It took me a little bit to adjust to the switches in dialogue and to get into the story within the story but I quite liked it, in the end. Maria Sara is an interesting character; her interactions with the proofreader are surprising and lovely.

Mots appris: hourie, noria, amaurose, tégument, objurgation, anobie, sourate.

Mot rencontré mais ayant résisté à toute tentative de définition: hilotrupe.

"(...) Um homem que me agradou logo que o vi, um homem que fizera deliberadamente um erro onde estava obrigado a emendá-los, um homem que percebera que a distinção entre não e sim é o resultado de uma operação mental que só tem em vista a sobrevivência, É uma boa razão, É uma razão egoísta, E socialmente útil, Sem dúvida, embora tudo dependa de quem forem os donos do sim e do não, Orientamo-nos por normas geradas segundo consensos e domínios, mete-se pelos olhos dentro que variando o domínio varia o consenso, Não deixas saída, Porque não há saída, vivemos num quarto fechado e pintamos o mundo e o universo nas paredes dele, Lembra-te de que já foram homens à lua, O seu quartinho fechado foi com eles, És pessimista, Não chego a tanto, limito-me a ser céptica da espécie radical, Um céptico não ama, Pelo contrário, o amor é provavelmente a última coisa em que o céptico ainda pode acreditar, Pode, Digamos antes que precisa."


Sempre que leio Saramago, de uma forma ou de outra, reconcilio-me com a literatura através daquele prazer genuíno e simples, fundacional, de quem escuta o sábio contador de histórias erguer um novo relato magnífico.

"The History of the Siege of Lisbon" ends abruptly. When I read the last words, I suspected for a moment that I had received a defective text, or perhaps one where a seditious proofreader had absconded with the ending so that I should have been deprived of the "afterwards."

But surely such a conniving character would not (could not?) make such a rash and bold decision. It is for the writer that power is reserved. They are the sacred keepers of the truth of the story, and their narrative is immutable, becoming doctrine upon dictation. But what if...

For the first 50 or so pages, I was deeply concerned that Saramago was another winner that represented some fetish of the Nobel prize selection group, that his disregard for textual convention was an affectation, and that this would be a slog. Hell, I had only bought the book because I loved the odd bookstore built in the cavity of an old newsprinting facility in Lisbon, and I could forgive myself for perhaps indulging in a romantic fantasy of "knowing the place."

But then "The Siege" surprised me with a lyrical treat, a discourse on the unfair treatment of dogs by the Abrahamic religions that ends with:

"Dog, says the Moor. You're the dog, retorts the Christian, and the next minute they are fighting with lance, sword, and dagger, while the hounds and mastiffs say to each other, We are the dogs, nor does it bother them in the least"

This subtle, light observation is tossed out amid our protagonist Raimondo Silva's post-petty crime rumination (he could be Raskolnikov, his soul incapable of containing his breach of copyeditors' conduct). It is funny and sad and wry and suggests that this Saramago fellow is playing with us, that he is either calculating and cleverly manipulative, or he is in control and simply doesn't give a **** what we think. Both realities are pleasing.

But now I was on to his game. He wasn't a passive narrator, he was a manipulator, and I wasn't going to just prance into another one of his devices while he sniggered in the background. What other traps had he lain? What was his game?

Saramago's game is play.

Let's change a single word and see how it changes the nature of a battle that defined a nation. Create a subversion in the shared story (lie?) that underlies the fabric of his little spot of civilization. Let's see if we can get away with a love story overlain with a castle siege - seriously, you are going to tell us of a threefold conquest, historical, metaphorical, and rhetorical, as the protagonist beds a woman 15 years younger?

But that is the fun. If feels like Saramago knows that there are no more stories to tell, so why contrive? Start with the simplest ideas, choice, fate, love, authority, reduce them like red wine in a Marsala, and then see what emerges. If the crusaders sail away, failing to aid our Portuguese King, is it the flapping of a butterfly that annihilates history, or will the Universe require a plot that sets the thread of history back on course? Saramago suggests simultaneously that fate is both immutable and subject to the force of will. Changing the crusaders' "no" to a "yes" may not change the fate of Lisbon, but for Raimondo Silva it spontaneously generates, ab ovo, a course of love with his editor that is both wildly improbable and inevitable.

Saramago's gift is to make these acts of play believable. Not in the sense that we feel what is happening is real - his reduction is too great to feel the sense of time passing, and time is what makes a reader's reality real. Saramago is not writing a narrative as much as assembling a cabinet of curiosities, filled not with little spiders and rocks but ideas and observations. And the whole assemblage seems real not because it is narratively clean and coherent, but because each element is cleansed of our stunning cultural laziness and laid bare for contemplation.

There are those "readers" who approach books with a ravenous appetite, for whom reading a book is like playing a record, an act of consumption. Readers who love escape, and writers who indulge them, deftly deploying tropes and idiom to deliver something that may intimate the exotic or weird or shocking, but are carved from familiar materials and fashioned with sturdy joints. Those readers are today blessed with a nearly unlimited buffet from which to indulge.

For such a reader "The History of the Siege of Lisbon" is going to be a thin, white fish with too many bones.

But for the rest of us, this is a real treat. A delightful mix of excellent writing, obvious erudition, historical memory, and real wit that sneaks up on you (in a good way) and leaves you with a sense of having been let in on the prank.

Beautifully written, intricately woven love story with the backdrop of history, despite the machismo, I enjoyed it.