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Wil Blades Trio
Formed in January of '14 to record Wil's next record, this trio features Jeff Parker of Tortoise on guitar and New Orleans drummer Simon Lott. Look for a release this summer!
Amendola Vs. Blades
Wil Blades and Scott Amendola conjure various sonic deities though only a duo. Their live shows have been generating a buzz around the Bay Area. The two got their start as a group when Scott had the vision of performing Duke Ellington's "Far East Suite" in duo with Wil. While quite a daunting task translating a suite (originally written for a big band) into duo, the Hammond Organ had previously been used in the 1940's and 1950's to emulate the sound of big bands. With Wil's knowledge of this tradition and Scott's desire to push boundaries, they were able to pull it off in an explorative, yet cohesive manner. The duo continues to perform the Ellington suite in their live performances, while also developing their original material. In performance, Amendola and Blades cover everything from Avant Garde to Funk, Bebop to Rock
Billy Martin and Wil Blades Duo
Billy Martin and Wil Blades wanna make you Shimmy. On their debut recording, the organ/drums duo waste no time getting right down to it. They go old school in the tradition of those essential organ-groove sides by the likes of Charles Earland, Brother Jack McDuff and Groove Holmes. Martin, drummer for the legendary Medeski, Martin & Wood, and Blades, a buzzed about young organist from San Francisco, first came together for a low-key, one-off late night set during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2011.The music that evening was so deep down in the pocket, the pair knew instantly there would be more shows together in their future. A West Coast tour was arranged for later in the year, which played to packed houses from Washington to California. In the middle of the run, Martin and Blades ducked into a Berkeley recording studio to capture what would become Shimmy. The electricity between the drummer and organist runs high voltage through tunes like "Brother Bru," "Toe Thumb" and "Les & Eddie." Speaking of Les and Eddie, Billy and Wil turn out a blazing rendition of Eddie Harris' "Means Greens," as well as reviving the traditional spiritual "Down By The Riverside."
O.G.D.
Featuring Wil Blades on Hammond B3 Organ, Joe Cohen on saxes, Steve Burke on guitar and Brandon Etlzer on drums. O.G.D. formed in the early 2000's when they were asked to open for one of their heroes, Soul-Jazz legend Melvin Sparks, at the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco. O.G.D. started as an organ trio honoring the music of the great Boogaloo and Soul-Jazz music of the 60's and 70's such as, Ivan "Boogaloo" Joe Jones, Grant Green, Lonnie Smith, Idris Muhammad, Cannonball Adderely and others. The band eventually expanded, adding Joe Cohen on sax and incorporating their own original music. The band has gained a reputation as one the funkiest bands in the Bay Area and performs regulary around local venues, as well as being featured at the SFJAZZ Festival.
(I Can't Stand)The Whole Lott of You - "Field Notes" 5:03
32nd Street - Wil Blades "Sketchy" 6:04
Pick Pocket - Billy Martin Wil Blades Duo "Shimmy" 3:51
Squeaky Chug Chug - Will Bernard Trio "Outdoor Living" 7:05
Reactions - Wil Blades - "Sketchy" Outtake 10:11
Hopeful - Wil Blades "Sketchy" 6:24
Oladipo - Amendola Vs. Blades - Live at Yoshi's 11:04
Pack of Lies - Eddie Roberts' West Coast Sounds "It's About Time" 4:46
Deep In a Fried Pickle - Billy Martin Wil Blades Duo - Live at Sullivan Hall NYC 9:37


Does this foreshadow an acquisition of Plurk by Second Life or just pandering to a large avatarian population. Or is there more as ArminasX writes? Time will tell.
I don't think it's anything sinister - we put in a request to plurk based on numerous discussion amongst resident plurkers.
*laughs* Hmmm... just because you're not paranoid soesn't mean they AREN'T out to get you!!
I don't think any scenerio I posed would be harmful or due to bad intent. My intended point was actally that there was likely no significance beyond a business decision.
I was just softly being a party pooper to the idea that Plurk making SL a country on their list sognified anything about how real avatars are outside of being a market segment.
grins. The original request was made so that Second Lifers could more easily find one another on plurk - there was no deeper significance re avatars being real... but I love that theory.
The real reason I came back to comment was just to say I'm sad to hear you are semi-retiring from blogging - I know I'm a terribly slack reader when it comes to blogs - I tend to follow links but I do really enjoy your posts when I see/read them.


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Showing results in Campbellfield VIC 3061 and nearby...
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Fawkner Leisure Centre Fawkner
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79-83 Jukes Rd.
(~12 mins from Campbellfield)
Why Fawkner Leisure Centre? The Fawkner Leisure Centre is situated in the heart of community living, forming a part of a vision to improve support, health, safety and wellbeing of the Fawkner community. Engaging in partnership with the community the range of services we provide include: - Fawkner Library - Fawkner Community Hall - Fawkner Neighbourhood House - Fawkner Senior Citizens Centre - Moreland Community Health Centre The Fawkner Leisure Centre has been servicing the Fawkner community for over 50 years and continues to upgrade its facilities and services to improve community health. The updated facility includes: - Fully-equipped...
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Why Thomastown Recreation and Aquatic Centre? The Thomastown Recreation and Aquatic Centre (TRAC) has been opened since September 2010 and is the premier aquatics and fitness facility in the northern suburbs. The beautiful provides modern facilities that are amongst the best in Australia staffed by a team of exercise, aquatics and customer service professionals committed to being at your service. Servicing Thomastown, Lalor, Epping, Mill Park, South Morang, Campbellfield, Bundoora, Reservoir and Fawkner, the Thomastown Recreation and Aquatic Centre includes: - a 450m/sq state of the art Thomastown gym - The Rolls Royce of fitness equipment with the Technogym Wellness System...
Leisure City Epping
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Why Leisure City? Welcome to Leisure City – Your community recreational facility. Located in the heart of Epping, the awesome sport, leisure and Epping gym facility has something for everyone. A visit to our centre is so much more than a visit to the gym. As a member you have access to - 24 hour Epping gym access - A state of the art Epping gym - Over 30 classes per week inc. Epping Yoga, Pilates, Zumba, Les Mills and more - A dedicated group fitness studio and cycle studio - Qualified Epping personal trainers - YMCA...
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Reservoir Leisure Centre Reservoir
2a Cuthbert Rd.
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Coburg Leisure Centre Coburg
Bridges Reserve Bell St
Why Coburg Leisure Centre? Located in the beautiful Bridge Reserve, the Coburg Leisure Centre has been improving the health, safety and well being of the city of Moreland community since 1993. Located within walking distance of the popular Coburg shopping precinct, the centre provides end-to-end fitness with superior service and facilities. A recent upgrade in 2008 has brought a state of the art gymnasium with high tech equipment to Coburg. Combined with our renowned Aquatic facilities, the centre also offers: - Popular group fitness classes including Yoga, Pilates and Les Mills - Indoor heated 25m Pool - Indoor heated...
Windy Hill Fitness Centre Essendon
74-84 Napier St.
Why Windy Hill Fitness Centre? The Windy Hill Fitness Centre is the home of the Essendon Football Club and has been servicing the Essendon community for over 12 years. Offering the latest in fitness technology, the recent redevelopment has equipped the centre with a huge aerobic studio, wellness studio, cycle studio and a private personal training studio. The centre also offers renowned services and facilities including: -Newly refurbished fully equipped Essendon health club & gym -Over 85 group fitness classes/week! -Wellness studio -25m indoor Essendon swimming pool -Toddlers pool -Hydrotherapy spa -Registered creche -COTA Over 50's Program -Birthday Parties -On-site...
