It came about, in my library home, that at fourteen I discovered what pretentious and humble joy there was in reading the great classics of literature. I started with The Mayor of Casterbridge and never looked back. I read War and Peace at fifteen purely for the prestige of it. I started the Harvard Classics at sixteen, albeit reluctantly, for the same reason. I all but abandoned my old genre of young adult fantasy and focused entirely on the works of such venerable writers as Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde.
Then there was a problem. With the singular exception of Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief, my favorite novels were all by authors no longer even recently living. Suddenly I looked around and realised the only modern authors I knew by name were Cormac McCarthy and A.S. Byatt, and I hadn't read either, nor intended to. Then I looked at the library shelves and saw them stretch from Ackroyd to Zusak with stops for The Kite Runner (which everybody's heard of) and Awaiting Trespass (which nobody has).
Then I turned eighteen and, long story short, decided to embark on a parallel literary journey through the shelves of modern literary fiction, and since I had no burning desire for any of it, I decided on a methodical course of A to Z, with only occasional deviations. The letter A alone consists of 20 books, not all of which I have the desire to read, but that still leaves over 10 before I move along.
So I began in the spring, and not wanting to be frightened off by any ponderous tome, I selected Isabel Allende's Zorro for my first read.
Sadly, I was not entirely happy with it.
So let's talk about Zorro.
When I was a kid, The Mark of Zorro was just about the only black and white film I could sit through. When I re-watched it a few years back, I was disillusioned by Tyrone Power's acting skills and by the almost total absence of the masked avenger. He had, what, two scenes? Most of the time, I was stuck watching an aggravatingly witless fop surrounded by 2-D characters (the highlight being Basil Rathbone). That is not surprising given that Zorro was originally the concept of one Johnston McCulley, a pulp writer who cranked out hundreds of stories under every imaginable pseudonym. Such was the inglorious beginning of the American Robin Hood.
Nowadays, Zorro Productions controls the franchise, and it was due to them that Isabel Allende was contracted for the duty of dreaming up the origins of the character. She's a Zorro fan; I am not. The chemistry was bound to fail, but I hoped a literary author would win me over as Steven "high explosives" Spielberg had not.
What I found inside the pages was every imaginable cliche you could think of. If you want: Indian uprisings, pirates, dastardly villains, Spanish damsels, a secret society of valiant heroes, Indian magic, warrior women, run ins with bandits, gypsies and jail breaks, you'll find it all in this novel. I was amazed by that alone. The only cliche not given credit was the wedding, since Zorro had to be free at the end to continue romancing.
It was a pageturner, it had a tongue-in-cheek quality and the habit of recollection. The tale was recounted, not played out with dialogue. I didn't mind that, though late in the day the authorial intrusions did become somewhat wearisome.
In the end, what I found most annoying in the book was its feminism. It annoyed me greatly that the Spanish sisters Juliana and Isabel were so hemmed in. Juliana (gorgeous) was a fickle nitwit, while Isabel (plain) was a tomboy who secretly learned fencing and tagged along on the swashbuckling adventures. All things considered, both were just plain annoying, Isabel the more so because I have never understood the idea that a "strong female character" to quote one of the blurbs, has to be sassy and swing a sword. (You see a lot of that in fantasy novels, too)
My other grievance was Don Diego de la Vega, as perfect and talented as any superhero. Learns to fence - he's BRILLIANT! Learns to play cards - he's BRILLIANT! Learns acrobatics - he's BRILLIANT! Learns horsemanship - guess what, he's BRILLIANT! Ms. Allende did allow him the shocking inadequacy of being an "abysmal" poet, which made me laugh.
Onwards to the villain, Moncada, petty and mean for the sake of it. I found him of no interest whatsoever, and he was never given any depths or shades of grey.
Onwards to Jean Lafitte the pirate. Don't tax your imaginations here, just imagine Jack Sparrow dressed in black.
The setting, the period details and all the minor characters, from Bernardo to the blind man, were all exceptionally interesting, and it did keep me reading. Generally, I found the middle portion set in Spain, where Diego had nothing to do but be perfect and pine for Juliana, to be the dullest, and the rest of it to be action-packed and enjoyable. I do not mean to be negative, since even the novel's failures were more silly than directly aggravating.
The final questions: have I found new respect for the legend of Zorro? In a manner. What the book taught me is that the great hero is classic pulp and not meant to be taken seriously, that he is always going to be viewed in a tongue-in-cheek way, complete with banter, comic relief and horses that demolish the barns meant to contain them.
Would I read more Isabel Allende? Perhaps. After all, her early works are considered excellent, The House of the Spirits is next door to being a modern classic, and whatever else I've said, Zorro was not badly written.
However, though I will fondly remember sitting on a rock, barefoot in the sun, and turning the pages of the book, there is no more of her work in the household library, and so I've moved on to a summer of Paul Auster.
Paul Auster will be my next blogging article, unless I decide to wax poetic about a film in between....
