After reading three of Andrés Neuman's books over the past couple of years (one in Spanish!), and having met him in Melbourne a while back, the Argentinian-Spanish author has definitely become one of my favourite contemporary writers. However, where those three books were novels (in the case of Traveller of the Century a rather hefty one), his latest offering in English is very different, a collection of short vignettes no sooner tasted than devoured. So, does his shorter work live up to his longer books? The answer is a most emphatic 'yes' :)
*****
The Things We Don't Do (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is a wonderful little collection of short stories, divided into five sections. Each section contains seven thematically-linked stories, few of which run for more than three or four pages. In addition to the stories, there's also a collection of four 'Dodecalogues' at the end, semi-serious guidelines for writing short stories (the choice of twelve rules for each set is, as the writer says, to avoid the absurd perfection of ten...). Together, it all adds up to 170 pages of great reading.
One frequent feature of the collection is the short, short story, pieces barely managing to fill a page or two. While I used to be a little suspicious of these, they've actually become my favourite type of short fiction as they distinguish themselves more clearly from novels than longer short stories do. A good example is the opening story 'Happiness', a one-page piece about a man who condones his wife's adultery. The reason for this is fairly bizarre - it's mainly because he wants to be the man she's sleeping with. Once he's managed to live up to this standard, his wife will, of course, come back to him...
Another good one is the first section's title story, 'The Things We Don't Do'. One of the shorter pieces in the collection, it's a list of things the writer loves about their relationship:
"I like that we don't do the things we don't do. I like our plans on waking, when morning slinks onto our bed like a cat of light, plans we never accomplish because we get up late from imagining them so much."
'The Things We Don't Do' p.31 (Pushkin Press, 2014)
It's a less a story than an ode to the joys of a lazy Sunday in bed.
While there's a lot to enjoy in the shorter contributions, the longer ones are pretty good too. A story about a rather less loving relationship is 'A Line in the Sand', where two stressed partners are separated by a literal line, scratched out on the beach. Standing in the burning sun, the man slowly realises the deeper significance of the line the woman has drawn, and his unwillingness to accept it is indicative of the controlling nature the woman is attempting to highlight. (Mind you, being compatible isn't all that great either. In another of Neuman's relationship stories, 'A Terribly Perfect Couple', he shows how being perfect for each other can cause all manner of unexpected issues.)
Another of the main topics is writing, and in 'Theory of Lines' we get a light-hearted hint at one of Neuman's own inspirations. This one is a short piece narrated by a writer inspired by the washing his neighbours hang out:
"As the years go by at my window, I have learned that you should not go too far in changing what you observe. You can discover more by concentrating on just one point rather than transferring your attention hither and thither, This counts as a lesson in synthesis. Three or four washing lines ought to provide sufficient material for a thriller."
'Theory of Lines', p.158
There you have it - a story in every soiled item of underwear...
One of my favourites in this collection is 'Mr President's Hotel', an intriguing story in which a VIP is constantly asked to sign the visitor's book at hotels. However, this apparently tedious task takes on more importance when he discovers that a mysterious N.N. always seems to have been there first. When the sinister message leaver begins to direct their comments at the narrator, he suddenly feels threatened by a shadowy figure with no existence beyond the two initials and the notes. It's a fascinating story, one that has you thinking of Kafka, and his protagonists pursued by unseen menaces.
There is definitely evidence of other influences on Neuman, though, with the short pieces paying homage to Argentinian writers like Córtazar and Borges. Examples include 'Man Shot', a brief monologue of the thoughts of a man about to be shot by a firing squad, and 'A Cigarette', a bloody tale of honour amongst criminals. A more obvious nod in the direction of Neuman's influences is given by the story 'The God of the Blind Men', in which a small literary society is honoured to receive none other than Jorge Luis Borges himself as its guest of honour ;)
The content is excellent, but it's the variety of styles and voices which makes The Things We Don't Do stand out. 'Delivery', for example, is a mesmerising, one-sentence stream-of-consciousness telling of an unusual birth. Thoughts of the conception, the speaker's own childhood and the birth intermingle, all in a story with a definite (and unusual) ending. The style is very different, though, in 'Juan, José', a tale alternating between the points of view of a psychiatrist and a patient. The story is full of professional jargon, clinical and to the point - the only problem is that we're not sure which of the men is the psychologist and which the patient...
Another pleasing aspect to the collection is the translation - after recent disappointments, it's nice to find something which reads so well. One of the final stories, 'The Poem-Translating Machine', examines the frustrations of translation in more detail, as a poet disappointed by a poor translation of his work begins to experiment with having it retranslated over and over again:
"Unless the poet's good taste is failing him, this fourth version of his poem is full of errors and is already close to unintelligible. The referents have gone out of the window, the theme has been cast to the remotest margins, the enjambments sound like saws. Devastated but at the same time amused, for a moment he imagines all his books translated into this or any other language. He sighs gloomily. No two ways about it, he thinks to himself, poetry is untranslatable."
'The Poem-Translating Machine' (pp.152/3)
It's an interesting idea, one with a familiar ring...
Neuman is particularly interested in translation, and his afterword mentions many of the people who have brought his work into English. Some of the stories were originally released in English in magazines, and he takes care to name the original translators. However, his main praise is reserved for the work of Caistor and Garcia:
"If any of the texts in this volume touches somebody's heart, that will be thanks to the patient skills of my translators, Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia. The mistakes, I'm afraid, were my idea." (p.171)
It's nice to see the translators get due recognition :)
I loved The Things We Don't Do, and I think most others will too. There's far more here than I could cover in a single post, with many delights awaiting anyone who decides to get themselves a copy of the book. In fact, the only issue here is one which Pushkin Press will have recently had to deal with. You see, while there's no doubt Pushkin will have put Neuman's name forward for next year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the question remains as to which book, as both this one and Talking to Ourselves were released in 2014... Personally, I'd go for this one, but you never know what publishers are thinking. Still, if Neuman makes the longlist again in 2015 (and I'd say there was a fairly good chance of that happening), we'll all find out ;)
Over the last couple of years, I've discovered many great books and writers, mainly in translation, but it's always nice to return to old favourites. However, in some cases, these discoveries have quickly become old favourites, with sequels appearing within a decent space of time. Good examples of this are Jon Kalman Stefansson with his Icelandic sagas, Karl Ove Knausgaard and his very public midlife crisis and (of course) Elena Ferrante's bitter, twisted and compelling tales of two women in Naples :)
Let's see if today's post, my first for this year's Spanish Lit Month, can add another name to that worthy list...
