Press pack for Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel 'Hombres buenos' (2015)

"In times of darkness, there were always good men who fought to bring enlightenment and progress. And there were also those who tried to prevent it."

"There are men who pass through life without a trace, and others who remain and are never forgotten."

At the end of the 18th century, when two members of the Royal Spanish Academy, the librarian Don Hermógenes Molina and Admiral Don Pedro Zárate, were commissioned by their colleagues to travel to Paris to obtain, almost clandestinely, the 28 volumes of D'Alembert and Diderot's 'Encyclopédie,' which was banned in Spain, no one could have suspected that the two academics would face a dangerous series of intrigues, and a journey of uncertainties and shocks that would take them, along roads infested with bandits and uncomfortable inns and taverns, from the enlightened Madrid of Charles III to the Paris of cafés, salons, philosophical gatherings, debauched lifestyles, and political unrest on the eve of the French Revolution. Based on real events and characters, documented with extreme rigor, moving and fascinating on every page, 'Good Men' tells the heroic adventure of those who, guided by the lights of reason, sought to change the world with books when the future began to overturn old ideas and the desire for freedom shook established thrones and governments.

Every adventure fits in a book, but not every book ends up becoming an adventure. This is what Arturo Pérez-Reverte has achieved with 'Good Men,' just as he succeeded in doing decades ago with 'The Dumas Club', to which his latest novel is related beyond their shared themes. The story the author offers us this time focuses on the dawn of the New Regime, when the civilized world was illuminated thanks to the contributions of the new thinkers and scientists for whom the 18th century would be remembered as the Age of Enlightenment. But those who sought to control Spain's destiny, averse to any change, did not welcome the arrival of those winds of renewal that were beginning to sweep through Europe. It is at this time that a pair of good men appear who, commissioned by the Royal Spanish Academy, as standard-bearers of the most advanced ideas of their time, will seek to change the sociocultural stagnation that persisted in the times of Charles III, the Spanish king who had formulated his particular brand of "enlightened despotism."

From the very first moment of the narrative, a fierce struggle is proposed between reason and dogmatism, between the intellectual renewal of Spanish society and the premeditated stagnation of life fostered by those who have lived under the protection of faith and staunch conservatism, so fruitful for those who continued to be in power. Only from an institution like the Royal Spanish Academy could the winds of change emerge, and so Don Hermógenes Molina and Admiral Don Pedro Zárate became the pioneers who formalized the decision of the Royal Spanish Academy to bring to Spain the fruit of the renewal of thought that had France as its epicenter: the 'Encyclopédie' as a weapon with which to draw the new order well beyond the French Revolution.

In a time of hope, with the idea of leaving centuries of darkness behind, librarian Molina and Admiral Zárate, shrewd figures of high moral character, are about to confront the same forces that had gripped Spain for centuries. A month-long journey from Madrid to Paris (265 leagues), sixteen thousand reales in their purse, and several weeks searching for a first edition of the 'Encyclopédie' will allow them to experience European reality through unfamiliar eyes, with a detached perspective that doesn't succumb to surprise, but rather assimilates it with the same naturalness with which Arturo Pérez-Reverte interweaves the plot with fresh, eloquent, poignant, and fruitful conversation. In the middle of the action, a few enemies from within the Royal Spanish Academy will seek to thwart the civilizing enterprise undertaken by the pair of academic adventurers in France.

Another pair—this time of not so good men—, Manuel Higueruela and Justo Sánchez Terrón, will do everything they can from Madrid to prevent the 'Encyclopédie' from leaving Paris and crossing the Pyrenees southwards: at stake is the survival of the values of sanctimony, excessive devotion, and obscurantism that still linger in Spain. To this end, there's nothing better than hiring the services of a hitman, the devious Pascual Raposo, a professional at muddying the waters and, should the need arise, leading his prey to their doom. With this constant danger nipping at their heels, Don Hermógenes and Don Pedro—with the invaluable help of the revolutionary abbot Bringas—set out on an adventure that will take them through the Paris of the late 18th century. They will see the social salons and meet the philosopher D'Alembert, the writer Choderlos de Laclos (the author of 'Dangerous Liaisons'), and even the American freedom fighter Benjamin Franklin, who is in Paris seeking support to continue his campaign against the British troops. They will visit cabarets where the ten thousand prostitutes who worked in the city at the time swarm; noble houses where an enlightened air permeates the halls; and libraries with banned but widely read books... And of course, dark corners where it's easy to assault two good men who still have their pride intact and maintain such a sense of honor that they will engage in a sword duel with other equally honorable Frenchmen. If we add to all this a decisive dose of romantic adventure, with the determined participation of Margot Dancenis, an elegant, free, and intelligent woman, it will be difficult to resist the spell of this new adventure proposed by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. 

