From Publishers Weekly
This year marks the centennial of Nobel laureate Neruda's birth. Neruda, who died in 1973, was considered among the greatest poets of the past century and a man full of passions and contradictions who, despite his efforts to sing his political views, is also remembered as a poet of love. This biography follows Neruda from his precocious poetic beginnings to his wanderings as a diplomat in Asia, Argentina, France, Spain and Mexico. Journalist and translator Feinstein recounts how Neruda saved the lives of many republicans during the Spanish Civil War and how his activism in Chile's Communist Party forced him into exile in 1948. Neruda crossed the Andes to travel yet more through Europe and America, where he befriended such famous men as Lorca and Picasso. Back in Chile in 1952, after writing many great books, Neruda ran for the presidency and his commitment to social justice strengthened. But Feinstein also examines the other constant in the poet's life, love,detailing his three marriages and innumerable love affairs, including plenty of bittersweet stories in an attempt to clarify the often fantastic versions of Neruda's own memories. Feinstein undoubtedly researched every existent source and found new ones, and the result is a detailed and accurate biography. His dry writing fails to bring the poet alive on the page, but this is a necessary book, with many beautiful photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
For many decades the only full-length biography of Pablo Neruda available was by Volodia Teitelboim. Published in English translation in 1992 as Neruda: An Intimate Biography, it is a second-rate, hagiographic job, utterly uncritical of its subject. This isn't surprising: Teitelboim was one of Neruda's close friends and comrades. Which sets the stage for Adam Feinstein's ambitious Pablo Neruda, a multifaceted portrait that arrives amid the worldwide centennial celebrations of Neruda. (July 12, 2004, would have been the poet's 100th birthday.) I met Feinstein some years ago in London, where he was a correspondent for the Spanish daily El Mundo and a BBC broadcaster. His research is scrupulous. He has explored every aspect of Neruda's life with care and attention to detail, talking with countless friends, acquaintances and specialists (he is especially influenced by the Oxford don Robert Pring-Mill, one of Neruda's unheralded champions). He records the poet's bohemian years in the '20s, his immersion in poetry as an adolescent and the writing of his popular Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (which Neruda himself believed was mediocre), his diplomatic service in Burma and Sri Lanka, his witnessing of the Spanish Civil War as well as his misguided Stalinism and support of Fidel Castro. Also brought to light are details time has managed to eclipse, such as his fascinating relationship with his half-sister Laurita, his ambivalence toward his daughter Malva Marina Trinidad (whom Neruda infamously described as "a kind of semi-colon, a three-kilo vampire"), and his love of the early-17th-century Iberian poet Quevedo. Feinstein's is the type of biographical job the British have mastered: unadorned, straightforward, making sure the observer is kept at a distance.The result doesn't amount to an antithesis of Teitelboim's adoration. Feinstein fails to deliver sustained analytical insight. Neruda's poetry as a whole (he left us thousands and thousands of poems) is reduced to a mere map of his life, which, unfortunately, diminishes its depth. Feinstein doesn't distinguish between the good and the bad, and is so cautious in his approach, so impartial, that he describes ideological confrontations as if they were mere brawls outside a bar. Still, it is a much-needed, methodical picture of a poet who was at once witness to and participant in some of the major events of the 20th century.Also to coincide with "la fiebre Neruda," as one Santiago newspaper has described the current fervor, the autobiography of Neruda's third wife, Matilde Urrutia -- a Chilean musician and the inspiration of one of my favorite books by the poet, The Captain's Verses -- is being offered to English-language readers in a "doctored" version. Ironically, Alexandria Giardino has done to it what Urrutia and another of Neruda's friends, Miguel Otero Silva, did to the poet's memoir, known in Spanish as Confieso que he vivido ("I confess to have lived"): They cleansed it, condensing and editing it heavily. It is well-known that at his death, Neruda left a lyrical manuscript: What it lacked in sense it compensated for in sensibility. To make it palatable, Urrutia spent months refurbishing it. That was during the time when Pinochet's regime sought to utterly eradicate Neruda from Chile's collective memory. The manuscript needed to be smuggled out of the country. Urrutia, visibly depressed by the overall bleakness that surrounded her, delved into its pages in search of therapy. But did she purge indiscreet and unwelcome passages? Is Neruda the one doing the remembering, or is her hand in control of the material? Until the end, she defended her editorial effort. Her strategy, she repeated, was simply to give order to chaos.My Life With Pablo Neruda first appeared in 1986, the year after her death. She wasn't a writer, which is evident in the style and structure. In rendering it in English, Giardino has synchronized verb tenses, eliminated repetition and supplemented information harvested from historical sources. Happily, she hasn't altogether re-dressed the mannequin: It appears to have the same clothing, only color-coordinated. Urrutia's version is important in that it offers an insider's view of Neruda's last 25 years. They met at a concert in Santiago in 1946, she was his lover in the '50s (he built a house for her, La Chascona), and she was at his side when he died on Sept. 23, 1973, at his home in Isla Negra, only days after the Pinochet coup. One thing is clear: She isn't a Vera Nabokov. Her role is passive, obnoxiously domestic. The reader is surprised by how unliterary and apolitical she is: She blindly follows her husband, uninterested in offering her own political opinions. Of course, their habitat was the Hispanic world, where the feminist revolution is still in the making. Or maybe it was simply Neruda's taste for a certain kind of woman that explains her -- he liked them tame.Widows of canonical writers play a major role in Latin American public life: They are at once sufferers and keepers of the flame. Urrutia doesn't tell us everything. She fails to acknowledge Neruda's relationship with her niece, Alicia Urrutia, who was in her thirties when she and her daughter came to live in Isla Negra. (She was the inspiration of The Flaming Sword.) This pushed Matilde to the verge of desperation. After she returned from a trip to Buenos Aires to have plastic surgery, she threw her niece out and threatened to leave Neruda. But she stayed around: It was 1970, and Neruda was about to find out he had prostate cancer.Her decision was a crucial one. For one thing, the early stages of Neruda's afterlife depended substantially on her. In the Chilean imagination, Urrutia became a symbol of endurance. Gabriel García Márquez put it right when he said of Neruda that he was loyal to Matilde, rather than faithful. Reviewed by Ilan Stavans Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


