Books

I’ve been having a wonderful time with books here in Puerto Vallarta, not just reading them but also trading in them. I brought quite a few with me which, when once finished, I took to A Page in the Sun, a cafe and used book store a couple of blocks from our place. The owner, Gaby, takes my books and gives me credit for half the amount that she will then sell them for. When I began to go to the public library, however, I realized that this terrific resource receives no public funding. I decided forthwith to donate my books to their shelves. Close to the exit the library has several rows of books that they leave for anyone to take. A requested donation is 10 pesos for one book or 20 pesos for three. These books clearly are not suitable for their shelves because of wear or subject matter. A few are books that I myself would like to read, or, they are books that Gaby, at the cafe would buy.

Also, nearby our condo there is a print shop which has a display of used English books just inside the door. Any customers who wish may exchange books on a one for one basis. I have brought books there, looking for authors and subjects for my own perusal. Over the past couple of weeks though I have been especially searching out books that are both of literary value and in good condition, books that the library will consider keeping for their readers. At the library this morning I returned two books that I had borrowed and renewed for a further two weeks their atlas that I’ve had around for over a month (always scrutinizing our planet for great places to visit). In the for sale section I picked up three books that I would not have an inclination to read now but which I was pretty sure Gaby would take. My 20 peso (a little under $2 Canadian) investment yielded a 120 peso profit this evening. I added my new credit slip to a couple of others that I had been hoarding and did some shopping for the library shelves. I was able to purchase five books, all in suitably good condition. Two are by Canadian authors: Carol Shields’ Larry’s Party, and, Michael Crummy’s Galore. I’ll read the latter before we leave. Larry McMurtry’s Loop Group represents American authors. The library has quite a few of his books, several of which I have enjoyed while here. For a classically written English book I chose a hard cover edition of Anita Brookner’s The Rules of Engagement. My last selection was by an Austrian writer, Elfriede Jelinek, entitled The Piano Teacher. Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004. I will read her book before I donate it also.

In the past few days I have enjoyed two small books (both about 200 pages in length). Both are set in a British colonial context though half a world and half a century apart. The first was The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally, an Australian writer whose book about Nazi industrialist Oscar Schindler’s efforts to protect his Jewish slave workers prompted the making of the film Schindler’s List. This tale is also written as a novel but is based on an historical event which took place in Australia about the time of the outbreak of the Boer War. Jimmie Blacksmith is a half-breed, born to an aboriginal woman, a product of casual sexual activity with a white man. Influenced by a white minister and his wife, Jimmy tries to “better” himself within a society which expects little from the black man, resenting and even punishing initiative where it does occur. Keneally captures the power of the ancient aboriginal culture so alive within his full-blooded uncle and brother, as well as the ways of being and thinking of the European settler society which has usurped both land and power. Jimmie Blacksmith dwells in both spaces yet in some ways in neither, torn as he is within by these separate paradigms, unable to find any ground of reconciliation. The violence that ensues and its aftermath lay bare the destruction and the human pathos inherent in colonial settings.

The second book, The Mystic Masseur by VS Naipaul, set in the Indian community of Trinidad in the mid-20^th century, is another brilliantly conceived and written reflection of colonial society, but one hitting an entirely different note. Written in 1956-7 by Naipaul, newly graduated from Oxford University and embarking on his long and fruitful literary career, it is a wryly affectionate, often laugh-out-loud narrative that captures the language, customs, and interactions within his own community of birth. An example: “My mother distrusted doctors and never took me to one. I am not blaming her for this because in those days people went by preference to the unqualified masseur or the quack dentist. ‘I know the sort of doctors it have in Trinidad,’ my mother used to say. ‘They think nothing of killing two three people before breakfast.’ This wasn’t as bad as it sounds: in Trinidad the midday meal is called breakfast.”

Naipaul never returned to live in Trinidad, probably a wise precaution as not all of his community would have appreciated the rich vein of humour that he mines with nuance and love, but sparing no example of illogic and folly. I have read quite a few of Naipaul’s books and believe that there are few who can equal his consistently beautiful prose and intelligent penetration into whatever topic he turns his mind toward.

Clearly I’m having a good time messing about with books in Vallarta. I wish that I could bring some of the ones I will have to unload in our soon to occur move, but alas, transportation of such heavy cargo is more expense than it is worth. In reading, I follow the principle of: find the really excellent authors; in trade: buy low and sell high. It all seems to work.