El juguete rabioso

El juguete rabioso (Editorial Losada, 2007)
por Roberto Arlt
Argentina, 1926

"La struggle for life, che...unos se regeneran, otros caen...¡así es la vida!"  (El juguete rabioso, 145)

Hablar de El juguete rabioso es hablar de Silvio Astier, el protagonista y narrador de la novela cuya juventud se describe como una sucesión de crímenes, decepciones, fracasos, y mala suerte, en orden alfabético.  Probablemente el doble del joven Arlt, "che Silvio" es un personaje tan memorable como Holden Caulfield o Lazarillo de Tormes con paralelos al éste en cuanto a los problemas de la vida provocados por la pobreza extrema.  Además del retrato de Astier, que pasa su tiempo haciendo cosas como inventando artefactos explosivos, organizando un club de ladrones, y saqueando bibliotecas en esfuerzos inútiles para mejorar su vida económica, lo que más me gustó de esta bildungsroman bonaerense era la voz inconfundible de ese loco Arlt.  ¡Cómo me encanta este tipo!  Un poeta de perdedores y soñadores sin par, Arlt tiene la abilidad de salvar episodios ocasionalmente imperfectos con descripciones sumamente geniales como lo siguiente: "[El Rengo] conocía más nombres y virtudes de caballos que una beata santos del martirologio.  Su memoria era una almanaque de Gotha de la nobleza bestial.  Cuando hablabla de minutos y segundos se creía escuchar a un astrónomo, cuando hablaba de sí mismo y de la pérdida que había tenido al país al perder un jockey como él, uno sentíase tentado a llorar.  ¡Qué vago!" [158]  Arlt, en contraste con Borges, nunca me decepciona con la viveza de sus personajes o el calor humano de sus manías e imperfecciones.   Ellos (chorros, pelafustanes, macrós, o lo que sean) hablan en la lengua de la calle y no en la lengua de los libros, lo que es igual a una bofetada conceptual contra la literatura culta de aquel entonces.  Al mismo tiempo, sí hablan de ciertos tipos de libros acá--las historias de Rocambole, los poemas de Baudelaire--con una especie de ternura, o rebeldía, adolescente.  Por cierto, hay que recordar que la vida del Silvio también es un aprendizaje en cuanto a la escritura de la novela que leemos y que por consiguiente la trayectoría del autor ficticio crea sus propias complicaciones.  Porque, aunque Silvio parece rechazar su vieja manera de vivir al final de la narración con la traición de un amigo, este hecho inesperado y aún inexplicable en cierto sentido nos deja con una pregunta importante: ¿es Silvio un cómplice de o un rebelde contra la sociedad que él describe con tanto desdén a lo largo de su manuscrito?  Un buenísimo libro...¡pero probablemente sólo una picada en comparación con el bife de chorizo mariposa con papas fritas provenzal que es Los siete locos del año 1929! (http://www.editoriallosada.com/)

Arlt

"Eran las siete de la tarde y la calle Lavalle estaba en su más babilónico esplendor.  Los cafés a través de las vidrieras veíanse abarrotados de consumidores; en los atrios de los teatros y cinematógrafos aguardaban desocupados elegantes, y los escaparates de las casas de modas con sus piernas calzadas de finas medias y suspendidas de brazos niquelados, las vidrieras de las ortopedias y joyerías mostraban en su opulencia la astucia de todos esos comerciantes halagando con artículos de malicia la voluptuosidsad de las gentes poderosas en dinero" (83-84).

"Me tembló el alma.  ¿Qué hacer, qué podría hacer para triunfar, para tener dinero, mucho dinero?  Seguramente no me iba a encontrar en la calle una cartera con diez mil pesos.  ¿Qué hacer, entonces?  Y no sabiendo si pudiera asesinar a alguien, si al menos hubiera tenido algún pariente, rico, a quien asesinar y responderme, comprendí que nunca me resignaría a la vida penuriosa que sobrellevan naturalmente la mayoría de los hombres"  (111).