*****
Iosi Havilio's Open Door was a novel I enjoyed a few years back, and Paradises (translated by Beth Fowler, e-copy courtesy of And Other Stories) is a follow-up book, featuring the same protagonist. It picks up several years after the events of the first book, with our nameless heroine still living on the old farm in the country. However, right from the start, Paradises shows us that things will be a little different this time around - her partner, Jaime, has just been killed in a hit-and-run incident, and our friend decides that it's time to head back to the big bad city.
However, things are a little different this time around. First, she lands a job at a zoo, mainly thanks to Iris, a Romanian migrant who lives at the same lodging house. Then, Eloisa, her oversexed friend from the country, manages to track her down. Oh, there's one other thing - did I forget to mention her four-year-old son, Simon?
While the story and setting are different from those of Open Door, the style is very much the same. It's just as detached, just as world weary - and just as lacking in sentiment:
"In this new Jaime, the final Jaime, who I'll only see this once, in addition to his stillness, the smell of alcohol or formaldehyde, I'm not sure, I suddenly discover an oddity that bears little relation to death. Instead of his lips being sealed, as was his habit, somewhere between resignation and embarrassment, I catch sight of a small opening at the right-hand corner of his mouth, a sarcastic, sly smile, as if death had caught Jaime mocking something."
(And Other Stories, 2013)
We don't waste too much time grieving poor Jaime. Instead, his departure merely marks the start of a new stage in his widow's life.
She moves on, then, just as she arrived, without leaving a trace, and with all contacts left behind. Simon is one addition to her baggage, but he too is quiet and unassuming, not a boy to overcomplicate her life. However, for the first time in years, she has to find a job, entering the world of work once more. From the country to the city, you might think it's back to reality - the truth is that none of it seems real...
In fact, Paradises is pervaded by a dreamlike, grotesque quality at times, and when she moves into an old tower block, it's almost like a journey into a twisted fairy tale. Not that you'd find much like this in a kids' book:
"But the thing that keeps me from sleep more than anything, adding to the insomnia of recent days, is not the noise from the street or the music or conversations, but those strange murmurs produced in the bowels of the building and which at times I think might be in my head. Metallic sounds, wind-like, flushes, hums, sputters, like the secretions of a decomposing organism."
What awaits her there does remind the reader of certain of Grimm's Tales, though. There's Tosca, the gigantic, cancer-ridden, morphine-addict matriarch of the building, watching over the goings on with the help of her mentally handicapped son. Together, they sit at the top of a society of drug dealers, drag queens and other assorted human jettsam in a squat with unreliable power and water...
It's inevitable that Eloisa, the most memorable character from the first novel, crashes back into the life of the main character. The younger woman is as mad as ever, but slightly different in this new environment, and this actually sums Paradises up nicely - it's very similar to Open Door, yet very different at the same time (if that makes sense...). While the older woman is happy to see Eloisa again, she's never quite sure whether to go along with her stunts or cut her off. There's some excellent interplay here, and for readers who remember the first book, the sexual tension between the two is skilfully drawn out.
Havilio's style is simple, but hypnotic. While the plot is quite ordinary, the author's handling of it makes it seem as if it's happening a world away. It can all seem hidden behind a veil of fog - you see, the main character just isn't quite on our wavelength:
"Simon has taken advantage of those seconds of distraction to escape from my sight. He's hiding or being hidden by the landscape. One of the two is using the other. I'm not going to shout, I wouldn't know how. I wait, to see if he appears, surely he'll appear, but he doesn't appear. I stand up and walk without alarm, accommodating my flip-flops between the holes and the stones."
She seems incapable of strong emotions, no matter what life throws at her, and her inability to really get upset adds to the dreamlike feel of the novel.
While I'm not quite sure Havilio is up with the writers I mentioned at the start of the post, Paradises is very enjoyable and well written with a good translation (one with a noticeably British-English feel). In truth, it's not really about the story, it's all about the 'vibe' - it's a mellow book, with occasional (deliberate) jarring tones of swearing and drugs, just enough to keep the reader on their toes. Enough of my thoughts though - I'll leave the last words to our anonymous friend, words which sum up her style perfectly:
"I offer no opinion, nor do I contradict her. I prefer to let things follow their natural course, then I'll see."
And that pretty much sums her (and the book) up ;)
With the 2014 FIFA World Cup a matter of weeks away, it's no surprise to find several football-themed books on the market, and I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of one recently. It's a novel which looks at football from a slightly different angle, but in the end it's just as much about friendship as about the beautiful game...
*****
Eduardo Sacheri's Papers in the Wind (translated by Mara Faye Lethem, review copy courtesy of Other Press) is set in Avellaneda, just outside Buenos Aires, and follows three friends (Mauricio, Ruso and Fernando) with a passion for life - and the local football team, Independiente. The novel starts with the three mourning the death of Fernando's brother, Mono, a former junior footballer who later became successful as a systems analyst. As they sit in a café, taking in the reality of their friend's passing, they begin to ponder the future.
Their main concern is for the future of Mono's daughter, Guadalupe, and they're right to be concerned as Mono sank all his money into buying a young football talent, one loaned out to a team in the lower divisions:
Ruso sounds excited when he adds, "That's awesome. That he plays first-string I mean. That he feels secure in his spot. For his confidence, and all that."
Bermúdez looks at him as if he's not sure he should respond.
"The thing is, kid, you have no idea just how awful his replacement is."
p.19 (Other Press, 2014)
The contract of Mario Juan Bautista Pittilanga, then, looks like US$300,000 down the drain - unless the friends can think of something fast...
While football is the topic around which the novel is constructed, the true focus of Papers in the Wind is friendship, in particular the importance of keeping in touch with childhood friends. The three main characters are very different people, and if they had met as adults, they probably wouldn't even have given each other the time of day. Fernando is a teacher on the wrong side of town while Mauricio is a lawyer with his sights on the big time (and any attractive secretaries who come his way). As for Ruso, let's just say that he's a small-business owner who really shouldn't be let anywhere near a small business...
None of that really matters, though, because the three boys grew up in the same neighbourhood, kicking a ball around in the street and watching Independiente play every weekend. These are friends who will fight for each other - as Ruso proves on a visit to Mono's uncaring specialist:
"Are you a doctor or what, you little son of a bitch? Don't you see, don't you realize that Mono is sick, asshole? That he's afraid he's gonna die? Or do you not give a shit? You didn't even look at him, asshole, you didn't even look at him! Don't you realize what he wanted to ask you? Didn't you realize, moron? What? You - you've never been afraid?" (p.165)
If the doctor hasn't had much experience of fear in the past, Ruso soon helps him to catch up in this department.
