Category Archives: Berkowitz, Hyman Chonon

page 116 of 499 of Pérez Galdós : Spanish liberal crusader

Most of what he wrote was a first draft. The only thing he would really change was repition, and he would change any repeated words for their synonym.

I assume his revising was all done beforehand in his preparation for writing. Yet he didn’t outline and he left behind few notes. He did have lots of maps, train schedules, and even family trees for his National Episodes, bhishe just wrote.

page 102 of 499 of Pérez Galdós : Spanish liberal crusader

Trafalgar was a large success. And it’s success was even literary in its retelling in that University Medical students were smuggling the book into lectures and so instead of learning the science of healing a Spaniard, they were learning the morality of healing one (at the expense of malpractice).

Putting the National flag on the cover was a clever marketing touch.

page 90 of 499 of Pérez Galdós : Spanish liberal crusader

“It was so pleasant to dream that he was reluctant to come into contact with reality.”

He very much is a person who drinks in everything around him, filters it in his own way, then transforms it to the page. His minatures, his journalism , his wanderings around Madrid taking in the “flavor”, he’s been soaking this up for a long time.

page 71 of 499 of Pérez Galdós : Spanish liberal crusader

“In his worship of the indigenous and the popular Glados often finds sublimity where someone less [though I’d word it as “more cynical”] prejudiced might see only bad taste.”

What I find unique about Glados is that he can see both extremes – he loves Spain and is able to see the reasons even in Spain’s bad behvaior, but he can also see the ridiculous and banal in it, too. He’s uncommonly fair and observant.

page 24 of 499 of Pérez Galdós : Spanish liberal crusader

How wonderful is this description: the sound of the Atlantic waves, the smell of fish, fruits, meat sold/at the nearby market stalls, women in black mantillas or wearing white kerchiefs – this waas outside the window of his school, which was a horror inside. These descriptions are just as Glados would write them – the biogrpher here seems to be channeling Glados, or at least in love with him.