With a perfect combination of fiction and history, the novel adds an extra layer of highly interesting reflection on the act of creation itself, because along with the adventures of the two academics, there is a parallel account of the details of how the narrator researched the story he is telling in books, maps, travel guides, and all maner of documents, and through conversations with scholars, specialists, booksellers, bibliophiles, and friends who help him rigorously construct this historical adventure. This is why the narrative is so full of life and confirms that there are novels that help us understand the events of the past (and the present) as precisely as an academic treatise. Ultimately, it is about writing to discover, to understand, to experience with certainty a past time that is faithfully reflected—and how—in our immediate present, and perhaps also in the future. 

In pre-revolutionary Paris, the birthplace of reading rooms, academies, the cabarets around Les Halles, of libertines and proto-Jacobins, of the Café Procope and its proud duelists, the quixotic couple in this adventure will not renounce love, disputes, or the zeal that made them unable to imagine a nobler cause than the one they were embarking on in pursuit of the light of knowledge, without attachment to dogmatism of any kind. All of this is wrapped up in a double pleasure for the lovers of bookish adventure: that of experiencing it within the story of the novel itself and that of sharing it with our protagonists, who, like the author himself, belong to that peculiar breed of men who seek to furnish their world with books. Not a bad idea, given the outcome. If it's true that "there are men who pass through life without a trace, and others who remain and are never forgotten," there are also novels that share that second nature that makes them unforgettable: 'Good Men' will be, among the unforgettable ones, one of the best. A book, in short, that will lead us to more books, which is the best thing one can ask of a literary work. If it also provides the reader with entertainment, the exciting feast is set to make history.

Characters

Don Hermógenes Molina (a good man)

Short and plump, with a friendly face, his brown jacket is scuffed and shiny at the elbows, and had undoubtedly seen better days (…). A librarian at the Royal Spanish Academy, he was never interested in traveling outside of Spain, except to Italy, the cradle of the Latin world to which he dedicated his life and studies. Now a widower of sincere religious faith, he managed, in the most uncertain moments, to build solid bridges between his reason and his faith. He has a face that needs shaving twice a day and suffers from gout, among other ailments.

Don Pedro Zárate (a good man)

A man with blue, watery, and melancholic eyes. Despite his still good figure, clothes that fit him like a glove, and his neat appearance, academics estimate him to be between sixty and sixty-five years old, although no one knows his exact age. He lives as a single man with his two sisters, Amparo and Peligros, with hardly any personal assets except some savings, a brigadier's pension, and little else. He is the author of a prestigious 'Dictionary of the Navy.' In his modest capacity, he was one of those enlightened sailors, committed to contributing to a modern and honorable navy, equal to the challenge assumed by the Spanish empire, which still extended across both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. A cultured, dignified, and honorable man, like so many others who ended up with little official recognition, killed in hopeless naval battles, or in simple misery, on half pay or no pay at all. We should add that he was a proud combatant in the Battle of Toulon against the English (February 22, 1744, off the French coast).

Manuel Higueruela

Sixty-something, with a thick neck and a nasal voice, he wears a tontillo jacket and an unpowdered wig, always tilted as if it sat uncomfortably on a head whose vulgarity is only disturbed by his eyes, which are lively, malignant, and intelligent. He is a member of the Spanish Academy of Music, an unrefined playwright, and a mediocre poet, but he is the editor of the ultra-conservative 'Literary Censor,' which has strong support among the most reactionary sectors of the nobility and the clergy.

Justo Sánchez Terrón

Asturian of modest origins, self-made through studies and reading, he enjoys a reputation as a man of advanced ideas, but he is a radical enlightened man. A civil servant and member of the Royal Spanish Academy, blinded by success and incapable of seeing himself with critical lucidity, he has become a pedantic figure, self-important to the most annoying arrogance due to the hammy moral tone of his writings and speeches. He is dubbed the Cato of Oviedo. Furthermore, it is said that he is preparing a theatrical drama with which he intends "to bury the rancid corpses of the national stage."

Pascual Raposo, the hitman.

"A resourceful man, no doubt about it. And with the right scruples. Raposo, Pascual Raposo (…). Clever and dangerous, like his last name" (which means Fox in Spanish). A man in his forties, with curly hair and thick black hatchet-shaped sideburns, rather short, with sturdy shoulders in a brown cloth jacket. He was a cavalry soldier and also worked for the police during the Jesuits' expulsion. At forty-three, with a hardy life at his back and the old scar from a knife wound on his left kidney, he left the army eighteen years ago, after deserting in the battle of La Guardia Pass against the English, which earned him four years of imprisonment in the Ceuta prison. "In his risky profession, smiling is part of the rules until, at the right moment, the smile turns into a butcher's grimace."

Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Count of Aranda

Representative of Charles III's monarchy to the French court, former grandee of Spain, and former ambassador to Lisbon and Warsaw, he is now a stooped, cross-eyed, and toothless sixty-year-old. His influence is widespread on both sides of the Pyrenees, despite his initial reluctance to assist the Spanish academics in their venture.

Milot

A police inspector, he will assist Raposo in his plans to thwart the academics' mission.

Margot Dancenis

Elegant, intelligent, and beautiful, her home is the meeting place for a famous philosophical and literary gathering, often attended by some of the most renowned intellectuals in Paris at the time. Her husband amassed a personal library of more than five thousand books, both philosophical and romantic, including gems such as Newton's 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica,' a masterpiece of 18th-century human thought and modern science, and the long-awaited 'Encyclopédie'.

Abbot Bringas

Poet, pamphleteer, Jacobin revolutionary, and fugitive from the Inquisition, he frequented exiles and radicals in the years leading up to the French Revolution. A translator of Diderot and Rousseau into Spanish, he earned his living through mediation services and various other wheeling and dealing. He accompanies the protagonists on their investigations to obtain a first edition of the 'Encyclopédie' for himself. We know that, years after this adventure ends, he will ultimately be guillotined alongside Robespierre and his followers.

Excerpts from the novel

"'Encyclopédie, ou dictionaire raisonné' (1751-1772): the greatest intellectual adventure of the 18th century: the triumph of reason and progress over the dark forces of the then-known world [...]. Its twenty-eight volumes were published in Paris by Diderot, D'Alembert, and Le Breton (...). One of those wise and decisive works, rare in the history of humanity, that enlighten the men who read them and open the door to happiness, culture, and progress for all peoples."

"At this age, there are more stories to write than time to devote to them. Choosing one means letting others die. That's why it's necessary to choose carefully. Make just the right amount of mistakes."

"It's about choosing two good men from among our peers."

"With such a panorama, Paris represents a challenge. A tempting experience. In that city, which has become the undisputed center of reason in conflict with unreason, the cauldron where the cream of human intellect and modern philosophy boils, Gordian knots are being untied today, once unconquerable beliefs are crumbling, and everything under heaven and on earth is being discussed."

"For the most part, these scholars were shrewd men of moral standing (…). They sensed that by rigorously defining the language, making it more rational and scientific, they were changing Spain."

"Damn the need we have for that printed torrent of disbelief and impiety that insults everything traditional and everything honorable..."

"Dear colleague, I propose a truce. A temporary and fruitful tactical alliance. A compromise between the two extremes."

"No one intends to harm our beloved librarian and admiral, the journalist says. It's only a matter of hindering things. Of making their task so difficult that they have to return empty-handed…"

"This is a long, hazardous journey. A strange and noble adventure befitting its prodigious time: bringing the enlightenment, the wisdom of the century, to that humble corner of cultured Spain, its Royal Academy."

"In a game, you win or you lose… But you always have to trump one card with another… Do you follow me?"

"In an unjust world like the one [Raposo] has come to know, there are only two possible ways to endure injustice, whether divine or human: resigning yourself to suffering it, or allying yourself with it."

"How sad. We Spaniards continue to be our own worst enemies. Determined to extinguish the lights wherever we see them shining."

"Omnipresent religion prevents us from flourishing. There is no freedom... Whatever comes from outside is accepted only poking at it with the tips of our fingers, so as not to get burned [...]. Few in Spain dare to cross the boundaries of Catholic dogma."

"Education is the key word, without a doubt. It will be the lever of the new man [...]. That is why you and I travel, Don Hermes [...], to tight our humble little screw on that lever."

"In a place where nobles didn't pay taxes, where work was considered a curse, and where it gave you luster that none of your ancestors had worked in mechanical trades, the natural tendency was indolence, the rejection of anything that might change things."

"We were not enlightened in the sense of other places in Europe, because there was never a coordinated nucleus of philosophers and political writers who freely handled new ideas."

"The urgency of new Spaniards who are not slaves to the old world."

"There is a fascinating exercise, halfway between literature and life: visiting places which one has read about in books and projecting into them, enriching them with that reading memory, real or imagined stories, authentic or fictional characters who once populated them."

"You should know that duels are frequent in Paris. Rarely is there a day when someone isn't dispatched [...]. Mourning is as fashionable here as pigeon-wing wigs..."