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14 Dawson Street
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East Keilor Leisure Centre Keilor East
Corner Quinn Grove & Dennis Ave
Why East Keilor Leisure Centre? CURRENTLY CLOSED UNTIL 2020. A new state-of-the-art, fully accessible centre is due in late 2020. The existing centre will be closed until this time. The new centre will include: - 50 metre heated outdoor pool - 25 metre indoor lap pool - learn to swim pool - dedicated hydrotherapy pool - spa and steam - indoor water playground for young children - café and seating area - new gym, group fitness and spin studios - crèche - accessible and family change rooms So, if you're in the Keilor area and you need assistance with anything...
Ascot Vale Leisure Centre Ascot Vale
Corner Langs & Epsom Rds
Why Ascot Vale Leisure Centre? The Ascot Vale Leisure Centre is owned by the City of Moonee Valley and is managed by Belgravia Leisure. Since 1977, the centre has provided a community focus to health and fitness. Operating one of the largest Ascot Vale gyms and recreation centres in Melbourne with over 1800 square metres of floor space, the Ascot Vale Leisure Centre includes: - One of the most comprehensive gyms in Melbourne - Over 1000 sq/m of gym floor space with state of the art equipment - The latest cardio with individual entertainment screens - More than 100 group...
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WaterMarc Aquatic & Leisure Centre Greensborough
1 Flintoff St
Why WaterMarc Aquatic & Leisure Centre? WaterMarc is the name of our new Multi Activity Regional Centre. Together with the Greensborough Walk and Town square the new precinct forms a fantastic new community space dedicated to the community. This $42 million Banyule City Council project is a leader in the provision of health and leisure services with facilities that will continue to deliver excellent results for everyone - from the first time casual swimmer to the most dedicated of exercisers. WaterMarc is the largest aquatic and leisure facility in the northern region of Victoria and is home to: - The premier 850...
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Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre Maribyrnong
1 Aquatic Drive
Why Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre? Welcome to MAC - A fantastic Total Community Health, Fitness & Aquatic Centre! The Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre, now affectionately known as the MAC, was opened in July 2006 and is located adjacent the Highpoint Shopping Centre at 1 Aquatic Drive Maribyrnong. MAC is an awarding winning council owned and operated facility that focuses on building and strengthening their diverse community through recreation opportunities. The fantastic indoor community facility includes: - A fully equipped Maribyrnong gym with over 700 sq/m of space - A new state of the art cardio area overlooking Maribyrnong - Over 65...
Collingwood Leisure Centre - Yarra Leisure Clifton Hill
Corner Hoddle & Turnbull St
Why Collingwood Leisure Centre - Yarra Leisure? The City of Yarra offers a range of leisure and recreation opportunities. The Council is committed to helping community members stay active, fit and healthy and has developed a number of plans and strategies to ensure everyone stays on track to achieve this. The Council has spent millions of dollars upgrading our facilities, with our range of high quality sites - Richmond Recreation Centre, Collingwood Leisure Centre, Fitzroy Swimming Pool and Burnley Golf Course. In these facilities, the Council offers a range of services and activities including gym classes, swimming lessons, massage, spas and saunas,...
One Health & Fitness Epping
41-53 Miller St. (~14 mins from Campbellfield)
Why One Health & Fitness? At One Health & Fitness Epping, we are passionate about exercise and wellness. That is why we offer a five star club that includes state-of-the-art cardiovascular equipment, mixed and a separate ladies-only area, Spin studio, 2 Group Exercise studios, and on-site Child Care. We know healthy living is more than just exercise! It's about feeling comfortable in your own skin, having a healthy attitude towards food, and of course, a healthy dose of fun! That's where we come in. We offer plenty of innovations and indulgences to keep you motivated and inspired along the way....
Olympic Leisure Centre Heidelberg
15 Alamein Rd (~37 mins from Campbellfield)
Why Olympic Leisure Centre? The Olympic Leisure Centre was part of the original Olympic Village precinct for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic games and offers members a culture rich in physical activity. The Olympic Leisure Centre in Heidelberg has a wide range of facilities, including - 25 metre indoor swimming pool - Swim school - Spa and Sauna - Personal Training - Cardio equipment including treadmills, upright bikes, steppers, recumbent bikes and concept rowers - Fully equipped gym including free-weights and pin-loaded weights - Boxing area including punching bag and speedball - Multi purpose court stadium (basketball, netball, volleyball, soccer...
Ivanhoe Aquatic & Fitness Centre Ivanhoe
170 Waterdale Rd. (~37 mins from Campbellfield)
Why Ivanhoe Aquatic & Fitness Centre? The Ivanhoe Aquatic & Fitness Centre aims to provide all members with a facility that encourages a relaxed atmosphere in a non-intimidating environment, whilst utilising an extensive range of the latest fitness equipment. Some of our facilities include: - Fully equipped gymnasium - 25m Indoor Heated Pool (7 lanes) - 12m Learners Pool - Toddlers Pool - Sauna & Spa - Creche (available Monday to Friday 9am -12pm) - Multi Purpose Program Room - Aerobics room - Room hire - Learn to swim - Personal Training - Huge range of 60+ group fitness classes, including...
Kensington Community Recreation Centre Kensington
Corner Kensington Rd & Altona St (~40 mins from Campbellfield)
Why Kensington Community Recreation Centre? The Kensington Community Recreation Centre provides a welcoming atmosphere which caters for all your recreational and fitness needs. The Centre is conveniently located within the iconic JJ Holland Park. We are an easy walking distance from Kensington and South Kensington train stations. As a member you have access to: - a state of the art Fitness suite - complimentary fitness programs - over 30 group exercise classes per week including Les Mills programs, Kensington Yoga and Zumba - qualified personal trainers - Adrenaline HIIT small group training - YMCA Challenge Fitness camps - indoor 25m...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Daniel Starkey's c-blog
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LONG BLOG
East vs. West: From the ashes
1:59 AM on 08.15.2011 (server time) 0
The United States is the undisputed birthplace of the games industry. Built on brands like Magnavox and Atari, the seeds for interactive media were sewn in the west. And then... we cocked it up. After the great Video Game Crash of 1983, Nintendo had an opportunity to make its move, releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. This gave Japanese developers their shot at the American and European markets. Throughout the late 80�s and 90�s, the Land of the Rising Sun cranked out a lot of creative titles. We saw many of the first games with narrative, the adventure and RPG genres, and countless other innovations
Nothing lasts forever; any institution which does not adapt will inevitably fail. By the sixth console generation, the Japanese games industry was beginning to show signs of stagnation. The fact that Microsoft was confident enough to push the first real American console in over 15 years was indicative of their belief in the decline of the East. It seems a lot of people are still fighting this transition and I honestly cannot, for the life of me grasp why.
I think gamers suffer from a malignant nostalgia. Japanese games were innovative in their time, but they have stubbornly refused to keep pace with their contemporaries. The country desperately clings to positively ancient design philosophy. Non-interactive cut scenes, flat character archetypes, the persistence of menu battles, and a host of other equally vexing traits are not at all conducive to telling good stories or even entertaining modern audiences. I dare you to find one significant aspect of Final Fantasy XIII that is strictly better than any of its predecessors (graphics don't count). The story is more unnecessarily convoluted, the absolute dependence on non-interactive story-telling makes the game cinematic (which I think is positively criminal in this day and age), the player has less control over characters than ever before, and the barrier to entry is so absurd that many never make it to the �good part�. I really do take offense when people claim that Japanese games always have better writing and better stories. I think, that if we are using any rational set of definitions that hasn't been true since Bill Clinton was in office.
In the West, especially with indie games, we have seen the exact opposite- modernization. Say what you will about Call of Duty, but the first Modern Warfare had some incredible moments. Assassin�s Creed and Prince of Persia both took fantastic gameplay concepts and fleshed them out over the course of several titles. BioWare and Bethesda have moved from being minor players in a niche market to titans in the industry. Bioshock revolutionized the way we think about weaving narrative elements into the environment. Valve has shown us just what a precise art game design really is, and Blizzard practically invented E-Sports. Even if you think each of these games suck, you cannot deny the impact they have had on the face of gaming. Our medium will never be the same. What has Japan done to move us forward in the past decade, even?
