The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti - “The Graham Greene of Uruguay . . . foreshadowing the work of Beckett and Camus.”— from The Sunday Telegraph, this is ranked 1454th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, although it must have been higher up when I saw it, for I have decided to try this and the algorithm changes places there – you have more than five thousand reviews on magnum opera (well, some of them) from the aforementioned GOAT and other pages, together with about as many notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you could even subscribe

 

The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti - “The Graham Greene of Uruguay . . . foreshadowing the work of Beckett and Camus.”— from The Sunday Telegraph, this is ranked 1454th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, although it must have been higher up when I saw it, for I have decided to try this and the algorithm changes places there – you have more than five thousand reviews on magnum opera (well, some of them) from the aforementioned GOAT and other pages, together with about as many notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you could even subscribe

 

 

7 out of 10

 

I must be very careful with these lines, for I just received a warning (something like that) from Goodreads, so let me put a spoiler alert here, I did not enjoy The Shipyard, and that is about all there is to the ‘review connected to the topic’ – being preposterous I ask A La Recherche du Temps Perdu https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/albertine-disparue-by-marcel-proust.html is all about lost time?

 

What I am trying to say is that many writers do not ‘keep within the boundaries of the subject’, indeed, you have absurd theater https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/06/exit-king-aka-le-roi-se-meurt-or-regele.html in Eugen Ionesco, you get rhinoceros on the streets, and this is not science fiction, why not have reviews with little to do with the topic?

While we are at this, what about my own complaints, which they ignored for years, regarding a bizarre profile, one with no friends, and yet a man who has posted what look like fraudulent ‘reviews’, to reach number one, with no personal contribution that we could detect…anyway, passons, ‘forget about it’ in the words of Donnie Brasco

 

‘we have a responsibility to the reader to be entertaining and literate’ this was a quote from Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html who was very hard on many established luminaries, for instance on Nathaniel West ‘I feel as I do with Virginia Woolf I want to keep saying 'No, he didn't', No it didn't happen as you describe it', No, that isn't what he thought,  No, that's just what she didn't say’ and there is more on Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov and others

Another point of view comes from Arthur Schopenhauer: ‘One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited’

 

Which I see as connected with what Seneca said, along the lines of ‘we have enough time in life, if only we do not waste it’, and connecting the two I have the result that I must miss on The Shipyard, not because it is a bad book, albeit The GOAT must make up its mind, they had it in the first one thousand, and made me take it, but because it would be time better spent if I take on something I enjoy, like Jake’s Thing

The next rule is from According to Mark https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/according-to-mark-by-penelope-lively.html -‘the novelist has an infinity of choices, He chooses what is to happen, to happens, and in what way he will relate what happens, the picture he constructs is complete on its own terms…when he says this is the story and the whole story we must accept it…perhaps novelists are the only people telling the truth’ concluding hence that the writer is god, only I choose to apply this to the reader, myself in particular

 

In this case, I have decided to avoid visiting The Shipyard, in the Blink of an eye, applying the Malcolm Gladwell formula from the psychology classic Blink https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/blink-power-of-thinking-without.html also thinking of The Harding Effect, a bad president, but look at what a bad joke America has in charge

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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