An architect erects a building in the confidence that it is almost a monument, a work of art that will make it transcend, go down in history. But structural failures, aesthetic misunderstandings or popular jokes make him the laughing stock of the society to which he offered the architectural tribute. There is no need for his failure to result in human lives, the defeat is enormous. In some cases, it even involves the suicide of the creator, as occurred with the mythical death of Francesco Borromini – he dropped his body on a sword – after building the church of San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane, in Rome. The Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck dedicates her first foray into prose to these failed projects. Mortal Jumps, who puts himself in the mirror to reflect on his own way of being in life and art. The question would be whether the failure of creation is a symbol of a failed life. And the response is: “Any claim to produce a masterpiece is absolutely arrogant, but the opposite seems even more inconceivable. From what point are we willing to admit our mediocrity? Mediocrity is crueler than mere failure. “There is a certain greatness in failure.”
Another featured book this week is The afternoon Bobby didn’t come down to play, in which Mayra Montero connects a pair of love stories that serve to explain pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba: on the one hand, that of a mysterious Cuban of Polish origin with Bobby Fischer’s mother in 1956, a couple of years before the fall of Fulgencio Batista; On the other hand, already in 1966, during the XVI World Chess Olympiad, in Havana, Miriam – actually, the author herself – with the chess player, when they were 14 and 23 years old, respectively.
Other books reviewed by Babelia experts are Be mine, by Richard Ford, who brings us back to his endearing character Frank Bascombe (who came to life in 1986 in the renowned novel The sports journalist) and who is embarking on a farewell trip with his adult son who is sick with ALS; An immense blue, in which Patrik Svensson delves into the lives of a handful of explorers in love with the seas treated like characters in a novel; and What is happening to us, by Moisés Naim, which compiles the columns of the Venezuelan journalist and writer, in which he addresses everything from the climate emergency to the crisis of democracies.
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