames of
Alexandria Library. It is not even ourselves, barbarized and inflicting the
doom of the Empire onto ourselves.

Barbarian is the Time, Barbarian is the ossification of Evil in us,
Barbarian is the knowledge and skill, when abused. Barbarian is the
gluttony, the hedonistic, Ego of ours, fed by the blind ...stupidity. And
cruelty, born of the degeneration, brought by the luxuries of the Empire.

Through a Magistrate of the Empire outpost, a benign, slow administrator,
Coetzee shows the hopeless nature of Good when it meets the Evil. It is
overriden, raped, exorcised to the level of being laughable.

A Magistrate is not without his guilt, but he was, as all benign creatures,
just doing his job, more or less successful. He becomes problematic at the
times of trouble, when the sickly torturers of the Empire come to effect.

Coetzee's Magistrate fells prey to his humanity: he is imprisoned and
ridiculed to the death of his old himself.

There is nothing surprising in the fall of the Magistrate. Those who are
high, fall low. What is more surprising is Coetzee's creation of the
another tenure for the fallen administrator.

Was it because of his humanity, being closer to nature than stiff
brutality with which the Third Bureau treated the opponents, creating them
in the course of "investigation", rather than trying to understand them?
Brutal force never tries to understand, it seeks to break, destroy. Humanity might
fail, but if given chance, it creates hope, it does not destroy it.

What about the case when there is no chance, when humanity plainly does not
help? It is wrong to think this way: it might not help against outside enemy,
but it is in fact the last resort of a falling Empire, it establishes its
moral right.

Even if it would remain only the empty letter in a chronicle,
it is worth maintaining it. Probably it goes back to Kant's "moral law in
us", which, however ancient it might seem, still prevails. Until we get
eaten for breakfast by some senseless heptapedic cosmic travellers.

Coetzee created a valuable addition to the notion of Barbarians. It is a dense read,
and I am yet to see how it withstands the battering by time, but I am, indeed, impressed by his writing skills. A master.