Borro!

I have to get it out of my system.  Zorro sucks! It's repetitive and boring! There's almost no dialogue! The historical bits are worse than inaccurate, they're just offensive, racist, and dumb.

I keep reading out of a strange desire to know if the "beef jerky" subplot will come to fruition. See, Zorro's dad is like the mayor or something, and he spends lots of time in his beef jerky laboratory trying to figure out how to invent "salted dried meat" for people to use on long journeys. He's trying to perfect the recipe to make it tasty and spicy. And then it gets mentioned again when Zorro's on the ship going to Panama - he thinks "if only there were something like salted dried meat  for sailors to eat!"  WTF...  A few pages later the sailors are actually eating some beef jerky (called by that name.)  So I'm really hoping now to hit the Stupid Jackpot and that part of the story's climax will be the invention of pepper jerky.    Number one stupid thing is that it wasn't like people didn't know how to make travel food. Salt was expensive! It got huge taxes on it because it was so useful for preserving food! No one in the book mentions this.. it's just like salt comes from nowhere.

I can't hold back on the "Indians" either. I'm no expert anthropologist or historian but... the book talks like there is one kind of  Indian on the California Coast from Los Angeles to Monterey. And they all speak the same language. No. Oh, and our Imaginary Indians have ceremonial kivus like Hopi or Pueblo people did, and do flesh-hook initiation rites which I think was a thing of the northern plains, and ... they're constantly being childlike, primitive, mysterious, wise, naturally skilled at bonding with animals or whatever, dumb (literally unable to speak) and acting on instinct. Oh, and loyal to their masters.  Except when they're rebelling and attacking, which they do for no real reason other than not understanding how great the missions are. Also, they can cure anything with herbs.

Yeah whatever... annoying...

Any actual book from that time is about a million times more interesting.

Here I am on the bit about Zorro and the gypsy woman in Spain (p. 151-152) Which is where I screamed out loud and restrained myself from throwing the book across the room. I think a few quotes are in order, with fisking:

"In the following months, Diego, whose blood was boiling with the pent-up desires of his seventeen years, found relief in Amalia's bosom.

[I guess they liked titty fucking? With ... blood?]

They met at tremendous risk. By making love with a gadje she was violating a basic taboo, for which she could pay dearly. She had been a virgin when she married, the custom among the women of her people, and she had been faithful to her husband till the day he died. ...

[I guess that is an attempt to make her sound complicated... or just for it to be somehow okay that she be a huge slut with a 17 year old. After all, she was virtuous all the *rest* of the time! So it's really okay!]

Lives were lived in full view of the clan. Amalia did not have time or a place to be alone, but occasionally she was able to meet Diego in some quiet alleyway: there she would take him in her arms, always with the insufferable fear of being caught.

[So, let's get this clear - they have sex in a quiet alleyway?

Also: Insufferable fear? Sounds like she suffered it.]

Amalia did not entangle Diego with romantic demands...

[Porno fantasy woman with no needs, no demands, as well as no actual desire.]

[stuff about living with her husband in the communal tent and how their affection did not have any raptures of passion] ... [ her husband is killed] ...

As Amalia told Diego, she had had a good life. She knew that Ramon, whole again, was waiting for her somewhere, miraculously recuperated from his martyrdom.

[Cussing her out for cuckolding his ghost? Or praising her generosity? Hmmm!]

When she had seen his body, mutilated by the hoes and spades of his murderers, the flame that lighted her within had gone out, and she had never again given a thought to sensual pleasure or the consolation of an embrace.

[That's nice. We established above that her marriage was passionless and raptureless. Now she's even more un-sexual. While being perfectly willing to have sex with any random guy just becasue he seems like he might be "bursting with need" or whatever.  One wants to turn the page and read "And then Diego accidentally discovered oral sex and hand-cranked vibrators and Amalia had 20 million orgasms in a row and decided passion was nice after all and she fucked whoever she wanted AND enjoyed it for the rest of her life. The end.]

