The Duel

The Duel [Der Zweikampf] (Melville House, 2011)
by Heinrich von Kleist [translated from the German by Annie Janusch]
Germany, 1810

Apparently I need to deepen my acquaintance with the smash hits of German literature.  Superb long short story/short novella which, in addition to providing an easy way to pad one's reading statistics for the year, dares to investigate the question of whether God's will is at all fathomable to mere mortals.  That in itself would be unexceptional, of course, but even godless bloggers will have to admire Kleist's audaciousness in advancing his theme--spinning a spare page-turner of a tale in which a duel pitting one Count Jakob Rotbart, a fourteenth century ladies' man accused of killing his brother the duke but who has a seemingly airtight alibi predicated on the claim that he was otherwise busy seducing an aristocratic woman on the night in question, against Sir Friedrich von Trota, the murdered duke's chamberlain and a valiant defender of the disgraced Lady Littegarde von Auerstein's honor after her denial of Rotbart's claims goes unbelieved even by her immediate family in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, will reveal God's "infallible verdict" in a trial by combat that's binding by law.  That the answers provided by the duel can be seen to reflect poorly on God's judgement, man's interpretation of same, the value of honor, innocence, true justice, and mercy, or any and all of the above is just one example of Kleist's slippery winning ways, but I won't dwell on the primal ambiguities since I'm led to believe that most bloggers want only simple solace and maybe a costume drama/retro vibe outta their goddamn historical fictions.  While there's little of those things here, on an entirely unrelated note I'm tickled by the fact that the 19th century icon Kleist, at least in the promo photo below, is probably the first author to be featured on this blog who could ever be mistaken for a band member in one of the mid-1980s incarnations of the Fall or the Psychocandy-era Jesus and Mary Chain.  Yes! (www.mhpbooks.com)

Heinrich von Kleist

Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend [Doktor Faustus.  Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde] (Vintage International, 1999)
by Thomas Mann [translated from the German by John E. Woods]
USA, 1947

Doctor Faustus, a German novel written in sunny southern California exile but with the grim presence of World War II serving as the aging Mann's strumpet muse, is a sort of unholy trinity: part intellectual pseudo-biography exploring the link between creativity and madness, part Faust rewrite involving a composer who may have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years of uninterrupted artistic greatness, part political allegory of Germany's rise and fall in the period comprising the two world wars.  How does one manage to tell such a tale?  In the hands of narrator Dr. Serenus Zeitblom, Ph.D., a lifelong friend of the composer Adrian Leverkühn, the answer seems simple enough: a biography/memoir.  It's clear from the outset, though, that this won't just be any ordinary biography as the scholarly Zeitblom here moves from a childhood reminiscence about carefree kids eating berries in the invigorating country air to drawing careful attention to the way that art and fate fought it out in Leverkühn's later life:

I am moved to look back not out of nostalgia, but for his sake and at the thought of his fate, which ordained that he ascend from that valley of innocence to inhospitable, indeed terrifying heights.  His was an artist's life; and because it was granted to me, an ordinary man, to view it from so close-up, all the feelings of my soul for human life and fate have coalesced around this exceptional form of human existence.  For me, thanks to my friendship with Adrian, the artist's life functions as the paradigm for how fate shapes all our lives, as the classic example of how we are deeply moved by what we call becoming, development, destiny--and it probably is so in reality, too.  For although his whole life long the artist may remain nearer, if not to say, more faithful to his childhood than the man who specializes in practical reality, although one can say that, unlike the latter, he abides in the dreamlike, purely human, and playful state of the child, nevertheless the artist's journey from those pristine early years to the late, unforeseen stages of his development is endlessly longer, wilder, stranger--and more disturbing for those who watch--than that of the everyday person, for whom the thought that he, too, was once a child is cause for not half so many tears...  I urgently request the reader, by the way, to credit what I have said here with such feeling to my authorial account and not to believe it represents Leverkühn's thoughts.  I am an old-fashioned man, stuck in certain romantic views dear to me, among which is the heightened drama of an antithesis between the artist and the bourgeois (27-28).