The Waves

The Waves (Harcourt, 2006)
by Virginia Woolf
England, 1931

While one or two of the Woolf fanatics in my blogging inner circle will hopefully be chuffed to learn that Virginia and I are back on speaking terms once again after the disastrous blind date that was Orlando, I'm afraid that they may well be unchuffed/not chuffed/dischuffed/less than chuffed (blimey, somebody help me out with this British English already!) to hear that The Waves didn't exactly do it for me either.  Not that I thought it completely sucked or anything.  On the plus side, I admired Woolf's willingness to experiment with narrative structure--the central conceit here being a novel that unfolds without dialogue in a series of soliloquies by six characters speaking in turn.  I also enjoyed her ability to handle a variety of traditional downer themes--death, loss, our looming mortality--in a way that felt fresh and true to the spirit of the distinct characters involved (both those with speaking roles and those like Percival who only come alive through the refracted memories of the others).  It should go without saying that there were any number of quotable passages and truly poetic images bobbing among the 220 pages of text.  On the minus side, though, I found The Waves to be much more ambitious than exhilarating in terms of the reading experience delivered.  The writing's incredibly mannered and artificial, and reading it often reminded me of when I had to sit through church as a little kid when I would have rather been watching football or playing outside or doing almost anything else instead.  It didn't help that the italicized interludes that help frame the soliloquy segments were so dull, but they were.  I suspect that I would have been at least somewhat more receptive to The Waves' cerebral charms if I had read it with more time in between it and the atrocious Orlando, but I'm certain that all that overly "stagey," Greek chorus-like heavyhanded theatricality of the prose would have bothered me at any point in time regardless.  Meh.  (http://www.harcourtbooks.com/)

Thanks to Woolfies Sarah, Frances, Emily, and today's discussion host Claire for throwing the Woolf in Winter party and to those of you who visited here during the different pub crawls (below) along the way.

Mrs. Dalloway

To the Lighthouse

Orlando: A Biography

Neuromancer

Neuromancer (Ace, 2000)
by William Gibson
USA, 1984

As part of my rehab from Virginia Woolf's monumentally boring/annoying/occasionally racist Orlando a week or two ago, William Gibson's cyberpunk classic Neuromancer was prob. just what the doctor ordered: a taut, high-octane thriller that I actually looked forward to reading when I got home from work.  Having said that, it was also sort of a letdown on the big ideas front.  Imagination, now that's another story.  Beginning with the celebrated opening line mentioned in almost every review of the work by straights and geeks alike ("The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"), the novel instantly transports you into a noirish otherworld of the future where a few multinational corporations dominate what seems to be a dramatically-altered, grim post-apocalyptic landscape.  Molly, a genetically-modified "razorgirl" working as the muscle for a dubiously-principled ex-special forces officer named Armitage, recruits the self-destructive but once über-talented hacker Case to join a team specially assembled to breach artificial intelligence giant Tessier-Ashpool's vaunted security network defenses.  Things, somewhat predictably, go awry.  Although this three-sentence plot summary will fail to do justice to certain of Neuromancer's narrative twists and turns, it's more than enough to make clear that the novel's basically just a caper story where the devil's in the details.  Gibson's great, for example, at describing a world where old school humans (genetically-modified or not) interact with ninja robots and other artificial intelligence life forms in a way that feels plausible.  I also liked how both Chiba City, the Blade Runner-like Japanese underworld where we first meet Case, and the imagined or reconstructed memory scenes that take place in virtual reality elsewhere (on the beach? in the afterlife? jacked into somebody else's head?) score high on the atmosphere meter in compellingly different ways.  Mostly, though, I just really fell in love with how cool the Molly character was written.  Suffice it to say that her back story--with its jarring references to the sordid world of virtual reality prostitution--did more to elevate Neuromancer above its genre roots for me than all of the "prophetic" references to the matrix/microsofts/etc. combined.  An entertaining read, to be sure--but hardly the "mindbender" that sci-fi fans and those establishment wackos at Time and the Village Voice might have you believe.  (http://www.penguin.com/)

A Brazilian version of Neuromancer with the scene-stealing Molly, suspiciously looking just as I had imagined her, on the cover.

William Gibson:

"The future is already here--it's just not evenly distributed" (2003 quote lifted from Wikipedia).

Maldoror

Maldoror and Poems [Les Chants de Maldoror] (Penguin, 1978)

par le Comte de Lautréamont (translated from the French by Paul Knight)
France, 1868-69

"The great universal family of men is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic."  (Maldoror, 43)

