The Color of Summer: Or the New Garden of Earthly Delights

This is one of the most unusual and wonderful books that I have had the pleasure of reading. This book begins with a play then has many small chapters, filled with wit, humor, and all manner of unbeleivable images. Reinaldo makes no apologies for his sexual leanings, or spare the feeling of the dictator Fifo (Fidel Castro) or his brother Raul. Many people are mentiond by name, and many have mulitiple names, sometimes male, sometimes female. This book is enertaining, tittilating, and wonderful. I would reccomend this book to anyone, but not for children. There are some extremely strong sexual images. Read it, it is truely unique. Cheers Reinaldo!!

Wow! I just finished reading "The Color Of Summer" by the late Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas--and what a challenge it is for me to describe or assess this extraordinary work of fiction. It seems to be a hybrid of memoir, satire, and wild, hallucinatory magical realism. Maybe I should de-emphasize the term "realism." Historical events are exaggerated or transmogrified by the author--often with hilarious and irreverent results. The relentless pursuit of pleasure is constantly at odds with the pursuit of power. In one chapter entitled "The Garden Of Computers" Arenas brilliantly satirizes the bureaucracy of informants. "...denunciations, backstabbings, and betrayals of friendship were the nourishment the machines lived on." This is as brilliant as anything Dickens ever wrote about corrupt institutions. Other authors that came to mind as I read "The Color Of Summer" were Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, William Burroughs and, especially, Salman Rushdie. The amazing word-play in this book(in which 30 tongue twisters are interspersed)is delightful. Credit for this must surely be shared by the English translator Andrew Hurley. Sex(especially gay sex)is an obsession with most of the characters in this book-including the central tyrant Fifo(Castro). This is not a book for the timid or prudish. However, underneath it all there is a powerful affimation of the human spirit. Arenas expresses profound sadness, frustration, and anger--which cuts right through all the raucous humor. But, more than that, he imparts a sense of real joy through his characters' acts of defiance and creativity. I thoroughly recommend this book. A masterpiece.

The translation of this work is amazing - no way would you know that this delightful queen, Arenas, didn't originally write this in wickedly idiomatic English. He had to write this story, what?, seven times? It was confiscated, stolen, and lost over and over. And he re-wrote it over and over, until he could escape to freedom and finally see it in print. The story is a scream of queer humor atop the most tragic background of brutal state repression. Yet, in a way that only imprisoned Cubans seem to know how to do, his pride and dignity survive.

If the famous altarpiece of Hieronymous Bosch , similarly titled the Garden of Earthly Delights, could become words, those words would probably read much like Reinaldo Arenas' last volume. As with any fine writer (and make no bones about it, Arenas is one of the best of the Latin writers), the act of drawing an audience into a book is part enjoyment but also part labor. Plan on working to catch all the subtle metaphors and references as well as the obvious in-your-face slapstick that flows continously from these pages. Arenas' bifurcated feelings about his native Cuba are well know to the readers of his other novels: Cuba he adores - Castro he loathes. And as the author was dying from AIDS in the US he was able to concentrate all of his ambiguous responses to his native homeland into a grand guignol carnival Farewell Party. The precis for the story is the preparation for the celebration of Fifo's (thinly disguised name for Fidel Castro) "50th" anniversary of dictatorship. Arenas very cleverly separates his personality into three faces - Gabriel, Reinaldo, and Skunk in a Funk - in order to give us the many facets of view of living in Cuba now and before Castro. His characters are hilariously drawn campy creatures in an endless pursuit of earthly delights (aka gay sex) and if the interchange of gender pronouns (him/her) at times gets a bit overused, the premise is sound and keeps the stew bubbling. Even the atrocities attributed to "Fifo" are handled in sure polished slapstick that we are drawn more to laughter than to loathing. Cuba is finally liberated by being separated from its mooring to the sea floor to float out blissfully toward Europe..or....Arenas was a brilliant writer who died too young, but as this final translation of his output proves, his was a significant voice not only as a gay writer, but as a revolutionary thinker under the duress of loss of freedom that still plagues Cuba. Highly recommended book....just plan to work some and to take your time.......

Tragic yet hilarious, "The Color of Summer" is a bitter frolic through the lives of homosexuals in Fidel Castro's Cuba. Opening with a stunning 50-page play, the farce continues to sing throughout the remaining pages. The ill-fated sojourns of so many characters are detailed, but always with a willingness to see the humor within the suffering of men who seek pleasure despite the risk of punishment by a tyrant and his faithful firing squads. A nice piece of political commentary aimed at the seat of Castro's olive-green pants, "The Color of Summer" reveals the leaks in the dictator's "air-tight" oppressive regime, leaving Castro at the center of ridicule. With wonderful character development, gleaming threads of honesty appear within the blanket of mischeivous men whose tales are told in the most amusingly crass manner.