The Morality Of Literature

Too Many Sparrows In Zaragoza is a novel full of thought, provocation and questions. We are a curious playful species, and what more productive games could we play than with our beliefs and opinions. Literature is better equipped than any other art form to force us into these playful, relevant questions. Fiction has changed history before. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged lead to the creation of the Tea Party and Ron Paul. The Iliad inspired Alexander the Great to conquer the world. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe inspired a wave of copycat suicides. Charles Dickens' Christmas Carols invented Christmas as we know it today!

The power of fiction is embedded in our species and cannot be underestimated. Writers, film-makers, playwrights should keep in mind what kind of influence they wish to exert on their readers/audience. I won't claim that Too Many Sparrows In Zaragoza is in the same league as the above classics, however I do hope that it will influence its readers, however slightly.

It might tempt them to visit Spain, or Zaragoza. It might make them look at postcards and souvenirs in a new way. It might make them want to try something new. It might make it re-evaluate their friendships.

But I suppose these are superficialities. Here follow a series of quotes from the novel that ask more searing questions.

Was Zaragoza that important to him, or did he cherish his image of Zaragoza more?

“So what is Malta like then? Luis says it’s not very modern.”

Tell me what is your greatest fantasy?

Let me ask you this, then, what excites you?

I didn’t really care about the history of religion, politics, conflict; but wasn’t being surrounded by splendour and richness of any kind our goal in life?

Are you sure it’s your job that’s boring, not you?

Don’t analyse something you taste, just taste it, you know?

Not the theatre of the stage, that was just a veneer. But as social animals aren’t we forced into drama?

I was curious about Jaime especially; could a man in his late twenties really not do any work at all?

“You’re intelligent enough to adapt to anywhere, if there are no physical barriers holding you back, like money, then what’s to stop you?”

It was an appealing idea, who knows what those gigantic continents would be like today without European interference?

“That’s a bit risky, when has a country ever benefited from being colonized?”

“But isn’t it a source of pride to be governed by your own countrymen, to have your own Republic?”

“Don’t you think that there could be some cultures that wouldn’t mix well together?”

Women with shopping bags, men armed with suits and suitcases on their way to work, old women waiting at the crossings, teenagers walking by on their mobile phones looking up only to take a peek
at the fliers in the shop windows . . . where was my place in all this?

The Proust Questionnaire - for Luis Ramon Ortega Y Hernandez

For my first blog in this page that aims to promote not only my novel but the ideas and questions it deals with, I am making Luis - the enigmatic main character - undertake a Proust Questionnaire. This enigmatic questionnaire, favourite of intellectuals and writers, wasn't actually invented by Marcel Proust. But he was once asked to take part in it and the name stuck to him. His replies were simultaneously insightful and whimsical (to the first question - What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? - he replied: "being seperated from mama.").A brief background of Luis before we start. He is the host of Nadi, the narrator of the story, who has been living in Zaragoza after emigrating from Malta. He works there as a journalist, which he enjoys and loathes depending on his moods. He is a free-thinker with a joy for life. His eccentricities range from giving titles to his rooms in his flat, and carrying toy animals to dinner. Is he mentally imbalanced or merely utterly indifferent to social customs? What's the difference? His real name is Marco, but when he arrived in Zaragoza he changed his name to the more Spanish (albeit pronounced in a French way) Luis Ramon Ortega Y Hernandez. He named himself after one of his idols (and fellow Zaragozan) Luis Bunuel.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To live in a society without freedom. North Korea, Stalinist Russia, take your pick. To have the imagination so restricted would drive me to suicide. Uniformity scares me, imposed uniformity suffocates me.

Where would you like to live?
Somewhere replete with platforms of all kinds. I've thought about leaving Zaragoza before, to live somewhere closer to nature and her infinite possibilities  But the lack of social contact and the threat of obscurity puts me off everytime. Zaragoza will do wonderfully for now.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
I don't know what you mean by 'earthly' happiness - what else is there? But I suppose it would be to enjoy simplicity with a living intellect.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Anything to be found in a souvenir shop. I know most people would call them tacky and kitsch - but I don't see anymore excitement in buying a book than buying a postcard. A postcard is a book waiting to be written, in living words. Nothing against books of course, they are wonderful tools for opening one's mind.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Anyone from a Bunuel film. Particularly Archibaldo de la Cruz. The serial killer that never actually kills. But I love how Bunuel imbues him with such creativity and details in planning. I'd like to think I plan my imagined life with the same attention to detail.

