Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, I found a Times magazine interview with Zafon, the author of "The Angel's Game," while reading this afternoon.  It isn't a very in-depth interview, but it provides an interesting insight to the author.  The interview also confirmed something that I had only suspected.  "The Angel's Game" is a prequel to Zafon's first novel, "The Shadow of the Wind."  I had thought that it might be; it certainly was set earlier in the century than "Shadow", both are set in Barcelona, and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a part of both.  I don't know why I hadn't recognized that it is a prequel, but I had not.  Perhaps because the book cover didn't refer to it as prequel.  I can state that both novels stand on their own.

When asked about the Cemetery, Zafon describes it, and then follows his description with this:

The idea came to me probably in the late '90s. I think it came from something that I was becoming aware of at the time, which was the destruction of memory, the destruction of history. I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are. So thinking that and driving across the country and finding all these fantastic used bookstores that nobody was paying attention to — all these things were tumbling around my mind, and at some point I came up with this image of this place. It was clear that it was a visual metaphor, not just for forgotten books, but forgotten people and ideas.

The destruction of memory.  It's accurate, but also inaccurate.  What is memory?  Is it the sole province of a person's ability to recall, or is it merely a storage system for facts, memories, and histories?  Surely memory is deteriorating.  The ancients passed their entire history to their children in memorized chants, songs, and stories.  Few of us today can even remember the preamble to our Constitution.  Doesn't that imply that personal memory may be deteriorating but that the overall memory of a culture is better available in books, or data bases?  I can't answer.  It is something I will think about, and possibly write about another time.

But, later this evening I will probably write another blog post about a repository of data that is, in a manner of speaking, a repository of memory.  And it might be worth exploring which is more important, the ability to recount history from memory, or find recorded stories available to everyone.

I think the interview is interesting enough to recommend it to anyone who is considering reading either, or both, of Zafon's novels.