When I first read Maldoror back in my early twenties, I thought that it might be (no, it must be!) the most fucked-up book of all time.  I wasn't alone either: how many other authors can you think of that have inspired critical reactions with such awe-inspiring titles as J-P Soulier's Lautréamont, génie ou maladie mentale? (Lautréamont: Genius or Mental Illness?)?  Rereading Lautréamont's novel-as-excursus-on-evil this past week, an older and now infinitely more jaded version of that earlier self was immediately reminded of why this very messed up text was also once my favorite book of them all.  Let's see if I can explain.  A series of six chants or cantos in prose at least partially dedicated to the proposition of depicting "the delights of cruelty" (31), Maldoror takes its name from the mysterious protagonist who flits in and out of the narrative (fantastical scenes involving gravediggers, various animal metamorphoses, and Maldoror's own underwater copulation with a shark) at war with God and mankind.  Numerous extremely sadistic vignettes flesh out just how "inhuman" the character is, spelling out the death of innocence in an all too literal way--the joke, such as it is, lying in the fact that while mankind is born evil and a cannibalistic God spends his time passed out drunk or in brothels within the the novel's unceasingly blasphemous "strophes," Maldoror alone is willing to cop to and embrace this facet of his essential nature.  Although this bloodthirsty, shape-shifting incarnation of evil is naturally the primary focus of attention here, one of the more subversive literary aspects of the work is the way in which the subjectivity of the author and his putative hero so often merge into one: "Stupid, idiotic race!" Lautréamont rants early on in the second chant.  "You will regret having acted thus!  My poetry will consist exclusively of attacks on man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought never to have bred such vermin.  Volume after volume will accumulate, till the end of my life; yet this single idea only will be found, ever present in my mind!"  (73-74)  While the geniality of such a vision will be lost on most people, accustomed as they are to the tame fare peddled by chain bookstores and the lame fare recommended by their reality TV-watching friends, those willing and able to put up with Maldoror's squirm factor may grow fond of Lautréamont's aesthetics of excess.  For in amplifying his theme with such uncompromising and bombastic craftsmanship, the author reveals himself to be quite the stylist: both enamored with and at war with language.  Like a modernist, only interesting!  How else to explain the profusion of strangely poetic images ("And I held out to her the hand with which the fratricide slits his sister's throat" [36]) and similes ("The beetle, lovely as the alcoholic's trembling hand" [186]) unleashed in the course of the work?  Or the arch humor, literally embedded in a parenthesis in this case ("I would be showing little knowledge of my profession as a sensational writer if I did not, at least, bring in the restrictive limitations which are immediately followed by the sentence I am about to complete" [217]) in the novel within a novel that closes the sixth and final song?  Or the running "dialogue" between the author and reader that constantly exposes the essential fictionality of fiction ("Why should I, at random, reopen, at a given page, with blasphemous eagerness, the folio of human miseries?  There is nothing more fruitfully instructive.  Even if I had no true event to recount to you, I would invent imaginary tales and decant them into your brain" [230])?  Or the hymns to the ocean and mathematics?  Etc., etc.  A vile, misanthropic opus that remains one of the funniest candidates for a readalong I've ever come across!  (http://www.penguinclassics.com/)

Le Comte de Lautréamont was the pen name of Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870), a Frenchman born in Montevideo, Uruguay, who died in Paris, France, almost a complete unknown to the men of letters of his day and age.  Although I've chosen to save my comments on his Poésies for a later post, here are a few "style samples" from Maldoror which should give you an idea of the mocking humor that permeates the work.

Chant I, 1 (Lautréamont vs. the captatio benevolentiae): "May it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and having for the time being become as fierce as what he is reading, should, without being led astray, find his rugged and treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar.  It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity.  Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands.  Listen well to what I say: turn on your heels and go back, not forward, like the eyes of a son respectfully averted from the august contemplation of his mother's face; or rather like a formation of very meditative cranes, stretching out of sight, whose sensitive bodies flee the chill of winter, when, their wings fully extended, they fly powerfully through silence to a precise point on the horizon, from which suddenly a strange strong wind blows, precursor of the storm..." (29)

Chant I, 8 (one full sentence): "And just as elephants, in the desert, before they die, look up one last time at the sky, despairingly raising their trunks, not moving their eyes, so too these dogs' ears do not move, but, raising their heads, they swell out their dreadful necks and start barking in turns, like a hungry child yelling for food, or a cat who has ripped its guts open on a roof, like a woman about to give birth, or a plague-ridden patient dying in hospital, or a young girl singing a sublime air; at the stars in the north, at the stars in the east, at the stars in the south, at the stars in the west; at the moon; at the mountains which in the distance seem like giant rocks in the darkness; at the tops of their voices they bark at the cold air they are breathing, the cold air which makes the insides of their nostrils red and burning; at the silences of the night; at the screech-owls who brush against their muzzles in their oblique line of flight, as they carry off in their beaks a rat or a frog, living nourishment, sweet to the little ones; at the rabbits who scurry out of sight in the winking of an eye; at the thief, fleeing on his galloping horse after committing a crime; at the snakes stirring in the heath, who make their flesh creep, their teeth chatter; at their own barks, which frighten them; at the toads whom they crush with a quick, sharp movement of their jaws (why have they strayed so far from the swamps?); at the trees, whose gently-rustling leaves are as many mysteries that they cannot understand, which they want to fathom with their attentive, intelligent eyes; at the spiders hanging beneath their long legs, who climb up trees to escape; at the ravens who, during the day, have found nothing to eat and are returning with tired wings to their nests; at the craggy cliffs along the sea-shore; at the fires burning on the masts of invisible ships; at the muffled sound of the waves beating agains the huge fish who, as they swim, reveal their black backs and then plunge down again into the fathomless depths; and against man, who makes slaves of them."  (38-39)