Andrew Motion, The Guardian
"[Feinstein's] book turns Neruda's life into an opera - a blend of aria and reciitative."


Review
"[Feinstein's] book turns Neruda's life into an opera - a blend of aria and reciitative."


Book Description
The first comprehensive English-language biography of Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean writer, was born into a poor family in 1904. His love poems would go on to make him a household name throughout the Spanish-speaking world and win him international acclaim. His remarkable life reads like an adventure story, from his involvement in the Spanish Civil War to his flight as an exile from the security forces of his own country. He was a Communist and a lover of humanity who nevertheless clung to his Stalinist views even after the horrors of the gulag were revealed. He married three times and endured the early death of a daughter; he had countless other love affairs and forged close friendships with some of the greatest writers and artists of his time, notably García Lorca and Picasso.

Adam Feinstein, a journalist and prize-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American poetry, delves into a wealth of published and unpublished accounts of Neruda. Drawing on Neruda's poetic work, on original interviews, and on the extensive writing on Neruda that exists in Spanish, he delivers the first English-language biography to illuminate the personal, political, and artistic life of this beloved writer.



About the Author
Adam Feinstein is a journalist and broadcaster based in London who specializes in foreign affairs, focusing particularly on Spain and Latin America. He has published a number of short stories, as well as translations of poetry by Federico García Lorca and Mario Benedetti. This is his first book.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This is the first authoritative biography of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate. Born in to a poor family in southern Chile in 1904, Neruda achieved early fame with his book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, and quickly gained prominence as a political figure as well. While he was Chilean consul in Spain, he became an active supporter of the Republican cause; within ten years, his outspoken criticism of Gonzalez Videla's regime in Chile put him at risk in his own country. He lived underground for a year before finally fleeing Chile in a dramatic escape into exile." "As his poems made him a household name throughout the Spanish-speaking world and won him international acclaim, including the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, Neruda married three times and endured the early death of a daughter, finally finding domestic idyll as Isla Negra with his third wife. He also forged close friendships with some of the greatest writers and artists of his time, including Lorca and Picasso. And he maintained a controversial loyalty to Stalin even after the horrors of the gulag were revealed." Adam Feinstein draws on revealing interviews with those who knew Neruda best, including his closest friends and surviving relatives, as well as newly discovered documents in South America, the United States, and the former Soviet Union. Published on the occasion of Neruda's centenary year, this biography provides the first full portrait of a man whose dramatic times, dynamic poetry, commitment to social justice, and joie de vivre made him an icon of the twentieth century.

SYNOPSIS

Drawing on interviews with relatives and friends as well as newfound documents from South America, the US, and the former Soviet Union, Feinstein constructs the first full biography of the charismatic and contradictory Chilean poet. "Pablo Neruda was the antithesis of Jean- Paul Sartre," writes Feinstein, a London-based journalist. "While Sartre felt nausea at the world around him, Neruda felt joy even at the height of his painful and protracted final illness. While Sartre attempted to teach us to find individual freedom through accepting the essential meaninglessness of life, Neruda felt that man—and writers above all—had a duty to embrace life and commit to seeking social justice." Sixteen inset pages display b&w photos spanning Neruda's life. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This year marks the centennial of Nobel laureate Neruda's birth. Neruda, who died in 1973, was considered among the greatest poets of the past century and a man full of passions and contradictions who, despite his efforts to sing his political views, is also remembered as a poet of love. This biography follows Neruda from his precocious poetic beginnings to his wanderings as a diplomat in Asia, Argentina, France, Spain and Mexico. Journalist and translator Feinstein recounts how Neruda saved the lives of many republicans during the Spanish Civil War and how his activism in Chile's Communist Party forced him into exile in 1948. Neruda crossed the Andes to travel yet more through Europe and America, where he befriended such famous men as Lorca and Picasso. Back in Chile in 1952, after writing many great books, Neruda ran for the presidency and his commitment to social justice strengthened. But Feinstein also examines the other constant in the poet's life, love,detailing his three marriages and innumerable love affairs, including plenty of bittersweet stories in an attempt to clarify the often fantastic versions of Neruda's own memories. Feinstein undoubtedly researched every existent source and found new ones, and the result is a detailed and accurate biography. His dry writing fails to bring the poet alive on the page, but this is a necessary book, with many beautiful photos. Agent, Victoria Hobbs. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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