The publishers describe this book as a collection of GCI's
writings on Cuba from 1968 to 1993. But everything he writes is 'on Cuba', even when it seems to be on something else. As he himself puts it:
The exile is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs
Tony Gould
MEA CUBA by G. Cabrera Infante, translated by Kenneth Hall with the author Faber, £17.50, pp. 503 The day I finished reading this profound and witty collection of essays — with an Name Address Postcode
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He knows about power, having been on the receiving end, and powerlessness, which is almost a condition of exile. He quotes from H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man and writes:
Now I am invisible too. Not invincible but just the opposite: being invisible means to be as vulnerable as the unseen. You are less a person than a non-person.
But he also knows that having nothing to lose is a kind of strength, and this knowl- edge informs the memorable and often moving portraits of both well-known and lesser known Cuban writers, with all of whom GCI was at least acquainted. These Lives have a Johnsonian clarity and charity — a rare gift in a writer (on the whole an envious breed). He even writes generously of Alejo Carpentier, a great writer perhaps, but by all accounts a mean- spirited man.
The one person to whom he cannot be charitable, needless to say, is Fidel Castro, the outlaw who 'never became an in-law, only a law unto himself,' whose very name is subjected to many metamorphoses, from Mephistofidel to Castroenteritis. Ridicule is the most effective weapon in goading the tyrant, whose sensitivity to literary attack was evident in his (rough) treatment of the poet Herberto Padilla in what became uni- versally known as the 'Padilla Case'. This — in itself a fairly minor (though not for Padilla) — episode was a turning point in international (particularly intellectual) attitudes to Castro, and was recorded at the time by the Chilean writer-diplomat Jorge Edwards in his Persona Non Grata. Sixties Castro-and-Guevara worship, gave way to Seventies scepticism, and now it is hard to recall their joint status as pop icons without a shudder. And no one has been more diligent, or more devastating, in undermining the myth than Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Now that communism is everywhere discredited and surely doomed in Cuba, will GCI outlive the tyrant and return in triumph like a tropical Solzhenitsyn? He would have every right to; he has been steadfast for 30 years, as this magnificent book demonstrates. But he eschews politics and may even have come to appreciate the cold climate in which he has now lived for so long. 'Exile is in itself a form of martyrdom,' he writes from personal experience. 'But it is also a rare privilege.' Well, we too are privileged — that such a decent man, with such a remarkable talent, should live among us.
A bad taste in my mouth
Matthew Parris
THE HOUNDING OF JOHN THOMAS by Craig Brown Century, £14.99, pp. 202 Included in one of the funniest paper- back collections of satirical writing I have enountered, The Very Best of Craig Brown, Is a profile Mr Brown wrote after a day spent shadowing the young Tory backbencher, Henry Bellingham. The poor fellow is made out to be a total jerk, the very worst sort of braying public-school ninny. Assinine remark after asinine remark is quoted, verbatim and without comment. A picture emerges which, if I were Bellingham, would have made me cry. It was published some time ago. It was cruel, and very clever. I have not been alone in reacting unexpectedly to that profile. Having no axe to grind for Bellingham and sharing Brown's prejudice against upper-class twits, I began the piece with glee. As the ghastly caricature took shape I mentally urged its author on, like a spectator at a boxing match. By the middle of the article I was chortling with delight. But before the end a doubt began to discomfort me. Why was he doing this? What had Bellingham done to deserve it? Who had Bellingham ever really hurt — as badly as Brown was hurt- ing him now? The very scale of the writer's attack started to undermine its purpose, throwing the focus off the victim and back onto the author. What had Brown got against this man? I left the piece admiring Mr Brown's skill, unconvinced of Mr Bellingham's guilt, and with a bad taste in my mouth. It is still there.
That piece (others will remember a pro- file Brown wrote of Cecil Parkinson) serves as an early pointer to the danger into which The Hounding of John Thomas has, I think, fallen. Bile in bucketfuls can swamp a novel Angostura is not best served in pints. Let me be clear: this is a clever book, and if you enjoy politics or enjoy hating Politicians, it is a must. I doubt whether there is a better parodist alive than Craig Brown, and there are moments when you will shriek with laughter — or pain — at his mimicry. Ingeniously, the novel proceeds entirely by archivists' fragments: letters from the story's characters, news- paper clippings, excerpts from Hansard, all
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