Chant VI, I (Lautréamont vs. the reader): "I howl with laughter to think that you will reproach me for spreading bitter accusations against mankind of which I am a member (this remark alone would prove me right!), and against Providence.  I shall not retract one of my words; but, telling what I have seen, it will not be difficult for me, with no other object than truth, to justify them.  Today I am going to fabricate a little novel of thirty pages; the estimated length will, in the event, remain unchanged.  Hoping to see the establishment of my theories quickly accepted one day by some literary form or another, I believe I have, after some groping attempts, at last found my definitive formula.  It is the best: since it is the novel!  This hybrid preface has been set out in a fashion which will not perhaps appear natural enough, in the sense that it takes, so to speak, the reader by surprise, and he cannot well see quite what the author is trying to do with him; but this feeling of remarkable astonishment, from which one must generally endeavour to preserve those who spend their time reading books and pamphlets, is precisely what I have made every effort to produce.  In fact, I could do no less, in spite of my good intentions: and only later, when a few of my novels have appeared, will you be better able to understand the preface of the fuliginous renegade."  (213)

Sor Juana for Beginners I: Sátira filosófica en redondillas

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

I'm not a Sor Juana expert by any means, and I definitely don't enjoy the syllable-counting exercises that poetry freaks seem to live for.  However, I love, love, love the little I've read of Sor Juana's works over the years and am fascinated by her biography.  So who is Sor Juana, you ask?  The short answer is that she was a 17th-century Mexican poet (c. 1650-1694 or 1651-1695 depending on which of two books you choose to believe) who spent most of her life in a convent.  She was sometimes referred to as "the 10th muse" by her many admirers.  She closes out Elías L. Rivers' collection of Spanish Renaissance poetry, Poesía lírica del Siglo de Oro [Lyric Poetry of the Golden Age] (Cátedra, 1979 and 2004), an important distinction considering that she's the only New World writer to appear in that volume of Iberian peninsula greats.  By my math, that makes her the first great poet of the post-Conquest Americas and the last great poet of Spain's Siglo de Oro.  She might also have been the New World's first feminist--or at least a feminist avant la lettre.  In any event, you can decide that for yourself with the following poem, presented first in the original Spanish and then in translation (note: a redondilla is a poem written in stanzas of four octosyllabic verses with rhymes on the first and fourth lines and second and third lines; while the translation lacks some of the argumentative insistency to be enjoyed when you read the original out loud in Spanish--you can almost picture Sor Juana scoring points in a debate or in a court of law--I think it does a great job of capturing the spirit of the poem).

SÁTIRA FILOSÓFICA EN REDONDILLAS

     Hombres necios que acusáis

a la mujer sin razón,

sin ver que sois la ocasión

de lo mismo que culpáis:

     si con ansia sin igual

solicitáis su desdén,

¿por qué queréis que obren bien

si las incitáis al mal?

     Combatís su resistencia

y luego, con gravedad

decís que fue liviandad

lo que hizo la diligencia.

     Parecer quiere el denuedo

de vuestro parecer loco,

al niño que pone el coco

y luego le tiene miedo.

     Queréis, con presunción necia,

hallar a la que buscáis,

para pretendida, Thais,

y en la posesión, Lucrecia.

     ¿Qué humor puede ser más raro

que el que, falto de consejo,

él mismo empaña el espejo,

y siente que no esté claro?

     Con el favor y el desdén

tenéis condición igual,

quejándoos, si os tratan mal,

burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

     Opinión, ninguna gana;

pues la que más se recata,

si no os admite, es ingrata,

y si os admite, es liviana.

     Siempre tan necios andáis

que, con desigual nivel,

a una culpáis por crüel

y a otra por fácil culpáis.

     ¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada

la que vuestro amor pretende,

si la que es ingrata, ofende,

y la que es fácil, enfada?

     Mas, entre el enfado y pena

que vuestro gusto refiere,

bien haya la que no os quiere

y quejaos en hora buena.

     Dan vuestras amantes penas

a sus libertades alas,

y después de hacerlas malas

las queréis hallar muy buenas.

     ¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido

en una pasión errada:

la que cae de rogada,

o el que ruega de caído?

     ¿O cuál es más de culpar,

aunque cualquiera mal haga:

la que peca por la paga,

o el que paga por pecar?

     Pues ¿para qué os espantáis

de la culpa que tenéis?

Queredlas cual las hacéis

o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

     Dejad de solicitar,

y después, con más razón,

acusaréis la afición

de la que os fuere a rogar.

