Ybarra's memoir is witty, suave, funny, and and just plain good--his father was Venezuelan, his mother Bostonian, and the family shuttled between these worlds round the end of the 19th century, so the book is well worth one's time, especially if you're interested in people who are equally at home in one culture and another, which ususally means that you miss one when you're in the other or viceversa, and even more so if you are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to be one of these people. Or if you're not. Young Man of Caracas will appeal to you even if you are a staunch monoculturalist. Witness Ybarra's Anglo grandfather's amazement at Venezuelan communication:
He was much struck by the exhuberant rhetoric dished out by Venezuelans to one another & to foreigners, especially in official correspondence.
"Their main idea," he confided to Aunt Jane, "is to tell polite alsehoods in words of six syllables."
And here's Ybarra's father's ambivalence:
Always he looked upon the circumambient Latinity of my early years with the cold eyes of a codfish.
Ybarra mentions the Tovar family, which I had always assumed to be German, since during my stay in Caracas we'd often visit La Colonia Tovar, a kind of little Germany renowned for bread & jam &
schnitzel & sausages. But so anyway.
More quotes:
If she rallied him too much he would retaliate by casually putting on a slipper of hers--for he had the small feet characteristic of Spaniards & their descendents.
*
In accordance with Venezuelan custom, some red wine was fed to that turkey on the night before his doomsday--a treatment supposed by Venezuelans to make the meat tender. By the fascinated eyes of my sister, my brothers, and myself, the big bird reeled around our yard, dead drunk, amid an extraordinary succession of hiccuping noises.
[This treament was also prevalent in Colombia: one of my mother's old cookbooks, a legacy from my grandmother, suggests as the first step in turkey preparation that one get the durkey good and drunk.]
She was very low and begged me to promise her to have her veins cut when she died, and make sure she was not buried alive. I did.
*
There were plows and coffee machinery. There were bottles of whisky and other American-made liquors, in a big class case (kept securely locked). And typewriters. And office furniture. And stationery. And jewelry. And assorted machinery posd artistically along the colonnades of the big interior patio, which the deceased Englishman had provided for his handsome residence. The most impressive and exhibit of all was an enormous and lugubrious coffin, which had been entrusted to us by the National Casket Company. It dominated everything around it so heavily that it gave the main exhibition room of the Warehouse the general air of a lying-in-state. (...)
...I did fairly well at this as long as I could limit my explanations to pointing at a bottle of whisky and announcing "That is a bottle of whisky"--or directing the eyes of visitors to our gigantic mortuary exhibit and saying brightly "That's a coffin." But when details were demanded by possible purchasers about plows and machines destined to displace manual labor on Venezuelan coffee plantations, I was a flop of the first water.
*
"Tell him," the American Minister would instruct me, in a deep voice, nodding toward Castro, "that the government at Washington is so sore about those unpaid American claims that, if he doesn't pay them p.d.q., there will be fireworks!"
"What does el senor ministro say?" Castro would inquire eagerly.
"He says," I would reply, "that the government at Washington fully appreciates the difficulties of Your Excellency's position. But, at the same time, it feels itself compelled, though most reluctantly, to consider the position of American claimants. Therefore, the government at Washington would esteem it a great favor if Your Excellency would take up again the possibility of paying at least part of these claims--merely, of course, as a token of good will."
Castro would bow politely in the direction of Mr. Loomis. Then he would give an answer something like this:
"Tell His Excellency the American Minister that I deplore from my heart the losses unfortunately incurred by certain citizens of the great and noble republic of the North, owing to the cruel exigencies of that glorious and spontaneous national upheaval that made me President of Venezuela. And tell His Exllency that, in view of the great friendliness toward the United States that throbs in my bosom, I shall give orders at once that the claim against the republic of Venezuela made by the American citizen, John Doe, is to be reconsidered immediately."
"What does he say?" Mr. Loomis would ask impatiently.
"O.K.," I would reply. And Mr. Loomis would bow to General Castro, and General Castro would bow to Mr. Loomis, and I'd feel that, as a
decorator-deflowerer, I wasn't half-bad.
Notes for moi: look up mulcted, lap-a-pie, noni soit qui mal y pense, cytherean, billets, William Eleroy Cortes's book on Venezuela, mossback, Ybarra's light verse book & his Young Man of the World plus his stuff from Collier's and the New York Times Sunday magazine, David Harum (novel), hawser, Henry Seidel Canby ("distinguished author & critic").
Also read Freakonomics, as has half the world. If you haven't, do. It's good & breezy & full of surprising information, as well as a good frame from which to look at the world. Also, quotes:
He did not consider [conventional wisdom] a compliment. "We associate truth with convenience," he wrote, "with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes to self-esteem." Economic and social behavior, Galbraith continued, "are complex, and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring. Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which reflect our understanding."
*
An expert doesn't so much argue the various sides of an issue as plant his flag firmly on one side. That's because an expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn't get much attention. An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom. His best chance of doing so is to engage the public's emotions, for emotion is the enemy of rational argument, and as emotions go, one of them--fear--is more potent than the rest.
There were other books read, all worth one's while: David Rees's My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable, David Chelsea's David Chelsea in Love, Tony Millonaire's When We Were Very Maakies, and Alex Robinson's Tricked. These are all comics, and they are all fantastic. Also reading buckets of required stuff, which I don't list, because of no good reason, but here's a snippet from Robinson's Western Translation Theory on the life of Etienne Dolet:
...he moved to Lyon, where he ran afoul of the law by killing a painter. He was thrown in prison but pardoned by the king, who delcared the act justifiable homicide.
Here are some Can You Forgive Her? quotes (look up dudgeon, cicature, brougham, trailing weepers (w/r/t widows), doits, hustings, quidnuncs, Bradshaw & Murray's Guidebooks, Daughters of Danaus, buckram), the first because it's a political-campaign-promises discussion with What's the Matter with Kansas? echoes:
Of course it won't be done. If it were done, that would be an end of it, and your bread taken out of your mouth. But you can always promise it at the hustings, and can always demand it in the house.
*
How was he to dance...? Even to Burgo Fitzgerald the task of running away with another man's wife had in it something which prevented dancing.
*
I know a young woman who broke the os femoris by just kicking her cat.
*
I always think that worldiness and sentimentality are like brandy-and-water. I don't like either of them separately. But taken together they make a very nice drink.
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