"My companion is an enlightened man of the masses: a variety more common in Spain than one might think."

"Ministries in France are despotic [...]. The people are bled dry by taxes that go into the pockets of just a few, and the State is gnawed by debts... A good shake-up is needed, something that will change all this. Something that will shake it up from top to bottom. A bloody revolution."

"Voltaire is what the police seize the most. That makes it very expensive."

"Luck has little to do with it […]. And a lot to do with apathy and lack of interest in the arts, sciences, and education, subjects that make men free."

"The new philosophy will do that job. Without a doubt. […] But accompanied by a slap in the face. The people are too thick to understand. That is why they must stop respecting the authority that imprisons them… Let the spirits of the base man be stirred, showing him the shame of his own slavery."

"The mission of those of us who wield the pen, our philosophical duty, is to demonstrate that there is currently no hope. To confront human beings with their own desolation. Only then will they rise up demanding justice or revenge…"

"It was the desperation of the bitter poor devils that, exploding from the lower social strata, ended up inflaming the whole people. In practice, spiteful fanatics like the crazed abbot, with their frustration and hatred, brought more people to the streets than all the Encyclopedists combined."

"When one has lived properly, there is nothing better than a long, well-earned rest."

"Spain, he concludes, must stop resisting science and reason. Let her learn to think and read. She's very clever, and she really needs it."

"The travelers are having trouble finding what they're looking for, and he's preparing to hinder them even further. Furthermore, they're in the hands of an untrustworthy individual, and the embassy isn't taking any notice... All well and good, as you see. Favorable for our plans."

"People, especially the Spanish, live off dreams, appetite, hatred, and fear; and people like you and I, each in our own way, manage this like no one else."

"Today, in Paris, every lady worth her salt must have at least one libertine and a geometrician at her court, just as they used to have pages."

"I'm just one of those who try to furnish the world with books."

"A library is not something that has to be read in full, but a companion, he said, after taking a few more steps. A remedy and a consolation [...]. A library is a place where you can find the right thing at the right time."

"Policeman Milot and his network of informants keep Raposo informed of everything the admiral and the librarian do in the city."

"It's my specialty, comrade. To fabricate false testimony, subject to payment."

"Individuals like him easily find justifications for every act in their lives, no matter how crude or miserable; and it's rare that someone carries around more ghosts than they care to bear."

"A rat cornered in an alley, among the garbage. A perfect image of the world, thinks Raposo, as he throws the piece of brick at it."

"I'm sorry, Don Hermes. It wasn't personal. But speaking of Spanish science is to stumble at every step over the pitfall of religious scruples."

"A state policy is needed that encourages bourgeois society to finance experimental sciences, seeing business in them. In Spain, science, education, culture, everything stumbles on the same thing. And because of this, the prudent remain silent and the bold suffer."

"I believe that when someone has material or spiritual goods to preserve, and maturity, and leaves behind the effervescence of youth—and in that I include young people like those in the English colonies—they tend to place kings on their thrones..."

"Every man, whether he studies or not, is dangerous when he gets used to be, it seems to me... Or when he is forced to be [...] They forget the force of a torrent, and the sea, and nature, which blindly strikes everything in its path. They forget the rules of life."

"The day after tomorrow at dawn, on the Champs-Élysées, if it suits you […]. I beg you to choose your weapons […]. At first blood."

"The duelist places himself above the law and proves that his pride matters more to him than any human or divine authority..."

"It matters to me. I have no interest in dying tomorrow morning."

"Doesn't that heart of yours, always in time with your head like a clock hand and its pendulum, tire you sometimes?"

"The metallic sound of the swords finally rings out, silvery and clear, in the humid morning air."

"That's worth a drink, or several," Milot calls to the waitress. "After all, the money of fools is the heritage of the clever."

"Here [in Paris], used to being in public places and dealing with men, women have their own pride, their audacity, and even their own gaze..."

"After having had a good number of lovers, a woman should consider herself lucky if she knows how to turn one of them, the most intelligent, into a faithful and loyal friend [...]. When the illusion of early passions fades, reason is perfected."

"A handsome man is one whom nature has properly formed to perform two main functions: the preservation of the individual, which extends to many things, including war, and the propagation of the species, which extends to only one... Have you kissed any women in Paris, sir?"

"I can't imagine a nobler cause than bringing that 'Encyclopédie,' and above all what it contains and represents, to the heart of that dark and rugged Spain from which I live in exile."

"It was an honor to help you, gentlemen."

 

"There are men who pass through life without leaving a trace, and others who remain and are never forgotten."