     Bien con muchas armas fundo

que lidia vuestra arrogancia,

pues en promesa e instancia

juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.

You Men [translator unknown]

     Silly, you men--so very adept

at wrongly faulting womankind,

not seeing you're alone to blame

for faults you plant in woman's mind.

     After you've won by urgent plea

the right to tarnish her good name,

you still expect her to behave--

you, that coaxed her into shame.

     You batter her resistance down

and then, all righteousness, proclaim

that feminine frivolity,

not your persistence, is to blame.

     When it comes to bravely posturing,

your witlessness must take the prize:

you're the child that makes a bogeyman,

and then recoils in fear and cries.

     Presumptuous beyond belief,

you'd have the woman you pursue

be Thais when you're courting her,

Lucretia once she falls to you.

     For plain default of common sense,

could any action be so queer

as oneself to cloud the mirror,

then complain that it's not clear?

     Whether you're favored or disdained,

nothing can leave you satisfied.

You whimper if you're turned away,

you sneer if you've been gratified.

     With you, no woman can hope to score;

whichever way, she's bound to lose;

spurning you, she's ungrateful--

succumbing, you call her lewd.

     Your folly is always the same:

you apply a single rule

to the one you accuse of looseness

and the one you brand as cruel.

     What happy mean could there be

for the woman who catches your eye,

if, unresponsive, she offends,

yet whose complaisance you decry?

     Still, whether it's torment or anger--

and both ways you've yourselves to blame--

God bless the woman who won't have you,

no matter how loud you complain.

     It's your persistent entreaties

that change her from timid to bold.

Having made her thereby naughty,

you would have her good as gold.

     So where does the greater guilt lie

for a passion that should not be:

with the man who pleads out of baseness

or the woman debased by his plea?

     Or which is more to be blamed--

though both will have cause for chagrin:

the woman who sins for money

or the man who pays money to sin?

     So why are you men all so stunned

at the thought you're all guilty alike?

Either like them for what you've made them

or make of them what you can like.

     If you'd give up pursuing them,

you'd discover, without a doubt,

you've a stronger case to make

against those who seek you out.

I well know what powerful arms

you wield in pressing for evil:

your arrogance is allied

with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

    

This poem appears here in honor of the México 2010 Reading Challenge hosted by Sylvia of Classical Bookworm.  More Sor Juana stuff, both in prose and verse, coming soon.

Orlando: A Biography

Orlando: A Biography (Harcourt, 2006)
by Virginia Woolf
England, 1928

I'm sure that people who liked Orlando will have all sorts of interesting things to say about its playfulness, its liberating send-up of gender roles, and the way Woolf thumbed her nose at genre conventions in creating a novel that pairs the literature of the fantastic with feminist pseudobiography in such a creative way.  For my part, I haven't taken such a visceral disliking to a book since the second installment of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy a few months back.  How could a tale about a 16th-century character who ages over three hundred years and undergoes a gender change in the course of the story be such a complete bore?  While I'm not entirely sure, I think a huge part of it for me has to do with Woolf's smug contempt for the non-white/non-aristocratic "others" in her fictional fantasy land.  If you can imagine a gentle Calvino fable as rewritten by unsavory pro-Empire types like Margaret Thatcher or Bush Republicans, you'll be well on your way to understanding why all the freewheeling references to "blackamoors," barbarous gypsies, and "niggers" in Orlando sometimes make it tough to enjoy some of the more exotic elements in its otherwise frothy, fabulistic mix.  Lest any readers of this post rightly point out that it's not really fair to judge Woolf's apparent racism by the standards of a later generation, I should note that I also didn't connect with her stylistic elements this time out either.  For all the heady fast-forwarding in time that takes place in the narrative (for me, practically the novel's only saving grace), I felt virtually bored into submission by the overkill I'm-so-clever-watch-me-make-fun-of-the-biographer's-role asides from the narrator, the silly stories about dropping toads down potential suitors' shirts, and the "whimsical" use of an invented language for entertainment purposes ("Rattigan Glumphoboo," described as a substitute for "a very complicated spiritual state" on pages 208-209, might have been the low point EVER for humor lost in translation).  With any luck, Woolf will be depressed and/or cynical again when I get around to reading The Waves in a couple of weeks since this "fun" side of hers definitely rubbed me the wrong way.  A total disappointment.  (http://www.harcourtbooks.com/)

Woolf

Thanks to Frances for hosting the Orlando: A Biography round of Woolf in Winter.  See you on or around the 26th for a discussion of Woolf's The Waves being organized by Claire of kiss a cloud.  In the meantime, I await your petulant comments and/or e-mails.

