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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
‘Nothing works, but it’s all the same. It’s always the same. Like a scratched record, always repeating itself…’
33 Revolutions is a grim and grimy portrait of a post-revolution Cuba from Canek Sánchez Guevara, the grandson of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara, Short, and admittedly a bit thinly told, this novella follows the life of an unnamed office worker through the mundanities of his life as he is disillusioned with the promise of a better society, arguing that the very people the revolution promised to uplift are now those most crushed under a bleak life of monotony. Life is a ‘scratched record,’ he frequently repeats like a refrain, stuck on an endless loop of skips and false starts without the melody of living ever flowing out. ‘Deep down, something is moving, falling apart, breaking up,’ he tells us, and as he watches more people fleeing the island by boat, watches more people disappear or give in to depression, we begin to feel the amalgamation of his woes start to sink the narrator. 33 Revolutions is a bleak investigation of life shriveling up under complacency and poverty.
‘On days like this, his life seems like a vain literary exercise, an experimental poem, a treatise on the pointless and unneccessary,’ writes Guevara. This statement is not unlike the aims of the novel itself, a literary exercise (though I wouldn’t call it vain) to capture the feeling of pointlessness in life. Our narrator goes to work where conditions are poor and the bosses are cruel, goes out drinking where nobody interacts with him and goes wandering to the water where he thinks about how isolated Cuba has become:
The feeling of isolation is stifling for him, and many others. While for him music is an escape (‘For the first time he was able to dream while music played.’) he also sees tha for the most part, the only escape people have as a society at large are drinking and sex:
Guevara also addresses issues of racism, such as a Black man being detained by police while running to catch a bus and told 'a black man running in the dark is always suspicious.' Luckily for our narrator he has a few connections, such as a girlfriend who is a Russian Diplomat, and he begins to plan his escape from the mundanity. But is escape even possible? How many lives are drowned out escaping across the seas as those left behind are drowning in what feels like a capsizing society?
This is a bleak portrait of life in Cuba, one that Guevara believes his grandfather would have seen as well. ‘He never would have approved of what has become of this revolution,’ Guevara said in an interveiw with The Independent, ‘let’s be honest, a young rebel like Fidel Castro in today’s Cuba wouldn’t be sent into exile. He’d be shot.’ Like the narrator, the author found himself disillusioned and left Cuba for Mexico in 1996. Guevara sees the revolution as having just become another form of elitism, with the government officials having all the wealth and the people crushed underfoot and the dreams of a classless society having resorted to a continued wealth disparity and oligarchy. Unfortunately, Guevara passed in 2015 at the age of 40.
33 Revolutions is fairly interesting, though a bit bleak and repetitive. It feels a bit rushed and ends abruptly, and while there are some beautifully poetic passages it also seems a bit clunky. Not unlike a scratched record.
3/5
'The whole country is a scratched record (everything repeats itself: every day is a repetition of the day before, every week, month, year; and from repetition to repetitions, the sound deteriorates until all that is left is a vague, unrecognizable recollection of the original recording—the music disappears, to be replaced by an incomprehensible, gravelly murmur.'
33 Revolutions is a grim and grimy portrait of a post-revolution Cuba from Canek Sánchez Guevara, the grandson of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara, Short, and admittedly a bit thinly told, this novella follows the life of an unnamed office worker through the mundanities of his life as he is disillusioned with the promise of a better society, arguing that the very people the revolution promised to uplift are now those most crushed under a bleak life of monotony. Life is a ‘scratched record,’ he frequently repeats like a refrain, stuck on an endless loop of skips and false starts without the melody of living ever flowing out. ‘Deep down, something is moving, falling apart, breaking up,’ he tells us, and as he watches more people fleeing the island by boat, watches more people disappear or give in to depression, we begin to feel the amalgamation of his woes start to sink the narrator. 33 Revolutions is a bleak investigation of life shriveling up under complacency and poverty.
‘On days like this, his life seems like a vain literary exercise, an experimental poem, a treatise on the pointless and unneccessary,’ writes Guevara. This statement is not unlike the aims of the novel itself, a literary exercise (though I wouldn’t call it vain) to capture the feeling of pointlessness in life. Our narrator goes to work where conditions are poor and the bosses are cruel, goes out drinking where nobody interacts with him and goes wandering to the water where he thinks about how isolated Cuba has become:
‘We win by isolating ourselves, and in isolating ourselves we are defeated, he thinks. The wall is the sea, the screen that protects us and locks us in. There are no borders; those waters are a bulwark and a stockade, a trench and a moat, a barricade and a fence. We resist through isolation. We survive through repetition.’
