Saramago José - The Notebook

Praise for The Notebook

The Notebook reveal[s] an often sharp, sometimes mischievous, engagement with the world, whether skewering George W. Bush as a liar emeritus or the cruel absurdity of the Gaza blockade Such shafts of sanity and humour will be missed. Maya Jaggi, Guardian

Saramago enjoys picking up a passing thought or an incident and running with it, confident in his political outrage, calm in his appreciation of friends, considered in his aphoristic criticism of culture. Iain Finlayson, The Times of London

The Notebook is a cogent, stimulating and timely book. Thomas Wright, Independent on Sunday

His range of interests and capacity for indignation [are] remarkable and admirable. Allan Massie, The Scotsman

Cogent, deft and brisk the deeper you delve a broad, humane political philosophy begins to emerge. Chris Dolan, Glasgow Sunday Herald

The world is poorer without Saramago, but these notes are a testament to his energy; and his homages to the young will now read as a passing on of the torch. Tom Payne, Daily Telegraph

Saramagos enthusiasm is irresistible and his commendations are acute. Toby Lichtig, Times Literary Supplement

[T]he writing here reflects the wondrous integrity of his previous books... The genuine novelist is still vividly present, as he was throughout his life. Los Angeles Times

Provocative miscellany of occasional pieces. ngel Gurra-Quintana, Financial Times

Beautifully crafted and honest, Saramagos notebook is elegant in tone and style while clearly conveying a legends take on our evolving society. Publishers Weekly

Given that most blogs that make it to print seem to involve someone sharing too much information about their sex lives, theres something refreshing about Saramago taking the form to a more elevated plain, crafting aperus on all manner of subjects. Metro

The book presents an intelligent twist on the blogs-turned-books phenomenon, proving that the two mediums are compatible beyond social curios and cultural gimmicks The Notebook is a unique glimpse into the candid ruminations of one of the most talented living writers. Flavorwire

The Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jos Saramago was a novelist, playwright and journalist. His numerous books, including the bestselling All the Names, Blindness, and The Cave, have been translated into more than forty languages and have established him as one of the worlds most influential writers. He died in June 2010.

JOS SARAMAGO

Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn

Funded by the Direco-Geral do Livro e das Bibliotecas / Portugal.

English-language edition first published by Verso 2010
This updated paperback edition published by Verso 2011
Verso 2010

First published as O Caderno Jos Saramago &
Editorial Caminho, SA, Lisbon 20082010
by arrangement with Literarishe Agentur Mertin Inh.
Nicole Witt e. K., Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Translation Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn 2010

Foreword translation Shaun Whiteside

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-801-3

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in Sweden by ScandBook AB, Smedjebacken 2011

This book is dedicated to my collaborators at the Jos Saramago Foundation, and in particular to Srgio Letria and Javier Muoz. They are the ones who wait night after night, in Lisbon and Lanzarote, sometimes till late, for me to send them my short pieces of writing. They are the ones who, one leaf at a time, have collected a volume I never imagined would be this extensive. They are the craftsmen of my blog.

There is no need for this book to be dedicated to Pilar, because it has belonged to her ever since the day she said to me, Heres a job for you. Write a blog.

by Umberto Eco

An odd character, this Saramago. Hes eighty-seven and (he says) he has a few infirmities. Hes won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a distinction that would allow him to stop producing anything at all, because hes entering the pantheon anyway (the very stingy Harold Bloom called him the most gifted writer alive in the world today and one of the last titans of an expiring literary genre). And here he is keeping a blog in which he takes a pop at more or less everyone, attracting broadsides and brickbats from many a quarternot, in most cases, because he says things that shouldnt be said, but because he doesnt mince his words. And perhaps he actually infuriates readers on purpose.

Are we talking about the same person? This man who is so careful with punctuation that he makes it disappear altogether, who, when dishing out moral and social criticism in his fiction, never tackles a problem head-on, but poetically sidesteps it in the styles of the fantastical and the allegorical, so that his reader (suspecting that de te fabula narratur) has to invest something of himself in the fable. Is this the same Saramago whoas in the novel Blindnesssends the reader off in a milky mist in which not even proper names, with which he is relatively frugal, provide clearly recognizable signposts, who in Seeing makes a political statement through the casting of enigmatic blank ballots?

And this fantastical and metaphorical writer nonchalantly comes along and pronounces on George W. Bush as a man who with his mediocre intelligence, abysmal ignorance, confused communications skills, and constant succumbing to the irresistible temptation of pure nonsense, has presented himself to humanity in the grotesque pose of a cowboy who has inherited the world and mistaken it for a herd of cattle, a man who might be a badly programmed robot that constantly confuses and switches around the messages it carries inside it a compulsive liar a liar emeritus the high priest of all the other liars who have surrounded him, applauded him, and served him over the past few years. And this delicate weaver of parables is similarly candid when describing the proprietor of a publishing house that publishes him. And this manifest atheist, for whom God is the silence of the universe and man the cry that gives meaning to that silence, puts God on stage just to ask him what he thinks of Ratzinger. And, as a militant Communist (tenaciously, still), he starts shouting at an interviewer that the left has no fucking idea of the world its living in and, when his outburst is published, complains that he never had a response from the left. (What was he expecting? An expulsion or a denunciation at the very least, I suppose.) And he risks being accused of anti-Semitism when criticizing Israeli government politics, simply forgetting, in his heartfelt involvement in the misfortunes of Palestine, to consideras balanced analysis requiresthat some people deny Israels right to exist. But no one reflects that when Saramago speaks of Israel he is thinking of Yahweh, a ferocious and bitter God, and in this sense he is no more anti-Semitic than he is anti-Aryan or certainly anti-Christian, given that in the case of every religion he is trying to settle his own scores with Godwho plainly, call him what you might, gets on Saramagos nerves. And having God get on your nerves is clearly a reason for furious rage against everyone who uses the Almighty as a shield.