Any literary effort by David Slavitt is a complicated business for a reviewer. The complexity arises not immediately from the work itself, but from the prolific nature of Slavitt. To date, he is the author of 13 works of fiction, 14 books of poetry or translation, two books of nonfiction, at least eight pseudonymous novels, to say nothing of a steady stream of reviews and essays.

Unlike Anthony Burgess, with his A Clockwork Orange, or Vladimir Nabokov, with his LoZita, Slavitt has yet to write that one single work about which all the other books and writing can orbit. The result is that each new book has to be approached on its own, and it almost seems that the reviewer needs to recapitulate Slavitt’s career in order to get at this one book. I am sure, one day, there will be someone who will make the connections, tie up the loose ends, and package up Mr. Slavitt. I cannot do that here.

Salazar Blinks concerns itself with modern Portugal just after longtime strongman Antonio Salazar suffers a paralyzing stroke. Because of the length of his rule and the need for some sort of continuity, the actual government of the day allowed the paralyzed Salazar to preside over a mock government. In the novel Salazar is watched and protected by his housekeeper, Dona Maria, who interprets his eye blinks when questions are posed to him by his sham ministers.

The book is narrated by a poet, Carlos. It seems at one time Carlos was a poet of talent and promise. Over the years he was compromised, and he is now a figure of fun. He stages mock radio broadcasts and serves as the announcer for shows that have an audience of one: Salazar.

The narrator is the major problem of the novel. Carlos is extremely unsympathetic. When the narrator of the novel is a poet, the risks of boredom and pretense are high. Slavitt has concerned himself with the figure of the poet before and has, in a witty and likable novel. Anagrams, allowed himself far more scope to explore the role of a poet (or, better, the lack of a role for poetry in American society). However, his use of the poet in Salazar Blinks. As less successful. (Or did I miss something? Is the whole novel a sendup of poets who think they do actually have some role, some place, in democratic or totalitarian societies?)

Novels based on “real” events also bring out the fact-checker and the historical-comparer in me, and I note in what is a book narrated by a poet there is no mention of the one internationally known Portuguese poet of this century, Fernando Pessoa. Further, it is interesting to compare Slavitt’s version of the 1930’s in Portugal:

There was a literacy rate of thirty-five percent—if you believe the government figures. Cut that in half for a more realistic estimate. No terrific base for all those fine democratic institutions. I mean what he [Salazar] was running was essentially a joke country.

with that of Albert Jay Nock, who actually was in Portugal in the 1930’s:

I am greatly impressed by the number and quality of the bookshops in Lisbon. They are an interesting and an encouraging sight. The whole population of Portugal is less than New York City’s and I hear that 70 percent of it is illiterate, which, if so, makes the reading public very small. It is astonishing to estimate, roughly, the number of bookstores that New York, or any city, would have if they stood in the same proportion to the number of people who are able to read. The literate Portuguese, moreover, seems able to manage French and Spanish as well as his own tongue, for the shops carry a large stock in both languages. . . . One sees a considerable blessing in illiteracy when one remarks the utter absence of signboards along the roadside. They hardly exist in Portugal; one may drive a hundred miles without seeing one. I do not think it would be unfair to say that the only advantage of our general literacy is that it enables people to read advertisements.

Despite my reservations, Salazar Blinks is still better than 95 percent of the novels published this year in the United States. I also recommend Slavitt’s Anagrams, Rochelle or Virtue Rewarded, ABCD, or his masterful translation of Ovid’s Tristia.

McGonigle_Review

[Salazar Blinks, by David Slavitt (New York: Atheneum) 159 pp., $16.95]