domingo, 27 de septiembre de 2020

Chicas muertas

 
Chicas muertas (Literatura Random House, 2015)
by Selva Almada
Argentina, 2014

When Selva Almada was just a sheltered teen growing up in Entre Ríos in the 1980s, news of the murders of three other Argentinean girls roughly her own age--Andrea Danne, 19; María Luisa Quevedo, 15; Sarita Mundín, 20--awakened her to a couple of harsh realities: "Adentro de tu casa podían matarte.  El horror podía vivir bajo el mismo techo que vos" ["They could kill you within your own house.  The horror could live under the same roof as you"] (17).  As Almada explains the extent of the shock a page later, "Tres adolescentes de provincia asesinadas en los años ochenta, tres muertes impunes ocurridas cuando todavía, en nuestro país, desconocíamos el término femicidio" ["Three adolescents from the provinces murdered in the 1980s, three unpunished deaths at a time when, in our country, we still didn't know the term femicide"] (18).  Haunted by these deaths even when, as an adult, she realized that young girls were dying all around Argentina in alarming numbers, the author crisscrossed the country in search of some kind of answers to the cold cases still unsolved after decades.  The results of the investigation, as chronicled in the non-sensationalist but still way sobering Chicas muertas [Dead Girls, now out in an English translation], take the form of a hybrid narrative nonfiction/memoir blend which manages to pay respect to the victims and their families while not exactly providing solace for anybody else.  While Almada succeeds in giving a measure of voice to the three victims beyond the forensic reports, through no fault of her own what little "perspective" there is to be found here comes in the form of things--a clairvoyant who denied the help requested by the boyfriend of one of the victims, saying that "él con las cosas del diablo no se metía" ["he didn't get mixed up with things of the devil"] (42); a husband who endangered his wife, another one of the victims, because she was "demasiado linda" ["too cute"] to return to her previous job as a maid after she had a baby: "Tanta belleza desperdiciada entre los vahos de los productos de limpieza.  Así que la mandó a prostituirse" ["So much beauty wasted among the cleaning product vapors.  So he sent her out to turn tricks"] (111-112)--that can only be classified as tough, tough pills to swallow.  A brave piece of work.

Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, 1973)
photo: Pablo Cruz

sábado, 26 de septiembre de 2020

Los oficios terrestres

 
Los oficios terrestres (Ediciones de la Flor, 2013)
por Rodolfo Walsh
La Argentina, 1965

Un puñado de cuentos, todos menos uno o buenos o muy buenos, dos o tres de los cuales son cuentazos.  "Esa mujer", por ejemplo, es el famosísimo cuento en el que un periodista que se parece a Walsh habla con un militar sobre el robo y traslado del cadáver de Evita.  En menos de diez páginas y sin nombrar a la muerta específicamente, los dos personajes bailan alrededor del tema de manera evasiva: "--Esa mujer --le oigo murmurar--.  Estaba desnuda en el ataúd y parecía una virgen.  La piel se le había vuelto transparente.  Se veían las metástasis del cáncer, como esos dibujitos que uno hace en una ventanilla mojada" (292).  Mientras tanto, el cuentista-- en gran parte a través del diálogo--capta una atmósfera tensa e inquietante en igual medida.  "--¡Está parada! --grita el coronel--.  ¡La enterré parada, como Facundo, porque era un macho!" (296).  En una nota, Walsh añade que "la conversación que reproduce" dentro del cuento "es, en lo esencial, verdadera" (287).  Espeluznante.  "Irlandeses detrás de un gato", que cuenta la paliza que espera el nuevo chico en un internado católico de provincia como rito de iniciación, es otro buen ejemplo del estilo vigoroso y sin tonterías de su autor.  Además de crear una atmósfera donde se respira "el aire asesino" (342) de la violencia pendiente, Walsh parece señalar la inescapabilidad de tal comportamiento en una sociedad que margina a los pobres y juega por las reglas de los "viejos tiempos levíticos" (340).  Nocaut.


