Why we love women by Mircea Cărtărescu
Romanian fiction
Orignal title – De ce iubim femeile
Translator – Alistair Ian Blyth
Source – personal copy
Another visit to Romania and I decided to read one from a writer that has in the last few years been a leading name for the Nobel winner. He is a writer I had wanted to try for a while so here is the first of a few books I hope to read from him in the coming year or two I have blinding on my kindle and will be getting Nostaglia which is due out next month from Penguin and his huge Solenoid which is due at some point from DeeVelp vellum in the US this seemed a great intro a collection of short stories around women he has known and other women, they were orignally published in a series in a Magazine in Romania. He grew up in ROmania but like many writers in his generation he was forced to move to France. This collection came in 2008.
The girl was npt just beautiful, she was the tangible images of Beauty itself. I can’t say whether she was merely an aesthetic object, wholly devoid of psychology, of whether, on the contrary, she was pure, a projection of the facinated gazes of those around her. Looking at her, I understood whey the call it ” captivating beauty”: we were all her captives, as if waiting for cruel sacrifice at any moment, one by one. Nevertheless, shyness and innocence were her only powers.
from the first story the Little African women. a vision of beauty he had seen in america in a white sari.
The collection starts with him remembering an attractive Afircan lady in a white sari he said he had never been with any one of another colour but laments this fact. this is a collection of memories with a thjin veil on the whole to make them fiction and in fact in parts he talks abou thow the women in some of these tales were actually the role models for some of his own shprt stories he wrote after meeting them. So D was Gina in a later story from charater tics like the rather large girl he meet gthat had the annoying habit of saying my ears are pinned back ever so often. Else where he remembers a drunken night in Ireland as he was on a tour with two poets who didn’t really get on. I laughed when he said abpout talking in his Iowa English at one point I thought how many other writers from around the world had a similar accent. Also him ordering an Irish coffee not quite knowing it what it was then he talks aboput a Jewish girl and links it to a frank Zappa song the last story is the title tale a ode to what makes women so loveable in his eyes.
At the time, my ind was not quite as innocent as you might imagine. On the poutskirts of Belfast, we had stopped off at a pub, where I had ordered an Irish coffee. Back then (it was in 93) I had no idea what Irishcoffee was. I just wanted to try something local, given that it was my first time in the land of the Druids, Guinness and Joyce. They brought a large cognac glass brimming with hot coffee and two chocolate mint wafers in little dark green envelopes on a saucer. When I got up from the table I realised, to my disbeliefm tjat I could not walk straight. For, in Ireland, the “Coffee” contain more whiskey than coffee, And so it was that at it grew dark ancd the towns and villages flew past, my state of confusion was amplified
Drunken on a very Irish coffee made me smile !
I’m not sure if this is the best intro to him it seems this is more of a memoir or auto fiction as he is a writer that has been compared to Thomas Pynchon. Even so I liked the view into his pife and the travel he had done and those women he has met or seen over the years at points there is maybe a feeling that he couldn’t get away with some of the stories and titles now but the time he is remembering is twenty years ago. I brought this as it was a short work by him and for me as a reader I will be reading him again no matter if his other works are different this maybe is one of those to start with later but it has let me know where some of the characters in his other works have come from it is also as a piece of auto fiction into a male view of the world insightful he does notice the femlaes around him and remembers them. So it would be hard to say on this as from all I’ve read it is a different collection to his other works if he is a worthy nobel winner lets see what I think of his other books in a month or two when I get to them. Have you read anything by him are you like me eager to get to Solenoid considered his best book when it comes out ?