In July, the month in which the sipmac team brings down more idols from their pedestals, they could not miss some writers. It might be true that no one can take away the dancing (dancing as being literary success or sales) from them, but with them we have anyway a couple of issues to fix:
Sam Clemens / Mark Twain: It is quite an experience to read
Tom Sawyer with the innocent eyes of a child, and another one with the eyes of a cynical adult. In a nutshell, Mark Twain did not have any respect for his own characters. I do not mean to
Aunt Polly (even if Mr. Twain mocks his prudishness without any consideration) or the inhabitants of St. Petersburg in general (more straitlaced, impossible), but the protagonists: Twain enjoys the lack of culture and sublimely naive vision that Tom and
Huckleberry Finn with which they embrace the world. Just read the end of “Tom Sawyer” or the part of “Huckleberry Finn” in which he goes to the circus, or worse, the liberation of the slave Jim at the end of the novel.
Let's say that the only revenge he could take Tom was the fact that Clemens, the most unrepentant scoffer of the 19th century, was a spendthrift, forcing the author to keep writing Tom Sawyer sequels.
Ian Fleming: undoubtedly the creation of the “
James Bond” character should grant him a place in the pantheon of letters, even if the critics could not even reluctantly agree. The literary James Bond is much more remarkable than his film counterpart. Still, please never make the big mistake of reading three of his novels one after the other. I started with "Goldfinger" and then went for "Casino Royale". By the time I read "From Russia with Love", I just read the approach of the plot, left the story in the part where Bond arrives in Turkey and then returned to the scene of the Nash monologue. I did not feel I missed anything.
Jorge Ycaza: no doubt his claim to the exploitation of indigenous people in Ecuador in "Huasipungo" is valiant, but although the priest's misdeeds were taken from real life, the book is not without an anticlerical whiff, not to mention other clichés that threaten to turn the novel into a pamphlet. For many readers there is not a problem, and "Ñucanchic Husipungo!" is a battle cry as good as any other, but the work does not surpass the propagandistic tone, especially in the agit-prop reeking final paragraph of the work.
Stephen King: "The Stand" endures the test of time and a thousand-odd pages were absolutely necessary to describe how today's society could crumble and collapse by spreading a deadly plague, and what happens immediately after the epidemic decimates the humanity is engaging, but turning
Randall Flagg again and again as a villain, simply makes you completely lose respect for him, because nobody likes a villain who fails again and again (unless it is a comic book). Flagg is inept. Witness his failure in "
The Eyes of the Dragon", then he appears again in "The Dark Tower"... the thing becomes repetitive and booooring.
Besides, other works by King began to falter over time and do not allow a rereading (Either "Pet Sematary" was mistranslated or it was plain awful from the beginning).
Tom Clancy is a great writer of best sellers, but I have never been thrilled by anything the guy has ever written. I do not remember if I read "Patriot Games" or "
Clear and Present Danger", but it felt at the end like a lot of loose ends remained untied. Anyway, I should concede that the translation may have something to do well.
That's all for now (Cervantes, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, you can rest with easy by now.)
