Mientras la tierra gira.
Gerling, David Ross
Jose Luis Sampedro's latest collection of short stories spans
approximately a half-century of writing (1945-91) and relates events in
the lives of ordinary people "as the world turns"
("mientras la tierra gira"). Sampedro obviously took the title
for his book from that of the famous American television soap opera (1956 to the present) in order to point out that stories about everyday
people and things can be extraordinarily fascinating. Although the
subject matter may be commonplace, however, Sampedro's writing is
anything but ordinary. As anyone who has read him knows, Sampedro's
literary style makes us feel that we are listening to a master
storyteller rather than reading a book.
Some of the early stories in the collection that have Castilla la
Vieja--or, as the new map of Spain calls it, Castilla-Leon--as their
setting ("El agostero," for example) evoke the same love of
the land as Antonio Machado's poems, and when Sampedro shifts to an
urban setting such as Madrid (in "Un dia feliz"), we have the
very best of nuevo costumbrismo. The pieces from the intermediate period
(1950-70) tend to be epigrammatic and didactic ("Sabiduria
sufi"), and while they have a central focus, they lack the elements
of crescendo and surprise ending usually associated with a good short
story.
The latter third of the collection is as good as if not better than
most of the fiction that is being published in Spain today. The spectrum
of plots ranges from the nostalgically humorous "Ebenezer,"
about the author-protagonist's years as a visiting professor at
Bryn Mawr, to the sarcastic "La Mortitecnia, industria de
Occidente," about funeral-home rip-offs. In between are a couple of
salacious stories infused with a joyfulness and playfulness that is
woefully lacking in much of contemporary erotic literature. "Divino
divan," whose title might best be translated as "The
Autobiography of a Sofa," is a good example of the author's
erotica, which springs from a nonpuritanical tradition where sex is more
a wonderful natural girl than a legacy of original sin. The sofa's
monologue takes us through some one hundred years of history, from the
moment of its inception in an obscure carpentry shop to its present
status in the London Wax Museum, where it is part of the display
depicting the psychoanalysis of a reclining Fraulein Anna O. by Dr.
Freud. When Sampedro lies down next to Anna and gently caresses her wax
thigh, the sofa begins to talk and tells him to forget his fantasy and
to listen to the stories of the real people whose bodies it has had the
pleasure of feeling before ending up in the wax museum. Considering the
sofa's first-person narration together with the variety of
ambiences and amas and amos it has known and served, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that this piece is a truly unique offshoot of the
picaresque novel.
Sampedro's carefully prepared tales, some spicier than others,
but always intellectually delicious, will delight the epicurean reader
and the student of contemporary Spanish literature alike.
David Ross Gerling Sam Houston State University