A Japanese-developed game has not won Game of the Year at the DICE summit since Ocarina of Time. These are the people that make games. It is the closest thing we have to an Academy, and it is far more open to foreign productions. What does this say about the state of games in Japan? Tomonobu Itagaki, Hideo Kojima, the New York Times, and even our own Bob Muir have all commented on this phenomenon. Japanese games haven�t been competitive in a long time. It�s really sad, but as Bob points out, the handful of brilliantly creative titles that do get the green light have to struggle, desperately, just to break even. While the West may not be perfect, the rise of indie gaming, and the general support for innovation in North America and Europe have given us a cultural watershed.
Japan had its day, and it may yet have another, but for now, it is over.
*Also thanks to ManWithNoName, because I totally stole his image.
#OpinionEditorial
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Daniel Starkey
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About Daniel Starkeyone of us since 2:41 PM on 12.27.2006
Some say he never sleeps and eats only gourmet amaretto cupcakes. Others claim he's a hyperactive optimist. To citizens of the Destructoid empire, though, he's Captain Starkey, Intergalactic Games Journalist.
Disclosure: In my undergrad at the University of Minnesota, I did do PR and event promotion for Microsoft. It does not and has not affected any of the pieces I have written, but it is something that you, as a reader, should know.
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Start by marking "خانواده‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته" as Want to Read:
We'd love your help. Let us know what's wrong with this preview of خانواده‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته by Camilo José Cela.
Preview — خانواده‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته by Camilo José Cela
خانواده‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته
Camilo José Cela,
فرهاد غبرایی (Translator)
3.73 · Rating details · 7,571 ratings · 486 reviews
کامیلو خوسه سلا را در ردیف نویسندگانی چون سلین و مالاپارته، و این کتاب را همسنگ بیگانهی کامو دانستهاند. پاسکوآل هم مانند مورسوی بیگانه مرتکب قتلی بیهدف میشود. خانوادهی پاسکوآل دوآرته بررسی روانکاوانهی ترس است؛ خشونت ترس و احساس گناه نسبت به آن. کامیلو خوسه سلا را در ردیف نویسندگانی چون سلین و مالاپارته، و این کتاب را هم‌سنگ بیگانه‌ی کامو دانسته‌اند. پاسکوآل هم مانند مورسوی بیگانه مرتکب قتلی بی‌هدف می‌شود. خانواد‌ه‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته بررسی روانکاوانه‌ی ترس است؛ خشونت ترس و احساس گناه نسبت به آن. ...more
Published 2008 by نشر ماهی (first published October 1942)
La familia de Pascual Duarte
Raphael, Mario Ferrone, Lola, Pascual Duarte, Rosário...more, Esteban Duarte, Madre, Engracia, El Estirao, Don Manuel, Lureña, Don Corrado...less
Other Editions (116)
To ask other readers questions about خانواده‌ی پاسکوآل دوآرته, please sign up.
This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I could not understand why Pascual killed the bitch he was so fond of. Would anybody like to tell? (hide spoiler)]
Juan Fernández It's a way of showing the kind of person he is. You do not understand his actions because you are not like him. Great for you !!!
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داستان‌های جیبی نشر ماهی
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Jan 22, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: southern-europe, novels, dalkey-archive
For fans of Spanish miserablism set in a heartless deterministic universe (i.e. this one), Pascal Duarte is the brief novel for you. Duarte's confession, written from prison, is a beautiful recounting of a life of violent poverty and aimless murder, told in simple and frequently moving prose. Cela's work is often concerned with the seemingly endless human capacity for violence and conflict and this short work leaves a powerful imprint on the reader with its moments of hair-raising cruelty and For fans of Spanish miserablism set in a heartless deterministic universe (i.e. this one), Pascal Duarte is the brief novel for you. Duarte's confession, written from prison, is a beautiful recounting of a life of violent poverty and aimless murder, told in simple and frequently moving prose. Cela's work is often concerned with the seemingly endless human capacity for violence and conflict and this short work leaves a powerful imprint on the reader with its moments of hair-raising cruelty and almost unbearable tenderness. ...more
Jul 16, 2013 Vanessa J. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: classics, mwahaha-gore, psychological, philosophical, favourites, dark-as-my-soul, 2013, humans-are-scary, spain, unreliable-narrator
I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reason for being one.
Pascual Duarte has done many things in his life. Some of them took him to prison not once but twice times. He's now under his second sentence and he's about to be executed. Thus, he wrote a diary in which he told his entire life and the people who influenced it.
He killed many people. He states that at the beginning, so don't you worry about spoilers. Some in cold blood, some because of revenge, others
He killed many people. He states that at the beginning, so don't you worry about spoilers. Some in cold blood, some because of revenge, others because of self-defense, etc. The thing is, the man was a murderer.
You kill without thinking, I have well tested; sometimes unintentionally. You hate intensely, fiercely, and the blade is opened and with it wide open, barefoot, you come to the bed where the enemy sleeps.
His past is dark and terrible. I wouldn't wish anyone a life like the one he had. His father and mother abused him, his sister escaped from the house at 16 because she couldn't bear living there any more, the man who dishonors his sister ends up sleeping with his first wife and gets her pregnant.
Plus, he was violent by nature, so should you be surprised about the things he's yet capable of doing? Yes, you should.
The truth is that life in my family had little to recommend. But since we are not given a choice, but rather are destined—even from before birth—to go some of us one way, some the other, I did my best to accept my fate, which was the only way to avoid desperation.
You should not be surprised that the general tone in this book is pessimistic. I don't have a problem with that, in case you were wondering. For some reason still unknown to me, these kind of books end up being my favorite.
The realism of the novel is also overwhelming and good. The situations portrayed in the book are things that still happen, and since it's narrated in 1st person POV, you can see Pascual's opinions on them. And also, you get the opportunity of being inside a murderer's head.
I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilled in a knife fight...
Many people would say this man was mad, but was he indeed? That's actually a rather difficult question for me to answer. When I read this in 2013, my Spanish teacher asked us that question. I've been thinking since that moment if the man was crazy or not, and I still cannot come up with an answer.
Also, is he a bad person? He states at the beginning that he is not, but that he has many reasons to be so. Certainly sometimes he's not acting according to the moral, and his motives may not justify his actions, yet he still claims he's neither a mad nor a bad person.
The ending of the book is also open for interpretations. Was Pascual trying to redeem himself? Was he simply telling his life because he was proud of his actions? Was he just merely trying to explain things?
I wanted to put ground between my shadow and myself, between my name and me, between the memory of my name and the rest of me, between my flesh and me myself, that me myself who, without shadow and name and memory and flesh would be almost nothing.
This is the thing with unreliable narrators: You can never trust all the things they say. Yes, there are some facts about his life that he can't modify because they're things everyone knew... but what about the feelings? What about his inner thoughts? Should they be trusted too? Not in the majority of the cases.
The letters at the beginning and the ending of the book are the only clues as to what you should think about his diary, because the person writing the letters is just as puzzled as the reader.
Anyway, I recommend this. I'm not really sure about this book being one of my all-time-favorites, but it sure was good enough to pass the 2015 re-read test. ...more
Mar 16, 2008 Amorette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This one is morbidly intriguing. It's sick fun to get into Pascual's head, "con perdón". Pascual kills his dog, his rival, his mom, your mom, and damned if you don't feel sorry for him in spite of it all. There is nothing sadder than a baby (Pascual's little neglected brother) having his ears eaten by a pig. Stop laughing, this is sad stuff.
