I finally deigned to read Paulo Coelho. Sorry, ‘deigned’ was a little condescending (especially for someone who still picks up Donald Duck comics). I finally read Paulo Coelho and was not wowed. Not condescending, just my opinion.
It was Eleven Minutes. For Coelho—or his protagonist, but he is the type of author who shamelessly weds his skin with that of his personas—eleven minutes is the actual, pared-down, bullshit-aside duration of the sexual act. Toss the small talk, dump the kisses on the neck, flush the rummage in the condom drawer, heck, even dispose of paying the prostitute what you owe her, and you’re left with eleven minutes of grind.
For a long time, I had been expressly averse to reading any of Coelho’s works. There was that brief phase when I started on By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, and fell asleep with the book on my chest, open at page twelve. After that, but not because of that, I didn’t touch another Coelho.
Generally, I like being averse to things. Gives me a sense of choice, in a fulfilling way that the choice between ylang-ylang OR vanilla extract OR orange blossom doesn’t quite deliver. So there I am, teenagehood, and every teen had read Coelho: Coelho speaks of the spirituality that exists in the world, but only the pure of heart can feel. Adults had also read Coelho: Coelho speaks of things we already know, but society has sucked out of us. Coelho is genius. Coelho changed my life. Coelho knows.
And still I didn’t read Coelho, because I tend to get mad at things that make our easy lives easier. Coelho sounded to me like a proselytizer of microwaveable spirituality. Of Soul, ready in just eleven minutes! Of love, pounded so that it’s soft to chew. His writings seemed to me a mash-up of sugary maxims, of life truths that are best discovered by living; and if you still choose to forego living, you might as well read about them in the lush pages of Steinbeck and Nabokov.
Basically, I was being a literary snob. And because of my prejudice, I decided to read. And I inhaled the book within the four days.
In Eleven Minutes, Coelho plants an essential, compelling message, but conveys it clumsily. His plot is predictable, his characters facile, the setting sinks in the mono-dimensional plains of all-too contrived stories. The writing is simpler than that of an instruction leaflet, with its flat syntax and childish diction. The narration is neither tightly realistic nor upliftingly abstract—it’s just vague. Tone hovers somewhere above the narration, but the two never meet. The writing is arousing, but damn! so are a lot of things.
Yet…I do salute Mr Coelho, for his impact, if not his writing skills. His approach to sex is so healthy as to be vital. He allows his heroine to travel through the gradations of sex, to learn and to un-learn. The reader learns with her, and here are the precious findings: the robot has perfunctory, meaningless sex. The animal resorts to sadomasochism. And the human makes love.
Maria searches for her soul, and for the perfect orgasm, and eventually she finds one in the other. Not only does Coelho skip the cowardice of euphemisms (the S&M scene is flush with detail, down to the last butt slap), but he also communicates a beautiful message about sex. Sex should be politically incorrect, and should be an affair of the soul, and nobody should feel guilty for striking upon this very genuine, very human balance. Sex should be dirty, but more importantly, it should be cathartic.
Apart from that, because of his simplistic diction, Coelho does what Harry Potter did for the kid masses: he gets people reading. That’s never, ever a bad thing.
My advice? Do read Eleven Minutes. Then, put it away, and have the dirtiest sex of your life, with somebody you love.