However, as most people know, modern football has a way of corrupting those who become involved in the business, and trying to sell Pittilanga to get Mono's money back is going to test the ties of our three friends:
"What I'm saying... what I'm saying is that soccer is a lie. That it's all a farce. That it's all business. The players, the managers, the journalists. Even the hooligans are on the books. All about the benjamins. They all do it for the money." (p.443)
The beautiful game has a dirty underbelly, and as Fernando, Ruso and Mauricio get drawn into the world of negotiations and bribery, they realise that it's impossible to come out with their integrity intact. A bigger problem, though, is that there's always the temptation for one of the three to start acting behind the others' backs...
Papers in the Wind is a nice, easy read, and it's a story which draws you in, a definite page-turner. The story has two alternating strands, one set in the present, and one relating the events leading up to Mono's untimely death. The flashbacks help to set the scene for the later events, also shining a light on the nature of the relationship shared by the four young men from the suburbs.
There were a couple of minor issues I had with the book. The first is to do with the strand dealing with Mono's illness, which, while initially interesting, later became far too slow, bogging down the main storyline. It's an important side to the story as it helps show the strength of the bond the men share, but towards the end it really dragged, and I was skipping through it as quickly as possible to get back to the main event.
The other issue is one which will only be shared with a minority of readers out there, namely British-English speakers with a passion for football. You see, this translation is in American English, and while that usually only poses minor concerns, the moment the book starts to mention 'soccer' in any depth, it really is a different language. Some examples I noted down are 'field' (pitch in British English), 'wall pass' (one-two), 'goal area' (penalty area), 'demoted' (relegated), 'light towers' (floodlights), 'lateral defender, left side' (left-back) and 'an off-mark shot to the goal' (a shot off-target). For people like me, that all makes for painful reading ;)
Luckily, though, Papers in the Wind is more about the people than the game, looking at how sport can have a corrupting influence once large amounts of money are on offer. As you watch the best in the world this (northern) summer, don't forget that for every Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, there's a Mario Juan Bautista Pittilanga hoping that his contract is going to be renewed at the end of the season - and a middle-man counting his dollars, who might just make it happen...
After the huge success of Traveller of the Century, many readers have been waiting anxiously for Andrés Neuman's next work to appear in English - and I certainly count myself among that number. Perversely though, with such a huge weight of expectation (and having met the writer last year in Melbourne), I've found this is a review which isn't that easy to write.
The keyword here is objectivity - and to imagine that I'm talking to myself...
*****
Talking to Ourselves (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is a short novel in three voices, which together reveal the story of how a family deals with terminal illness. Mario, suffering from an unnamed disease, uses a short grace period of relatively good health to take his ten-year-old son, Lito, on a trip in his truck, his attempt to give his son one last, happy memory of their time together. Meanwhile, back at home, Mario's wife Elena, physically and mentally exhausted from caring for her husband, sits around and worries - until she finds a way to cope.
After a visit to her husband's doctor, hoping to break through his professional reserve and learn the truth about Mario's prospects, Elena allows herself to become involved in an affair, a brief, physical, charged relationship. As she details her thoughts in her diary, she struggles to understand what's going on, why she's turning her back on Mario in his final days. The only place she can search for the answers is in books, scouring her library for any mention of death and illness. In the end though, the truth is very clear - we all go through this alone...
Talking to Ourselves is an excellent exploration of what it means to live with the knowledge of imminent death, and the way in which we avoid discussing the thoughts constantly circling around in our minds. By splitting his story into three alternating sections, each told in the first person by one of the family members, Neuman allows each of the main characters a say, all three having their own clear, unique voice (a credit to both the writer and the translators). While conversations are described in each of the sections, Mario, Elena and Lito are talking very much to themselves - occasionally at cross purposes.
Lito's part is, for obvious reasons, the slightest. Unaware of his father's illness, he's simply thrilled to be going on a journey he's been looking forward to for a long time, a trip he's likely to remember for the rest of his life. The writer paints a picture of a boy whose thinking hasn't quite reached the level necessary to cope with his father's illness - he still thinks he can control the weather with his moods and that life is like a rally game (a crash just means you lose time...).
His simple, naive descriptions of the trip are complemented by Mario's story, a digital recording he makes when in the hospital after the trip, waiting for death to catch up with him:
"...will those mp thingamajigs still exist?, or will iPods seem as old-fashioned to your kids as my record player?, formats disappear just like people..."
p.33 (Pushkin Press, 2014)
In a quick, yet rambling monologue, he leaves an oral record to be given to his son at a later date, explaining what really happened on the trip - why they had to take so many toilet breaks, why they slept in the truck, why he hurried Lito out of a bar so quickly...
Of the three family members though, the key to Talking to Ourselves lies with Elena. The brief respite offered by the trip allows her to think about matters in more depth, which is not necessarily a good thing:
"If Mario accepted the limits of his strength, we would have told all our friends the truth. He prefers us to be secretive. Discreet, he calls it. A patient's rights go unquestioned. No one talks about the rights of the carer. Another person's illness makes us ill. And so I'm in that truck with them, even though I've stayed at home." (p.17)
Elena is obviously drained by caring for her husband, and Neuman examines her emotional instability by allowing the reader to follow her through her relationship with the doctor.
Initially, there's a wall of professionalism between Elena and Dr. Escalante, one which actually frustrates her:
"The cautiousness of doctors irritates me. Conversing with them is like talking on a phone without any coverage. In other words, like listening to yourself speak." (p.20)
However, once the ice is broken, it's as if a torrent is bursting through a tiny hole in a dam, thrusting her into a relationship she doesn't know how to handle. It's a graphic, physical affair, similar to that of Hans and Sophie in Traveller of the Century, but far darker and more twisted; where the two translators are celebrating their bodies in the name of life, Elena and Escalante are merely trying to forget death...
While frank about her motivations and guilt, in her attempts to get to the bottom of her actions Elena does shift some of the blame onto her husband, especially regarding his inability and unwillingness to accept his fate and let his family know about his illness:
"By avoiding the subject of his death, Mario delegates it to me, he kills me a little." (p.49)
Of course, she is no better than her husband in this regard - her thoughts, elegantly set down in her diary, are, just like Mario's words, meant purely for herself.
And this is what the reader is left with at the end of the novel, the feeling that much has been lost in a lack of communication. Despite appearing to be a close, loving family, each person has their own thoughts and prefers to keep them secret, hidden away inside - together but alone, trapped in their own emotions. It's honest, but brutally so, and it leaves you with an uneasy sense that this is how it could be for us too. Something to ponder in a quiet moment alone...
*****
Objectivity. Hmm.
