Because You Never Asked

(6/05)    

     There is a cultured Catalan gentleman named Pepin Mari who has appeared in these pages before. Over the almost 20 years I've been coming to this privileged place by the Roman Sea, our acquaintance has become rooted in a sincere friendship based upon a multitude of reciprocal feelings and interests. One of our strongest bonds is a true love of the art of the written word.

     It has now become traditional for Pepin to provide me with the best from his literary collection. Upon arrival, my first question is always a somewhat selfish inquiry as to what he has for me from the "Biblioteca Mari de Prestamos" (The Mari Lending Library)? Within a few hours, he will show up with a diverse sampling of titles that will become my literary diet for the next 2 months. It is always a delicious, candy store assortment of the latest in Hispanic writing, but not exclusively. There might also be some older works or non-Hispanic authors as well. It was Pepin who introduced me to Milan Kundera and Jose Saramago, 2 universal geniuses I've written essays about (see essays with their names in the title).

     As most of you know, for the 40 years following the Fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War, Spain was forced to live in the isolated cocoon of Franco's Catholic tyranny. Everything having to do with life in the Spanish state was strictly controlled, including literary output. If you had something to say that the regime did not want to hear, you could either shut up, leave, or be incarcerated. This is something like trying to grow crops without fertilizer, thus yielding a stunted, insipid tasting product (with some rare exceptions). When this state of affairs finally ended in the late 70's, not just from a literary standpoint, but in a broad cultural sense as well (see essay "Spanish Tennis"), Spain's lungs began to breathe freely, its heart began to pump more strongly, its appetite increased and a cultural muscle that had atrophied over 40 years started to work itself back to health.

     No cultural area has more prospered from this change than the written arts. The tree of words planted after Franco's death has continued to grow taller, thicker, and more beautiful as the years have rolled on, so much so that it may have even helped sprout the Hispano-American literary explosion manifested in Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, and many others. But this pales in comparison to what has happened in Spain itself, where putting names to this abundance would only open a Pandora's box too great for these pages to contain.

     Spain's literary boom is entering a new stage. A tidal wave of talented writers who began writing after those culturally shriveled days of "Generalissimo" Franco, are now

arriving to the summit of their creative abilities. They are an impressive array of wordsmiths whose ability to tell a story has been nourished in a much wider world than their parents' generation.

     But this essay isn't really about that. It's about cigarettes.

     I've always envied the intellectual underworld that many consecrated writers have  been nursed in. As mentioned before in my essay "The Art of Sour Grapes", it seems that most people successfully working written language have cut their teeth on either careers in journalism or academic endeavor, where their lives develop in a University setting. Unfortunately, whatever intellect one might attribute to me (and I feel confident enough to at least claim a measure of such beyond "none") has come later in my life, through my own solitary devices, meaning that I never had the thrill of participating in this wonderful world of provocation and ideas.

     Nobody writes a novel without leaving much of one's personal experience on the pages. This wonderful café society of ritual attendance --- bars, clubs, restaurants, etc. --- where the great themes of humanity are discussed, debated, loved and scorned, lived and unlived, eventually makes its way into the literary creations of those who've lived it. It is a world of cheap food, beer and wine, flirtatious pursuit, and yes . cigarettes. It is ironic that such an intellectual environment has been married to such a low brow habit.

     I repeatedly refer to the nicotine habit as the most mediocre vice the Earth has ever known. Other than to placate a nervous sensation caused only by its use, it seems to have no other function. There is no great taste sensation, nor is there any serious diversion from reality. One objectively scrutinizing the world of cigarettes can only come to the conclusion that its primary purpose is to leak money from the smoker's pocket.

     I can't remember the last time I read a contemporary novel by a Spaniard that wasn't strangling in cigarette smoke. So many of the mood setting lagoons are filled with the rites and paraphernalia of the tobacco habit. Hardly a page goes by without someone lighting someone's cigarette, or someone lighting their cigarette, or someone groping for a lighter or crumpled pack of tobacco, or nervously realizing they had just run out, or flicking a butt into the street, or squashing one out in an overflowing ashtray, or proffering one to the girl being pursued (always accepted), or waking up and searching for one, or, or . from cover to cover, the cigarette is always lurking anonymously in the background, as natural a part of the environment as air, water and food.

     From a story telling point of view, I have no problem with this. When one sees the fertility of this café society, the fact that it is linked so closely to the cigarette can be overlooked. Although it grieves me to think that my longed-for opportunity to participate

in this ambiance of literary incubation would have to endure this pea soup fog of the nicotine climate, the literature engendered here begs my forgiveness. If it has created a talented outburst of novelists who feel compelled to garnish their work with this backdrop of tobacco, so be it. It enhances their stories because it's who they are.

     But this story takes a turn for the worse here. The first 2 novels Pepin presented me

with this year were sterling examples from this newly emerging force of post-Franco writers. I've chosen not to mention them or their novels because there is a universal quality to this cigarette use in Spanish literature that I don't want to minimize with individuality. Both novels share a kinship in that their authors are familiar with the United States and have devoted significant segments of the books in question to American scenarios. Quite logically, this included a substantial amount of interaction with American women. The 2 books in question show an even closer kinship in that the women involved were always examples of America's more educated, intellectually developed classes. No waitresses or typists involved.

     And this is where an American like myself, who's antipathy for the tobacco nation is more widely shared in his country, can feel somewhat violated by these books.

     There is very little about Europe that I might compare unfavorably to my homeland. One of these things is their lackluster attempts to inhibit the nicotine habit (though this is beginning to change), something which America has led the charge on. One studying American smoking habits can only come to the conclusion that tobacco use is becoming more and more confined to the lower laminations of gringo society. This trend might even be more pronounced in an educational-intellectual sense than in a rich and poor sense. America's well educated, more so than Spain's well educated, generally don't smoke.

     And that is why, when one of these Spanish writers has American women, women with academic backgrounds and solid middle class credentials, partaking in this tobacco environment as naturally as a Spaniard in a bohemian bar in the "barrio chino" of Barcelona, I feel uneasy, even offended. By taking their tobacco culture and imprinting it on a segment of American society that normally does not immerse itself in this ritual, there is something a bit dishonest and self centered in play. It's something like an American writer portraying an American man in Spain at a drive-thru window waiting for some burgers and fries with his Spanish date.

     For those Spaniards who might think I'm being trivial, I won't object to such in these pages. The books in question are formidable works of literature well worth reading. But for those who might accuse me of being an American puritan, I will not back down. Another universal vice I do not participate in is beer, and yet, if the company is right, I

have no trouble putting myself in this environment. But the nicotine habit is physically aggressive, it lays siege to you, it won't let you be .

     Please, Mr. Spanish writer, when you write your books, if you must take this habit with you to America, don't attribute it to us as well.

Relevant Material: The 2 books in question here are: "La Velocidad de La Luz" (The Speed of Light), by Jose Cercas; and  "El Hijo del Acordeonista" (The Son of the Accordion Player), by Bernardo Atxaga.