I've quoted from this passage at length both because it provides a representative sample of the narrator's voice and a measure of the gripping, philosophical way aesthetics and inspiration are engaged with as a matter of course in this work.  Leverkühn's life as a man of genius separates him from the pack artistically and socially, but his good friend Serenus is aware of the price that he's had to pay as the result of a life devoted to his music.  Is the tradeoff worth it to advance his craft?  While fellow Doctor Faustus readers will have to judge for themselves, Mann ups the metaphysical ante in Chapter XXV when the narrator introduces a "secret manuscript" bearing "Adrian's unmediated voice" (237).  The subject?  A purported dialogue between the composer and the Devil in which extravagant claims are debated at a feverish pitch that may anticipate the title character's looming mental illness and subsequent breakdown: "The artist is the brother of the felon and the madman" (252).  "What is art today?  A pilgrimage upon a road of peas" (254).  "Parody.  It might be merry if in its aristocratic nihilism it were not so very woebegone" (257).  "Psychology--merciful God, you still hold with that?  It is but a poor, bourgeois, nineteenth century thing!" (264).

Although the shaken Zeitblom--perhaps himself an admirer of that "poor, bourgeois, nineteenth century thing" in his role as a middle class traditionalist/scholar trying to understand the human psyche--resumes his narrator role for the rest of the work, his biography is increasingly marked by the way Leverkühn's downfall-in-progress mirrors Germany's turbulent war years.  Confronted with his old friend's guilt over a war caused by German aggression, for example, Leverkühn manically opines: "Germany has broad shoulders.  And who would deny that such a real breakthrough is worth what the meek world calls a crime!"  (325)  Later, while working on the score for an apocalyptic work to be performed under the title of The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus, the obsessive composer prompts this reflection on the nature of German Kultur from a friend who has seen one man's road to madness parallel a nation's:

Meanwhile a transatlantic general has the inhabitants of Weimar file past the crematoria of their local concentration camp and declares (should one say, unjustly?) that they, citizens who went about their business in seeming honesty and tried to know nothing, though at times the wind blew the stench of burned human flesh up their noses--declares that they share in the guilt for these horrors that are now laid bare and to which he forces them to direct their eyes.  Let them look--I shall look with them, in my mind's eye I let myself be jostled along in those same apathetic, or perhaps shuddering, lines.  Our thick-walled torture chamber, into which Germany was transformed by a vile regime of conspirators sworn to nihilism from the very start, has been burst open, and our ignominy lies naked before the eyes of the world, of foreign commissions, to whom these incredible scenes are displayed on all sides now and who report home that the hideousness of what they have seen exceeds anything the human imagination can conceive.  I repeat, our ignominy.  For is it mere hypochondria to tell oneself that all that is German--even German intellect, German thought, the German word--shares in the disgrace of these revelations and is plunged into profoundest doubt?  Is it morbid contrition to ask oneself the question: How can "Germany," whichever of its forms it may be allowed to take in the future, so much as open its mouth again to speak of mankind's concerns?  (505-506)

A profound and arresting work not least for grappling with these sorts of questions so soon after the war and from the vantage point of a justly defeated people in the narrator's eyes.  The fatherland, c'est moi, is it not?  (www.vintagebooks.com)

Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

Destiny--or at least a happy coincidence--led me to read Doctor Faustus in conjunction with the German Literature Month program that's now underway here and here.  Thanks to Sergio Pitol, whose specific raves about the novel in El arte de la fuga (Mexico, 1996) first led me to become interested in the work, and to Anthony and Caroline and Isabella for more general blogger motivation to check Mann out for the first time.

