review of
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's The Man of My Life
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 9, 2016

Yeah, my review is too long for here. If you read this version you won't read the last 1/3rd of it. SO, go here for the full thing: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/412412-the-wo-men-of-my-life

I'm 'always' picking on Andre Breton's L'Amour Fou (Mad Love) as a weak example of descriptions of passion but it's been so long since I've read it that I'm really not so sure. The Man of My Life, on the other hand, is about as exemplary a description of passion as I've ever read.. & much more. This is the 3rd bk I've read by Montalbán & my respect for him only grows & grows.

I've been preoccupied for much of my adult life w/ the way standardized call-&-response rituals degrade true emotions by making them requirements rather than true expressions: "'Doesn't she look beautiful?' trumpeted Biscuter, who as usual was crying from his eyes and the tip of his nose. Both of them were staring at Carvalho, offering him or demanding from him an emotional response he did not feel." (p 1) Exactly. Right off the other hand bat Montalbán addresses a subject that I rarely see anyone else tackle.

Ever aware of politics Montalbán sprinkles The Man of My Life w/ Catalan, the language of Northern Spain that was outlawed during the Franco era b/c it was the preferred language of the defeated Republic, & other telling details:

"'Vale, tio, però no et passis de rosca ni de llest o a la primera bajanada, s'ha acabat el bròquil.'*

"*OK, but don't try to get around me or to play games, because if there's any funny business, that's it.

"It was obvious that, for Margalida, absolute truths could be spoken only in Catalan." - pp 85-86

"'I'm Catalan, and I work for the independence of Catalonia. That means that for now I work here; tomorrow it could be somewhere else. It's in my blood. My grandfather on my father's side was killed by Franco's army; my grandmother had to go into exile with a sick husband and four kids. When she came back, the Fascists in her village accused her of being a separatist, and made her life impossible. Castor oil. They killed her dogs. That was a village in what they call the "heartland of Catalonia", where four Fascists, with the help of the Civil Guard, could keep everyone under control. The Catalan language was banned, and you were in trouble if in your Spanish exams at the Balaguer Institute they detected any hints of a Catalan accent. That was my father's experience. Do you get it, Carvalho? Franco was everywhere, but in Catalonia we had a double dose of him: he was against the Reds and against us as Catalans.[']" - p 86

"It was the period when the Catalan language was undergoing a timid revival, and the Franco authorities allowed the play to be put on in church halls. Despite the restrictions, the actors usually managed to insert a few subversive jokes." - p 41

"'We're off to a good start, Carvalho. But anem per feina,* [*Let's get down to business.] and let's not waste time. How is your work as a private detective going?'

"'We're going through a bad patch. Globalization has hit us hard. The multinationals control all the private security business, and one-off detectives like me are seen as anthropological curiosities.[']" - p 11

Of course, multinationals wd want to control all the private security business - that enables a consolidation of control akin to sending Haliburton into Iraq - but how many readers wd think about that?

Montalbán's politics are always very well-informed & detailed. He puzzles out interwoven complexities w/ remarkable facility. As the expression goes, the man does his homework:

"'One pressure group has created it as a deterrent against another. Apparently futuristic deals are on the cards, and the amounts at stake border on the infinite. Precision geo-economic engineering is at work. It all started when the son of one of the most powerful industrialists set up a sect so he could screw as many girls as he wanted, then Papa cut off his money because he didn't like the idea of him being the anti-pope and into sex. The father was Opus Dei, non-hairshirt faction. Pérez i Ruidoms no less. All of a sudden the boy found himself showered with money, said to be from followers and sympathizers, but in fact from the Mata i Delapeu group. You know who they are, they're everywhere, and up to no good at all, if we apply the ten commandments of constructive capitalism to them. They're asset-strippers who've become multimillionaires. They buy failing companies after they have got rid of staff, then rationalise them or sell off what's left: the land, the factories. Nice, clean business fun, don't you think? So the idea makes sense for them. But it turns out that Albert Pérez i Ruidoms, alias Satan, attracts your murder victim, Alexandre Mata i Delapeu, to the sect and to bed. The death of a Lucifer's Witness, apparently in a ritual killing, puts the spotlight on the sect, and the identity of its leader means his father is involved too, and everything he represents. Soon, you mark my words, false accounts will appear — elections for the autonomous parliament are coming up this autumn, and there's a serious chance the nationalists may lose to the left, so any scandal would damage people high up in the autonomous government.'" - pp 19-20