Muchacha punk

Fogwill, versión 2006 (foto: Clarín)

"Muchacha punk"

por Fogwill

Argentina, 1979

Había querido leer este "famosísimo" cuento argentino, un objeto de culto escrito en el año punk de 1978 y publicado en el año punk de 1979, desde hace algún tiempo, y no me decepcionó.  Un relato que tiene que ver con la historia del encuentro entre un viajero argentino y una muchacha punk británica en Londres a finales de la década de los setenta, la obra ofrece una visión bastante cómica de una aventura amorosa que empieza en una pizzería española.  Aunque el narrador es sumamente chistoso (compara la semblanza del "mozo español de pizzería inglesa" con "cualquier otro mozo español de pizzería de París o Rosario" antes de añadir, con un guiño al lector, "he elegido Rosario para no citar tanto a Buenos Aires" [59]), también me gustó su manera de narrar los eventos porque me pareció ser un personaje con actitudes y opiniones fidedignas.  De hecho, me reí mucho con sus detalles cuentísticos tan personales: la mezcla de Chianti y Coke bebida por la muchacha punk y sus amigas, la escena donde una amiga de la muchacha punk se despide de él con un sarcástico "Bye, Borges" y un ademán irrespetuoso, su "decepción" al descubrir que la muchacha punk Coreen "era tan limpia como cualquier chitrula de Flores o Belgrano R.  Nada previsible en una inglesa y en todo discordante con mis expectativas hacia lo punk" (74), etcétera.  Aunque no voy a decir nada sobre la manera en cual el enamoramiento del narrador con la muchacha punk se puede leer como un comentario sobre el choque de culturas (basta invocar la escena anterior en la pizzería con la amiga fea:  "--Bye, Borges --me gritó cara de sapo desde la vereda, amagando sacar de cu cintura una inexistente espadita o puñal; yo me alegré de ver tanta fealdad hundiéndose en el frío, y me alegré aún más pensando que asistía a otra prueba de que el prestigio deportivo de mi patria había franqueado las peores fronteras sociales de Londres" [65]), está claro que el tono pícaro del relato también esconde algo más siniestro.  ¿Qué hace el viajero en Londres de verdad?  ¿Y por qué, en estos años de la dictadura militar, quiere comprar un catálago de armas para su "gente" en Argentina antes de regresar al país?  Por supuesto, ustedes tendrán que leer el cuento para proponer sus propias respuestas a estas preguntas.  Mientras tanto, yo buscaré a los Cuentos completos de Fogwill en cuanto posible porque éste fue un knockout.  Fuente: Juan Forn (selección y prólogo).  Buenos Aires: Una antología de nueva ficción argentina.  Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1992, 53-78.

* "Muchacha punk" en línea *

The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron"

Professor Almansi

The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)

by Guido Almansi

England, 1975

While fruitlessly searching for a cover image for this book, I had a nice but totally unexpected laugh when I stumbled across a review of another Almansi title online which referred to the author's "ironia e gusto della provocazione" (irony and taste for provocation).  It seems that Almansi, a professor of Comp Lit at the University of East Anglia who died in 2001, must have been very consistent in that regard, since a great deal of my own enjoyment of his The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron came from watching him take potshots at rival critics who failed to sufficiently establish their critical positions to the satisfaction of the good doctor's tastes.  A collection of five essays on various elements of Boccaccio's craft, The Writer as Liar is really just a fine introduction to the technical side of The Decameron.  In staking out both an anti-realist and an anti-psychological interpretation of the work (see the extended quote at the end of this post, which mirrors my explanation for why most U.S. bloggers are unreasonably leery of any modern experimentation in the novel as well), Almansi is quite persuasive at positing a reading of The Decameron that emphasizes "how the literary game of falsehood is being exaggerated to a point of no return" (46).  The first three chapters on "Narrative Screens," in which Almansi discusses The Decameron's cornice or storytelling frame, on "Literature and Falsehood," and on "Bawdry and Ars Combinatoria" are more topical for the most part, but the concluding chapters on "The Meaning of a Storm" and "Passion and Metaphor" shift the focus onto close readings of major tales like the story of Alatiel and her serial lovers (Decameron II, 7) and the grisly one about Tancredi and Ghismonda (Decameron IV, I).  While a lone but unfortunate reference to one of Boccaccio's characters as "a nasty old queer" (49) tends to date this book even more than the rapidly yellowing pages in the library copy I borrowed, I'd still strongly recommend it to any lit crit geeks out there interested in an idiosyncratic companion to their Decameron studies.  I realize that might mean...none of you.  (Routledge & Kegan Paul, out of print)