El gaucho insufrible

El gaucho insufrible (Anagrama, 2009)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 2003

Ya que siempre había imaginado que El gaucho insufrible figuraba entre las obras menores de Bolaño por alguna razón, vaya sorpresa descubrir que esta recopilación de cinco cuentos y dos ensayos ofrezca dos de las mejores obras cortas del chileno.  El cuento titular, por ejemplo, es un homenaje ruidoso a El Sur de Borges que cuenta la historia de un abogado bonaerense que trata de escaparse de la caída económica de Argentina en los años de 2001 y 2002 por refugiarse en un lejano lugar en la pampa.  Una vez instalado en el campo, de modo divertido el abogado Pereda se convierte en "el gaucho insufrible" en una tierra donde "ya no quedan caballos...sólo conejos" (27).  A pesar del escenario principalmente rural, el sentido de humor malicioso es puro Bolaño:  "Es difícil, decía, no ser feliz en Buenos Aires, que es la mezcla perfecta de París y Berlín, aunque si uno aguza la vista, más bien es la mezcla perfecta  de Lyon y Praga" (17).  Para mí, la otra joya obvia es el ensayo Los mitos de Cthulhu, una polémica sobre la literatura latinoamericana contemporanea en la cual Bolaño grita contra las supuestas virtudes de "la legibilidad" y "la respetabilidad".  El ejemplo que sigue es típico de la retórica corrosiva y desenfrenada: "Latinoamérica fue el manicomio de Europa así como Estados Unidos fue su fábrica.  La fábrica está ahora en poder de los capataces y locos huidos son su mano de obra.  El manicomio, desde hace más de sesenta años, se está quemando en su propio aceite, en su propia grasa" (168).  Entre las otras obras, las que más me gustaron fueron el cuento "El policía de las ratas", un noir con roedores supuestamente basado en Josefina la cantora o el pueblo de los ratones de Kafka, y el ensayo autobiográfico Literatura + enfermedad = enfermedad, que me dieron risas + crítica literaria + trauma en las dosis esperadas.  (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/)

*

Since I'd for some reason long harbored the sneaking suspicion that El gaucho insufrible [The Insufferable Gaucho] probably figured among Bolaño's lesser works, what a nice surprise it was to discover that this slender collection of five short stories and two essays contains at least two of the Chilean's best short pieces.  Take the title tale, for example, a riotous homage to Borges' "El Sur" which presents us with the story of a Buenos Aires lawyer who tries to escape from Argentina's 2001-2002 economic collapse by fleeing to a remote outpost in the pampas.  Once installed in the country, the city slicker Pereda undergoes a super amusing transformation into "the insufferable gaucho" in a land where only rabbits and no horses now remain.  Despite the mostly rural setting, the mischievous sense of humor is pure Bolaño: "Es difícil, decía, no ser feliz en Buenos Aires, que es la mezcla perfecta de París y Berlín, aunque si uno aguza la vista, más bien es la mezcla perfecta de Lyon y Praga" ["It's difficult, he used to say, not to be happy in Buenos Aires, which is like the perfect combination of Paris and Berlin--although if one looks more carefully, it's more like the perfect combination of Lyons and Prague"] (17).  For me, the other obvious standout is the essay "Los mitos de Cthulhu" ["The Myths of Cthulhu"], a screed on contemporary Latin American literature in which Bolaño rails against the twin nemeses of "legibility" and "respectability" for providing exactly what we don't need from our literature.  The example that follows is typical of the corrosive, no holds barred rhetoric: "Latinoamérica fue el manicomio de Europa así como Estados Unidos fue su fábrica.  La fábrica está ahora en poder de los capataces y locos huidos son su mano de obra.  El manicomio, desde hace más de sesenta años, se está quemando en su propio aceite, en su propia grasa" ["Latin America was the insane asylum of Europe just as the United States was its factory.  The factory is now in the hands of the foremen and fugitive madmen supply the labor.  The insane asylum, for more than 60 years now, is burning in its own oil, in its own fat"] (168).  Among the other pieces, I most enjoyed the short story "El policía de las ratas" ["Police Rat"], a rodent noir supposedly modeled on Kafka's "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk," and the autobiographical essay "Literatura + enfermedad = enfermedad" ["Literature + Illness = Illness"], which delivered laughter + literary criticism + trauma in the expected dosages.

