Bel Canto..Letting go

[shadowkat]

Just finished the book Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, which won the Pen Faulkner Award a few years back. The novel takes place in a small South American country - where a bunch of young terrorists take a house full of visiting dignitaries, opera singer, businessman, and the Vice President of the Country, hostage. They'd intended to kidnap the President of this small country and trade him for their relatives being held captive by the government.
But, alas, the President opted out of the gathering because his favorite soap opera was on.

It's a beautifully written novel. One of those books that takes a group of people puts them in an impossible situation and through doing so, reveals new things about human behavior or rather human interaction. The violence in the book takes place towards the end and is not from the terrorists, so much as from the outside world against the terrorists holding the people hostage. Violence only erupts when the world comes crashing in. The book was published ironically enough in 2001.

Here's two interesting passages:

This first is about love. Not romantic love - but love of art or a performance - and it reminds me a great deal of the type of love a fan might feel for a television performer, or movie star.

A man has just conveyed to a famous opera singer that he loved her. He tells her through a long winding personal tale of his youth and love affair with opera. Taken aback by his sentiment. The opera singer more or less tells him she doesn't love him back. He informs her that it is a gift like a necklace or a book that he might give her in addition to it. She tells him that he is too generous with his gifts and that she has nothing to give him in return. This is his reply:

"What a thing to say, after all that you have given me. But it is never about who has given what. That is not the way to think about gifts. This is not business we are conducting. Would I be pleased if you were to say you loved me as well? That what you wanted was to come to Russia and live with the Secretary of Commerce, attend state dinners, drink your coffee in my bed? A beautiful thought, surely, but my wife would not be pleased. When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view."

An odd little speech. Yet says so much. About being a fan of art. Of the desire to share that love with the artist. And about giving. Sometimes I think it is easier to give than it is to receive. After all, when you give, you pour out, you let go, and you are instantly rewarded by that person's response. But when you recieve, you take in, you become full, and you are the one left with the response or the need to respond and the guilt of responding wrongly.

Another interesting passage happens towards the end, which is also about letting go. In this passage, a translator ruminates on difference between learning and forgetting. He has spent his whole life learning languages, learning cultures, but "these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn. He managed to forget that Carmen was a solider in the terrorist organization that had kidnapped him..."

He forgets the trappings, the identifiers.

"It was too much work to remember the things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go."

Interesting. Reminds me again of that self-help book I saw reviewed recently, Traveling Hopefully, where the writer states that there comes a time to throw out the baggage holding you back. But, in Patchett's novel, forgetting comes with a hefty price. I'm not spoiling anything for you - if I tell you that, since Patchett herself tells you within the first ten pages of her novel, that the terrorists will not make it out alive. Yet, yet - Patchett also proposes that maybe the price is worth it.

Currently taping all four hours of Farscape - so can't unwind in front of Farscape tapes tonight or TV in general. Since can't tape one show and watch another at the same time and do not want to spoil myself. So..I'm being good and not watching while I tape. Hard. Very hard. This mini-series - from the trailers and bits and pieces I've seen? Looks amazingly good. May be the best sci-fantasy thing to show up on television in years.

Back seems to be better tonight. Stomach is also better. For some bizarre reason these ailments plague me on the weekends, not during the week. Hmmm.
Eating plan may require some alterring. (ie. no more mallomars or chocolat).
And maybe a few more long walks?