Dec 18, 2017 Catherine rated it did not like it · review of another edition
Shelves: novels, maestría
i am never so aware of my own mortality as when i waste time reading books like this
Jul 04, 2009 jeremy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: translation, fiction
camilo josé cela, spain's fifth nobel laureate, is perhaps best known for two novels, the hive (la colmena) and the family of pascual duarte (la familia de pascual duarte). the latter of these is a magnificent work of fiction he composed when he was only 26 years old. the family of pascual duarte relates the story of a castilian peasant serving a prison term for multiple murders.
the story is told from the perspective of duarte himself, as he spent his time incarcerated writing his life story camilo josé cela, spain's fifth nobel laureate, is perhaps best known for two novels, the hive (la colmena) and the family of pascual duarte (la familia de pascual duarte). the latter of these is a magnificent work of fiction he composed when he was only 26 years old. the family of pascual duarte relates the story of a castilian peasant serving a prison term for multiple murders.
the story is told from the perspective of duarte himself, as he spent his time incarcerated writing his life story and recalling what led him to commit these heinous crimes. at the beginning and ending of the novel, cela includes letters from the transcriber of duarte's memoir and the prison chaplain (amongst others), explaining more about duarte's character and how his papers came to be published. while the novel is fantastically composed, these extra literary stylings add a certain charm and authenticity to the story.
while pascal duarte had killed with little remorse, cela is able to convey duarte's humanity in such a convincing manner that one cannot help but have sympathy for the convicted murderer. cela portrays duarte (or rather, duarte, thus, portrays himself) as having endured many hardships, some unimaginably debilitating, and while we are not expected to condone the homicides, we can almost understand the mindset and emotional state that led up to his reprehensible acts. it is no small feat of craft that cela was able to create a main character whose actions are entirely deplorable, yet depict him in such a way that it stirs compassion in the reader. the family of pascual duarte is a short, yet riveting tale, almost flawlessly composed, rich with insights into human frailty and desperation. it is a truly stunning read.
"the inhabitants of cities live with their backs to the truth, and oftentimes they are not even aware that only a couple of leagues away, in the middle of the plain, a country man may be thinking about them while he packs up his gear, folds his fishing rod and picks up his little wicker basket with its six or seven eels inside." ...more
Jun 15, 2014 Voldemort rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: must-read, till-death-do-us-part, 20th-century, nobelist
Can a person fall in love with a book?
I did. Twice.
However, I have this problem. Every time I like someone/something I convince myself I DO NOT. Probably because of some fucked up ideals I built in my head since childhood.
So this is me, pretending I didn't fall for Jose's dedication "I dedicate this edition to my enemies, who have helped me so much in my career" or Pascual's first sentence "I am not sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one."
This is me Can a person fall in love with a book?
This is me telling myself the prose was pessimistic with an agonizing philosophy which cannot be real; it's a fatality we only find in books. Mother Nature and Father God treat us better.
This is me attempting to loathe Duarte because of his nature which is so like ours but still remaining doubtful in front of that Hamletian question; are we born evil or do we become one through life?
This is me defining sin satanic, merely because I live by society's concepts. But what if killing is a virtue in another world? What if our ideas of values and truth are simply a mirage, shaped from what we think is right?
This is me, putting up my head a shiny aura which lightens those dark raw desires of being owned in and out by another human's flesh.
This is me believing killing is not easy like Duarte thinks, me walking head high without counting every dead organism under my feet.
I guess this is me trying to hate the book for its horrendous, atrocious translation (specially the dialogues); me disappointed because I could never despise Duarte strongly enough, me fearing the silhouette of someone I could become, me dreading my end…
Feb 08, 2015 Teresa rated it did not like it · review of another edition
Shelves: 2015-re-reads, 2015, popsugar-2015-book-challenge
I am rating this highly praised classic in the Spanish literature with just one star and if I could have, I'd given it 0. I am not basing my rating on its literary merit: the presumed originality, the social commentary value, the poverty and ignorance in rural Spain in the pre-war years, the Nobel prize, yada, yada,yada.
I am just rating it so low because I hated it.
So, yes. I have detested this book from beginning to end. It has been claimed as one of the best novels in the Spanish language,
So, yes. I have detested this book from beginning to end. It has been claimed as one of the best novels in the Spanish language, and it was written by a Nobel laureate that incidentally, I also detested when he was alive. He was a rude, arrogant and belligerent polemicist who enjoyed insulting other people from his TV platform. To me, he was, after all, a fascist. Now, trying to be honest, could it be that I was truly biased against the book even before I started it? Mmmmm, not sure, really. Could be! *Shrugs*
The Family of Pascual Duarte is the story of a psychopathic serial killer, portrayed in the form of a memoir that he writes from death row and then sends to a friend of one of the people he killed. I also contemplated the possibility that he was actually schizophrenic, and therefore of diminished moral responsibility, but there is actually little evidence that this is the case, so to me he is simply evil.
I have found the theme and the setting utterly depressing, an example of the particular brand of truculent Spanish realism termed "miserabilism" or "tremendismo". In this way, it has been compared with Sartre's and Camus's existentialism, but I do not really see this so clearly, as while I can acknowledge the existential strands in the book, (probably the deepest one surely is the question about the ontology of evil, i.e. is evil innate or learned through adverse life experiences?), both Sartre and Camus are among my favourite authors and I clearly remember respecting them in my teens, when I read their books, and not only due to their political ideology, which is diametrally opposed to Cela's. On the contrary, I have always despised Cela, and unfortunately I cannot think I can do a good job of separating Cela the man, and Cela the author.
I will really not get into the content of the book too much, but I'd just like to discuss the form briefly. I have read the original Spanish version and I have found the language archaic and difficult to follow. I have even needed to keep the dictionary near me while I was reading, despite Spanish being my mother tongue. This does not make enjoyable reading, but I'll admit that being written in 1942 and centring in a rural location, and with a peasant protagonist, it is probably unavoidable that it would contain many words currently abandoned. The style is florid and verbose, and the text is peppered with glaring grammatical mistakes that distracted me a lot from the narrative. I can see that these mistakes might have been completely deliberate by the author (who was, after all, a member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language) when attempting to evoke the idea of a semi-illiterate rural labourer writing his memoirs, but I have not enjoyed reading this and I think that the effect is not fully realised. The narrative still feels jarring and the idea of Pascual, who only had a very few years of schooling writing this is not credible.
While being immersed in worlds far away in time, distance or imagination from the world I live in generally brings me pleasure, this particular universe only brought me pain. And pain is perhaps the most central theme of the book. Deeply rooted, constant existential pain. There is misery everywhere, in every paragraph and every page. Complete ignorance, abject poverty and spiritual misery in every nook and cranny of the souls of most of the characters, not only Pascual. It is a terrible book steeped in violence, evil and misery. Pascual is an animal, and he feels no remorse for his criminal deeds. He does talk about repenting from his sins, but this is mere egocentric self-pity, not true grief and repentance coming from a well developed theory of mind and from the capacity of placing himself in the shoes of those he killed.
In have found this very short, very annoying book a total bore. Oh, well, it was another of the pesky assignments for my reading challenge this year, which so far is proving, errh, precisely that: challenging.
Popsugar Reading Challenge 2015. #25. A book you were supposed to read in High School but didn't. ...more
Dec 22, 2011 Ali rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: novels
The man who is born to poor, alcoholic parents, has had a couple of happy memories, such as his first marriage to a loving wife, and later a marriage to a second loving wife… Pascual Duarte, a man in his 50s, has killed his landowner during the Spanish Civil War, is sitting in prison, awaiting for his death, is a brutal Spanish peasant, shaped by poverty, ignorance and hatred, as he describes himself prior to killing his mother: as he sits in prison, awaiting death, he acknowledges that his The man who is born to poor, alcoholic parents, has had a couple of happy memories, such as his first marriage to a loving wife, and later a marriage to a second loving wife… Pascual Duarte, a man in his 50s, has killed his landowner during the Spanish Civil War, is sitting in prison, awaiting for his death, is a brutal Spanish peasant, shaped by poverty, ignorance and hatred, as he describes himself prior to killing his mother: as he sits in prison, awaiting death, he acknowledges that his heart is more like a machine for making blood ...