I could (and perhaps should) leave it there - this has already blown out enough. However, I'm not a paid reviewer, I'm a blogger, and blogging is all about subjectivity, giving people my opinions and feelings, and I don't think they're amazingly clear from what I've written above. The truth is that when I first read Talking to Ourselves, I thought it was an excellent, thought-provoking book with three distinct voices, a novel I enjoyed immensely. But I didn't love it. So I had to find out why...
The reason, which I suspected on the first reading but confirmed after rereading, is all to do with subjectivity (i.e. my preferences as a reader). You see, as mentioned above, the key to the book is Elena and the way in which her experiences as a carer have ground her down, leaving her open for the relationship she enters into with the good doctor. However, the moment she sleeps with him, she loses my good will, and this prevents me from enjoying the novel completely.
Why does this affect my enjoyment so much? Well, it's just the way I am. Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, to name just two examples, are other books where I feel that the writer is expecting me to sympathise with a woman who betrays her husband, and while in each case I can see what drove her to infidelity, I can never quite bring myself to sympathise or empathise with her actions. Most readers will be able to enjoy Elena's thoughts despite this, but for me her actions cast a very long shadow over her words.
I also thought it would be interesting to imagine what would happen if the characters in the book were (to use an in-vogue expression) 'gender-flipped'. Let's imagine a story where a terminally-ill woman takes her daughter on one last trip, while the husband stays at home and throws himself into a sadomasochistic affair with his wife's doctor. I really can't see that one winning over many readers, but with the roles reversed there's an expectation that the decision is more justified - or is this just me?
In truth, Talking to Ourselves is a wonderful book, cleverly constructed and well translated (Neuman told me that he occasionally looked back and tweaked his original after seeing what Caistor and Garcia were making of his text!), even if it's missing the warmth and life of Traveller of the Century. In its tone, it reminded me more of his first novel, Bariloche, and I wonder if his big, break-out work in English is the exception in terms of style rather than the norm. With another work out later this year from Pushkin (a collection of short stories), the picture may become a little clearer :)
So, objectivity's gone out of the window then, but that's unsurprising - it's clear that for someone who spends hours each day sitting in front of a computer monitor, subjectivity is a much more common state of mind. You see, the truth is that while I may occasionally delude myself into thinking I'm communicating with my digital readers, in my rare moments of lucidity and honesty, I realise that what I'm really doing is talking to myself - and that's a very scary thought...
While New Directions have published a fair few of César Aira's books in the US, he's still not really widely known here in Australia (or in the UK) - so my library doesn't have much of his work to borrow. Recently though, I've been very lucky, managing to obtain an inter-library loan and persuade my local branch to buy one of his books. Which is why you have a double dose of Aira delights today :)
*****
The Seamstress and the Wind (translated by Rosalie Knecht) starts with a writer in a Parisian café who wants to pen a story. He already has the title (the title of the real book), but that's as far as he's got. If only he can think of a story to go with it...
Eventually, he stumbles upon one from his childhood, a tale which starts with a friend's disappearance but quickly becomes ever more surreal. In the course of a mad dash to Patagonia, the reader makes the acquaintance of a host of unhinged characters, with the addition of a wedding dress, some serious gambling and (of course) the wind...
While some dislike the term, 'magical realism' is the easiest (and most apt) way to describe what's going on here. When you have a woman flung high into the air, only to land gently on her feet, an invisible lorry, a monster and a woman turning black from shock, you sense that we're no longer in Kansas (or even Buenos Aires). That's without mentioning the appearance of an armadillo on wheels, racing across the dried-out flatlands of Patagonia...
It's not always easy to tease out the deeper ideas hidden beneath the crazy surface, but one theme Aira works on is memories and forgetting. In his initial rambling monologue, the writer touches on these ideas, recalling(!) several mistaken memories from his childhood. He remembers his mother being asleep when he went to bed, even though he's sure she was always up later than him, and his memory of being waken by birds turns out to be mistaken (it was his neighbour's car).
He also enjoys playing with contradictions, frequently starting sentences off only to turn back on himself before we reach the full stop:
"My parents were realistic people, enemies of fantasy. They judged everything by work, their universal standard for measuring their fellow man. Everything else hung on that criterion, which I inherited wholly and without question; I have always venerated work above all else; work is my god and my universal judge; but I never worked, because I never needed to, and my passion exempted me from working because of a bad conscience or a fear of what others might say."
p.23 (New Directions, 2011)
The reader needs to stay focused when reading this book. Like the wind which makes its appearance late in the piece, Aira's story goes off in odd directions...
The Seamstress and the Wind is a great story that feels like it's being made up as the writer goes along - which, of course, is exactly what is happening, both in the story and in real life. Anyone familiar with the great Aira 'method' will know that he's a writer that doesn't like to plan too far in advance :)
*****
The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (translated by Katherine Silver), the second of my library delights, is a little different from the first. The book starts with the titular faith healer wandering the streets, and after an adventure in an ambulance (one which he undergoes unwillingly), he goes back to pondering his writings on the theory of miracle cures. One day, he is summoned to the bedside of an ailing billionaire, and, to his own surprise, agrees to test his theories for the first time...
It's very different from others I've read by Aira, a much denser piece despite its brevity. In fact, after the first couple of sections (44 of 80 pages), I wasn't really sure if I was enjoying it; I was missing the easy-reading flow his work usually induces. Then the 'great' doctor goes to work, and you are swept away by the energy and audaciousness of his attempt to bend the universe to his liking. It's a battle between belief and reason, and Aira and his doctor insist that you've got to believe...
Anyone wanting specifics about the miracle cure will be disappointed as the writer is deliberately ambiguous, which fits in very well with the slippery nature of what Aira's trying to say with his book. In fact, it's very easy to equate Dr. Aira with the writer, even without the name:
Writing was something he couldn't do in a single block, all at once. He had to keep doing it, if at all possible, every day in order to establish a rhythm... The rhythm of publication, so checkered due to the imponderables of the material aspects, could be regularized through the installment format, which also took care of the quantity of the product and its basic tone, that of "disclosure".
p.38 (New Directions, 2012)
Hmm - an author who writes every day and brings out regular short works... Remind you of anybody?
I may be completely wrong, but it seemed to me as if Aira was equating the struggle and mystery of producing a great work of art with the art of the miracle cure (or vice-versa). Just as in the creation of a work of fiction, the good doctor tries to bend the universe in his own fashion; more importantly, just as is the case in writing, it can all go horribly, horribly wrong.
At the end of the piece, we find ourselves asking whether the 'doctor' is a charlatan. More importantly, perhaps, what about his creator? Now that's not a question most writers pose about themselves...
