Reviews

Paşii pierduţi by Alejo Carpentier

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

adimitri's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

shoshin's review against another edition

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

The prose is beautiful, but I can't say it's a good book. Misogynist, "myth of the noble savage" colonialism with a hefty dose of protagonist and writer alike apparently not realizing what a terrible person the protagonist is throughout the story. (Probably because it's semi-autobiographical.) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Body horror

aldwynreads's review against another edition

4.0

I don't remember the details now, but I remember it really moving me, and reading the finale as a storm was rumbling in over the Congo River.

lurchio2509's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

leelulah's review against another edition

1.0

I didn't like this book at all. Some structures were okay in relation to the prose, but it's a nauseous piece of work, hailed for being more than it is. It has an incredible amount of intertextuality, which apparently, makes you smart among postmodernists.

Spoiler

Imagine a guy who thinks he's a great composer but instead he's perpetually doing nothing and failing to provide for his wife, 'cause at the core, he's a libertine. But, since she's an actress and he can never see her -and if they do, they only have sex-, I guess cheating on her is okay, that's his logic. Similarly, when he leaves Europe for Venezuela in search of the origin of music, which he never really finds, he goes away with her wild-yet-too-European french lover, which he'll abandon by a local woman, whom he cannot see outside "feminine activities such as washing clothes" (because apparently his mother didn't teach him how to do it), and looks down upon for considering her "primitive". When his Fench lover finds out this double cheating, turns out that she "shouldn't get upset".

At this, his wife initiates an international search, but he only goes back to Europe to tell her with an appalling calmness, that he's getting divorced. "Yeah, I've been away from months and I have given no sign of life, but yeah, we're getting divorced".

Following his logic, he's absolutely blameless. And for all his uncaring attitude towards pornography, he sure spends a lot of time analyzing women's bodies.

Also there is this really disturbing scene where a man with leprosy rips a 9 year old girl's genitals and then we have him killed, because "yeah, justice".

Fantastic.

sonicdonutflour's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25

This book sucked. Another dude tired of capitalist living goes on a jungle adventure where he lives his white, misogynist, fantasy idea of what indigenous existence is like. Good writing but the premise is cringy. 

versfobia's review against another edition

5.0

Simplemente hermoso.

atala's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring slow-paced

3.0

jimmylorunning's review against another edition

5.0

These were the days for the accumulation of humus, the rotting and decay of the fallen leaves, in keeping with the law decreeing that all generation shall take place in the neighborhood of excretion, that organs of generation shall be intertwined with those of urination, and that all that is born shall come into the world enveloped in mucus, serum, and blood--just as out of manure comes the purity of the asparagus and the green of mint. p. 229

This was my first exposure to Carpentier and I was immediately struck by the quality of his sentences. He writes a dense sentence, almost wild in its serpentine way, easy to get lost in. It feels a bit like you're in a jungle and the words are vines climbing up your leg. This became especially effective in chapter four, when our protagonist actually enters the jungle... the prose achieved a sort of ultimate mirroring of its content.

One felt the presence of rampant fauna, of the primeval slime, of the green fermentation beneath the dark waters, which gave off a sour reek like a mud of vinegar and carrion, over whose oily surface moved insects made to walk on the water: chinch-bugs, white fleas, high-jointed flies, tiny mosquitoes that were hardly more than shimmering dots in the green light, for the green, shot through by an occasional ray of sun, was so intense that the light as it filtered through the leaves had the color of moss dyed the hue of the swamp-bottoms as it sought the roots of the plants. p. 161

Though his prose was thrilling, it was also a little exhausting because it never lets up. At times, when I was really tuned in to what he was saying, it was like crawling into the dense undergrowth and feeling completely at home. But other times, when my attention was flagging after a long day, I could hardly concentrate on the complex workings of what he was saying. I had to read sentences over and over, as if grasping for a downed limb.

Because here, amidst the multitude that surrounded me and rushed madly and submissively, I saw many faces and few destinies. And this was because, behind these faces, every deep desire, every act of revolt, every impulse was hobbled by fear. Fear of rebuke, of time, of the news of the collectivity that multiplied its forms of slavery. There was fear of one's own body, of the sanctions and pointing fingers of publicity; there was fear of the womb that opens to the seed, fear of the fruits and of the water; fear of the calendar, fear of the law, fear of slogans, fear of mistakes, fear of the sealed envelope, fear of what might happen.

The adventure story itself was exciting, but as you probably know by now, plot alone doesn't do it for me. So what else interested me? First: the narrator, aside from the immense prose he writes, is also psychologically a very interesting dude. To me, he lies somewhere in between the unreliable narrator and the reliable one. You can see his pitfalls miles before they come, and perhaps he can too, but he is so good at convincing himself and you, piling illusion atop illusion. But these aren't crazy illusions, they are common ones, about civilization, nature, modernity vs. primitivity, art etc.

What I really found attractive about him was that he was so... malleable, but also so strong inside. At times he seemed normal, not like a typical 'crazy' unreliable narrator with unpredictable moodswings. He is actually quite consistent and sane, but open to being changed by the world, and always struggling to reach a place of well-being, though often in vain. He can be despicable at times, and selfish and unfair, and though he doesn't see these aspects in himself, I think the author intended for them to be apparent to the reader. I don't think Carpentier was painting the narrator to be an example to be followed above judgement, but rather as an example of the futility of our condition in the world--how we can't go back to a simpler state, and how we cannot stay here either in the time of the 'galley master'.

The thought invariably struck me that the only difference between my previous birthday and this one was the extra candle on the cake, which tasted like the last one... But to evade this, in the world that was my lot, was as impossible as trying to revive today certain epics of heroes or saints. We had fallen upon the era of the Wasp-Man, the No-Man, when souls were no longer sold to the Devil, but to the Bookkeeper or the Galley Master. p. 9

The second thing about this story is that, even though it's straight forward, it is full of asides, tangents, and opportunities for our narrator to muse about this topic or that. These I found highly entertaining and often insightful, and always perfectly phrased. I wouldn't have enjoyed the direct route as much as the one provided here, with all the views and vistas of his mind.

Overhead, into the thinning mist, rose the peaks of the city: the patinaless spires of the Christian churches, the dome of the Green Orthodox church, the large hospital where White Eminences officiated beneath classical entablatures designed by those architects who, early in the century, sought to lose their way in an increase of verticality. p. 10