A CONFUSED REVIEW OF SEA OF EDEN BY ANDRES IBANEZ

 A CONFUSED REVIEW OF SEA OF EDEN BY ANDRES IBANEZ

 

If this novel were to be made into a movie, the last scene would have to be R18 – or maybe not. The mother-to-be who envelopes the father-to-be between her thighs, the place he thinks is heaven and paradise in one. It’s the most torturous love story ever told. In an attempt to reflect the crazy world around us, Ibanez leads us by the nose across a vast landscape that is an island, an island like planet earth, cut off from a universe that is and isn’t us. Like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle – unfortunately not featured in the novel – we, like electrons, cannot be sure where we are, where we are not. Are the great mystics charlatans or are they the real thing? Is Anton Bruckner one? For Ibanez aka Juan, the man, there is only one tripartite solution: music, numbers and women - the latter best presented naked. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society of England) or SRIA feature as one of the main factions on the island, with one Abraham Lewellyn at the helm – the current Supreme Magi is suitably named Anthony W. Llewellyn – makes life for the newly crashed castaways hell on earth only to redeem themselves in the end by letting everyone get off the island. The ruse of having a Boeing 747 crash-land on the beach of an unknown Pacific Island is pretty absurd, especially invoking a Polynesian tribe that goes there to practice cannibalistic rituals – a somewhat primitive, racist Eurocentric idea from the 19^th century. Equally absurd are the Latin-American styled ‘guerrillas’ whose Stalinist leader, in the name of absolute equality amongst the comrades, screws the women of his choice while everyone else has the right to screw everyone they like. Juan and his band of civilised castaways who are their prisoners for a while, note with great distaste that fornication and defecation occur in the same location. What a put-own! One can only guess what Ibanez’ political affinations are. We do of course learn towards the end what the ideal is: the White University, where meditation rules supreme, in an effort to find the real self that is love incarnated, tantric sex meditation included. The academic subjects listed sound a bit like up-to-date summaries from Wikipedia and I was first excited to read that Linguistics is a very important one, only to be disappointed that only ‘structuralism’ was mentioned in passing, a somewhat outmoded concept. The paradisical environment of the university, the ‘Eden’ of the title of the novel, matched only by the perfect-in-every-way residents, is of course a nice idea that has been explored in literature many times, and as such sounds a bit tired in its apparent futility. Since the castaways are an example of the flawed nature of people, what with the Swiss Kunze billionaire attempting a right-wing takeover versus all the liberals, the obvious question is what the point is to describe the human condition in such mystical terms, in a sometimes-bizarre mix of magic realism and outright nonsense. The main love story in its Iberian context is a refreshing one for jaded Anglo-Saxon readers, even in an English translation that occasionally goes overboard with exotic vocabulary like enticing bodies described as ‘svelte’. Love as a long torturous up-hill journey – literally up the mountains – what with misunderstandings and separation, ending in a ‘happy end’ sounds a bit like a Hollywood blockbuster but is quite original in its execution. Cristina, the love interest par excellence, is the kind of woman whose pursuit of spiritual enlightenment and sexual laissez-faire can drive any man insane unless he is prepared, like our hero Juan, to try and match her spiritual heights that amongst other things reveal the female body as a temple dedicate to beauty and art. Ibanez is clever in juxtaposing this state of affairs with that of his hero’s musical hero, Anton  Bruckner who it is said was quite a simpleton in terms of his catholic spirituality and his rather pathetic attempts to enlist a virgin as his wife. How can such a man compose such great music? Ibanez as a musician of note, or so we read in the biographical notes, lets fly with incredible details that only a true-blue musician could appreciate. For example he cites the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No.3 in which a particular chord, D flat, B flat, G, F, a dominant ninth, is said to have a ‘sweetness‘ and ‘mystery’ that never fails to ‘enchant’. Having a budding pianist in my house at the time of writing this – practising Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor (Op.3 No 2) - I asked him to play it for me and then expand on his verdict in this matter. He said it was an interesting chord but nothing to go to town with. Bruckner like Wagner were of course the favourite composers of the least likely music aficionado, Adolf Hitler, and while one cannot blame Bruckner or Wagner for such an unfortunate fan base, I cannot help but feel a bit uneasy about Ibanez’ glorification of Bruckner. 

 

Many of the supporting actors like Wade, the all-American lad with a history that goes on and on over many pages, adding weight to the 617 pages, all seem to confirm the suspicion that the good old US of A is still the best place to be, at least compared to Spain, Switzerland, India and Mexico – the latter featuring the Narcos who send out drugged, naked women into the desert to be hunted and killed like animals. European artists and intellectuals often seem to have a fascination with the US of A, as the land of unlimited, individualistic opportunity, not stifled by social democratic ideas like social welfare, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and a pervasive type of catholic puritanism that denies individual choices. In the USA there are of course also extremes of puritanism but at the same time there has always been a sense of very liberal attitudes to sex, possibly in the tradition of Afro-American culture, or more cynically because sex sells. Ibanez can only dream about finding enlightenment between the thighs of a woman but maybe it is a realistic choice for some Americans. Not that Ibanez explores any of these points I raise here, for he is not interested in any political or social analysis in the European tradition. There is also the sense that jaded Europeans are very selective about their art and music while Americans acknowledge that they are lacking in this department, and as such welcome any European eccentric who wants to study and play Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony ad nauseam, providing a generous stipend and the real opportunity to make it big. Given that Latin-American Spanish literature (and in English translation) has a substantial presence in the US, a true-blue Spaniard like Ibanez can climb the literature billboard and be invited by the likes of Oprah Winfrey. Variously described as a ‘genius’ by literary critics, I wouldn’t jump on the band wagon, especially as these days in popular, hyperbolic culture everyone who sells something or someone is a genius. Still, Sea of Eden is a compelling read even if sometimes a bit too heavy on the weird type of hyper-magic realism – juxtaposed by some merely violent realism. Happily, for the two main protagonists, in the end true love conquers all. For everyone else out of love, it’s rather confusing.