The feeling of isolation is stifling for him, and many others. While for him music is an escape (‘For the first time he was able to dream while music played.’) he also sees tha for the most part, the only escape people have as a society at large are drinking and sex:
‘The only thing that works here, he thinks, is partying, promiscuity, phallocentricism, an obsession with sex (erotic materialism). The rest is speechmaking to confuse the masses. Sex is the beginning and the end: History as one big fuckfest, he thinks.’
Guevara also addresses issues of racism, such as a Black man being detained by police while running to catch a bus and told 'a black man running in the dark is always suspicious.' Luckily for our narrator he has a few connections, such as a girlfriend who is a Russian Diplomat, and he begins to plan his escape from the mundanity. But is escape even possible? How many lives are drowned out escaping across the seas as those left behind are drowning in what feels like a capsizing society?
This is a bleak portrait of life in Cuba, one that Guevara believes his grandfather would have seen as well. ‘He never would have approved of what has become of this revolution,’ Guevara said in an interveiw with The Independent, ‘let’s be honest, a young rebel like Fidel Castro in today’s Cuba wouldn’t be sent into exile. He’d be shot.’ Like the narrator, the author found himself disillusioned and left Cuba for Mexico in 1996. Guevara sees the revolution as having just become another form of elitism, with the government officials having all the wealth and the people crushed underfoot and the dreams of a classless society having resorted to a continued wealth disparity and oligarchy. Unfortunately, Guevara passed in 2015 at the age of 40.
33 Revolutions is fairly interesting, though a bit bleak and repetitive. It feels a bit rushed and ends abruptly, and while there are some beautifully poetic passages it also seems a bit clunky. Not unlike a scratched record.
3/5
'The whole country is a scratched record (everything repeats itself: every day is a repetition of the day before, every week, month, year; and from repetition to repetitions, the sound deteriorates until all that is left is a vague, unrecognizable recollection of the original recording—the music disappears, to be replaced by an incomprehensible, gravelly murmur.'
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
“We overwinnen als we ons isoleren en door ons te isoleren worden we overwonnen, denkt hij. Er zijn geen grenzen; dat water daar is bastion en prikkeldraad, loopgraaf en greppel, barricade en gevangenis. We houden stand in ons isolement. We overleven in de herhaling.”
Een korte novelle, maar niet minder indrukwekkend dan een dikke pil geweest zou zijn. Canek Sánchez Guevara (kleinzoon van) heeft een fijne, prikkelende schrijfstijl. Deze postuum verschenen novelle (hij is helaas veel te jong overleden) schetst het dagelijks leven van de hedendaagse Cubaan, de beperkingen en uitzichtloosheid ‘als een gekraste plaat’.
Het leven is eentonig, iedere dag herhaalt zich telkens weer op exact dezelfde wijze. We volgen een jonge Cubaan en ontmoeten door hem zijn goede vriend de ex-dikke, de Russin met wie hij het bed deelt en zijn 80-jarige buurvrouw die de roddels en het nieuws via de onofficiële kanalen weet te volgen. Vluchtpogingen worden ondernomen, en je voelt hoe de vlam wordt aangewakkerd. De vrijheid lonkt, kan de keten van de revolutie waar zijn grootvader zo hard voor heeft gevochten, eindelijk doorbroken worden?
“[D]e dag van morgen wordt gebouwd op het fundament van de dag van gisteren en met de arbeidskracht van vandaag.”
Een korte novelle, maar niet minder indrukwekkend dan een dikke pil geweest zou zijn. Canek Sánchez Guevara (kleinzoon van) heeft een fijne, prikkelende schrijfstijl. Deze postuum verschenen novelle (hij is helaas veel te jong overleden) schetst het dagelijks leven van de hedendaagse Cubaan, de beperkingen en uitzichtloosheid ‘als een gekraste plaat’.