*****
That makes four Aira books for me over the past few months, and I'm very happy that New Directions have taken on the job of bringing Aira's *many* works into English - one 'installment' at a time. Each of the books has had an excellent translation (Chris Andrews was responsible for both Varamo and Ghosts), and with several more translations already out there, I'm very keen to read some more. Why not give Aira a try? I'd definitely recommend his work. He might turn out to be your next new favourite writer...
As you may have noticed, I've read a lot of tricky books in my time (many this year alone), so why is today's book, a 150-page first novel, one of the most difficult I've ever read? Well, there's a simple answer to that - there's a lot that's lost in translation...
*****
Bariloche is the first novel of Argentine-Spanish writer Andrés Neuman, he of Traveller of the Century fame. It's a much shorter and simpler book than his IFFP-shortlisted work though, and is centred on the life of Demetrio Roja, a rubbish collector in Buenos Aires. Every day, he goes to the depot where he and his work partner cruise the empty streets of the Argentine capital, removing unsightly rubbish before the rest of the city starts its day.
However, back home, we see a different side of Demetrio. In a stark, semi-vacant apartment, he sits and occupies himself with jigsaw puzzles. Not just any puzzle will do; they all have pictures showing the lake, forests and mountains of Bariloche, a small rural town on the other side of Argentina. You see, Demetrio is not a native of the big city, and in his lonely apartment, he pines for the home of his youth - and a woman he once knew:
"Era lindísima y mayor que yo. Se vestía como los hombres del lugar, escondiendo el cuerpo lo más que podía. No vivía lejos, pero para mí ese trecho de tierra y a veces de barro era toda una ceremonia, una distancia que no podía recorrerse así nomás."
p.32 (Anagrama, 2009)
"She was very beautiful, and out of my reach. She dressed like the local men, covering her body as best she could. She didn't live far away, but for me this stretch of land and, at times, mud was a complete ritual, a distance which I could never cross." (my poor translation...)
As you may have guessed, Demetrio is not a very happy man...
Bariloche consists of sixty-five short chapters, several lasting less than a page, while the penultimate chapter, the longest in the book, only runs for six pages. Initially, these scenes of urban life are merely snap-shots of Demetrio's daily routine, but as the novel progresses, we are treated to more glimpses of his life before his arrival in Buenos Aires, in particular, of a relationship he has which ends abruptly.
While the scenes in the mountains are sunny and filled with languid happiness, the chapters in the capital mostly happen in the dark, in the midst of the refuse of the big city. There's an obvious contrast between the purity and innocence of Demetrio's youth and his life in Buenos Aires, and this contrast isn't limited to his physical surroundings - life in BA also seems to have corrupted his morals. His young love was innocent, if forbidden:
"Nos besamos in ese momento y después no importó nada aparte de sus manos y las mías." (p.61)
"We kissed at that moment, and afterwards nothing mattered except her hands and mine."
Back in the big city, however, Demetrio's female affairs are less simple, as he is sleeping with the one woman he really should have left well alone...
The two strands, past and present, intertwine to create a fuller picture of a man whose life is going nowhere. Trapped in memories, many of them pasted onto cardboard and carefully cut into small pieces, Demetrio is stuck in a rut he's unlikely to climb out of any time soon. Work is simply a chore, and his love life is a dead end waiting to smother him alive. Still, in his mind (and on his kitchen table), he'll always have Bariloche...
*****
The observant among you (i.e. those who have actually read the post carefully) will have realised by now that it wasn't the book that was difficult but the fact that I was reading it in the original Spanish. Sadly, Traveller of the Century is, at this point, the only one of Neuman's books to have appeared in English, and having read it twice and loved it - and having caught up with the writer at the Melbourne Writers Festival -, I was keen to try another one.
How? Well, I have studied Spanish before (two years at GCSE level while doing my A-Levels), and the similarity with French, another of my languages, helps a lot. In essence though, it was me and my hazy memory of the language (with a little help from Google Translate) against an authentic literary text - I staggered through twelve rounds, but I got a hell of a beating ;)
If I'm being honest, it would be hard for anyone to take my review at face value as I did struggle with the book at times. The first few days saw me read about seven pages at a time, with constant stops to look words up, and I really thought I had bitten off more than I could chew... However, I slowly got the hang of things, and my long-term memory kicked in, allowing me to double that by the end of my two weeks of reading. While there were still words I didn't know, I opted for fluency over complete comprehension where possible, especially if I sensed that not knowing a certain word was unlikely to affect the flow of the story.
I did get a lot out of Bariloche, especially when contrasting it with Traveller of the Century, as it allowed me to compare the two books and draw out some parallels with, perhaps seeds of, the later, longer novel. Demetrio's illicit affair has shades of Hans' relationship with Sophie, and an old homeless man the rubbish collector befriends may well be a literary ancestor of the Organ Grinder. The care taken when describing the streets of Buenos Aires (and the beauty of Bariloche) is also repeated in Neuman's later description of Wandernburg. Finally, the picture of Demetrio poring over his jigsaw puzzles in a grotty bachelor pad evokes images of Hans sitting in his room at the inn, dictionary in hand, working away at his translations (which, in turn, is uncannily close to the image of Tony turning frequently from book to i-Pad in a desperate attempt to make sense of it all...).
What it lacks though, is the sparkling conversation and warmth that pervades Traveller of the Century. One of the features of the latter book is the way in which it exudes life and laughter, with Hans and Sophie knowing full well that they won't be able to enjoy themselves forever, but giving it their best shot anyway. In contrast, Demetrio is taciturn and isolated, a man who's lost even before he's started the game. Mind you, it's just as well that the writer skimped on the dialogue in Bariloche; whenever the characters did start talking, I really struggled to understand a word of what they were saying...
For a native (or skilled) reader of Spanish, this is a book to be knocked off in a couple of days - it took me about two weeks ;) Still, it was definitely worth the effort, and I did enjoy it, even if it never reached the heights of Traveller of the Century. One thing is for sure though; with Pushkin Press' translation of Neuman's Hablar solos only about six months away, I think I'll just wait for the translation next time :)
Today we're looking at an offering from another new translated fiction press, Frisch & Co., run entirely from Berlin. How does that work, you ask. Well, you see, it's all electronic - we're moving into a paperless era here ;) Once again, I'm delving into Spanish-language fiction - we're off to Argentina...
*****
Carlos Busqued's Under this Terrible Sun (translated by Megan McDowell, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a short, laconic and occasionally disturbing book. The story begins when Javier Cetarti, a man approaching middle age with little to show for it, gets a phone call from someone he's never met - unsurprisingly, the news the call brings is not great:
"Daniel Molina", retired petty officer of the air force and represented here by Mr. Duarte," had killed his lover and a son of hers at noon the previous day. That is, Cetarti's mother and brother"
(Frisch & Co., 2013)
Cetarti manages to get his act together and drives all day to get to the provincial town of Lapachito, where he meets the aforementioned Duarte, has his mother and brother cremated and goes along with Duarte's ruse to scam some insurance money.