Roberto Bolaño, el superhéroe

¿Qué pueden hacer Sergio Pitol, Fernando Vallejo y Ricardo Piglia contra la avalancha de glamour?  Poca cosa.  Literatura.  Pero la literatura no vale nada si no va acompañada de algo más refulgente que el mero acto de sobrevivir.  La literatura, sobre todo en Latinoamérica, y sospecho que también en España, es éxito, éxito social claro, es decir es grandes tirajes, traducciones a más de treinta idiomas (yo puedo nombrar veinte idiomas, pero a partir del idioma número 25 empiezo a tener problemas, no porque crea que el idioma número 26 no existe sino porque me cuesta imaginar una industria editorial y unos lectores birmanos temblando de emoción con los avatares mágico-realistas de Eva Luna), casa en Nueva York o Los Ángeles, cenas con grandes magnitarios (para que así descubramos que Bill Clinton puede recitar de memoria párrafos enteros de Huckleberry Finn con la misma soltura con que el presidente Aznar lee a Cernuda), portadas en Newsweek y anticipos millionarios (171-172).

*

What can Sergio Pitol, Fernando Vallejo and Ricardo Piglia do against the onslaught of glamor?  Hardly anything.  Literature.  But literature's not worth anything if it's not accompanied by something more refulgent than the mere act of surviving.  Literature, above all in Latin America but I suspect in Spain as well, is success, social success of course--which is to say big publishing runs, translations in more than thirty languages (I can name twenty languages, but beginning with #25 I begin to have problems--not because I think that #26 doesn't exist but because it's difficult for me to imagine a publishing industry and a few Burmese readers trembling with emotion at the magical realist transformations of Eva Luna), a house in New York or Los Angeles, dinners with business magnates (so that we can thereby learn that Bill Clinton can recite entire paragraphs of Huckleberry Finn by heart with the same ease that Aznar reads Cernuda), Newsweek covers and million-dollar advances (171-172).

One More Fact

Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs, "One More Fact" (2009)

The Crime of Father Amaro

The Crime of Father Amaro [O crime do Padre Amaro] (New Directions, 2003)
by Eça de Queirós [translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa]
Portugal, 1880

Since I saw the "steamy" Mexican film adaptation of The Crime of Father Amaro long before I ever got around to reading Eça de Queirós' outrageous Portuguese original, I was pleased to discover how fresh and humorous a novel this is despite the devastation that lies in wait for several of its key characters. Seriously, whoever would have thought that a self-destructive love affair between a provincial parish priest and one of his beautiful parishioners could prove so amusing?  Perhaps because Eça was more interested in exposing the hypocrisy of his times than in delivering a traditional morality tale, few people or things are spared when it comes to skewering his victims.  Early on, for example, the narrator introduces us to an odd devotional work said to be "both devout and titillating" and "breathing mystical lust"; not content with a full paragraph of such descriptions, he then gleefully blurts out, "it is the canonical Spanish fly!" (88). Elsewhere, malicious Tacitean slander is the weapon of choice used to eviscerate one unfortunate character's reputation ("He always looked rather grimy, and his sallow, effeminate face and debauched eyes spoke of ancient, infamous vices" [144]).  Given the novel's focus on sham piety, the characters naturally badmouth each other as well: Canon Dias' joking description of his sister as "a veritable Grand Inquisitor in skirts," while undoubtedly deserved after an excess of religious zeal has led the bitter old maid to burn the personal items once belonging to an unfairly excommunicated romantic rival of Father Amaro's, is entirely typical of the more playful sorts of attacks (269).  Aside from the humorous touches and the anti-clerical satire, I just greatly enjoyed Eça de Quierós as a stylist.  Here are two almost Proustian soundbites.  On the Marquesa de Alegros, one of Father Amaro's patrons: "Her two daughters, having been brought up both to fear Heaven and to care deeply about Fashion, were at once excessively devout and terribly chic, speaking with equal fervour about Christian humility and the latest clothes from Brussels.  A journalist of the time said of them: 'Every day they worry about what dress they should wear when it comes to their turn to enter Paradise'" (24).  On a lecherous city administrator: "And with that, he turned on his heel and went out onto the balcony in his office--the same balcony on which, every day, between eleven and three, he defiled Teles' wife with his gaze, all the while twirling his blonde moustaches and smoothing his blue cravat" (257).  Having talked up Eça's comedic and descriptive flourishes for long enough, I should probably note that the illicit love affair between Father Amaro and Amélia, while well-depicted throughout in terms of the characters' sexual tension, "courtship" and jealousy and startlingly situated against the social backdrop of a Portugal in transition (i.e. the Church and monarchy vs. secularism and republicanism), does take a predictable turn for the worse near the end.  While I'm not sure that the novelist really could have written his way out of that 19th century ending, in one sense it doesn't matter at all because he entertainingly keeps you off guard throughout most of the novel--and virtually all of Portuguese society gets blasted by the final page.  In short, a fine and unexpectedly edgy read.  (www.ndpublishing.com)

