|
|
||
|
|
Three for the Show by William A. Douglass Within the past several months three books have appeared that deserve special mention. The Basque Book Series of the University of Nevada Press released the work A Deep Blue Memory by Monique Urza. It has received considerable critical acclaim (it has already gone into a second printing) and it is not my purpose to discuss its literary merits. Rather, I would underscore that Ms. Urza is, in fact, novelist Robert Laxalt’s daughter, and her book revisits many of the same places and events that her father describes in his works. The result is a fascinating treatment of the Basque-American experience from a different generational and gendered perspective. Read in tandem, father’s and daughter’s works, in addition to providing a satisfying literary experience of the highest order, provide the reader with a social commentary on “becoming American” that is quite unique within the literature on the nation’s immigrant heritage. The second noteworthy book is also an offering of the University of Nevada Press. Novelist Frank Bergon, himself a native Nevadan of Basque upbringing, has penned a wonderful book called The Temptations of St. Ed and Brother S. Its protagonist, St. Ed, is a Boston-born, part-Basque, catholic monk who founds a monastery in the Nevada desert and is then forced to defend it against critics ranging from his bishop and a Las Vegas talk show host, to the sinister bureaucracy of the Department of Energy bent upon removing a thorn in the side of nuclear testing. The work is alternately hilarious and tragic, serious and ribald. Given its author and protagonist it might have gone into our Basque Book Series but it was decided that it was equally (or more) appropriate for the University of Nevada Press’ Western Literature Series. The third book that shouldn’t be missed is the recently released English translation of European Basque novelist Bernardo Atxaga’s Obabakoak (Viking Press, 1993). The title literally refers to people and things of a mythical Basque town, Obaba. Atxaga is a consummate storyteller and his tales range broadly to a village in Castille, Germany and beyond. At times they assume ethnographic overtones while at others they are mystical and exude elements of contemporary Latin American fiction and the Tales from the Arabian Nights. In the end the reader is drawn back to Obaba and to a startling denouement. Obabakoak was the winner in 1989 of Spain’s most prestigious literary award. It has been translated into several languages and has enjoyed enormous success in various European countries. Don’t miss it. Bernardo Atxaga’s Obabakoak should be available at your local bookstore (or they can order it for you). The following titles may be ordered from the University of Nevada Press, Reno, NV 89557. They are priced as follows: 1. Monique Urza, A Deep Blue Memory $16.95 2. Frank Bergon, The Temptations of St. Ed and Brother S. $18.95 For postage, add $2.50 for first book, .50 for each additional book. |
|
|
|
|
