Soy Un Escritor Frustrado

Soy Un Escritor Frustrado


Aren’t we all frustrated writers? Everyone has frustrations with the written word, some more than others. Some people have problems filling up the space on the back of a postcard while I’m sure that even the most successful writers have their complaints. You don’t even want to get me started on my personal battle with words. I can’t even figure out how to get out of this paragraph except to say that I am a frustrated writer is a great title for a novel. I wish that I had thought of it first.

I was looking for something to read as my most recent novel in Spanish was almost entirely tedious and a fairly epic struggle against an excess of adjectives, lack of story, and even less in the way of insights. Since I’m on a budget I first looked through the bargain bin and only saw one prospect, El colonel no tiene quien le escriba by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have already read that short novel and I was really looking for a contemporary Spanish writer. Soy un escritor frustrado, by José Ángel Mañas, caught me with the title. At 5€ it was in my price range, and I easily read the first page so it was linguistically feasible.

It is odd to me why some books are so easy for me to read in Spanish while others may as well be written in Italian, a language I’ve never studied. I wrote down every word that I needed to look up in this novel and the total came to something like 75. For a 220 page novel that isn’t too bad. I wonder if there will ever be a time when I have no need for a Spanish/English dictionary? If that time ever comes it won’t be soon.

This was the first novel I have read since I arrived in Spain that wasn’t like a tough homework assignment. It read the whole thing is two days, which is a long time to read a 220 page novel in English but in Spanish is is blazing. Besides being so proud of myself just because I was able to read the thing, Soy un escritor frustrado is a good novel. Its humor is about as dark as it gets while still being able to see the words on the page. Without this humor the story would have been pretty hard to stomach at times and by using humor the author was able to take the reader deeper and deeper into the abyss. The reader is overcome with the Stockholm Syndrome in which the kidnapped become enamored with their captors.

The book was made into the French film, Imposture which I have not seen. If the film fails to capture the brilliant humor of the novel it is probably pretty terrible. I would stick with the book. I will reread this book now that I have looked up all of the vocabulary. This helps me to retain the new words and idioms. Besides being highly entertained, I learned a lot from this novel about modern Spanish speech (as opposed to Latin American Spanish).

I doubt that there is a bookstore open on Sunday so tomorrow I want to get one of the new histories of the Spanish Civil War that I see so many people reading right now. I only am familiar with the broad strokes of the war so along with the Spanish lesson I’ll fill in one of the gaps in my knowledge of history.

I picked up a diccionario junior or a kid’s dictionary at the Sunday flea market in the stadium parking lot near where I live. It was 1.50€ and I think it will turn out to be a gold mine of a learning tool. It is illustrated which really helps in learning new objects. I have always had a weakness for dictionaries. Here in Spain I have several: Spanish, Spanish/English, French/English, Portuguese/English, Arabic/English, plus my new kiddie dictionary.