We discover the truth about Maqroll the Gaviero in a short story called, Appointment in Bergen. Narrated by Maqroll, it’s the first of three stories that make up Triptych on Sea and Land, last of the novellas in the collection. A Norwegian character named Sverre Jensen kills himself and sends the Gaviero a letter explaining his reasons. Later, another friend says to Maqroll,
‘Go on tossing from place to place like a ship without a pilot. It’s another way of doing what Jensen did.’
‘Yes, it is the same,’ I said…
For all the adventures, and all the wandering, the truth about Maqroll the Gaviero is that he is self-destructive. Why this is so is open to speculation, but his life is essentially about escaping the world.
Old Man Stories
Having read all the stories that make up The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, it occurs to me that they are an old man’s stories. There is nothing wrong with that except for the trap that lies waiting for the teller: Nostalgia, with its pining for “the good old days.”
The stories here don’t suggest there were such days — they would vehemently deny that — but nostalgia’s longing is present.
This is one of the aspects I reacted to negatively as I progressed through the collection. As we go through the novellas, we see (and feel) the accumulating impacts of Maqroll’s adventures and how they affect him, particularly his view of the world. It doesn’t change but it deepens, and it’s dark. There is also a sense of withdrawal from a world that, while never good, used to be more tolerable, presumably because Maqroll was younger.
This nostalgic quality is responsible for, and informs, the feeling of an intellectually and culturally elitist narrator. The key characters he writes of form a coterie that stand apart from the rest of us, eschewing “… the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call ‘the others.’”
We are ‘the others.’
An Upward Struggle
The stories are dark and fatalistic and, perhaps as a consequence, they’re also cynical. The narrator continually makes snarky asides about people and places and after a while they become tiresome. For example, in the that story Appointment in Bergen, the narrator has no fondness for the English, who to him are boorish, and he finds the city of Brighton to be version of hell.
Through all the stories the author as narrator, or the Maqroll character, make asides like this regarding places he’s been to and people he has met. They’re incontrovertible statements delivered from on high.
It may be that they are accurate assessments. I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that after a while I began to find them exasperatingly tedious.
The stories have an upward struggle as a result. They are all fascinating, and the term adventures is well applied, but the adventures are wrapped up in a narrative voice that is often pompous.
In isolation, each story would work fine, I think. The narrative voice wouldn’t have the wearing effect it has when they are read one after another. Read together though, it’s a characteristic that undermines one of the better aspects of the writing, which is the poetic quality the stories have.
Poetic Quality and Structure
Mutis writes beautifully, even lyrically. Some of these stories, such as The Snow of the Admiral, began as poems. Though not included in the collection, there are also Maqroll poems. It is in them that the character was born.
Those poetic origins may be responsible for the structure of the stories, and of the collection as a whole, which is often atypical.
There is nothing rigid to the construction, certainly not in any traditional sense, and many episodes lack clear beginnings and, more significantly, endings. A story is usually framed and made up of several smaller stories, of which one is usually the key. The stories, in isolation and as a collection, come across as having been made up of fragments that, combined and set out by the fictionalized author, Álvaro Mutis, create an image. A man. An enigma that is a life.
They often slowly wind down with reflections on what has occurred, or jump ahead many years in time. Many of the stories, perhaps all, are framed within another, so when the heart of the tale reaches its apogee and denouement, we cut to the framing story and a secondary denouement with a narrator who ruminates on the story he’s just told or heard.
I love the casual structure of these stories that connect internally and externally less by cause and effect than by imagery, tone, and theme. They are filled with pauses in plot progression for asides which are often the most fascinating parts of the stories, and are most effective when not sidetracked by snide commentary.
Often they are rhapsodic descriptions of what the narrator loves, particularly places, women, and food. These portions are where the lyrical quality comes across most strongly, though it sometimes goes overboard.
Flawed Jewel
The stories of Maqroll are wonderfully compelling and if I’m excessively critical of them it’s probably because I like them so much but feel I could have liked them more. They are a jewel with a flaw, and my mind’s eye can’t stop seeing the flaw and feeling that, in seeing it, I’m missing the jewel.
I’ll read The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll again but I’ll wait awhile before doing so. When I do, I’ll read each one individually, maybe one every month or so, and not one after another. I suspect — I hope — the irritant the narrative voice became will be gone. I’ll know enough then not to over-indulge in something so rich.