The Language Barrier.

Margaret Atwood has the following unattributed epigram pinned to her office bulletin board:
“Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate.”
What the epigram is getting at is the fact that so often the meeting of the real thing is a disappointment.... the author is shorter, older, and more ordinary than what you were expecting.
Well, tonight I went to see my idol.
The best author in the entire world.... the whole planet.
For those of you faithfuls who are keeping track of this blogpage, I am referring to the one and only Jose Saramago. (See my Worship-Blog of June 9th).
Tonight was the night.
I just walked back from there. Within this past hour I was in his very presence, and shook his venerable hand.
I very nearly fainted.
But, sadly, this evening in its entirety was one of the most disappointing letdowns of my life.
Definitely one of the top eleven or so!

Here’s why..... are you ready for this?

I DID NOT UNDERSTAND ONE WORD OF THE ENTIRE EVENING!
IT WAS NOT IN ENGLISH!
I WANTED TO TEAR MY HAIR OUT IN FRUSTRATION!

Correction.
Correction, excuse me. I did understand one word, a hyphenated one.

Shopping-centre.
Because Mr. Saramago said this combination of words at least fifty-four times, no exaggeration. He was explaining something about his wonderful book The Cave and talking about The Center, which figures very prominently in that book, as you probably know.
Thing is, apparently there is no French equivalent for the word “shopping centre” AND THE ENTIRE EVENING WAS CONDUCTED IN FRENCH. This is the only thing I understood all night.
SHOPPING-CENTRE!
I did not take even ONE note of any kind, because I couldn’t understand anything.

He was introduced (in English) and then he got up to the podium.... people were standing on their feet in a spontaneous ovation before he even said one word. Then he read from the beginning of Blindness, in Portuguese. Some other guy got up afterwards and read the same passage in English.
Then Mr. Saramago was interviewed in French and we all put these headsets on so that we could hear the interpretation from back there in the interpretation booth. [Soon I, and hundreds of other English-dependent headset-wearers, were turning and looking back there, and we were NOT looking to see if it was Nicole Kidman doing the interpreting!]
THE DEVICES WERE NOT WORKING!
You could hear people getting restless, banging these cheapo headsets with their cheapo transmitters against the chairs..... praying.... doing everything humanly possible to get these things working..... Jose just kept talking.... obviously oblivious to the horror descending in the room.
Seriously, people were just getting up and leaving, and I did too. I went out to the foyer to talk with the guy who gave me the headset as I went in to the auditorium.... we were all asking the same question..... “What the hell is the matter with these things?”
Meanwhile, I can see Jose talking away on the TV screen thingy in the overflow room..... in French.
The headset guy was seriously panicking. “I don’t know, they just aren’t working” he stammers and shrugs.
So we all just sort of kept walking back into the auditorium, sort of trickling back in there.... I mean, what is the use of even being there?
The person I was with, she can understand French. So she was telling me the odd sentence or two, but Mr. Saramago’s French is so different from the French that she is familiar with that it was really difficult for her to make out any larger pieces of information.
It was very disappointing.
At any one time, half the auditorium was craned backwards, looking at the sound booth, where frantic machinations of some kind were indeed going on, and an interpreter was interpreting.... we could all see that she was, but NOTHING was coming out into the headsets.

In the foyer, I and some other angrier ticket-holders spoke with the main organizer of the event and I told him I was not impressed at all, and to appease us he put a number of our names down on a list of people that will receive free tickets to an upcoming Jane Urquhart evening in September. She is a terrific author in her own right. Hopefully she will not be speaking in.... Martian that night!

A very disappointing evening in Bookpuddle-land!
I was looking so forward to inundating this page with all manner of Saramagian anecdotal wisdom!
But nope!
Not going to happen.

I did get to have my beautiful new volume of Blindness signed by the Master himself. But other than this, the night was a bit of a washout.
IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
I repeat (in English...) IT IS NOT MR. SARAMAGO’S FAULT.
He is still the best there is. He is still the greatest living writer!

And I am sure that every word he said was tres importante as they say en francais! Life-changing, even!
However, like one of those dogs in the Gary Larson cartoon, all I was hearing was....Blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah-blah-blah shopping-centre blah-blah shopping-centre!