The novel sounds a cautionary note about the sorts of men that arise in this kind of moral vacuum, occasional flashes of very dark humor, political dimension? a criminal but also an opponent of the conservative Franco regime?!
Cela, for many years denied the recognition he deserved due to his membership in the Falangist party and his service on Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This book (1942), was Cela's first novel.
عنوان؛ "خانواده ی پاسکال دوآرته" طنین آشنایی دارد، پس حتمن جایی دیده ام یا خوانده ام که به فارسی برگردانده شده. امیدوارم کار یکی از مترجمان مورد علاقه ام باشد.
Nov 26, 2019 Andy Weston rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Published in 1942, the same year as Camus's The Stranger this short novel is the dark story of Pascual Duarte, a brutal Spanish peasant, whose life has been shaped by poverty, ignorance and hatred. The story recounts his mounting depravity as he goes from killing his dog to knifing a romantic rival to final horrific matricide.
It's a raw and compelling read that has surprisingly been out of print as a translated version since not long after it won the Nobel Prize in 1989.
Oct 13, 2014 Delara H F rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: spanish-literature
I hated it. It was awful and unlike what was written on the cover, it was absolutely not like the books by Celine or Albert Camus. Or at least I didn't feel like there was any similarities.
Nov 24, 2018 Iulia Marin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
lthough he writes in the nihilist mode, Cela, unlike most modern practitioners, starts from no preconceived positions; his premises tend to evolve as he goes along and then just as easily disappear all together. Is Pascual a cautionary tale, a psychological study, or mere naturalism of a dark, distressing sort? One never knows. All these ingredients are there, but brand names seem irrelevant. Cela's anti-hero is a man whose humanity is close to that of an animal, and yet what he has to say of lthough he writes in the nihilist mode, Cela, unlike most modern practitioners, starts from no preconceived positions; his premises tend to evolve as he goes along and then just as easily disappear all together. Is Pascual a cautionary tale, a psychological study, or mere naturalism of a dark, distressing sort? One never knows. All these ingredients are there, but brand names seem irrelevant. Cela's anti-hero is a man whose humanity is close to that of an animal, and yet what he has to say of himself (it's in the first person) is so blunt and blunderingly honest that a bleak pathos is evoked on every page. Outwardly he's a proletarian figure living in the sticks north of Madrid in the '20's. Grown up without love (a drunken father, stone-faced mother), as a field hand he feels nothing in nature. He has a sister-fixation but she's little more than a whore. Everything he touches falls apart. He marries, his children die; his first wife's unfaithful, his second can't help. Early on in the course of events his impulses turn inwards. He's deemed to commit one senseless murder after another, beginning with the shooting of his pet dog, ending with the horrendous- and that is the right word- stabbing of his mother. What is one to make of all this? Zola's La Bete Humaine used similar melodramatics, but there it was a sort of mental hygiene appeal. Cela's world is as bonebare as a geometric proposition and as inexorable. Though its style and language suits the class of its narrator and though not a bit of pity seeps through, something close to tragedy, close to a catharsis is felt. A strange achievement; the most disturbing and disturbingly good Spanish writing since Borges, whose nerve-wracking ceremoniousness is the underside of Cela's stark, spiney neutrality. ...more
May 14, 2019 Robert Wechsler marked it as tasted · review of another edition
Shelves: span-lit
A cold, violent first-person monologue about a man and his family. The pain of it was not offset by the quality of the writing, or anything else.
Sep 03, 2011 Robin rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: i-own-a-copy, obscure, translations
Well I mostly rated this book as 3 stars because there were parts that I couldn't follow what was happening. Perhaps that was intentional, perhaps it was lost in translation, but it was frustrating to be turning pages back and forth going, "wait, what? did he kill that guy? did he kill his wife? oh, he just left the city. I guess?" etc.
I'm surprised when people don't like a book because of a narrator that is evil or unlikable. I really enjoy being forced to be "on the side" of the narrator that Well I mostly rated this book as 3 stars because there were parts that I couldn't follow what was happening. Perhaps that was intentional, perhaps it was lost in translation, but it was frustrating to be turning pages back and forth going, "wait, what? did he kill that guy? did he kill his wife? oh, he just left the city. I guess?" etc.
I'm surprised when people don't like a book because of a narrator that is evil or unlikable. I really enjoy being forced to be "on the side" of the narrator that cannot be trusted. Similar to the narrators in Lolita or The Collector. It makes you constantly skeptical of the narrator's version of events which is a neat literary device. I also enjoyed the similarity to "The Stranger": in both books the narrator stresses that he had no choice, and anyway it was all fate/circumstance pushing him into his misdeeds. The appeal to the reader that an injustice is being done to the narrator because they are being punished for their crime, a crime they HAD to commit.
So, overall, good, not great. I'm glad I randomly found it in a used bookstore. ...more
Jun 11, 2007 Chenvael rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: from_spain
To the fear.. To the anger.. To the madness..
I guess Cela (the writer of this book) has a good way to tell a story about the main character, Duarte. Cela put so much anger in Duarte's mind, body, all of it. It's as if two third of him is made from anger instead of water.
I like the way Cela wrap the overall story. The letters, the testatement, the note, everything give additional touch to the story. I like it.
This book may be good to a phsyco so he can count how many people To the fear.. To the anger.. To the madness..
This book may be good to a phsyco so he can count how many people Duarte had killed. Just check these statements that I took note from this book (excuse my translation, I read Indonesian version of the book):
".. I am so sure that only bloodshed can heal me."
Apr 25, 2008 Nellie K. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
That was shocking and that's what we call tremendismo. Realismo. el horror...
Aug 08, 2014 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Camilo José Cela is compared to Albert Camus, but he is no Camus, and Pascual Duarte is no L'etranger. The book is a fair nihilistic work.
Jan 10, 2014 Murtaza rated it really liked it · review of another edition
some died themselves, rest of them got killed by pascual, and himself got executed, while he didn't want to die. He was a psychopath. Sad!
Aug 31, 2013 Marc rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Bleak, dark, ungainly, but ambiguous: self-relativity of the main character. Stylistically alternating sober-realistic-more prosaic.
Feb 01, 2011 Tuck rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: dalkey-archive, spain
nobel prize in 1989. groundbreaking when published as it broke spain's ""great silence" and the "great forgetting"
Mar 27, 2009 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This review first appeared in "Margin" which is an online literary publication focusing on magical realism edited by Tamara Kaye Sellman.
IN CAMILO José Cela's The Family of Pascual Duarte, people, plants, animals and other natural forces take on shimmering qualities when a murderous madman projects his imagination over a gray and barren landscape.
His nameless and impoverished agrarian village is located, Pascual tells us, "some two leagues from Almendralejo, squatting athwart a road as empty This review first appeared in "Margin" which is an online literary publication focusing on magical realism edited by Tamara Kaye Sellman.
His nameless and impoverished agrarian village is located, Pascual tells us, "some two leagues from Almendralejo, squatting athwart a road as empty and endless as a day without bread..."
He works only rarely, and his account reads like one of a low-rent bon vivant flitting about indulging self-generated paranoias and fears that might hold less sway were he out tending fields with more consistency.
His personal poverty is a relative thing. He enjoys a modicum of economic independence and the ability to make a pleasure trip with his bride to the provincial capital. The house he describes is clean and appointed for basic necessities, even if the family burro occupies the room adjacent.