Eça de Queirós

Having wanted to read The Crime of Father Amaro for at least two or three years but never quite able to get my act together for it on my own, I'd like to thank Amateur Reader (Tom) for the push provided by his Portuguese Literature Challenge that's now in session over at Wuthering Expectations.  Tom, Litlove of Tales from the Reading Room, and possibly one or two others will also be writing about The Crime of Father Amaro on their own blogs sometime soon (update: Litlove's review can now be found here).  Until then, here's one more Eça de Queirós broadside for you from pages 123-124 of the Margaret Jull Costa New Directions translation:

What did it matter to him that he had the right to open or close the doors of Heaven?  What he wanted was the ancient right to open or close the doors of dungeons!  He wanted clerks and Amélias to tremble at the mere shadow cast by his cassock.  He would have liked to have been a priest in the old Church, when he would have enjoyed the advantages brought by the power of denunciation and by the kind of terror that an executioner inspires, and there, in that town, under the jurisdiction of his Cathedral, he would have made all those who aspired to the joys that were forbidden to him tremble at the thought of excruciating punishments, and, thinking of João Eduardo and Amélia, he regretted not being able to bring back the bonfires of the Inquisition!  In the grip of a fury provoked by thwarted passion, this inoffensive young man spent hours nursing grandiose ambitions of Catholic tyranny, for there is always a moment when even the most stupid priest is filled by the spirit of the Church in one of its two phases, that of mystical renunciation or that of world domination; every subdeacon at one time or another believes himself capable of being either a saint or a Pope; there is not a single seminarian who has not, albeit for an instant, aspired longingly to that cave in the desert in which St Jerome, looking up at the starry sky, felt Grace flow into his heart like an abundant river of milk; and even the potbellied parish priest who, at close of day, sits on his balcony probing the hole in his tooth with a toothpick or, with a paternal air, slowly sips his cup of coffee, even he carries within him the barely perceptible remnants of a Grand Inquisitor.

Bolaño Infra. 1975-1977: los años que inspiraron "Los detectives salvajes"

Bolaño Infra.  1975-1977: Los años que inspiraron Los detectives salvajes (RiL Editores, 2010)
by Montserrat Madariaga Caro
Chile, 2010

