La alegr�a del capit�n Ribot by Armando Palacio Vald�s (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: La alegría del capitán Ribot by Armando Palacio Valdés Gustavo Pérez Firmat Armando Palacio Valdés La alegría del capitán Ribot (1899). Tomo XI. Madrid: Librería general de Victoriano Suárez, 1920. Project Gutenberg Open Access. [Invited retrospective review essay]. More than a Hispanist's "bucket list," this commentary is a "book shelf" list, since my bucket contains books. Not the ones I'd like to read or write, but those I'd like to write about. Now in the tercera edad of my academic life, I've been writing about books or authors whose company I have prized, that I have read over and over, but that have not been relevant to my research or my teaching. Writing about them is a way of memorializing our acquaintance, tying the knot of readerly affection. The list is not long, mostly limited to works generally within my competence, modern Spanish or Spanish American literature, and many of my favorites fall outside this field. So far, I've taken about half a dozen items out of the bucket. I have a few more left. Next up is La alegría del capitán Ribot (1899), one of Armando Palacio Valdés's most widely read novels, whose popularity lead to its prompt appearance in English the next year and century as The Joy of Captain Ribot (1900). I acknowledge that my temperament makes my task a bit harder. In literature, as in life, I shy away from complexity, ambiguity, tension, suspense – some of the features of literary works that give [End Page 241] scholars pasture to feed on. Instead, I favor intelligent sentimentality. To Unamuno's El Cristo de Velázquez, I prefer his Teresa. To Neruda's "Alturas de Machu Picchu," I prefer "Poema 20." One of the Cuban poets formerly in my bucket, José Ángel Buesa, was said to write for cooks and chauffeurs. Another, Dulce María Loynaz, likened her poems to ripples of water glinting in the moonlight. When it comes to fiction, my inclinations run along the same soft lines: Pereda, not Pérez Galdós; Valera, not Pardo Bazán. And Palacio Valdés. The Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins's recipe for writing fiction was simple: Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait. I would add a fourth imperative: Make me happy. My poets and novelists do. Some will conclude that my bucket is full of treacle. Sure, but their treacle is my treat. If I am to trust my gap-stricken journals, I first read La alegría del capitán Ribot in the summer of 2010 while on vacation in Duck, a resort town on the outer banks of North Carolina. That was a difficult summer, and Palacio Valdés helped me get through it. Since then I've reread it many times. I'm not sure how many because recently I've been reading it on Kindle and my highlights are not dated (or if they are, I don't know how to locate them). With every reading, the Captain's alegría rubs off on me once again. Some of Palacio Valdés's novels bear ironic or misleading titles: El idilio de un enfermo is hardly an idyll. The title of La alegría del capitán Ribot means what it says. My problem is this: I love this novel, I want to record my gratitude to its author, but I don't know what to say about it. Not because it has been the object of abundant critical commentary, it hasn't. Like much of Palacio Valdés's fiction, La alegría del capitán Ribot is viewed with gentle condescension. Some scholars have labelled it a novela rosa, the kiss of death for serious fiction. A few years ago, I wrote about another of his rose-scented works in my bucket, Sinfonía pastoral (1931). Written in his late seventies, no one had ever taken it seriously, an incentive for me to do so. I would like to do the same with La alegría del capitán Ribot. My rule of thumb: If I like it...