Cain

Took a while to get used to the odd stylings, but it clicks in about 1/3 of the way through and turns into a witty, acerbic, entertaining read. Stick with it.

3.5/5.0

Good compilation of tales having Cain as a protagonist, all put together as a single continuous story, and in classic Saramago's fashion, a satirical view of the deeds and personality of the god of the bible is presented in each one.

Why not 4 or 5? The first story of Cain as a wanderer didn't struck me as unnecessary; although entertaining, to me it didn't seem to be as relevant as the other stories, which included more important characters of the bible, who are more well known and can be portrayed and criticized better than a minor (and to many, unknown) character.

Saramago has been among my favorite contemporary authors ever since I became acquainted with his works in 2000. He is a genius in carrying the narrative in unexpected directions, and the way his prose flows seems so effortless it's impossible to comprehend fully the talent involved. And then there's his ability to use the narrator's voice to inject wit and occasional wisdom into the work. In short, his works read well, they're fun and often deeply humane.

At 176 pages Cain is just too long. Saramago's narration has that usual wit (”man doesn't live by bread alone” is a brilliant moment), but most of the time he seems too witty for his own sake, and this becomes apparent as the narrative progresses and the narrative device employed wears itself out. Instead of substance what we seem to get is window-shopping: Saramago ransacks the pages of the Old Testament and points at the obvious things modern readers find laughable, and laughs. I would have yearned for something concentrated, that is, a more rooted and focused story of Cain, which, I think, is inherently tragic. By this I don't mean there couldn't have been any comedy. But now Cain reads like the done-to-death archetypically scornful atheist reading of the Old Testament, which it is, of course, but offering very little else for someone like me who has actually heard these arguments before quite a few times concerning the Old Testament or the Bible in general, be they theological or literary.

In terms of the English language translation, Margaret Jull Costa's works is very beautiful.

Cain calatoreste prin timp si rescrie Vechiul Testament. Dialogurile dintre Cain si Dumnezeu mi-au amintit de cele dintre Jupiter si Oreste din Mustele. Avem, in fapt, un mic manual de antiteologie, mai profund decat cel oferit de Onfray. Mi-ar fi placut ca textul lui Saramago despre Avraam sa fie accesibil lui Kierkegaard si cel despre Iov lui Sestov. De fapt, critica pe care o efectueaza Saramago sacrificiului lui Isaac este mult mai radicala si mai profunda de cat cea operata de Dawkins!

“l-am omorat pe abel pentru ca nu puteam sa te omor pe tine” (32)
“domnul i-a poruncit lui avraam sa-i sacrifice propriul fiu, a facut-o cu desavarsita naturalete, asa cum ceri un pahar cu apa cand iti e sete” (72)
“[avraam], frustratul calau” (75)
“Istoria oamenilor e istoria neintelegilor lor cu dumnezeu, nici el nu ne intelege pe noi, nici noi nu il intelegem pe el.” (81)
“copiii [din sodoma] erau nevinovati” [!!!] (89)
“daca dumnezeu n-are incredere in oamenii care cred in el, atunci nu vad de ce oamenii acestia ar trebui sa se increada in el” (123)
[Citatele sunt dupa editia de la Polirom.]

Having read Cain, these are the things I believe José Saramago liked in life:
1. Appositives
2. Himself

These are the things I believe he hated:
1. The Bible
2. Women
3. Conventions of writing

Cain is the story of cain (note item three in the list of dislikes; Saramago saramago does not capitalize names), son of adam and eve. As is tradition, cain kills his brother abel. It is recorded as the first murder. cain is sent away by god with a mark on his forehead and a promise. saramago stays true to this story but then divulges widely—well, as an example, cain is what you call a time-traveler. It works well enough.

Before I get too deep into this review, let me just state I have no problem whatsoever with saramago's personal beliefs—I wouldn't care if he disagreed with me on every matter, as long as he wrote it well. And sometimes, Cain is written well. The story is interesting—definitely interesting. The dialogue between god and cain is witty. The work as a whole is original. What gets in the way, however, is the writer himself; he seems so hell-bent on proving the absurdity of judeo-christianity that his story becomes lost in his rant. I believe this is a classic example of a writer writing for himself, not for his readers.

saramago's commentary includes a negative view of women. This is in part a criticism of women's role in these biblical stories. And if it stopped there, I wouldn't consider it further. saramago, however, adds his own stories in the mix, call them fantasy pieces where cain gets to fulfill his desires with a cast of women. In the novel, cain plays the role of god's questioner. He hates god and hopes to outsmart him—seemingly, saramago is fond of the character of cain, an idea backed by the author's frequent interruptions to rally behind cain. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that cain is likely representative of the author himself. Despite the urgency of disproving god, however, there seems to be time to stop for girl after girl after girls—and of course none of them can get enough. These fantasies are foreign and only distract from the story.

I have heard much of the brilliance of saramago's [b:Blindness|2526|Blindness|José Saramago|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1161054077s/2526.jpg|3213039], a novel I still intend to read one day. Some who have raved about it have mentioned saramago's lack of conventions—sentences without punctuation, quotes that run into one another without markings, et cetera—a clear allusion to what it is like to be blind. Perhaps. Cain, however, lacks these same standard rules of writing; their absence in Cain certainly doesn't make as much sense. Maybe saramago just didn't like quote marks and periods and paragraphs. He loved a run-on though:

The lord turned on the woman and asked, What is this that you have done, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat, Liar, deceiver, here are no serpents in paradise, Lord, I did not say that there were serpents in paradise, but I did have a dream in which a serpent appeared to me, saying, So god has forbidden you to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, and I said no, that wasn't true, that the only tree whose fruit we could not eat was the one that grows in the middle of paradise, for we would die if we touched it, Serpents can't speak, at most they hiss, said the lord, The serpents in my dream spoke, And may one know what else the serpent said, asked the lord, trying to give the words a mocking tone that ill accorded with the celestial dignity of his robes, The serpent said that... [word count so far: 156; remaining words to end of conversation where period is finally placed: 276]

From the texts which, over the the centuries, have provided a somewhat random record of those remote times, be it of events that might, as some future date, be awarded canonical status and others deemed to be the fruit of apocryphal and irredeemably heretical imaginations, it is not at all clear what kind of tongue was being referred to here, whether the moist, flexible muscle that moves around in the buccal cavity and occasionally outside it too, or the gift of speech, also known as language, that the lord had...

Cain

Cain

Yes, that is the usual formula used to explain what appears to have happened here, the future, we say, and we breath more easily, now that we have placed a label on it, a docket, but, in our opinion, it would be clearer to call it another present, because the land is the same, but has various presents, some are past presents, others are future presents, and that, surely, is simple enough for anyone to understand.