Having just clicked on 7 random peoples blogs and found not one response on the last half of The President (and i thought i was leaving it a bit late)... Ive given up for tonite.... and i SHANT be getting up early to respond tomorrow morning either. Have to try again tomorrow evening. 

Last half of The President

Just finished the book. It really started to draw me in for the second half. I wrote last time about being frustrated by the intricacies and use of 'poetic' language, which did persist throughout the book, but i read the second half essentially without putting it down. Several things really struck me:

First: I don't find myself easily offended by material i read or watch- ive never met a show with nudity, violence, and adult material that I felt glad to have been warned about. But... this book at times made me feel like I shouldn't be reading it. I had been slightly lagging during my last post, and hadn't read the whorehouse chapter yet. Nor, obviously, had i read the latter accounts of the people in prison... most notably the imprisonment of Angel Face himself... or rather "prisoner no.17". I found myself, when reading the accounts of the torture visited upon the various people... moved? scared? disgusted? disturbed? Maybe all of the above, to a greater or lesser extent. While it undoubtedly adds to the book... aiding it to its Nobel-Prize place in literature... i found it at times to be plainly unpleasant. Given a choice i wouldn't have continued reading, because why would i knowingly subject myself to material that i find unpleasant? --- When i started this paragraph that was all i intended to say on the matter, but just now something has struck me that seems worth putting in: I wanted to put down the book... to escape from the reality this book put forward. I could do that. And im just READING about this stuff. For the people who lived, and live today in regimes like this... I guess i can see why this book is thought to be so powerful. 

Second: A continuation on the theme of escape for the people. Something that began in the first chapters and certainly continued was the rampant alcoholism throughout the population... and especially those charged with doing the dirty deeds. The jury was drunk at Carvajal's trial, and gave him the death penalty. The executioners and guards were drunk at the time... The President gets raving-drunk when he meet with Angel Face... I believe people can be evil. There are some people who aren't victims of circumstance or influence... they are simply, inexcusably evil. But these people are few. And certainly the number of people doing bad things to each other in this "fictional" city/state is too great for them to all be evil. I would guess there is a part in most of them that knows what they are doing is wrong, but is done to keep them as secure as they can be... at least for the moment. The booze must be the only way they can live with themselves... 

In closing, I've revised my initial assessment... I do like this book better then Facundo, perhaps for the same reason that disturbing accounts on the news, unpleasant as they may be, do more to stimulate thought than a 4 hour documentary on Argentine geography. If it bleeds it leads, to borrow a phrase. This book was unpleasant at times, but now i'm sitting here thinking about a group of people who i never would have bothered with before, even if they are "fictional."