Has anyone read Leonard's "Cuba Libre"? I have on my "to buy"
list and
was wondering what sort of priority I should give it.
Bird's eye comment on the assigned reading:
Since I had read the book not long ago, there were no plot
surprises so
I concentrated exclusively on how Willeford builds his
characters. He
seems to view the American male as a desolate,
empty-at-the-core,
fearful, and innocently cruel being who survives by talking
the talk,
bragging, and keeping up appearances and who is often
stretched too
tight and snaps. There are similarities between Figueras and
the
protagonist of "The Woman Chaser". As a New Yorker cartoon
said once,
these guys are "haunted by potential". The anxiety of the
insecure male
trying to make it seems to be a typical American phenomenon.
It must be
old - Thorstein Veblen talks about it in his classic (1899)
"Theory of
the Leisure Class". From the first page (on this re-reading)
I could
sense that Figueras's ambitions smelled bad, that they
were
disproportionate to the man himself. In a sense, Figueras is
an
automaton, guided only by his ambition and a very restricted
form of
reason. His cheating by trying to paint the thing himself
when there was
no Debierue to be had is done with no hesitation.
More later,
MT
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