Sánchez Piñol settles scores with the Process in the sequel to 'Moby Dick'

Albert Sánchez Piñol (Barcelona, ​​1965) is a novelist who possesses the virtues of audacity and a keen sense of timing. This, I believe, is undeniable, regardless of whether you like his novels or not. When I say he has the virtue of audacity, I mean that he conceives narrative projects that are grand in both ambition and capacity to surprise, and that he dares to attempt to execute them without resorting to specious precautions or reining in his imagination. And when I say he has the virtue of a keen sense of timing, I mean that he knows how to read the signs and interests of each historical moment and, with a threefold literary, political, and anthropological perspective, knows how to incorporate them into his novels. He demonstrated this with Victus and the commemoration of the tercentenary of the fall of Barcelona against the Bourbon troops in the War of the Spanish Succession. He demonstrated this with The monster of Saint Helena and the desire to reinterpret reality through the lens of feminist justice that sparked the Me Too movementAnd he proves it again now with After the shipwreck and the vengeful resentment and the miasma of disappointment and shame that the failure of the independence process has instilled in Catalan society.

After the shipwreck, which Sánchez Piñol has published in Universo after a lifetime at La Campana, is two novels in one: it is a sequel to Moby Dick And it is an allegory of the independence process. As a sequel to the masterpiece of Herman Melville, After the shipwreck It proves the adage that sequels never live up to the original. As an allegory of the Process, it works better in its attempt to settle scores with the pro-independence leaders than as a political explanation of what happened and why. Since it's two novels in one, I'll try to cover it by writing two reviews in one.

Easy, predictable, and poor

As a sequel to Moby Dick, After the shipwreck It is plot-wise simple and predictable, and literarily thin and weak. It is, quite literally, a direct sequel. As the title indicates, Sánchez Piñol picks up the story right where Melville left off, that is, after the sinking of the Pequod, defeated and destroyed by the almost supernatural power of the great white whale. Sánchez Piñol's first-person narrator is also the same as Melville's, the sailor Ishmael, and the adventures and misfortunes he experiences on the ship, the Lonia, which rescues him from dying at sea, are, with some nuances, an exact replica of those he already experienced aboard the Pequod: the senseless obsession doomed to failure. To make matters worse, just as the culprit behind Melville's Pequod's maniacal mission was Captain Ahab, here the culprits are also the two officers on board, Captain Karl van der Berg and his second-in-command, Mr. Jon Quer.

All the similarities and imitations in terms of plot are differences in terms of form. Whereas Moby Dick Melville's is a novel of nature, oceanic dimensions and riches, an epic and lyrical novel in which adventure, metaphysics, essay and terror coexist, full of existential speculations and thrilling situations and abundant sensory evocations, a novel written with a prose After the shipwreck It is a monster adventure comic written in gray and functional prose, far inferior to the talent shown by the author in previous novels such as Cold skinIt gives the impression that Sánchez Piñol works with the materials half-heartedly, as if they were a mere pretext, and that he is primarily interested in political allegory.

As an allegory of the Trial, After the shipwreck It is insightful, though not original. I mean that the interpretation of the events of the Process is the most prevalent among unofficial discourses and mouthpieces. This is what Sánchez Piñol explains: although both know it is impossible to hunt Moby Dick, because Lonia is a simple tuna fishing boat and doesn't even have the resources of a whaler, Captain Karl van der Berg and Mr. Jon Quer make people believe they do want to hunt it and manipulate, each, the naive ambition of Lonia's crew, all to fight each other to maintain or gain control of the ship. Stripped of the allegorical guise, this is what Sánchez Piñol says: Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras lied, using the ideal of independence, in which they never believed, to achieve regional hegemony, and in doing so, they placed Catalonia and Catalan identity at the mercy of the establishment. Although he lays it on both leaders, Sánchez Piñol doesn't absolve the pro-independence citizens, the crew of the Lonia, of blame: "Their harpoon drills were beautiful choreographies, nothing more. They lacked the killer instinct." But political acumen isn't enough to write a good novel.