A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site

the complete review - fiction

The Blind Rider

by
Juan Goytisolo

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

A- : powerful reflective personal work

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "El autor se mueve con gran libertad en los confines del relato, el ensayo, la remembranza personal o el ensueño, en una síntesis que funde algunos de los motivos y escenarios presentes en su obra con la perspectiva de un personaje que acaba de experimentar el "crudo rigor" de la viudedad y se reconoce súbitamente vulnerable (...) En este sentido, el testimonio literario contenido en Telón de boca, mezcla de elegía y meditatio mortis, es sobresaliente por la economía de medios puestos en juego, por la difícil sencillez del discurso, por la sobriedad en la confesión de estados íntimos y por la capacidad para seleccionar algunos hechos minúsculos del pasado para sintetizar lo más significativo de una historia sentimental" - Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural
  
  
• "Nicht einmal die Melancholie bleibt längere Zeit bei ihm. Sie streift ihn lediglich in nur kurzen Bildern aus seinem früheren Leben, die sogleich wieder von anderen Fragmenten verdrängt werden. Mit all diesen punktuellen Erinnerungen ist eine Sinngebung seines Lebens unmöglich. Er irrt wie ein Blinder durch die Vielzahl der Fragmente aus seinem bisherigen Leben" - Walter Haubrich, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "The protagonist of this fictional memoir never expected to outlive his wife, and the loss of her overwhelming vitality has led to a shrinking of his world. And yet there are ambiguities in his memory. (...) For all the angry rejection of any facile humanism, however, there is never any doubt that the protagonist opposes all forms of tyranny." - Adam Feinstein, The Guardian
  
  
• "Yet this haunting meditation on love, time and mortality (in Peter Bush's translation) moves beyond memoir. A dream-like last trip to the Atlas mountains blurs the edges of life and death." - Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
  
  
• "Goytisolo ist ein empfindsamer, ein genauer Erzähler mit ausgesprochener Abneigung gegen gestanzte Phrasen. Umso bedauerlicher, dass er sich hier so unbekümmert den abgedroschenen Phrasen des Atheismus hingibt, eines Atheismus, der sein provokantes Potenzial längst verloren und auch sonst viel Erhellendes nicht mehr zu sagen hat." - Kersten Knipp, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  
  
• "(H)is book is neither an easy nor a comforting read. The reader must work out for himself the message, girding his loins to tackle what will be, Goytisolo says, his last book." - Raymond Carr, The Spectator
  
  
• "Though somewhat hermetic, Telón de boca is nevertheless a thought-provoking study of loss and of a disillusionment which defies words." - Ryan Prout, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "It is in these measured digressions that Goytisolo is at his most powerful. (...) Goytisolo is no stranger to the tirade; but it is when he is at his most wrathful, most Lear-like, that The Blind Rider loses its way." - Toby Lichtig, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       The dates of composition given at the end of The Blind Rider -- November, 1996 to August, 2002 -- give some indication of how much went into this slim novel. Goytisolo's wife, Gallimard editor Monique Lange, passed away in October 1996, and The Blind Rider is clearly the product of his prolonged effort at coming to terms with her death, which led him also to reflect on his own life and work. It is a novel of restlessness -- "He hadn't slept for months", it begins --, frustration, and, especially, anger -- the anger of the impotent, of how small and helpless we are when facing time, history, and fate, regardless of our efforts.
       The narrator clearly is getting on in years and worries that he doesn't have much time left -- and hence much opportunity to affect change. But then regardless of what one does and accomplishes:

Time was a blind rider nobody could unsaddle. As he galloped, he ravaged all that seemed enduring, transformed landscapes, reduced dreams to ashes.

The book of his life lacked a plot: there were only fragments of pages, loose or ill-fitting pieces, outlines of a possible theme.

He wanted to be neither model nor statue. His attempt to avoid any acceptable definition or morality responded to that wish. His writing left no trails, erased all traces: he wasn't the sum total of his books, but what was subtracted from them. Only the release contract was missing and that would be along soon.

Literature united and distilled the essence of two childhood passions -- history and geography -- in a unique arena. Escape was possible without taking a step.

You who imagine me blissfully surrounded by my angels and devotees, don't realise it's only the deeds of ill-doers which amuse me. No perversity is alien to me.

- M.A.Orthofer, 25 November 2011

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• Goytisolo speaks - Goytisolo introduces his work in Le Monde diplomatique
• Suhrkamp publicity page

• The Barcelona Review
• The Compulsive Reader
• Deutschlandfunk (German)
• Deutschlandradio (German)
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• The Guardian
• The Independent (scroll down for review)
• Letras Libres (Spanish)
• The Modern Novel
• Neue Zürcher Zeitung (German)
• Sandammeer (German)
• shigekuni
• El síndrome Chéjov (Spanish)
• Starting Over
• The Stinging Fly

• The complete review's Juan Goytisolo page
• Interview in Review of Contemporary Fiction (originally in Texas Quarterly)
• Portrait in The Guardian

• Fiction:
  • A Cock-Eyed Comedy
  • Exiled from Almost Everywhere
  • The Garden of Secrets
  • Landscapes after the Battle
  • Makbara
  • The Marx Family Saga
  • Quarantine
  • State of Siege
• Non-fiction:
  • Forbidden Territory (Memoirs 1931-1957)
  • Realms of Strife (Memoirs 1957-1982)
  • Landscapes of War
  • Space in Motion

• See Index of Spanish literature under review

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       Spanish author Juan Goytisolo (1931-2017) lived in voluntary exile since 1956, mainly in Paris and Morocco. He is the author of numerous highly regarded novels.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2011-2021 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links