Albert Pérez i Ruidoms explains his version of Satanism: "'Modern-day satanism sees Satan as representing indulgence against abstinence, existence against spiritual distortions, knowledge against hypocritical self-delusion, kindness towards the weak and arrogance towards the powerful, rightful revenge rather than any namby-pamby turning of the other cheek, a sense of responsibility for those who stand up to psychic vampirism. It represents the truth of man as animal" (p 178)

Carvalho, the detective, goes to meet the mother of the murder victim, his client. Montalbán then uses this as an opportunity to build a character profile based on what they're reading: "There were lots of books on her living-room table: The Structure of Reality by David Deutsch, Political Order in Changing Societies by Samuel P. Huntington, The Information Age by Manuel Castells, a copy of Realitat magazine from the Communist Party of Catalonia, publications and pamhlets from Sal Terrae, and In the Same Boat by someone called Sloterdijk." (p 29) Clearly the client is a leftist intellectual.

A recurring theme in the Carvalho novels is Carvalho's culinary expertise: "He did not want to make things difficult for himself by sewing up the thighs round his stuffing, which he completed with a bit of bacon, some more chicken and ham, a sprinkling of breadcrumbs, egg and a truffle, so he stuffed the thighs, added salt and pepper, used a finger to anoint them with oil, then wrapped them in foil to cook them en papillote. At the same time, he cooked onions, added some white wine, chopped boiled eggs, garlic, parsley and the walnuts, and adjusted the sauce with a splash of the cognac the truffles had been preserved in." (pp 32-33)

Carvalho starts receiving some truly extraordinarily passionate faxes from a source unknown. Enter L'Amour Fou!: "You won't think of me as a cook, far from it, but thanks to you I am one now. You've been the man of my life in so many ways!" (p 38) The title of the bk, if not exactly 'explained', is put into a context.

Initially, Carvalho refers to the fax sender as the "Fax Cow", perhaps as a take-off of the expression "Cash Cow": ie: something from wch a plentitude flows. "You're always with me in all my life and all my dreams; my family knows it" (p 39) Eventually his awareness of how profound this expression of love is 'gets the better of him' & he's more respectful of it.

Another regular character in the Carvalho stories is Biscuter, Carvalho's employee:

"'I understand, boss. I wanted to tell you that when I finish the course I'm taking on "Globalisation and Underdevelopment" I'm going to sign up for another one on the Cathars.'

"'On what?'

"'It's a great and ancient religion that defends the poor against the rich and rejects all hierarchies. Besides, the Cathars bathed more often than other Christians, which meant they were cleaner, and you know what a fanatic I am for cleanliness. And they also hated killing animals; whenever they found one in a trap, they would open it, let the animal out, and pay the hunter compensation. What do you make of that?'

"'A religion is still a religion. Tu quoque, Biscuter!'

"'But according to what I've heard, this one hated evil even more than the others. It was like a religious anarchism avant la lettre.[']" - p54

"Tu quoque (/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/; Latin for, "you also," or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of the opponent's logical argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s)." - online definition

"avant la lettre": before the word was coined - in other words, Cathars were anarchists before the word "anarchism" was coined. This, however, is false b/c any form of Christinanity has a hierarchy at the top of wch is 'God' - thusly disqualifying it as an an-archy, as something w/o a hierarchy or 'rule by'.

"Biscuter had gone on from Cathars to another of his evening classes, possibly English, another lecture on globalisation, or voluntary work for the Zapatistas in Chiapas." - p 131

Carvalho is a passionate man in a way I can totally identify w/:

"'I can't see you and I going to bed together.'

"'Why?'

"'Because you look too healthy to me, like one of those girls who before you've even unzipped your flies have slapped a condom on you. And I demand unprotected sex.'

"That had given her pause for thought.

"'You do it without a condom? What about Aids?'

"'If love is Russian roulette, why shouldn't sex be too? If I have to wear a condom, it feel so distant I can't even get a hard-on.[']" - pp 57-58

Given that sexual excitement, for me at least, is my biological response to the possibility of impregnating I've never understood how guys can enjoy fucking w/ a condom on since the body won't be in the least bit fooled by it, the body knows there's no impregnation forthcoming & loses interest. Why get excited? It's more frustrating than doing push-ups in a strait-jacket.