Rodolfo Walsh (1927-desaparecido en 1977)

Fuente
Los oficios terrestres, libro que incluye seis cuentos en la edición original de 1965 + dos más en esta versión ampliada, aparece en los Cuentos completos de Walsh (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 2013) en las páginas 285-366.

domingo, 20 de septiembre de 2020

ARLT

 
"ARLT"
by César Aira
Argentina, 1993

An appreciation of Argentinean Literature of Doom great Roberto Arlt penned by fellow Argentinean Literature of Doom great César Aira?  Sort of!  While I'm not sure what prompted Aira (above, photographer unknown) to take up this possibly spurious exercise in literary criticism, he begins his essay with a definition of the methodologies of expressionism and impressionism which I won't go into here.  Arlt, "torturado y pensativo como un alemán" ["pensive and tortured like a German"] (55), is an expressionist, though--the "like a German" line supposedly owing itself to a quote of Goethe's on the nature of the Teutonic temperament.  Moving from the general to the specific, Aira then zeroes in on the theme of "la traición' ["treachery, betrayal"] (57) as an example of how Arlt's expressionist tendencies ooze to the surface in his work.  Although Aira cheekily calls this "a random but a central" example  ["uno cualquiera, pero central"], parenthetically adding that "la elección de ejemplos es una trampa que habría que evitar" ["the choice of examples is a trap that should be avoided"] (!) (57), one wonders why the choice of language is so slippery here given that betrayal and treachery are so foundational to Arlt's fiction.  One possible answer: "Cuando uno se pregunta por las intenciones de un artista, es inevitable que se pierda en un laberinto" ["When one wonders about the intentions of an artist, it's inevitable that one get lost in a labyrinth"] (59).  And another: slippery language is foundational to Aira's own obra.  Whatever one's opinions on Arlt's art, of course, one needn't be a fan of either writer to be amused and/or intrigued by Aira's essayistic antics and conclusions.  One of my favorites among the former comes in the paragraph which begins, "Suele decirse 'Arlt, nuestro Flaubert'" ["As the saying goes, 'Arlt, our Flaubert'"].  Although I've actually seen Arlt referred to by Argentines as "our Dostoevsky," I'd be surprised if Aira didn't make up the "our Flaubert" talk altogether.  It's a great set-up line, though, insofar as our critic goes on to hammer home the points that 1) "Creo que la aproximación es inepta, y no sólo por el abismo que hay entre un escritor maduro y burgués, y el adolescente visionario que fue Arlt...  Yo diría 'nuestro Lautréamont'" ["I believe the approximation is inept and not only because of the gulf that there is between a mature, bourgeois writer and the adolescent visionary that was Arlt...  I would say, 'our Lautréamont'"] and 2) "Lo que en la novela europea se hizo a lo largo de quinientos años y mil escritores, en la Argentina lo hizo Arlt solo, en cinco años" ["What in the European novel was done over the course of five hundred years and by one thousand writers was done in Argentina by Arlt alone in five years"] (63, ellipses added).  Aira, who hides his cards on the matter of how much he esteems Arlt as a stylist or not, loses his poker face when concluding that Arlt's sense of "lo novelesco" ["the novelesque"] has roots in "el folletín truculento" ["the grisly feuilleton"]--something in opposition to "la novela ideológica, la falsa novela" ["the ideological novel, the fake novel"] as practiced by a more conformist writer like Eduardo Mallea: "Es la diferencia entre el gentleman y el Monstruo" ["It's the difference between the gentleman and the Monster"] (62); when pointing out some of the paradoxes of Arlt's style ("Las novelas de Arlt son historias de la inmovilidad, novelas de las que no se sale, pero al mismo tiempo no se explican sino como novelas de viaje" ["Arlt's novels are stories of immobility, novels in which there's no exit, but at the same time can only be explained in terms of travel novels"]) (63); or when finding unexpected parallels between Arlt's suspension of time and sense of perspective and Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass.  "Yo mismo, proponiéndome como ejemplo de la singularidad extenuada del tiempo, trepo a la cinta del continuo y corro tras el Monstruo revestido de la figura irrisoria de la explicación" ["I myself, setting out as an example of the exhausted singularity of time, step onto the treadmill of the continuum and chase after the Monster sheathed in the ridiculous figure of  explanation"], Aira writes, purportedly moved by "la introyección feliz de lo imaginario" ["the happy introjection of the imaginary"] and "la recepción del cine mudo de Arlt" ["the reception of Arlt's silent film"] technique, prey to images that dance before his eyes.  "Duchamp la llamó Perspectiva, yo la llamo Inspiración.  Salgo a buscarlas todos los días, en una rutina inmutable, a la perfecta transparencia de lo habitual, a las calles de mi barrio, que es el de Arlt, Flores, a los cafés de los alrededores de la plaza y la estación, donde voy todas las mañanas a escribir" ["Duchamp called it Perspective, I call it Inspiration.  I go out to search for them every day, in an unchanging routine, in the perfect transparency of the habitual, in the streets of my neighborhood, which is the same as Arlt's, Flores, at the cafés surrounding the plaza and the train station where I go every morning to write" (70-71).  Yes!

