Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Along the River That Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon by Richard Starks, Miriam Murcutt

2010; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 84; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2010.0182

1945-8134

Susan Smith Nash,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

m > m ci Z m Ci D H < Ci H pj D ci O liberated fromYugoslavia and also struggling todiscover itself. The personal and political are interwoven. At independence, Slovenia suddenly changed from being "the perennially dull and diligent "A" student in a various ly backward and brilliant, barren, and abundant union" to "the poor and dangerous neighbor of a jittery European Union." On emigrating to Slovenia and marrying one of itsbest-known poets, Debeljak lost her status as a successful financial analyst inNew York and became a foreigner with no permanent docu ments and littlepatience with the functionaries who issue them, no knowledge of the Slovenian lan guage, and no understanding of and less appreciation for Slove nian folk wisdom likewearing slip pers indoors or double-diapering babies. Finally, though, as she learns the language and the culture and through motherhood becomes a real participant in the life of the country, Slovenia changes from being the shabby poor relation to the Switzerland of southeastern Europe. So, while Debeljak never loses sight of the complications and suffering of the rest of the for mer Yugoslav republics and the political animosities dating back to and before World War II that still divide Slovenians, there is a happy ending. The book's sections, labeled "Singular," "Dual," and "Plural," reflect the author's growth, but within these divisions Debeljak alters chronology to indicate some of the complexity of the process. Debeljak presents scenes?her firstvisit to Ljubljana, her moth er-in-law's wailing after her son's marriage, for example?showing effects before describing the pro cess by which they occur, perhaps in order to give the reader a sense of the estrangement she felt. But the book's real value is in the details, which create a vivid sense of the appearance and life of Ljubljana and its surroundings. We are told several times that the capital has only three bars?that the literati frequent, anyway?but Debeljak's description of a night at one of them brings it to life. We are shown not only fear and resent ment of the violent and brutal south but also given the songs and half-affectionate stereotyping jokes used in thepast to create and, in the imagination, still maintain a ves tigial sense of Yugoslavia. Debel jak loves the country, but she sees around and sometimes through it. The same can be said of her response to her husband, whose energy and egoism have given him important places in his family and in the country as well as in her life. Initial and well-grounded fears about his capacity for fidelity dis appear when he realizes that he wants to excel at whatever he does, so that what Alexander Pope would call his ruling passion enables him ^Kl^l tomove from Don Juan tohusband to father and to develop both as S?PP person and poet. wp? Considered as a documentary, W??? this book is essential reading for anyone planning a trip to Slove nia. Considered as a memoir, it is an eloquent, sometimes movillSH ing, sometimes funnyportrait of a SHfii woman learning and growing, Robert Murray Davis University of Oklahoma 9b?| Richard Starks & Miriam Murcutt. 8R8 AlongtheRiver ThatFlowsUphill: SS?i? From the Orinoco to the Amazon. 111? London. Haus (Consortium, distr.). 2009. 246 pages. $19.95. isbn 978-1- HB 906598-32-7 In reflecting upon the thousandfB ?lf mile journey they took by boat to explore the Casiquiare River, HB which flows through present-day BSl Colombia and Venezuela to unite BIB the Orinoco and the Amazon river systems,Along theRiver Thai Flows W???? Uphill authors Richard Starks and BBS Miriam Murcutt must confront the BIS inner narratives that have given them a passion for adventure and BBl exploration but which have, at the SRI same time,placed them in danger. BBS As a result, the travel narrative BBl that results is an absorbing review BBl of well-known historical explor- BBS ers whose journals came to define h^H the risk, danger, and discovery BBl involved in Europeans' encoun terwith unfamiliar lands in the BB Americas, Africa, and Asia, and a HB realization that they formwithin BBl them a kind ofmapping of otherBrill ness that became, perhaps unconBill sciously, the driving force behind BlEl thepersistent need topush into the BBl Funded by Geographical, the BBl magazine of the Royal Geographi- HH immiiiiiimmMiiiimiiiiiiiiiimiim 78 i World Literature Today IHhP i, cal Society in London, to travel the 1 lengthof theCasiquiare thatappar i ently defies the laws of nature and 1 flows uphill, Starks and Murcutt i noted other paradoxes. First and [ foremost was the fundamental i hubris of the "adventure travel" , see ker who has been programmed i by a kind of false consciousness , to blind oneself to physical and , 1 political risk.The true risks are not \M i as romantic as theymight appear i 1 in the historical travel narratives: f i the authors are held captive by the j ! FARC, a Colombian narco-trafficking \ i group that has turned to kidnap -\ , ping in order to extort large sums ! 