Het leven is eentonig, iedere dag herhaalt zich telkens weer op exact dezelfde wijze. We volgen een jonge Cubaan en ontmoeten door hem zijn goede vriend de ex-dikke, de Russin met wie hij het bed deelt en zijn 80-jarige buurvrouw die de roddels en het nieuws via de onofficiële kanalen weet te volgen. Vluchtpogingen worden ondernomen, en je voelt hoe de vlam wordt aangewakkerd. De vrijheid lonkt, kan de keten van de revolutie waar zijn grootvader zo hard voor heeft gevochten, eindelijk doorbroken worden?
“[D]e dag van morgen wordt gebouwd op het fundament van de dag van gisteren en met de arbeidskracht van vandaag.”
Γκρίνια, μιζέρια και εφηβική μαυρίλα.
Δεν συνεχιζω γιατί θα γίνω κακός.
Δεν συνεχιζω γιατί θα γίνω κακός.
fast-paced
Guevara er ikke bange for at overforklare sin metafor - antallet af gange noget bliver beskrevet som en ridset plade er mildest talt anstrengende. For mig var en del af teksten også alt for mandet og explicit i sin omtale af kroppen og dens funktioner. Alt i alt en ret skidt oplevelse, men med en overraskende god slutning.
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If I was more of an intelectual I might've gotten more out of the book, but I'm not.
It was an interesting read, one I'd like to reread again when I'm older and see if I get more out of it.
It was an interesting read, one I'd like to reread again when I'm older and see if I get more out of it.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Canek Sánchez Guevara predicted the exact reaction I'd have to his work: "The novel, on the other hand, grabs him on each page, sinking into the unannounced tragedy of an anonymous, everyday person--so far, so alien, that he ends up feeling close to him."
Obviously there is much of 33 Revolutions which, for me, is a brilliant insight rather than something relatable. I've never lived in under a communist regime (or even in the tropics). Much of it I've heard before, but never in quite this way, and I haven't read a work where the communist nation as a whole so clearly doubles the protagonist's place in the world - "it's this abyss, this isolation, that defines and conditions us. we win by isolating ourselves, and in isolating ourselves we are defeated, he thinks."
That individual level of isolation - if not the national one - is one of the many times when I unexpectedly found myself empathising with the nameless protagonist, compelled to keep reading despite the book's comparative lack of action. His nature (more loner than lonely), his dissatisfaction with the inertia and repetitiveness of his life. He doesn't directly refer to the absurdity or meaninglessness of it all, but that's definitely the sense that comes across. My feelings about my own life (in a decidedly uncommunistic country) mirror the protagonist's in this way, and I think it's something that will be familiar to many people all over the world, in varying degrees. Once again, the author seems to predict this reaction -- the protagonist readily accepts that he would live in more or less the same way, essentially, no matter where in the world he was.
In some ways, this aspect of the book - including the scratched record of the scratched record similes and metaphors - is very reminiscent of Beckett (or maybe Vonnegut). But in the end, this novella is less of a scratched record than it pretends to be. Often, not much happens (beyond waiting for things to happen), but protagonist's musings and memories evoke a sense of eddies and undercurrents even when the surface of the story seems still.
Obviously there is much of 33 Revolutions which, for me, is a brilliant insight rather than something relatable. I've never lived in under a communist regime (or even in the tropics). Much of it I've heard before, but never in quite this way, and I haven't read a work where the communist nation as a whole so clearly doubles the protagonist's place in the world - "it's this abyss, this isolation, that defines and conditions us. we win by isolating ourselves, and in isolating ourselves we are defeated, he thinks."
That individual level of isolation - if not the national one - is one of the many times when I unexpectedly found myself empathising with the nameless protagonist, compelled to keep reading despite the book's comparative lack of action. His nature (more loner than lonely), his dissatisfaction with the inertia and repetitiveness of his life. He doesn't directly refer to the absurdity or meaninglessness of it all, but that's definitely the sense that comes across. My feelings about my own life (in a decidedly uncommunistic country) mirror the protagonist's in this way, and I think it's something that will be familiar to many people all over the world, in varying degrees. Once again, the author seems to predict this reaction -- the protagonist readily accepts that he would live in more or less the same way, essentially, no matter where in the world he was.
In some ways, this aspect of the book - including the scratched record of the scratched record similes and metaphors - is very reminiscent of Beckett (or maybe Vonnegut). But in the end, this novella is less of a scratched record than it pretends to be. Often, not much happens (beyond waiting for things to happen), but protagonist's musings and memories evoke a sense of eddies and undercurrents even when the surface of the story seems still.