She had decided to invite Diego to her wagon out of simple friendship, and when she saw how on edge he was for want of a woman, it had occurred to her to help him; that was the extent of it... she was not motivated by lust, only generosity.

[Because lust would be bad.

Now she has a wagon, not a communal tent, and seems to have time and space to be alone with this total stranger.

Did we notice that she has been completely faithful to her husband all her life and all virginal beforehand? Yet when she meets a man that "needs" to have sex she's like "Oh! Let me help you, sweetie!"  And it's the very first time she's ever met one of those? Not likely that years went by before some guy acted like wanted to have sex. ]

A bashful partner, she made love in the dark, without taking off her clothes.

[Are they in the alleyway? or in her 'wagon'? or in the communal tent? Where?] 

Sometimes she quietly wept.

[That's what whores with hearts of gold always do. Men, if you are fucking some woman and she bursts into tears, you should assume it is because she is overwhelmed with the intensity of her own generosity, and because she senses your need. Soothe away their tears and keep fucking.]

... with her he [Diego] learned to decipher some of the hidden mysteries of a woman's feminine heart.

[Oh wait! that's why she was crying.  The hidden mysteries of a woman's feminine heart!  Or wait, no. Maybe they did some dissections and anatomical studies together. I can see them in the wagon alleyway, heads bent over the dissecting table, the smell of formaldehyde in the air, learning about aortas.]

Despite the severe sexual norms of her tradition, Amalia, moved by unselfish sympathy, might have done Bernardo the same favor if he had given her so much as a hint, but he never did...

[See above, about her noticing the needs of men and being Ms. Helpy. She is totally chaste! I swear ! But she would generously, with unselfish sympathy, blow Bernardo (Diego's Indian servant and milk-brother) in the dark mysteries of the communal tent. It's the first time! Or it's because Diego and Bernardo are unusually hot-blooded. Their need is strong!]

The stereotypes and cliches don't even make sense. That's only about .01% of why this book is chapping my hide at the moment!  It's like a grotesque, sort of twee mashup of The Three Musketeers, without the good parts, the bits of "magical realism" that most suck, and a 2nd grade non-fiction book about the history of California.

How can this be a best seller? What dreck!  I'm know I'm being mean, but it bugs me that people act like they worship Allende's writing. She's really cool and nice and I'm happy she makes money, but this book is Wrongy McWrong.

technorati tags:books, allende, zorro, bad writing, sexism, snark

Comments

[TW]

Giggle! I think I want to read the whole thing with badger commentary all the way through now.

[laura Q]

is it possible that the stuff about "she was just doing it out of kindness" is the author telling us how she tells it to herself, and we're supposed to know / question that?

[badgerbag]

In case it wasn't clear - the quotes above were all one paragraph - it's not like I skimmed through the book looking for them.

*eyeroll*

I'm still stunned by how bad and boring it was. I love long, boring, GOOD books very much, too. If only...

It reminds me of hearing a somewhat inept little kid tell you about the "dream" they made up, or recounting the entire plot of a movie, it was so boring. Or the expositions in Balzac novels, which are okay if they are only like 5 pages... "In the town of N--- there lived a young seamstress by the name of Mme. T----, a very beautiful and charming girl who blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and who liked best of all to go skiing in the wintertime with her beloved pet poodle, F---, who was given to her as a present by her long-lost uncle, the former Mayor of the neighboring town." Or something. But for the whole length of the book! Arrrgh! Was that the irony of it all? Is her writing always like that?

[badgerbag]

LQ: I suppose vaguely, but it's so arch that it was invisible to me and there is never a differentiating stance. The whole book runs along like that.

Besides: beef jerky....

[lori]

This is Isabel Allende? She is sooo FUCKING precious. Even when she is writing a cookbook, for God's sake.

[Jo]

Eh, whatever. I liked it!

[oursin]

how to invent "salted dried meat" for people to use on long journeys

I think he should be talking to the Generic Indians about their Sekkrit Traditional Recipes for Pemmican...

I assume something bad, probably involving honour killing, is going to happen in connection with the gypsy woman.