1 of cash. The authors were fortunate : ji i to have a boat moored on the river i 1 and did not have topay the $10,000 i|l i demanded of them. While they ; Ljl ' made theirescape, however, Starks j i recalls all the others who were not / , so lucky and the thousands who "\ 1 are still held captive with little t , hope of escape. 1 The authors also meditate on 1 i how myth and a kind of narrative 1 1 of desire interweave to blur real \ i ity and one's own perceptions. A , case in point are the Yanomami, : ! ostensibly one of the most vio i lent and aggressive peoples on i the planet, who have been exten . \ , sively described by explorers. The 1 authors do not find poison-tipped , arrows. Instead, the Yanomami 1 appear passive and in fairly poor i health, plagued by parasites. 1 While the authors weave in i accounts of historical expeditions, < , they also reflect on the desire to 1 uncover hidden knowledge that : i drives many expeditions. What the ' [ uncomfortable truthmay turn out 1 i to be is thatmany of the puzzles j , which the explorers seek to solve 1 do not have a resolution, and as "; i the mystery of how a river can :| ! flow uphill is solvedby looking at ' * i ? ! thebifurcations of its channels, the sense of indeterminacy is height ened. Discourses of explanation expire in the gaze of a new reader who encounters them and imposes his or her own beliefs and narrative desires. Susan SmithNash University ofOklahoma JorgeVolpi. El insomnio de Bolivar: Cuatro consideraciones intempesti vas sobre Am?rica Latina en el siglo XXI. Barcelona. Debate / Random House Mondadori. 2009. 258 pages. 20.90. ISBN 978-84-8306-862-5 Simon Bolivar as an insomniac. That's the image thatpervades the four sections of JorgeVolpi's new book, El insomnio de Bolivar. His tory tellsus thatat thebeginning of thenineteenth century,Bolivar died without seeing his dream realized. Latin America, after its Indepen dence, had not only failed to unite, but itwas even more fragmented, hostile, and chaotic than ever. Two hundred years later, Mexican writer Volpi returns to the same question that must have kept Bolivar up at night:What does the dream of a united Latin America look like? Is there actually one place called Latin America? Ifso, does itcontain one or various cultures? Beyond theunifying language, what do the inhabitants ofColombia, Mexico, or Peru have in common? Are those countries with existing democrat ic systems reliable? Does a Latin American identityexist?Or iswhat we call "Latin American" only an expression coined by thewriters of theBoom? Volpi's compelling introspec tion made this book possible; he realized that in addition to being Mexican, he was also Latin Ameri can. This somewhat late epiphany happened when he was living in Salamanca, Spain, as a graduate student and inspired him to revis it the history, politics, and Latin American literature from its inde pendence to?in a daring imagina tive exercise?the signing, in the year 2110, of theConstitution of the United States of theAmericas. Volpi concludes the book with littlehope. Democracy now is threatened by "democratic caudi llos," those politicians that,elected by thepopular vote, revive all those shady political practices used by the old caudillos from centuries past, including those of terrible Latin American dictators. Corrup tion, drug trafficking,and popu lism appear to be the new ills that afflict Latin America. Within this context, Volpi points out that this isnot completely negative. The cul ture has liberated itself from the obligation to be "Latin American," especially the writers who, in par ticular, no longer feel the need to express themselves under those terms. Volpi argues that this new generation of writers and intellectu als no longer feelweighed down by the specific realityof theircountries or the continent. "Never has Latin America been less Latin Ameri can," states Volpi. Perhaps the last few decades have brought change; many, but not all, of the character istics that defined Latin America have ceased to exist. Despite bouts of insomnia, Bolivar's sleep might have finally allowed him to shift the shape of his dream. However, this dream no longer seems like something imagined by a character fromOne Hundred Years ofSolitude. By moving beyond magic, Latin America can start facing the reality of this new century. Marcelo Rioseco University ofOklahoma May-June 2010 179 ...