Perhaps this is the ‘divisadero’ of the title. The word, I believe, derives from the Spanish word ‘divisar’, to see from afar. Hence the writer is a seer, but only into the past, and only from the safety of distance. It may have something to do with division via ‘divisas’, shares, but the word does not obviously relate to ‘dividir’, to divide. The divisadero is thus the writer, the detached, distant observer who can be definitive about events by virtue of being removed from them, apart from them, not involved.
Hence we write about things from the safety of distance to rationalise and make sense of a reality, which, at the time, apparently demands we wander randomly through its landscape. All too often it is an act of violence or a loss that provides the watershed that parts ways.
Though the experience of reading Michael Ondaatje’s poetic prose is thoroughly delightful throughout, Divisadero is, in the end, only partially successful. It appears to lack coherence, and a bigger picture only emerges when one tries to fill in the gaps. Perhaps that’s the point.
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