Yet, for all the poverty Pascual claims to suffer, he does not seek exculpation for his serial murders by invoking a drab past or rotten luck. More important than poverty in the formation and motivation of Pascual lurks the shadow of his religion.
Compounding the grayness of the narrator's environment are the proscriptions of Spanish Catholicism, more severe and reliant on penitence than its gentler, more charitable Italian cousin.
Spanish philosopher and author Miguel de Unamuno defined this social order as "One faith, one shepherd, one flock, unity before anything else, unity imposed from on-high, repose, submission and obedience."
The Catholic and Castilian code, Unamuno wrote, implied two worlds: "A God and a devil over each, hell to fear and a heaven to conquer through liberty and grace, gaining a merciful and just God."
Indeed, God and proper convention are never far from our murderer's mind. After his mare kicks an old lady he stops to check on her "...for it would not be in the nature of a well-born person to ride on."
Pascual's relationship to the Church marks the real boundaries to his actions and perceptions. Its laws lend an otherworldly allure to what they forbid. Eve, after all, was naked and she gave Adam an apple to eat, not a bar of soap.
While visiting the local friar to discuss his intentions of marrying the village maiden Lola, "Don Manuel opened the door of the sacristy and pointed to a bench in church, a bench like any bench in any church, made of unpainted wood, hard and cold as stone, but a place where sometimes wonderful moments are possible."
The Lord clearly taketh in Pascual's life, but giveth on occasion as well. To the considerable extent that Pascual has faith in God, he has faith in the devil and the archangels and demons as a result.
While out spending a placid day in the country with his hunting dog Chispa, the animal (he says) turns to gaze on him with "the look of a confessor, coldly scrutinizing, the eyes of a lynx, the look they say a lynx fixes on you."
Pascual is unable to shake the resulting shudder that wracks his body and overcomes him.
"It was hot, the heat was stifling, and my eyes began to close under the animal's stare, which was sharp as flint.
"I picked up my gun and fired. I reloaded and fired again. The bitch's blood was dark and sticky and it spread slowly along the dry earth."
It appears, then, to be Pascual's destiny to kill; to that end, his assignment becomes one he fulfills consistently. Along the way, he also slashes a man in a barroom brawl and stabs to death a mare that has thrown Lola and killed the baby she carried inside.
Pascual becomes a fugutive for a number of years, but returns to kill his tormentor, Estirao (Stretch), who first abused his sister and later impregnated Lola in Pascual's absence.
Pascual eventually lands in jail, where the peasant from Extremadura (meaning "extreme" and "hard" in Spanish) pens his memoirs from death row. These memoirs constitute the story of Pascual Duarte throughout the majority of the book.
No madman on a self-destructive binge, Pascual does manage to be released on good behavior. At that moment he begins, earnest as ever, to rebuild a life, this time marrying Esperanza. But his demons get the worst of him and his mother pays the ultimate price.
Of course,the story is about Pascual's family, the most important social unit in agrarian settings such as this. His father is Portugese and an explosive madman who has a heart attack at the news of being cuckolded.
His sister Rosario, whom Pascual adores, is cursed with a similar, if less violent, destiny because "God did not wish any of us to be distinguished by good deeds..." She is a prostitute, which can be shameful and painful before the sacred community, not to mention fatal to her as a practitioner.
His brother, Mario, sired by a man other than Pascual's father, is born deformed.
"The poor fellow never got beyond dragging himself along the floor as is he were a snake and making some squeaking sounds in his throat. It was all he ever learned."
The unfortunate Mario even suffers the indignity of having a pig chew off his ears. Eventually he relieves the family of his oppressive sadness by drowning in a vat of olive oil at 10 years old:
"When we lifted him out, a thin trickle of oil poured from his mouth, like a gold thread being unwound from a spool in his belly. His hair, which in life had always been the dim color of ash, shone with such lively luster that one would have thought it had resurrected in death. Such were the wonders associated with the death of little Mario."
Pascual's mother is conniving and untrustworthy, giving birth to children not her husband's and encouraging her daughter-in-law Lola to do the same.
Back in that hornets' nest after his term in prison, Pascual threatens the old woman so that she removes herself as instigator, none of which escapes Pascual, who observes: "It's sad to think that in order to gain a little peace a man has to make use of fear!"
But fear is not retribution enough and, in the novel's dramatic highpoint, Pascual kills his mother and records his first impressions..."Her blood spurted all over my face. It was warm as a soft belly and tasted like the blood of a lamb."
True to form, Pascual flees the scene. At this point his personal narration ends and outside voices, introduced by Cela in the form of public testimony and private missive, fill in the rest.
The dispassionate diaries Pascual pens to divulge his murders have prompted comparisons with Albert Camus' The Stranger. Both books were published in 1943; Cela's went on to become the most polemic and most prolifically translated of Spain's 20th Century literary output. Camus did as much for French letters.
But Pascual is not empty of soul in the way of Camus' feckless anti-hero; rather he is driven by the customs and practices of a pervasive moral code. He fears the Holy Ghost.
His narration of events is not relayed in any linear way because, as Pascual explains, "Following the footsteps of people involved rather than the order of events, I jump from beginning to end and from the end back to the beginning. Like a grasshopper being swatted."
The memoirs tell his version of events, of a good man driven by intermittent and irrational forces to kill. Pascual admits it freely in his opening.
"I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one. We are all born naked, and yet, as we begin to grow up, it pleases Destiny to vary us, as if we were made of wax."
Recollections from his confessor ("the transcriber" of his testimony introduced at the beginning of the book) and the warden make clear that, following Pascual's release from jail, the murderer had more killing to do.
We learn that at the Spanish Civil War's outset, Pascual engaged in "revolutionary activities" that led him to kill the richest man in the town. The memoirs were sent, at Pascual's request, to the only friend of his victim "whose address he can remember."
The date of Pascual's eventual execution makes it likely, and the book works to suggest, that he was not shot in the end for his serial murdering, but, ironically, for his politics. Posted to a moral social code, Pascual is ultimately killed by the forces of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, keepers of that very same code.
Adding contrast to Pascual's atrocities are the peasant village life and style that unfold in what Unamuno called the "intra-historical" cycle of birth, marriage, procreation and death, or "the world of silences."
Pascual chooses a wife at his brother's funeral:
"When Lola went down on her knees she showed the smooth whiteness of her legs above her black stockings, tight as blood sausage. I blush to say what I must, and may God apply the effort it cost me to say it toward the salvation of my soul, for the truth is in that moment I was glad my brother had died...Lola's legs shone like silverplate, the blood pounded in my temples, and my heart seemed ready to burst from my chest."
Here, Cela is superimposing rituals of passage to accentuate the eventless existence of agrarian life. These rites provide the only signposts for direction and action in an otherwise mundane universe.
Pascual gains Lola, but the imprimatur of the church robs her of allure, for "that first kiss given with permission didn't taste half as good as the kisses in the cemetery, so long ago now."
Sexual pleasure and death are also coupled in the aforementioned stabbing of the mare. "When I quit the stable my arm was aching. I was covered with blood up to my elbow. The mare hadn't made a sound. She only breathed deeper, and faster, like when we put her to stud."
And the flow of blood is often swathed in an inviting metaphor of rejuvenation and cleansing: "When they carried him off to Don Raimundo's pharmacy the blood was flowing from him like water from a spring..."
Cela marks a life-rhythm in Pascual's pueblo using a trance-like dirge from a single, mournful drum. "The years passed over our heads as they do all the world. Life in our house went down the same drains as always..."
When Pascual's son dies, he is tortured by the endless chatter of the women in his family.
" 'Oh, the agony, the death throes!'
