My Homeboy Luis

I have a good friend named Luis who I lived near in Mauritania. He worked on the road from Selibaby to Goree, the boarder town to Senegal. He's from Portugal and he's the shit. So far, he's the only one who has read my work-in-progress novel. Well, it's finished, but just not quite where I want it. That's not to say that I didn't send it out to HELLA of people. They just didn't read it. But he did. This is what he had to say...and understand that English isn't his first language.


Friday, January 30, 2009
Bulge II
30 de Janeiro de 2009, sexta-feira. Caren said “Luis! That's why I love you! Are you telling me the truth? Don't lie, be honest...I need to edit it a whole lot more. Do you get it? The storyline I mean? Give me some details!” So let’s do it. I agree it still need edition. I consider it like a Beta version. Regardless, the story picked me up, transport me to places I’ve never been before, showed to me people Human, that goes trough situations that we all do. When I first started the reading and didn’t new either the characters or the story, I was expecting a lot from Mattel. She made me love her in the first lines. It was a character that had everything to be a heroin. It’s like if she was mend for higher scores in the course of life. So her path was bitter to me. When we love someone, we want the better for. Salim, could easily be a gangster and be killed or turn into a well succeeded business man. That was easy and expected. Anyone could have written that story. Where I think the magic start is when you gave to the most important, a sad destiny, without glory or violence, or without anything that made them be special. I mean, what made this characters be so special, is that they are not special at all. This direction you gave to de story, it’s like a cruel description of life, in our days. We’re just parts of the all. We’re pieces of the machine. Back to the Book! I think you only could be so cruel to Mattel, in the end, because you loved her too. You can’t be so sarcastic, to who is indifferent to you. To me, this story is not a story of lesbians or black people or middle class folks. Or Harlem, or Texas… I’ve felt’ it like a story of life, with people struggling for their chance, and to whom life is a bitch. This is the story of us all. We’re not mending to be heroes, villains or news in eight o’clock bulletin, we’re just ordinary folks, doing what everybody does. And that fact, although leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, is what makes me like more of the text. I’ve felt in the skin with pain, when you gave, specially to this characters, a destiny so humiliate, so ordinary. There are two different approaches to tell a story. You can make a story of Superheroes, or ordinary people. You can be sweet or can be hard. You can be pretentious and tell us a message or let us pick up our one. I understand that most authors - as owners of the text until it’ s published - take profit of and want to tell us about. If I was asked for, I would say, what I understood, is that “Life’s a bitch”.
Posted by Luis Pereira at 3:38 AM 0 comments
Labels: Books