On his return to Córdoba, Cetarti decides to quit his apartment and move into his brother's old place, a ramshackle house full of rubbish - and an axolotl salamander. As he settles into a life of smoking weed, eating pizza and watching the Discovery Channel, he slowly makes plans for heading off into the sunset. Little does he know though that Duarte is not who he seems - and that their fleeting meeting in Lapachito is to have far-reaching consequences...
Under this Terrible Sun is a book which starts off incredibly slowly (despite the dramatic phone call), and after a few of the many, fairly brief, chapters, I was starting to wonder if anything was going to happen. All of a sudden though, we get to see beneath the dull veneer, and it's fairly disturbing. The fact of the matter is that the air-force veteran Duarte is a nasty piece of work. Whatever you do, don't go down to the basement...
"Without untying him, he adjusted the boy until he was in a stable seated position"
This sentence appeared just as randomly and disturbingly in the book as it did in my post. It comes out of nowhere, and the reader suddenly suspects that the book is about to take a new direction.
Let's be blunt - Under this Terible Sun soon becomes a dark twisted story about some sad, nasty people. The initially affable Duarte is a criminal, sick and unforgiving, one with a penchant for model planes and vile pornography:
"There's some
pornography you don't watch to jerk off, you watch it more out of
curiosity about how far the human species will go."
Let's just say that he's not a very nice man... He is ably supported by Danielito, a big man addicted to junk food, marijuana and the Discovery Channel, one who is a side-kick to both Duarte and his own (rather strange) mother...
However, the central character of the novel, Cetarti, isn't much better. He's listless and drifting, spending his days smoking joints and avoiding anything which might lead to action. He's a man who really doesn't like to get involved - in anything:
"But getting out of
the car, talking, making himself understood, paying etc., it all seemed
like an unworkable task that broke down into an almost endless series of
muscular contractions, small positional decisions, mental operations of
word choice and response analysis that exhausted him in advance."
Danielito's father provides a connection with Cetarti, but the two men have more in common than their messy family ties. They're both losers with little going for them apart from a messy apartment, a bag of weed and an interest in TV documentaries. Sad men, with wasted lives.
A symbol for this sense of inertia is the pet Cetarti finds at his brother's house, an axolotl - a salamander which doesn't need to evolve or grow up. It lives at the bottom of its tank, stagnant, unmoving. It's a rather apt pet for the unevolved Cetarti...
Under this Terrible Sun is a short read, and interesting in parts, but it's not a book I loved. For me, it never really got going, and I was rarely sure where it was going (or why). Also, as alluded to above, it's another of those Latin American books with some very graphic scenes, which reminded me (in passing) of certain sections of Carlos Gamerro's The Islands. If you didn't like those (and those who have read Gamerro's book will know exactly what I mean), you may not like this...
*****
While the book wasn't really one for me, I'm definitely still interested in the publisher. An all-electronic press, which is a fairly new concept, has the advantage of allowing Frisch & Co. to deal with other publishers and get books out quickly. With contacts to various big European presses, they should be able to bring out a few exciting books. I'll definitely be trying another one - hopefully, I'll enjoy the next one a little more ;)
It's the final stop on my reading tour of Spanish- (and Portuguese- ) language literature, and the last author on the trail is César Aira. My first encounter with the Argentine novel(la)ist was the enigmatic, and slightly confusing, Varamo, but I'd been assured that today's selection was a much more enjoyable choice...
*****
Ghosts (translated by Chris Andrews, published by New Directions) takes place in, on and around an apartment building in Buenos Aires on the final day of the year. A Chilean family is living on the roof of the unfinished building while the father, Raúl Viñas, works there as a caretaker. On a sweltering morning (northern hemisphere folk, take note: December = summer), the future residents of the building come to look at how things are progressing. All in all, the building is fairly packed - workmen, tenants, children and ghosts. Yep, ghosts.
The ghosts are real, gliding about in the background, men covered in dust, naked and invisible to the visitors. However, the Chilean family living on the building are able to see the strange apparitions, and most of them simply accept the figures as part of the background.
"The children weren't there, but the other characters, those bothersome ghosts, were legion. They were always around at that time. To see them, you just had to go and look."
p.47 (New Directions, 2008)
Fifteen-year-old Patri is a little different though, and the quiet young woman observes the ghosts as she walks up and down the stairs. And then they begin to talk...
Ghosts is confusing, but strangely comforting, a story which initially makes little sense but is nevertheless enjoyable. The story meanders along, wonderful rambling vignettes interrupted by tangential asides and the odd glimpse of naked men hanging in the air. At one point, Patri has a dream during her siesta, one which serves as a lengthy digression on the nature of architecture and the importance of non-building in primitive cultures. While it's nice to see a few pages devoted to the culture of Australian Aborigines in the middle of the book, you do start to wonder if Aira might have got ever-so-slightly sidetracked...
There is a method in his apparent madness though, and despite its brevity, Ghosts does deal with a few clear ideas. One is the difference between the Chilean main characters and the Argentines they are living among; in the sense that they are invisible migrants, the family are just as much ghosts as the real things. Aira describes the contrast between the Chileans and Argentines as one between rich and poor, delicate and brash, real and superficial. Patri's mother Elisa explains that in Argentina, money is the only form of virility (I think the writer is trying to say something about his mother country here...).
In contrast, the extended family are shown as people who can enjoy life and use time as they see fit rather than being strangled by it. Theirs is a relaxed existence, seizing the moment with little thought of the future, and it's one which appears to work well. Raúl's drinking may well end up badly, but it gets him through the day, and the wine (which he cools by putting the bottles inside the ghosts...) is drunk at exactly the right time. Even the melon eaten at the party has reached its exact peak at the time it is to be consumed.
However, Patri is the odd one out, tenser and more preoccupied, and Ghosts is really about how she starts to think about what the world may have in store for her. The ghosts are reminders of masculinity and her inevitable fate - and they're not exactly subtle reminders either:
"Although well proportioned in general, some of them, the majority in fact, had big bellies. Even their lips were powdered; even the soles of their feet! Only at odd moments from certain points of view, could you see the foreskin at the tips of their penises parting to reveal a tiny circle of bright red, moist skin. It was the only touch of color on their bodies." (pp.54/5)
In a sense, the ghosts may represent a metaphor for a sexual awakening, and only Patri's mother senses that her daughter might be in danger. While the other children race around the building with little fear of a slip, Patri might just be falling for a rather dangerous idea of happiness. Waiting for the ideal man is a little like waiting for a ghost to appear...