'I held him gasping in my arms!' [they cry:]
It sounded like a litany, as slow and weary as a night filled with wine, as languid and heavy as the pace of an ass. And they went on in this way day after day, week after week...It was frightful, dreadful, and the curse of God, vengeance from on high."
Pascual's is the superstition of a provincial haunted by ill-fortune, relieved only by splashes of momentary magic.
Happy in a family life, he and Lola seemingly conjure the boy's death, inviting an ill-wind that kills him:
" 'Did you hear that?'
'What?'
'The window.'
'The window?'
'Yes. It creaked as if the wind, as if a draft were trying to get through...'
The creaking of the window, moved as it was by the wind. Came to be mingled with a moan."
The modern mind scoffs at the individual's dark power to conjure death, but Pascual's mind does not. He leaves his future "in God's hands" along with responsibility for his past transgressions, for the lamb of God takes away the sins of the earth. His very understanding of things is woven with the Catholic iconography of sacrifice and suffering.
The surrounding universe corroborates the place he sees for himself there. Lola tells him before she dies, "It's just that blood seems like a kind of fertilizer in your life..."
When his sister Rosario asks why he says he is damned, Pascual responds, "I'm not the one who says it."
Such is the "real magicalism" of Cela, who paints the everyday gray, then drapes it in golden thread and lively luster.
In magical realism, the extraordinary is invited to accompany the ordinary on its daily rounds; in the real magicalism of Pascual's mind, the very ordinary takes on the cast of something extraordinary by the projection of his fevered mind on the contrasting drabness and boredom of his surroundings
Camilo José Cela's inspiration to write The Family of Pascual Duarte might be seen as having an intrinsic connection to his own colorful political life in Spain. Cela was born in May 1916 in Iria Flavia, Galicia; a province steeped in fog, drizzle and a black magic mythology to match them.
In 1934, he began the study of medicine, but soon wound up under the tutelage of Pedro Salinas, a poet and member of the legendary "Generation of 1927" which counted, among its numbers, one of Spain's most triumphant literary exports, Federico Garcia Lorca.
Set up in Madrid's well-heeled Barrio Salamanca at the outset of the Civil War, Cela signed on with the Fascist fighting units of General Millan Ashtray whose war cry was "Long Live Death!" This experience could explain Pascual's righteous obsession with death and murder.
Later, Cela would serve for a time as a censor to the Franco regime only to see his own work receive the same rough treatment later. In 1974, he resigned his post as president of the prestigious Madrid Atheneum over the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich's execution. It seems Cela was always living at odds with the power brokers of his time. In 1962, he dedicated the 13th edition of The Family of Pascual Duarte to his "enemies, who have been of such help to me in my career."
Cela, by all accounts, was a man who planned to be famous, and to be so as a writer. He was prolific throughout his life, crafting internationally acclaimed novels, less critically adored plays, countless essays and articles.
He won the Nobel Prize in 1989 and quickly turned it to his commercial advantage, developing what he himself considered "the business of Camilo José Cela." Until his death in 2002 he roamed the streets and bars of Madrid with his youngish wife, living the old-style literary life in a European capital, collecting caviar prizes and stipends, expounding in electronic and print media on any number of topics, contemporary and otherwise.
In the years following Franco's death he was disdained by the political right over his criticism of the Franco regime and reviled by the reigning cultural elites of the ruling Socialist Party.
He could have cared less and if moved to, gave as good as he got. None of it could dent his hard-earned triumph, rooted more firmly in the quality and variety of his work than the meticulously crafted public persona he employed in shadowboxing the world around him.
Oct 18, 2017 Bob Newman rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Life Is Ugly"
Not everybody can control themselves, that's true. With some people passions lie close to the surface, uncertainty hovers over them like a rain cloud, soaking their better impulses, encouraging gloom. It seems to me that most writers of great literature [and Cela is no doubt one] form characters who wish to do well and to be successful in whatever they choose, big or small in scope. They often fail. But this novel is among the minority in which evil is explained, ugly feelings and Life Is Ugly"
Not everybody can control themselves, that's true. With some people passions lie close to the surface, uncertainty hovers over them like a rain cloud, soaking their better impulses, encouraging gloom. It seems to me that most writers of great literature [and Cela is no doubt one] form characters who wish to do well and to be successful in whatever they choose, big or small in scope. They often fail. But this novel is among the minority in which evil is explained, ugly feelings and brutal deeds made plain. While admitting that the writer is great, I found this novel extremely unpleasant. Not only does the main character, Pascual Duarte, commit three murders, but we see how a man dies locked in a closet when he gets rabies and how hogs chew off a retarded child's ears. Our "hero" also kills a dog and a horse. The overall tone reminded me, in its pessimistic, negative view of life, of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground", of Camus' "L'Etranger", the works of Gide, and certain works by Mishima and Tanizaki. There is almost no redeeming feature of human nature here. Suffering is nearly universal among people, but most do not become murderers. Looking around, historically and today, there's ample reason to feel hopeless when it comes to our species. So, if that attitude is what turns you on, I suppose this will be a 5-star book. While acknowledging the evil, vindictive side of Man, I prefer to read less concentrated "absence of good". Written by Pascual Duarte as he sits on Death Row in 1930s Spain, the chapter recall his entire life up to 1922. He is created by hardship, lovelessness, alcohol, violence, and his own great insecurity. It is not that it is surprising, rather it is the feeling I got throughout that the author was telling me, "This is real life. Anger, Blood, Violence are the Truth. So this is a real man." I don't agree. ...more
Sep 30, 2017 Esculapio Poblete rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: 2017-books, c-agreda-jl-lib, a-my-library
This is a book to be read when you're grown up. Too hard to understand, too subtle to grasp when youre young. Even so I would recommend anyone to read it, keep it close, and read it again when he felts its ready to.
I'm quite sure that I'm so fond of the story because I've been able to assist first-hand the hardships of rural life. Not as harsh as this impoverished area of Spain, because the territory were the story takes place was a sad extreme example of backwardness and poverty.
The novel This is a book to be read when you're grown up. Too hard to understand, too subtle to grasp when you´re young. Even so I would recommend anyone to read it, keep it close, and read it again when he felts it´s ready to.
The novel takes form as a manuscript by the same Duarte. He's living his last days, waiting for the dead penalty, and he engage his days filling in sheets of paper with his life's story. You get to know the character because you have access to his inner thoughts. Even so, there is something in his figure that is beyond reaching. And you know it from the start, because the sad end of "Chispa", his beloved hunting dog.
This was the first novel of Cela. He had published before a book of poems, but it was Duarte who give him status as writer. If in this book he chose the figure of the manuscript by the main character, Cela continued experimenting different techniques. It´s from my point of view of extra value that he explained why and how he had chosen to tell the story in a way or another.
The book prompted a film. I've not seen it, but it´s dubious that so much hardship can be taken to the viewer without upsetting it. Moreover, I cannot understand how so much of Duarte inner thoughts can be transformed into images.
Oct 02, 2017 Ville-markus Nevalainen rated it liked it · review of another edition
(Read this for university, which always affects the reading experience some what as I have to rush through it)
I believe that the reason that this novel was compared to Albert Camus's The Stranger is partially to blame for why I did not enjoy the it as much as I could have. I read The Stranger earlier this year and it was one of the best books that I had read for a long time and to have something like that in mind, expecting to get swept away in that similar way, might've been why it did not (Read this for university, which always affects the reading experience some what as I have to rush through it)
I believe that the reason that this novel was compared to Albert Camus's The Stranger is partially to blame for why I did not enjoy the it as much as I could have. I read The Stranger earlier this year and it was one of the best books that I had read for a long time and to have something like that in mind, expecting to get swept away in that similar way, might've been why it did not happen in the end. Similarly, the novel's "emotionless" violence had been brought up before I read, and while this was the case in The Stranger, I disagree that it is emotioneless here.