Who are your favorite characters in history?
All historical characters are to be admired. The fact that we're still talking about them now proves they have merited immortality. I am quite an admirer of Nelson, however. All admirals, really. To have the sea at your very command, and to travel at the edge of a musket, decked out in those wonderful navy-blue coats, sounds a dream to me.

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Housewives. Those women who have the courage to fight against the trends of the modern career woman to choose instead a life of freedom, decorating, and nurturing. What wonderful human values! Don't be political and think 'how conservative', or politically correct 'how sexist'. I am free and enlightened enough to choose to be conservative and sexist if I please.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
The Virgin of Pilar. I have never seen such beauty as that of the Icon of the Pilar in Zaragoza's Basilica. I don't believe in heaven but I believe we have the power to create it. And the artists that created Her, have succeeded in creating heavenly beauty.

Your favorite painter?
Vincent Van Gogh - for making the night sky that greets me on my way home from work into an eternal Starry Night.

Your favorite musician?
The unheard-of Amazonian playing his flute on the banks of the Amazon, with howler monkeys and exotic parrots as his only backing.

The quality you most admire in a man?
Indifference.

The quality you most admire in a woman?
Indifference.

Your favorite virtue?
Subjectivity. To know that everything is know what it is, but what the individual makes it out to be. This is as true for a building as for morality.

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one?
Professionalism. What bull! It serves to do what only Kim Jong Il could do better - putting us all in uniforms.

Your proudest achievement?
Emigrating. I think it was quite a leap of logic for me to realize that to be a true patriot one must leave the green green grass of home. I love Malta more now that I have left it. Look at it this way, in a country full of geniuses, the individual genius is merit-less. In a country full of average men and women the genius is truly a genius.It works the same for space.

Your favorite occupation?
Drinking in countries and times I have never been to. Nor ever will.

Who would you have liked to be?
A writer. Someone who could artfully reproduce in words what one artfully lives out.

Your most marked characteristic?
Arrogance.

What do you most value in your friends?
Introducing me to new platforms, and being loyal in helping me carrying out my own fantasies.

What is your principal defect?
Living in the clouds. I'd call this a defect simply because nature can never be as vivid in my imagination as it is in real life. And sometimes I miss her.

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Something like locked-in syndrome. To have a fruitful, creative mind, but being deprived of a body with which to carry out those fantasies. I tremble at the thought. In such situations euthanasia would be the only salvation.

What would you like to be?
An architect. Someone like Gaudi who can make those that experience their building travel into a new world.

What is your favorite color?
Blue. It is a very expansive colour, no?What is your favorite flower? The Liana. That most beautiful of flower that releases its seeds on floating parachutes. What a creative way to propagate life.

What is your favorite bird?
Any bird of prey. All birds are animals with tremendous freedom none of us can ever imagine. But birds of prey have eyes that physicists now think are at the limit of perfection. How grand.

What word or expression do you most overuse?
Platforms. Not that there’s any harm in it.

Who are your favorite poets?
Those whose life is richer than their verse. Federico Garcia Lorca. Luis de Gongora. Pablo Neruda. Vicente Huidobro. Yes all these are Spanish-speaking, but there is no more poetic a language than Spanish, you see.

What are your favorite names?
Luis. Lolita. Horatio. Socrates. Federico. Angel. Serafim. All those poetic names that elicit their natural birthplace.

What is it you most dislike?
Ignorance. How can you fuel the fires of the imagination without the natural oil life is so full of? To choose consciously to not open your mind – that is a living death. You might as well have not been born.

Which historical figures do you most despise?
Politicians.

Which contemporary figures do you most despise?
Politicians.

Which events in military history do you most admire?
The storming of Samarkand by Genghis Khan. There is something romantic about a horde of cavalry conquering one of the world’s most eminent cities. It’s nature and civilisation violently colliding. Don’t let anyone tell you Genghis Khan was a barbarian. He was a creator of myths.

Which natural gift would you most like to possess?
The ability to put up with people more. If I decide – which I usually do within a few seconds of meeting someone – that a person is flat and uninspiring, they become mere white noise to me. As non-existent as a snail’s consciousness.

How would you like to die?
In a bullfight. I’m not a bullfighter, which I guess would make it easier for the bull to kill me! But I want my corpse to be taken out of the bullring, still dressed in the suit of light, aloft on admiring shoulders. A triumphant way to go. Why couldn’t Jesus do that?

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
It doesn’t match up with what I think it to be. It’s too human. Why can’t I look at the mirror and see a bird of paradise. That would be more in line with my thoughts of myself.

What is your motto?
Make dreams out of your surroundings in order to submit surroundings to your dreams.