**********

"This [i.e. what Almansi sees as the primacy of the individual episode in The Decameron and the subsequent subordination of "any demands of historical accuracy, psychological consistency or behavioral plausibility"] is the puzzling factor which sets up an aesthetic gulf between the modern reader and the Decameron.  We are all of us constructed out of bits and pieces of nineteenth-century fictional characters: these are our inescapabale cultural heritage, even if our actual reading went no further than Enid Blyton.  Inevitably we run our lives on parallel co-ordinates to those of the Dickens or Balzac hero, in terms of behaviour, reasoning, motivation, instinctive needs and mental constructs.  It all turns out to be a kind of second-class copy of a nineteenth-century novel, i.e. the literary genre which was most obsessively concerned with the psychological credibility of the character.  We can veer between consistency and inconsistency, we can follow a direct or a more tortuous psychological line (Julian Sorel and Raskolnikov need by no means be considered self-consistent), but ultimately we are still accustomed to picturing ourselves and the world, art and politics, all in an uncompromisingly diachronic line, that is to say, in terms of psychological feasibility.

When the modern reader has to come to grips with a work like the Decameron, which belongs to a narrative area with a completely different raison d'être, he feels disoriented and is tempted to look for something which cannot be found in the work, namely a familiar character fresh from the 500-plus pages of a tome written by the grandfather of his grandfathers.  This also leads to the occasional insensitivity of criticism, which complains about the absence of narrative modes which Boccaccio neither intended nor wanted in the fabric of the Decameron."  (The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the Decameron, 75-76)

The Decameron #4/10

Not having read all that much Decameron criticism before, one of the more interesting things to come out of my time spent with Guido Almansi's The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in the "Decameron" (Routledge, 1975) so far is Almansi's assertion that earlier critics were prone to look for a faithful representation of "reality" in Boccaccio's magnum opus--as if the work were designed to replicate something historically accurate about 14th-century Florentine life.  Almansi, on the other hand, convincingly argues that the lie is the work's real star attraction--that The Decameron is more about Boccaccio drawing attention to his storytelling virtuosity than anything else.  Almost as if on cue, the Fourth Day's session begins with an unexpected interruption to the narrative flow in the form of a direct address from the author to his readers.  A snippet:

"Judicious ladies, there are those who have said, after reading these tales, that I am altogether too fond of you, that it is unseemly for me to take so much delight in entertaining and consoling you, and, what is apparently worse, in singing your praises as I do.  Others, laying claim to greater profundity, have said that it is not good for a man of my age to engage in such pursuits as discussing the ways of women and providing for their pleasure.  And others, showing deep concern for my renown, say that I would be better advised to remain with the Muses in Parnassus, than to fritter away my time in your company.

Moreover, there are those who, prompted more by spitefulness than common sense, have said that I would be better employed in earning myself a good meal than in going hungry for the sake of producing nonsense of this sort.  And finally there are those who, in order to belittle my efforts, endeavour to prove that my versions of the stories I have told are not consistent with the facts." (The Decameron, 284)

While I'll rather lazily avoid discussing this passage in any detail (time is a stern taskmaster today), translator G.H. McWilliam's footnotes inform me that there's no reason to believe that Boccaccio was responding to any real attacks here.  In any event, Boccaccio's arch and preemptive self-defense of what are probably only imagined potential critiques of his artistic creation soon evolves into an incomplete story intended to justify the Decameron's celebration of women and its rejection of poetry in favor of prose.  In other words, yes, a story about stories in the medium we all now take for granted!  Although our author goes out of his way to apologize for the incompleteness of said story ("for otherwise it might appear that I was attempting to equate my own tales with those of that select company I have been telling you about" he laments in a mega meta moment on page 285),  McWilliam notes that the tale "is in fact sufficiently complete for commentators to refer to it as the 101st story of the Decameron" (826).  For my part, reading this mini-story and the self-conscious arguments about form that precede it make it very difficult to argue with Almansi's basic premise.  Calling attention to the artifice of fiction does indeed seem to be Boccaccio's game.

In this light (and apologizing in advance for the lack of the customary amount of sleaze in this week's Decameron update), I probably shouldn't have been as surprised by the detour Boccaccio was about to make as I actually was.  But even if I haven't left myself enough time to do justice to the rest of the Fourth Day's stories, suffice it to say that they provide as clear a break from the 30 (or 31) previous ones as Boccaccio's own direct address to his readers.  To wit--and to show my paranormal romance reading friends that the lack of time for the Fourth Day's stories doesn't stem from any passive aggressiveness on my part--here's a road map to the romantic gore in store for you during the course of this particular session: one story in which a lady joins her lover in the afterlife by drinking poison served to her in a chalice with her ex-lover's heart; another story in which a woman disinters the body of her murdered lover, beheads it, and then stores the decomposing head in a pot full of basil, watering it with her tears; one story in which a jealous husband feeds his wife the heart of her ex-lover, an act she repays by jumping out an open window to her death on the ground below.  Although I lost count of how many beheadings and spectral visitations (real or imagined) were mentioned in the chapter, the theme for the day--"those whose love ended unhappily" (284)--unfolded with all the variety and gruesome artistry you might suspect: just not quite as much gleeful lubricity as previously.  Next up: an all-Almansi post or Decameron Day Five, who can tell?