A great little find for fans (and maybe even future fans) of a certain 1998 Roberto Bolaño novel, Bolaño Infra.  1975-1977: Los años que inspiraron Los detectives salvajes [Infra Bolaño, 1975-1977: The Years That Inspired The Savage Detectives] provides a short but thoroughly satisfying account of Bolaño's mid-twenties in Mexico during the time when the then aspiring poet was co-founding the Infrarrealist movement and raising hell with a gang of bohemian friends and sympathizers who would later become immortalized within the pages of The Savage Detectives as the "visceral realists."  While part of the fun in reading Bolaño Infra is getting to hear something from and learn something about many of the real life infras who inspired various Savage Detectives characters, an unexpected bonus for me was the faded snapshot of Mexico City's mid-1970s underground art and literature scene that eventually took shape as a result of Chilean journalist Montserrat Madariaga Caro's interviews and research.  For example, there are at least two wonderful anecdotes about how the infrarrealists targeted poet Octavio Paz for art terrorist attacks on multiple occasions for the crime of representing  establishment culture.  In the first such account,  José Vicente Anaya tells how "en una de esas reuniones donde discutían sus ataques, se le ocurrió ir con pistolas de salva a un recital de Octavio Paz para disparar y gritar: ¡la poesía ha muerto!  Pero la idea se desechó por un posible infarto del señor Paz" ["at one of those meetings where they planned their attacks, it occured to them to go to an Octavio Paz recital with starter pistols to shoot and to shout: 'Poetry is dead!'  But the idea was scrapped because of the possibility of Paz having a heart attack" (67).  In the second, Paz is remembered reading a poem of his called "La vista, el tacto" ["Sight, Touch"] that  plays with repetition of the word luz [light].  An unknown infra  begins to interrupt with shouts of "mucha luz, cuanta luz, demasiada luz" ["a lot of light, how much light, too much light"] to which Paz gets up, asks to see who's mocking him, and demands: "Qué es lo que tiene usted contra mí?" ["What is it that you have against me?"].  To which the infra replies: "Un millón de cosas" ["A million things"] before being ejected from the ironically titled "Encuentro de generaciones" ["Generational Encounter"] held at the UNAM bookstore (133). Great story!  In addition, there are several memorable word portraits of the young Bolaño.  Mexican novelist Juan Villoro, not an infra but a contemporary who became a friend of Bolaño's after meeting him in 1976, describes the Chilean wearing Groucho Marx glasses with hair "agitado por un viento imaginario que conservaría dos décadas después" ["agitated by an imaginary breeze that would still be preserved two decades later"].  "Imposible olvidar sus locuras, el entusiasmo, el disparate, su vitalidad para provocar conversaciones increíbles...  Roberto siempre fue muy exagerado y muy elocuente; sus elogios se disparaban hasta el cielo y sus críticas te llevaban al séptimo círculo del infierno, donde están los asesinos" ["Impossible to forget his craziness, enthusiasm, absurdity, his vitality for provoking incredible conversations...  Roberto was always very exaggerated and very eloquent; he'd praise things to high heaven, but his criticisms would take you down to the seventh circle of hell, where the killers are"] (101).  In one of the nicest surprises of all, an entire chapter is dedicated to the little-known Mexican poet Mario Santiago, the longtime best friend of Bolaño's who was the model for the Ulises Lima character in The Savage Detectives.  While details of the Bolaño-Santiago friendship were surprisingly affecting to learn about, one of the heads-up things that the author does with the material is to contrast how the ex-partners in crime approached life and literature after their infrarrealism days.  Bolaño, according to some who knew him in his pre-fame Mexico City youth, was a kind of sellout to the cause--a guy who wanted to be recognized as a writer so much that he turned his back on poetry and entered the world of the commercial novelist instead.  The eccentric Santiago, on the other hand, chose to live his life as a poem, circulating his poetry among friends and writing poems on apartment walls and other stray surfaces.  Which path was more honest?  To her credit, Madariaga Caro doesn't render a verdict on the question, instead leaving us with this:  "A fin de cuentas, los dos próceres del Infrarrealismo tenían la escritura tatuada en la sien.  Ambos vivieron intensamente y codificaron esas sensaciones en poemas, cuentos y novelas.  Murieron jóvenes.  Murieron sabiéndose deteriorados, como consumidos por sus letras pero aún así escribiéndolas" ["When all's said and done, the two leaders of Infrarrealism had writing tattooed on the brain.  Both lived intensely and codified those sensations in poems, short stories and novels.  They died young.  They died knowing themselves deteriorated, as if consumed by their literature but still writing it"] (124).  And this on what Bolaño hoped to achieve with his portrait of Mexico in The Savage Detectives: "Conoció a quienes hacen arte para poder vivir bien, y a los que viven mal para poder hacer arte; en consecuencia, aprendió la naturaleza dual de las cosas y concluyó que 'México es un país tremendamente vital, pese a que es el país donde, paradójicamente, la muerte está más presente.  Tal vez solo así, siendo tan vital, puede tener a la muerte tan presente'" ["He knew those who create art in order to live well and those who live poorly in order to create art.  As a consequence, he learned the dual nature of things and concluded that 'Mexico is a tremendously vital country in spite of the fact that it's the country where, paradoxically, death is most present.  Maybe only like that, being so alive, can it have death so present'"] (140).  An unexpectedly inspiring feat of research and one that's even more of a treasure trove for the fan on account of the "Primer manifiesto del movimiento infrarrealista" ["First Manifesto of the Infrarrealist Movement"] and some Bolaño-Santiago correspondence tacked on at the end.  (www.rileditores.com)

Photo originally published in Pájaro de calor, ocho poetas infrarrealistas, 1976.

