THE BOOK REVIEW

READING TIME

One of the pleasures of retirement is to allow myself time to read with a minimum amount of guilt for not doing something productive. I’m currently reading Zadie Smith’s newest novel “The Fraud”. She’s a writer I have been enraptured by from the moment I picked up her earliest work. Just gob smacked. How to explain such talent? Maturity? Depth? I think she was about 22 years old at the time. As I am a perfectionist – with all the inherent tendencies to procrastinate and equivocate and generally avoid attempting projects that risk coming up short of my own standards – reading Smith obliterated any aspirational shreds I might have been harboring around writing fiction myself. I knew at my core I did not have that kind of talent, let alone the soul.

Regarding “The Fraud”, I recently read a lengthy essay in the London Review of Books commenting on Smith’s intentional inverting of the traditional form of the novel as broad commentary on the fiction of the nineteenth century. And, how she is subverting this and that convention, packing juicy little historical easter eggs into the details for the academics to uncover and pontificate about. Perhaps. And while I can see and appreciate some of this nuance, please. Just read the woman’s prose.

She had arrived at Elm Lodge on the twenty-third of April, 1830. Ever after she marked the day in her heart. No language attended it. No conscious ritual. If asked what the date meant to her she would have spoken the truth and called it St. George’s Day and denied attaching any personal significance to it. But somewhere deeper, past language, it was marked. A cluster of sensations. The climbing rose. Frances in the doorway. That first, unmistakable, impression of her goodness. The feeling of walking down grassy Willesden Lane, early in the morning, plucking wildflowers out of the hedgerows and trying to appreciate them. The happiness of knowing she would turn round and walk back to a house of steamed rags and strung-up rabbits, drying linens and chubby baby ankles, small hands with food on them, the smell of bacon, fruit cakes wrapped in cloth, the swampy whiff of pea soup, and simplest chords of Bach played clumsily but with good humor. All of this warm human sacred business she had almost forgotten existed.

– Zadie Smith, The Fraud, 2023

It sometimes feels that I took too long to finally accept retirement. So much I had nearly forgotten existed.

DRIVING SCHOOL

We are continuing the process of acculturating Valenciano norms. I tend to have a romantic notion about “living as a local” which it is increasingly obvious will always be very limited in reality. It turns out, however, that just navigating the fundamental requirements of Spanish society brings with it a shift in perspective and appreciation for the culture. For example, I’ve embarked on a journey to acquire a Spanish driver’s license. Now as an American, you may wonder how this could be characterized as a journey. How big a deal can it be if you’ve been driving all your life? Ahem.

It turns out the Spanish take awarding the privilege of operating a motor vehicle in their country quite seriously. My status as a safe driver for over 52 years counts for exactly nothing. And, as a resident of Spain for more than six months, neither my U.S. nor international driver’s licenses count for squat. I am required to begin again, from the beginning, like a teenager.

Attending a state regulated driving school is mandatory for all “new” drivers. The format and protocol are the same no matter which school you attend. You must take and pass a state administered written exam. When you have successfully completed the written test, you must take and pass an actual driving test with a state examiner. The proctored, written exam consists of 30 questions. You must score a 90% or better to pass. Each individual exam is randomly generated by a computer from a database of 3,000 questions, so to prepare for the written exam, the first phase of driving school involves answering 3,000 questions. Correctly. No, that’s not a typo. I am in the process of taking 100 practice exams of 30 questions each. And I must go back and correct every error when I have finished. Only when I have successfully completed this phase, will the driving school schedule my first attempt at the state exam. (My driving school is called “El Cid”. I have visions of Charlton and Sophia every time I sit down to work on this thing.)

I’m 10% done with the 3,000 questions.

How this process becomes interesting – and relevant to the cultural aspects I referenced earlier – is the contrast with our expectations in Los Estados Unidos. My first instinct was to say, “well, the Spanish laws and regulations are just far more detailed and comprehensive than in the U.S.” But as I thought about it, I realized that our U.S. laws and regulations are at least as complex, it’s just that we don’t really expect everyone to learn them all. For example, trucks in the U.S. are required to have certain signs and symbols on them that indicate weight, size, contents, etc., but we don’t expect the average driver to know and understand their meaning. (Missed multiple questions on the meaning of a square versus a rectangle symbol.) Perhaps it’s just that I haven’t taken a driving exam for over five decades and today’s new U.S. drivers are subjected to more rigor than I was. (Not really buying this based on my experience on U.S. roads.) So, one conclusion I have reached is that Spanish society simply expects more from its citizens, as in total mastery of their driving laws, not just a passing familiarity.

So far, I’m averaging 4 – 5 errors per exam. Obviously not good enough. Some of the errors can be attributed to the awkward syntax of translated questions. And some, just don’t seem to translate. It turns out, for example that “stopping distance” and “braking distance” are not synonymous, though I cannot for the life of me discern the difference. In other cases, it’s just a different way of thinking. Imagine tossing a cigarette butt out of a car window resulting in points against your driving record. One regulation I would love to see more often in the US is minimum speed rules. I’ve also missed a couple of questions regarding the rules for herding animals along the roadways – a skill I am almost certain to need at some point in life, right? For some strange reason, helmets are not required on bicyclists during “extremely hot weather”. Missed that one.

An on it goes. Just 2,700 to go. It’s all quite humbling.