El olvido que seremos

El olvido que seremos (Planeta, 2007)
por Héctor Abad Faciolince
Colombia, 2006

"Cuando me doy cuenta de lo limitado que es mi talento para escribir (casi nunca consigo que las palabras suenen tan nítidas como están las ideas en el pensamiento; lo que hago me parece un balbuceo pobre y torpe al lado de lo que hubieran podido decir mis hermanas), recuerdo la confianza que mi papá tenía en mí.  Entonces levanto los hombros y sigo adelante.  Si a él le gustaban hasta mis renglones de garabatos, qué importa si lo que escribo no acaba de satisfacerme a mí.  Creo que el único motivo por el que he sido capaz de seguir escribiendo todos estos años, y de entregar mis escritos a la imprenta, es porque sé que mi papá hubiera gozado más que nadie al leer todas estas páginas mías que no alcanzó a leer.  Que no leerá nunca.  Es una de las paradojas más tristes de mi vida: casi todo lo que he escrito lo he escrito para alguien que no puede leerme, y este mismo libro no es otra cosa que la carta a una sombra".  (El olvido que seremos, 22)

El martes 25 de agosto de 1987, el padre de Héctor Abad Faciolince fue asesinado en Medellín por un sicario de motocicleta.  Un amigo del padre, Leonardo Betancur, también fue matado durante el mismo ataque por otro matón.  El olvido que seremos, escrito casi 20 años más tarde de los asesinatos como un homenaje al valor de la vida humana frente a la violencia y a los males que nos rodean, es por consiguiente una especie de epitafio tanto como un libro de memorias.  Vale la pena de leerlo.  En prosa sencilla, directa, y llena de ternura, Abad Faciolince comparte un retrato de una familia colombiana "normal" (normal en el sentido de que no era ni rico ni pobre) que me impactó mucho.  Me gustaron las varias anécdotas familiales, por supuesto, pero también me gustó ver el cariño particular entre padre e hijo.  No estoy acostumbrado a hablar del tema en cuanto a los libros de ficción que leo, lo cual puede decir mucho sobre los defectos de las novelas que elijo o mucho sobre mis gustos en ficción, qué sé yo.  En todo caso, un éxito de la obra de Abad Faciolince es que el escritor nos presenta con una biografía mesurada de una persona completamente fuera de lo normal en cierto sentido: un doctor humanista que, en su trabajo como profesor y periodista y como el fundador de la Escuela Nacional de Salud Pública, se reveló ser un leal amigo de los pobres de su país.  Un hombre de sentimientos izquierdistas claro, pero un hombre de moderación cuya única revolución de verdad fue la de los derechos humanos.  Leyendo de todos los hombres que fueron matados a causa de su participación en la Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos de Antioquia en aquel entonces, quizá debe aclarar que "moderación" no es la palabra adecuada para hablar de los héroes que luchaban contra la injusticia en los '80.  En resumen, El olvido que seremos (el título viene de un trozo de un poema de Borges, encontrado en los bolsillos de Héctor Abad Gómez después de su muerte) es un libro tristísimo pero muy hermoso a la vez.  Recomendado.  (http://www.editorialplaneta.com.co/)

Héctor Abad Faciolince

"Han pasado casi veinte años desde que lo mataron, y durante estos veinte años, cada mes, cada semana, yo he sentido que tenía el deber ineludible, no digo de vengar su muerte, pero sí, al menos de contarla.  No puedo decir que su fantasma se me haya aparecido por las noches, como el fantasma del padre de Hamlet, a pedirme que vengue su monstruoso y terrible asesinato.  Mi papá siempre nos enseñó a evitar la venganza.  Las pocas veces que he soñado con él, en esas fantasmales imágenes de la memoria y de la fantasía que se nos aparecen mientras dormimos, nuestras conversaciones han sido más plácidas que angustiadas, y en todo caso llenas de ese cariño físico que siempre nos tuvimos.  No hemos soñado el uno con el otro para pedir venganza, sino para abrazarnos".  (El olvido que seremos, 254)

February Reading

1) Llamadas telefónicas, 1997

2) Mantra, 2001

3) Les caves du Vatican, 1914

4) Orlando: A Biography (1928) & 5) The Waves (1931)