Pascual Duarte is in a depressing novel how it depicts how bad luck can ruin a man completely. I could not find much fault in Pascual himself, yes he does unacceptable deeds, but his whole life has been tormented by misfortune. Now, in prison as he is writing his confessions, he is sorry for all he has done. All of this contradicts everything what The Stranger is about.
But it was not only that, that it was not more like The Stranger, but that it set up expectations that it did not fill. As a short history of one man's life where nothing ever goes right, it accomplishes what it tries to do. It is a short read and entertaining enough while it lasts, but unfortunately it failed to leave any stronger impression on me. ...more
May 04, 2017 Sam rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: spanish, fun-lit
This novel is interesting because it is kind of out of time. Pascual Duarte seems to be a character taken out of a nineteenth-century novel--he is completely self-centered, he sees himself as a victim of circumstances, and he is incapable of any sort of redemptive behavior. Everything he touches dies, eventually, and it's never (according to him) his fault.
The novel, like El Quijote, is framed as a "found text," something that an editor has been sent in order to publish, and there are some This novel is interesting because it is kind of out of time. Pascual Duarte seems to be a character taken out of a nineteenth-century novel--he is completely self-centered, he sees himself as a victim of circumstances, and he is incapable of any sort of redemptive behavior. Everything he touches dies, eventually, and it's never (according to him) his fault.
The novel, like El Quijote, is framed as a "found text," something that an editor has been sent in order to publish, and there are some frame texts that add depth to the story.
This was only published 3 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and its publication helped stimulate Spanish writing in the early years of Franco's dictatorship. For that, Pascual Duarte is worth remembering. In fact, it's certainly a good example of realism/naturalism--we get loads of details about how the people live, the work that they do, and things like that. We get loads of gross details, like about dead bodies, and the characters can never really outrun the defects that they are "born with." There's a lot of attributing problems to destiny.
The thing is, I don't really like this kind of story. I just end up mad at the male protagonist. Because he's a jerk. But this is certainly a book worth looking into, if you're into realism or the post-war years in Spain. ...more
Mar 26, 2019 Kristín rated it liked it · review of another edition
I read this book years and years ago but didn't remember a thing about it (which is sadly fairly common for me) so I decided to reread it. It's a short story about a man who's born into a cold and nasty family where both parents are simply rather evil. So I guess poor Paskval doesn't really have much chance of succeeding in life - which he of course doesn't. He writes the story from prison, retelling parts of his lives that are so far from most reader's reality that at least for some (me) it's I read this book years and years ago but didn't remember a thing about it (which is sadly fairly common for me) so I decided to reread it. It's a short story about a man who's born into a cold and nasty family where both parents are simply rather evil. So I guess poor Paskval doesn't really have much chance of succeeding in life - which he of course doesn't. He writes the story from prison, retelling parts of his lives that are so far from most reader's reality that at least for some (me) it's rather hard to connect. I know it's supposed to tell us about life but I wonder whether I'm actually getting the message or not. The message seems to be, if you are dealt bad cards you will not win the game, but that's a rather harsh message to all the people that are given a bad hand in live. I'd rather see the other message, where you can actually change a bad hand to a winning hand by being smart or kind or... I'll give it three star because in many ways it's a nice little story but I don't think I would be fair to myself if I give it more. I simply didn't like it that much. ...more
Aug 14, 2018 Wow rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: paperback, 2018-reads, classics, novel, 1940s, 2018-purchases, literary-fiction, spain, nobel-prize
The reason that persuaded me to read this novel was the fact that the author was novel prize laureate, also being a classic of the Spanish literature pre civil war era.
I wanted to read something out of my confort zone.
The writing was beautiful and lyrical , you could definitely see why he was such a celebrated author.
Yet something felt off about the protagonist voice, and while I sympathise with his suffering...I can't stop being annoyed with his whining.
How he turns all the blame on Faye and The reason that persuaded me to read this novel was the fact that the author was novel prize laureate, also being a classic of the Spanish literature pre civil war era.
How he turns all the blame on Faye and God.
It was he , who chose that path. He chose to commit those crimes, he also had the choice of walking away.
To try and have a better life elsewhere!
The flow of the story also felt interrupted, it left me at times confused to what was going on and how we reached an outcome like that.
All in all it was a sad book, the ending was a downer .
I read a translation of a translation i.e. Arabic translation of the English translation of the Spanish original.
I am assuming that some of the allure and Charm of the novel was lost in translation.
Jun 15, 2017 Benoît rated it really liked it · review of another edition
It's the commonest trick in the world for writers to come up with an introductory note that attributes truth (or verisimilitude) to their story. I must have been absent-minded, but this time I was abused, and I spent the first part of the book really thinking this was a confession of a commoner sentenced to death, I read his words with more intensity, and I guess it's a testimony to Cela's realism that it took me a while to come to my senses. And I still think the first half is the best part, as It's the commonest trick in the world for writers to come up with an introductory note that attributes truth (or verisimilitude) to their story. I must have been absent-minded, but this time I was abused, and I spent the first part of the book really thinking this was a confession of a commoner sentenced to death, I read his words with more intensity, and I guess it's a testimony to Cela's realism that it took me a while to come to my senses. And I still think the first half is the best part, as you see the character present himself to you as a humble, base, unfortunate creature, as you feel him exert his sincerity and believe in his confession. In the second part, despite some confusions over the character's motives and decisions, I much appreciated the effort of Cela to explain how the thought of killing seizes the mind with remorseless hate, a classic 19th subject that is ever relevant. A short classic well worth reading. ...more
Apr 09, 2019 Stacey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Read for a reading list book as part of my graduate studies. It's a dark and violent meditation on life, written during a difficult period in Spain's history, but taking place further in the past. It's known in the literary world and is an important work, but for me, it just left me feeling depressed, so it's not a light read by any means. The introduction to the Kindle edition I read was extremely helpfully written and carefully constructed for those who are analyzing the text academically.
Dec 23, 2018 Oana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Conflicted about moral values. Who gets to judge a human being? Are you sure you have all the facts before you judge a criminal? This raw confession makes you double think the sentences we cast on others.
Jun 26, 2019 Frank Ashe rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: biography-memoir, fiction, nobel-prize, translated, spain
This is the sort of unremittingly bleak book that I should have liked more. Maybe I wasn't in the mood when I read it.
The murder of Don Riva 1 19 Jan 21, 2014 05:19AM
European Literature > Spanish Literature
Cultural > Spain
About Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela Trulock was a Spanish writer. Prolific author (as a novelist, journalist, essayist, literary magazine editor, lecturer ...), he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy for 45 years and won, among others, the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 1987, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 ("for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a Camilo José Cela Trulock was a Spanish writer. Prolific author (as a novelist, journalist, essayist, literary magazine editor, lecturer ...), he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy for 45 years and won, among others, the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 1987, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 ("for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability.") and the Cervantes Prize in 1995.
In 1996 King Juan Carlos I granted him, for his literary merits, the title Marquis of Iria Flavia.
His son, Camilo José Cela Conde is also a writer.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camilo_J... ...more
Books by Camilo José Cela
Trivia About The Family of Pas...
Quotes from خانواده پاسکوال د...
"I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilled in a knife fight..." — 16 likes
"يقولون أن السمك يموت من فمه ، ويقولون أيضا إن من يتلكم كثيرا يخطئ كثيرا و الفم المطبق لا يدخله الذباب" — 10 likes


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For the third year , Yorkley has achieved this P.E. award! Congratulations to all the children who competed, and thank you to the parents who supported the children. Well done everyone!
Another lovely Harvest Assembly. An impressive harvest loaf was the centrepiece of our display of produce – thanks to Lauren and William's mum for baking it for us. This year, all produce has been donated to Lydney Foodbank.