While I enjoyed Varamo, I wasn't quite sure if Aira was my kind of writer, but Ghosts has convinced me that he's definitely on my wavelength. There's so much to like in such a short book, and while a lot is made of his 'process' of writing a page each day and then just letting himself be forced to move the story along, I suspect that a lot of thought does go into the stories. Certainly, I felt that this story was extremely cohesive, with all the tangled strangs coming together in a dramatic climax.
And that's it - I've finally made it through my library loans :) Since finishing my IFFP reading, I've managed to try twelve books by six new writers (in between racing through my ARCs and a few choice works from the shelf). Hopefully, I'll be able to find some time to revisit a few of them in the future - and if I do, I'm sure Aira will be high on the list :)
It's always good to see more publishers bringing out fiction in translation, and a recent addition to the fold is New Vessel Press. They announced a starting half-dozen from around the world, and first up is a slim book from Argentina - although it's a work which certainly belies its size...
*****
Pedro Mairal's The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra (translated by Nick Caistor, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a book worthy of being New Vessel's first release. The narrator of the story is not the titular Juan Salvatierra but his younger son, a man who lives in Buenos Aires working as an estate agent. One of the reasons for his move was to escape from his father - or, to be more precise, from the gigantic canvas painting Salvatierra senior spent his life creating.
"I was supposed to be going away to study, but above all I wanted to escape from Barrancales, from home, and most of all from the painting, from the vortex of the painting that I felt was going to swallow me up forever, like an altar boy destined to end up as chaplain in that huge temple of images and endless duties with the canvases, pullies, colors..."
p.80 (New Vessel Press, 2012)
Years after his father's death though, our friend, together with his elder brother, Luis, decides that the unique artwork deserves to be brought out and shown to the world. The brothers return to their hometown (and their deserted home) to find the painting and sell it to an art gallery overseas. It's a unique creation, a tapestry-like picture which flows like a river, and there are sixty rolls piled up, one for each year of the artist's painting life...
...except that there should be sixty-one...
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra doesn't run to much more than a hundred pages, but it's a beautiful, well-written story. The narrator initially just hopes to settle some outstanding family affairs, but in searching for the missing roll, he finds much more than he bargained for. As well as discovering some interesting, unsettling and surprising facts about his father (and remembering the way the painting defined their relationship), he also starts to find out a little more about himself.
In fact, his search for the missing piece of the painting leads to a complete reevaluation of his life. He decides to shut his office and return to his home town, cycling along old paths and walking by the river, the border between Uruguay and Argentina (which has its own role to play in the story...). In effect, he is revisiting the past, adrift in a town full of strangers, where the train station is abandoned and overgrown, and his father's friends are long gone (or senile).
While his return allows him to see the town once more, it also helps him to learn more about his father, who is quite the enigmatic figure. Juan Salvatierra was left mute by a childhood accident, and this led him indirectly to his artistic destiny. An autodidact, his entire life was spent on one astonishing (lengthy) work. However, when it comes to life outside painting, his son discovers that there was a lot more to his father than he ever realised...
The star of the show though is the painting itself - life captured and reflected on canvas. It gives the son a sense of a blurred reality, and when he comes back to town, he starts to think he's in the painting:
"I looked at all this, asking myself so many questions at once. What was this interlacing of lives, people, animals, days, nights, catastrophes? What did it all mean? What could my father's life have been like? Why did he feel the need to take on such a huge task?" (p.35)
One thing's for sure, Salvatierra truly wanted to create life's rich tapestry. However, it's one which also contains many of the answers to his son's questions...
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra is a beautiful, understated novella, a story which calmly unfolds in front of the reader's eyes. It consists of short chapters full of elegant prose and measured recounts, but there are also plenty of little pieces of information which only later slot into their rightful place. Nick Caistor's translation is partly responsible for the feel of the story, making the book smooth and a pleasure to read. It would best be read slowly, allowing time for the story to develop at its own pace. Alas, I fear that most readers (like myself) will devour the book in a sitting or two ;)
One book it reminded me of a little, both in its measured pace and its subject matter, is one of Peirene Press' class of 2013, Richard Weihe's Sea of Ink. Both use the literary form to describe an artist and his art and both use short, concise chapters to great effect. And, like Juan Salvatierra, Bada Shanren was a man of few words (in his case, by choice though!).
What Mairal has produced with this book is a painting like a story, in a story like a painting, and I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to see read it :) It's a book I can heartily recommend, and one which I hope to reread at some point. As I said at the start of the post, it's good to have new players in the translated fiction game - especially when they can produce books like this one. More please :)
After the success of Fictions, my first exposure to the world of Jorge Luis Borges, I was always going to try more from the Argentine master of the short story. Luckily, my ever-wonderful library came up with the goods, in the form of a Penguin Classics edition with two collections included. Time to dive back into the world of the meta-fictional and meta-physical...
*****
The Aleph, including the prose fictions from The Maker (translated by Andrew Hurley) has another two sets of early works from Borges. The first is a series of short stories, reminiscent of the collection The Garden of Forking Paths, while the second is much shorter, full of pieces which are almost examples of flash fiction at times. The Aleph, though, is the collection most similar in form to what I read a while back, and this similarity applies to the themes too.
The lead-off story, 'The Immortal', is a perfect example of this. It's an intriguing tale, starting with that old Borgesian staple, an arcane document, one whose authenticity can be doubted, and it ends up as an improbable tale. A soldier searches for immortality in a story which turns the idea of eternal life on its head:
"Among the corollaries to the doctrine that there is no thing that is not counterbalanced by another, there is one that has little theoretical importance but that caused us, at the beginning or end of the tenth century, to scatter over the face of the earth. It may be summarized in these words: There is a river whose waters give immortality; somewhere there must be another river whose waters take it away."
p.15, 'The Immortal' (Penguin Classics, 2000)
In a lovely twist, the characters here are searching for water which will take away the curse of immortality. Of course, we are once again faced with the dilemma of how much (and who) to believe in Borges' elaborate stories within stories. Perhaps the document is just a hoax...
Many of the stories in The Aleph take place in the writer's native Argentina, and there are many tales of macho men in the wild west (or south!). 'The Dead Man' is a neat little piece where a cocky gaucho thinks he can take down the big boss, little knowing that he is just a pawn in a bigger game. However 'A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz' is a much subtler story, one which ends up being entangled in real-life Argentine history. While the significance of the ending of this story (and many others) would sail right over the head of the average Anglophone reader, Hurley's excellent notes help to explain exactly what is going on.
