I’ve written a lot about these stories by Álvaro Mutis, the Columbian poet and creator of the character Maqroll the Gaviero. What I’ve been reading is a collection of seven novellas titled, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. I don’t know why I’ve written so much.
I also don’t know why I’ve always had a fascination with reading these stories. Many years ago, probably 1992, I had the first book of Maqroll in hardcover. It had just been published in English, translated by Edith Grossman, and was titled, Maqroll: Three Novellas. A few years later (1995) a second volume was published: The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas.
Eventually both books were combined as The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (2002). I only recently got that softcover book. At 700 pages of quite small print, it took a while but I’ve finally made my way through all the novellas, scribbling and posting about what I’ve read as I went along.
It’s a bit misleading to call what I’ve written ‘reviews’ or, more pretentiously, ‘critical assessments.’ What all my words actually document are my perceptions of the stories, my questions, and certain thematic ideas — literary, social, cultural — that I’ve been trying to find a way to understand and articulate.
In other words, what I’ve written has as much to do with me as a reader as it does with the stories themselves. They don’t necessarily reflect what another reader might find in the book.
Intrigued and Puzzled
I think that what I’ve been intrigued by, and have been puzzling over, is masculinity as it’s reflected in the stories. I find that more than anything, these stories are singularly male as far as how they see the world. They’re generational as well — my father’s generation and, to some degree, my own because, at my age, I’m half in that one and half in today’s, which has been redefined by feminism and the voices of gay culture.
The stories are filled with adventures and attitudes that are particularly male and of an earlier generation, though not exclusively. They are also filled with a patriarchal pomposity, which if you read any of what I’ve written you’ll find I chafe against. I go on about this a lot in the introductory piece, Hostage of the Void. There’s almost a ‘boys club’ quality to the stories.
As I wrote about the individual novellas, progressing through them one after another, I found something in them changing. If the collection reflects the sequence in which they were written, as I suspect it does, then Mutis’ vision of Maqroll changes, though it remains rooted in the character as originally conceived.
Maqroll is an expression of a fatalistic machismo. As we read through the novellas, they take us closer to what is at the heart of Maqroll; the truth of him. The collection has an inevitable conclusion, one we realize has been clear from the start. However, it also has a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Note:
There is a lot of repetition in the pieces below and likely a number of contradictions. I’ve just been writing; not editing. These will probably change to some degree when I can wrap my head around them as a whole. For now, they are posted as is. Warts and all, as they say.