Your Face Tomorrow – Fever and Spear V 1 (New Directions Books)

Product Information

bir kitap düşünün james bond hikayesi kadar aksiyonu varmış gibi yapıp size olup olmadığını anlatıcının dahi bilmediği şeyler(neyler) üzerinden bir şeyler anlatıyor olsun. kitapta aksiyon olmamasına rağmen kitabı soluksuz okutuyor, what kind of sorcery is this?!! How can I not know today your face tomorrow, the face that is there already or is being forged beneath the face you show me or beneath the mask you are wearing, and which you will only show me when I am least expecting it ?

Dense, acrobatic stream-of-consciousness exploring the political and personal ramifications of the violation of a confidence, by Spanish novelist Marias ( The Man of Feeling, 2003, etc.). It’s all in the voice, and if its peculiar intellectual negligees don’t draw you deeper into Marias’ cranial boudoir (for rather traditional pleasures after all is said and done), then you’re left out in the cold, a cold many readers would probably rather be in anyway, and that’s understandable. It’s all in the voice, and its saturating verbal power is reminiscent of Sebald, like an endless stream of voice straight into your ear, or in your face. And as with Sebald this voice is so seemingly natural and so personalized that fiction has the illusion (or is it?) of blending into nonfiction. But unlike Sebald Marias is a game player, a bit of a prankster, though that quality of his is at the service of an urgency in this book, the pranksterism manifesting in a rarefied detachment within some self-absorbed inner cosmos and an insistence on exhausting every topic raised, almost every seed of every idea planted in every statement, like the author had given himself a challenge; it’s almost Oulipian! This begs the question: why write a review, when you have only finished 30% of the novel? How can you be sure that the first part is somehow representative or indicative of the whole, or the other parts?Divided into two parts -- yes, Fever and Spear -- this first volume of the trilogy basically covers how Deza is recruited by a British intelligence service outfit and then some of the work he does for that organisation. Al margen del protagonista, hay dos personajes en esta trilogía que son clave en el desarrollo de la historia y que, además, tienen muchas cosas en común. Ambos personajes están basados en personas reales —el padre del narrador en el padre del autor, el filósofo Julián Marías, y su protector en el Reino Unido, Peter Wheeler, en Sir Peter Russell, un buen amigo de Marías cuando este daba clases en Oxford. Ambos, cultos e inteligentes, afrontan el tramo final de sus vidas con la tranquilidad de quien ha hecho lo que tenía que hacer. Ambos representan una época ya casi extinguida, un tiempo de firmes principios (no necesariamente coincidentes), dignidad y capacidad de sacrificio. Ambos han vivido una guerra. Ambos, en definitiva, son un modelo a seguir para el narrador, en un mundo en el que ya no se puede ser como ellos. It may be all that is left if one cannot trust anyone. Then, one cannot give oneself over to anyone or anything, a painting included. Gathering facts by those removed from self-intrusion either through will or an absence of self will theoretically lead to an assessment of who people are and who they will be in the future. Their face tomorrow. Wordy and in no rush to move ahead, Fever and Spear isn't your typical spy-thriller, but what there is is tantalizing enough. In this brilliant dark novel, Marías has taken a central philosophical concern and set it before us in a new light, at once magical and terrifying in its implications for what we most value: for love, for justice and for the belief that we are who we say we are, when we think we are being honest." - John Burnside, Scotland on Sunday

Does it define the core themes of the novel as a whole? Does it merely introduce the characters? Does it anticipate aspects of the plot?Once narrator Dezas starts his person-interpreting intelligence work in earnest the reader is confronted by a number of seemingly random descriptions of various persons unconnected to the larger narrative. The story is more about the little intelligence unit's ability to manufacture those profiles. It’s more about what the profiles say about the profilers. I believe the psychological term here is called “projection,” Freudian lingo that Marías never mentions. What are we led to think about the profilers by what they see in others? Remember, their work is all intuitive. They base their assumptions on nothing factual except the roughest biographical data. It’s a fascinating idea and it works though it makes for dense narrative. A beach read this is not. ciltte dramatik dönemeçler pek yok. Baş karakter, Peter Wheeler ve yine Oxford'da tanıştığı Toby Rylands hakkında yeni bilgiler öğrenirken İspanya İç Savaşı ve İkinci Dünya Savaşı dönemlerinde yaşanan çeşitli olaylara ilişkin tarihi bilgiler, yorumlar ve tabii ki Marias'ın ele almayı sevdiği temalar üzerine uzun tiradlar okuyoruz. Yine ihanet, insanları gerçekten tanımanın, sır tutmanın ve gerçeği bilmenin imkansızlığı, pişmanlık öne çıkan temalar. Doğrudan ya da simgeler yoluyla çok fazla edebiyatçıya gönderme var. Bunlardan Katalonya'ya Selam, James Bond: Rusya'dan Sevgilerle, The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story öne çekip okumak istediklerim oldu. Kitabın başında sizi hiç bilmediğiniz bir şeye hazırladığı ilk birkaç bölüm hayatımda okuduğum en iyi girişlerden biriydi. Pero en realidad, más bien —en la práctica—, le interesé y me tomó como intérprete de vidas, según su expresión solemne y sus desmesuradas expectativas. Sería mejor dejarlo en traductor o intérprete de las personas: de sus conductas y reacciones, de sus inclinaciones y caracteres y sus capacidades de aguante; de su maleabilidad y su sumisión, de sus voluntades desmayadas o firmes, sus inconstancias, sus límites, sus inocencias, su falta de escrúpulos y su resistencia; de sus posibles grados de lealtad o vileza y sus calculables precios y sus venenos y sus tentaciones; y también de sus deducibles historias, no pasadas sino venideras, las que aún no habían ocurrido y podían por tanto impedirse. O bien podían fraguarse.