Montalbán's novels, being as rich w/ reference as they are, 'inevitably' stimulate research for me:

"'I have realized that everybody belongs to one sect or another. And that there are two sorts of sects: the destructive ones, like the satanists, and the constructive ones, like you, the Catholic Church or Opus Dei.'

[..]

"'To be brief. This is not exactly a sect, more a club of friends and followers of Friedrich Hayek. His name will mean nothing to you, but he was one of the outstanding figures of the twentieth century, one of its most lucid ideologists and strategists. In 1997 he got together a number of intellectuals and politicians in Mont Pelerin in Switzerland to draw up the guidelines for the rebuilding of capitalist pride in the face of the onslaught from communism and Keynesianism against the freedom of initiative, man's most precious freedom.[']" - p 65

Let's start w/ the opening statement above by Carvalho in wch Opus Dei is mentioned.

"Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei (Latin: Praelatura Sanctae Crucis et Operis Dei), is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity."

[..]

"Criticism of Opus Dei has centered on allegations of secretiveness, controversial recruiting methods, strict rules governing members, elitism and misogyny, and support of or participation in authoritarian or right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978. The mortification of the flesh practiced by some of its members is also criticized." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_Dei

Since it seems to me that Carvalho is being ironic & since Montalbán's politics are leftist I suspect that Opus Dei is being referenced here for its "support of or participation in authoritarian or right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978".

Hayek was, indeed, an economist about much can be read online: "If any twentieth-century economist was a Renaissance man, it was Friedrich Hayek. He made fundamental contributions in political theory, psychology, and economics. In a field in which the relevance of ideas often is eclipsed by expansions on an initial theory, many of his contributions are so remarkable that people still read them more than fifty years after they were written. Many graduate economics students today, for example, study his articles from the 1930s and 1940s on economics and knowledge, deriving insights that some of their elders in the economics profession still do not totally understand. It would not be surprising if a substantial minority of economists still read and learn from his articles in the year 2050. In his book Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin called Hayek the “preeminent” economist of the last half of the twentieth century." ( http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Hayek.html ) Since he died in 1992, 5 yrs before The Man of My Life has him get "together a number of intellectuals and politicians in Mont Pelerin in Switzerland to draw up the guidelines for the rebuilding of capitalist pride" that part is fictional.

Montalbán has hitmen come from Sarajevo, a city that was under siege for almost 4 yrs from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996 (1,425 days) during the Bosnian War. Since The Man of My Life was written around 4 yrs after this event, I think it's reasonable to deduce that Montalbán's hitmen are a hypothetical byproduct of the brutal destablization of Sarajevo by war.

"Dalmatius, leader of the Sarajevo shock troops, Mohamed Stepanovitch, and Silvia Rossler, both also from Sarajevo. Dalmatius had been hired to kill a particular individual, and had passed the job on to the other two, without knowing who their target was." - p 68

"Carvalho tried to explain to one of the post-Yugoslavs that there should be just enough vermouth to wet the ice for it to perfume the gin and change its aroma. None of them were listening: perhaps they were nostalgic for the Balkans, regretting how little chance they had any more to enjoy killing each other while the great powers looked on and commiserated." - p 187 ( )

Torna en Pepe carvalho involucrat en un assessinat amb un rerafons polític ( )

Celui là est très verbeux, pour les inconditionnels uniquement. ( )

This is without doubt both the most depressing and the most philosophical Pepe Carvalho mystery I've read. The novel opens with Pepe back in Barcelona (from his trip to Argentina) and the reappearance of Charo, who had vanished for seven years to Andorra as the kept woman of one of her former clients (he has paid for her to open a cosmetics store in Barcelona); she calls Pepe "the man of my life." But she is not the only one who will do so. Pepe has just acquired a fax machine, thanks to his office assistant Biscuter, and he receives endless and mysterious faxes from a woman who seemingly knows about all his cases; who she is, and the role she played in his life (and will play), is revealed about half way through the book. Pepe is supposedly investigating the murder of a young man who was involved in one of many cults, a satanic one in fact, and this investigation takes Pepe into the world of religion and cults and, lo and behold, many are politically connected and involved in, or against, the idea of statehood for Catalonia and other "stateless nations." Not much happens for stretches in the book as Pepe explores idea after idea, but the book was enjoyable and ultimately shocking.

Novela de crimen y misterio con el detectiva Carvalho, creado por el auto, y que figuera en otros títulos de V+´zquez Montalbán.. ( )