Borges is great at writing short stories with twists, and there are some very tricky endings here. In 'The Dead Man', the narrator discovers that a friend he remembers seems to have lived parallel, simultaneous lives, with different people remembering him in very different ways. In 'Emma Zunz', we have a well-constructed story of a woman taking revenge for her father's demise. Her actions leading up to the end of the story seem incomprehensible, but on the final page we understand why she has done what she did.
Of course, it wouldn't be Borges without a labyrinth or two, and there are plenty to be found in this collection. 'Ibn Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in his Labyrinth' is a story which doesn't keep the reader waiting for the content of the piece; however, titles (and labyrinths) can be most deceiving. Another story with a maze is 'The House of Asterion', a brief, three-page tale of a 'deity' - one which seems a little bland until the final, fascinating twist ;)
*****
The Maker is very different to The Aleph. It's a lot shorter and consists of several brief pieces; a nice addition, but not really a book in its own right. The stories in this section, may not be quite as short as haikus, but they have a similar, thought-provoking effect.
Having also read Professor Borges recently (a translation of a series of lectures Borges gave on English literature), there were many familiar names and themes mentioned in The Maker. The writer appears to have an obsession with the promise King Harold gave to Harald Hardrada in 1066 of 'six feet of English soil', and he's equally preoccupied with Don Quixote, Shakespeare and Anglo-Saxon poetry. One piece from The Maker combines a couple of his interests nicely - 'Ragnarök' is a story of the end of the gods (and mentions Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another of Borges' literary obsessions...).
I enjoyed this collection a lot, and I only wish I'd had more time to peruse it at my leisure (unfortunately, I managed my time badly and had to hurry through my library copy). It's a book to dip into and return to when you have an unhurried moment to devote to it - another time, perhaps ;)
After my recent experience with Fictions, I was keen to try more of Jorge Luis Borges' work (and I actually had a library copy of The Aleph sitting on my shelves). However, while browsing the New Directions web-site recently, I saw a new book by the Argentinian legend, an intriguing piece of non-fiction - and thought it might be interesting to see what the maestro thinks about our literary history...
*****
Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature (edited by Martín Arias and Martín Hadis, translated by Katherine Silver - review PDF courtesy of the publisher) does exactly what it says on the cover. Borges spent many years as a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires, and this book brings together a series of lectures he held from one semester back in 1966. The twenty-five chapters (or lessons!) provide the reader with a trip through time and English literature - Borges style.
We start with Anglo-Saxon poetry, looking at the differences in style between Beowulf and other historic texts, before jumping to the middle ages. There's a (very) brief look at the Victorian novelists, especially Dickens, before ending with the romantic poets. There is a lot on poetry... Strangely, Shakespeare is mentioned only in passing (if frequently), and while George Eliot, Austen and the Brontës are absent, there's a whole lesson on Robert Louis Stevenson.
Borges has an idiosyncratic style, and his choices certainly reflect that. In addition to the heavy focus on poetry, he also spends a long time looking at Anglo-Saxon literature, an era you'd expect to fill one or two sessions, not seven. His lectures are not your usual meticulously planned talks, more a kind of informal, digression-filled ramble through literary history. His goal seems to be less to deconstruct texts but to kindle interest in his students by discussing the history of the pieces and the lives of the writers.
Of course, it's all done with a slight Spanish slant. Barely a session goes by without a mention of Cervantes or Don Quixote (or both), and even in the sessions on Beowulf, Borges is able to find an Hispanic connection through the involvement of the Geats (Spanish relatives of the Goths). When he says...
"Hence all descendants of the Spaniards would be relatives of Beowulf"
p.10 (New Directions, 2013)
...you might think he's exaggerating a little though ;)
Above all, Borges has an interest in the characters of the writers he discusses, the people, not the author. He spends a lot of time talking about Samuel Johnson, using Boswell's biography of the great man to paint a humorous warts-and-all picture (he even describes the Johnson-Boswell pairing as comparable to that of Quixote and his trusty sidekick Sancho Panza...). Another figure to receive this treatment is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom Borges brings across as a somewhat lazy genius...
It's true that the book is just a transcript of off-the-cuff lectures, but it is amazing how he expounds and digresses, but manages to stay (mostly) on topic. Borges is erudite, with an incredibly wide historical and literary knowledge - and, let us not forget, it's all from memory. At this point of his life he was virtually blind:
"And now let us read some of Rossetti's work. We are going to begin with this sonnet I spoke to you about, "Nuptial Sleep." I do not remember all the details, but I do remember the plot." (p.187)
As a piece of writing, you won't find it particularly impressive - and that's because it's not writing...
It is inspiring though. I frequently zipped off to the computer to look up the writers and works name-checked (Rossetti, Blake, Morris), often reading the poems mentioned before returning to the book. One interesting find was Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, a long poem dealing with ten views of the same crime, a work Borges mentioned in the same breath as Kurusawa's film Rashomon (adapted from two stories by Akutagawa). Yep, erudite ;)
While I enjoyed this book greatly, not everyone agrees. A Guardian review I saw really didn't like it, and had several reasons for criticising it. The first was that this is not something Borges would ever have wanted published himself, and that's a hard point to argue with. Then again, this is merely a translation of the Spanish-language original, so I think we can probably side-step that objection.
The second point was that this is just a standard series of university lectures and that there's nothing here a university student wouldn't have come across before. That may be true to an extent, but for readers like myself, without a university background in literature, it does throw up new writers and works - plus there is the unique Borgesian slant...
The final point is that the lectures are dull and lacking in humour, and that's one I'd have to disagree with. It's not obvious, but a subtle, dry humour pervades Professor Borges (perhaps easily missed if you don't read the book carefully enough...), and what appears to be dry conjecture could also be read as sly mockery:
"Johnson had a peculiar temperament. For a time he was extremely interested in the subject of ghosts. He was so interested in it that he spent several nights in an abandoned house to see if he could meet one. Apparently, he didn't." (p.84)
All in all then, Professor Borges is a book worth having a look at, especially for those obsessed with all things Borgesian. In fact, even the introduction explaining how the book came about is a fascinating one. You see, we owe these pages to the unnamed students who recorded the lectures (on cassettes!) for lazy friends, and later transcribed them. All good and well, except for the fact that these were university undergraduates working in a foreign language - which means that the transcripts were full of errors and, at times, illegible.
With the original tapes long reused, scholars had to reconstruct the original lectures from the half-baked second-hand copies the students had produced, leaving us with a sparkling, possibly imaginary, series of lectures which may or may not have happened this way (Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius...). So did these lectures really exist? Just as was the case (as Borges tells us) with Samuel Johnson, whose witty conversations were remembered and written down after the fact, we'll never really know the truth...