Top: Margarita XX, Mario Santiago, José Rosas Ribeyro, Roberto Bolaño, José Vicente Anaya.  Bottom: Rubén Medina, Dina XX, Ramón Méndez, Guadalupe Ochoa, Ramón Méndez.

Montserrat Madariaga Caro

An Un-Review: La boda de Hitler y María Antonieta en el infierno

Just so you know, I've been wanting to read more of that crackpot J.R. Wilcock's oeuvre ever since a reread of his "Llorenç Riber" mini-pseudobiography last month reminded me of how devilishly entertaining most of his La sinagoga de los iconoclastas [The Temple of Iconoclasts] was for me a few years back.  So imagine my delight when, in aimlessly trolling around the internet last night, I discovered that the still as yet unseen by me El templo etrusco [The Etruscan Temple] that I'd requested for pick-up at the library today comes with this utterly genius descriptive blurb on the back of the book: "Wilcock despliega una vez más su destreza narrativa con una prosa de elegante terrorismo verbal, cuya gran precisión no nos ahorra detalles sádicos, y aun atroces, pero tampoco atisbos de una bellezza indómita" ["Wilcock displays his narrative skill once again with a prose of elegant verbal terrorism, the great precision of which does not spare us sadistic and even inhuman details nor inklings of an untamed beauty"].  "Elegant verbal terrorism"?  That, my friends, is a description of a book I want to read--and will soon.  However, the Wilcock title that I really, really want to read now is the one pictured above that I just found out about even later last night. La boda de Hitler y María Antonieta en el infierno [The Wedding of Hitler and Marie Antoinette in Hell], which sounds like one of the spurious works that appear at the end of Wilcock fan Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas, is a book written in collaboration with one Francesco Fantasia and only published after Wilcock's death.  What is it about?  Duh.  However, I love the sound of this thing as described by Guillermo Piro in his Página/12 non-un-review of the 2003 Argentinean edition:

La organización del libro recuerda un poco una famosa escena de Pierrot le fou de Godard, en la que Pierrot-Belmondo, al comienzo del film, se pasea entre la mayoría silenciosa invitada a una fiesta, simplemente escuchando las conversaciones que se suceden a su paso (conversaciones ridículas, en las que todos hablan enunciando slogans publicitarios).  En la boda...  los visitantes del infierno registran las conversaciones que tienen lugar entre los habitantes del infierno mientras se realizan los preparativos para la gran boda entre Hitler y María Antonieta.  Pero María Antonieta duda: Hitler la desea, es digno de ella, pero también Garibaldi cumple con todos los requisitos para poseerla. Y ella duda.  Hay un modo de resolver el asunto; una carrera.  El primero que llegue será aceptado; el perdedor deberá desaparecer inexorablemente de su vida.

[The book's organization is somewhat reminiscent of a famous scene from Godard's Pierrot le fou in which Belmondo's Pierrot, at the beginning of the film, strolls among the silent majority of guests invited to a party, overhearing the conversations that take place in his wake (ridiculous conversations in which the people that speak do so in advertising slogans).  In The Wedding..., the visitors register the conversations that take place among hell's inhabitants while the preparations are being made for the great wedding between Hitler and Marie Antoinette.  However, Marie Antoinette gets cold feet: Hitler desires her, Hitler is worthy of her, but Garibaldi also meets all the requisites for possessing her.  There's a way to resolve the matter: a race.  The first to arrive will win her, but the loser will need to inexorably disappear from her life.]

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La boda de Hitler y María Antonieta en el infierno was published by Emecé in Argentina in 2003 after originally appearing in Italian as Le nozze di Hitler e Maria Antonietta nell'inferno.  Man, would I love to get my mitts on a copy of it.  How about you?