Source
"ARLT," written in 1991 and published in 1993, appears on pp. 55-71 of the Argentinean journal Paradoxa #7.  People wanting a full account of all the good stuff I had to leave out from it can find a PDF of the piece here.

domingo, 13 de septiembre de 2020

Notre-Dame du Nil

Notre-Dame du Nil (Folio, 2019)
par Scholastique Mukasonga
France, 2012

Rwanda, au début des années 1970.  Le lycée Notre-Dame-du-Nil, tout proche de la source du fleuve égyptien, est un lycée d'enseignement catholique consacré à << l'élite féminine du pays. >>  Quoique dix pour cent des élèves sont Tutsi selon le quota officiel, les tensions sont fortes entre les Hutu et leurs rivales en raison de la croyance des premiers que << le peuple majoritaire >> sont << les vraies Rwandaises >> et toutes les autres sont << des parasites >> (255).  Pas étonnant qu'un personnage remarquera: << Le Rwanda, c'est le pays de la Mort >> (274).  Dans ce roman, Scholastique Mukasonga (née au Rwanda en 1956) raconte une sorte de répétition générale du génocide de 1994 tandis qu'elle propose le portrait d'une génération qui disparaîtrait bientôt.  L'écrivaine m'a surpris avec le dynamisme de ce portrait.  J'ai aimé, par exemple, cette description torrentielle de la saison des pluies: << La pluie pendant de longs mois, c'est la Souveraine du Rwanda, bien plus que le rois d'autrefois ou le président d'aujourd'hui, la Pluie, c'est celle qu'on attend, qu'on implore, celle qui décidera de la disette ou de l'abondance, qui sera le bon présage d'un mariage fécond, la première pluie au bout de la saison sèche qui fait danser les enfants qui tendent leurs visages vers la ciel pour accueillir les grosses gouttes tant désirées, la pluie impudique qui met à nu, sous leur pagne mouillé, les formes indécises des toutes jeunes filles, la Maîtresse violente, vétilleuse, capricieuse, celle qui crépite sur tous les toits de tôles, ceux cachés sous la bananeraie comme ceux des quartiers bourbeux de la capitale, celle qui a jeté son filet sur le lac, a effacé la démesure des volcans, qui règne sur les immenses fôrets du Congo, qui sont les entrailles de l'Afrique, la Pluie, la Pluie sans fin, jusqu'à l'océan qui l'engendre >> (65-66).  Une seule phrase.  Une telle richesse!  En plus du côté descriptif de Mukasonga, j'ai aussi aimé la complexité de sa vision du monde.  Bien que la dualité Hutu/Tutsi devienne plus prononcée au cours du roman, Notre-Dame du Nil évite la simplification et son point de vue sur la modernité du Rwanda est peut-être mieux illustré par ce commentaire de Kagabo, un guérisseur, sur une sorcière qui allait aider une étudiante Tutsi en danger: << Nyamirongi parle avec les nuages >>, il dit, << mais elle n'a pas de transistor.  Il y a eu un coup d'État >> (266).  Formidable.


Scholastique Mukasonga au Rwanda en 2013
(photo: DR)

domingo, 6 de septiembre de 2020

The Palm-Wine Drinkard

 
The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Grove Press, 1994)
by Amos Tutuola
Nigeria, 1952

If I understand things correctly, Tutuola's wild The Palm-Wine Drinkard (full title and capitalization in my edition: The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town) was one of the first books out of Africa to be a commercial and critical success in "the West" even though back home in Nigeria the novelist was derided for bringing shame upon the continent or some such on account of his imperfect and "uneducated" English.  "No prophet is accepted in his own country" & etc.  For our purposes, I'll note at the outset that I was pleased to make the acquaintance of this pre-independence Nigerian classic.  A freewheeling odyssey in which the affable narrator--a prodigious palm-wine drinker who occasionally appears to be a human but who claims to be both "a god and juju-man" and likes to refer to himself as "Father of gods who could do everything in this world" (194)--travels among the living and the dead in the company of his wife shapeshifting his way out of one scrape after another with Death, "a full-bodied gentleman" eventually reduced to a skull, a "very dangerous" bush in which "the boa constrictors were uncountable as sand" (222), and other amusing or monstrous oddities and locales supposedly imported from the world of Yoruba folk tales.  A+ for imagination!  As far as the actual writing is concerned, I'm not sure I understand the long ago fuss about its supposed flaws.  Although Tutuola's English is marked by a # of minor curiosities--i.e. his fondness for emphasizing certain words in sentences parenthetically--and repetitions, probably the "worst" mistake I noted was the following: "His both feet were very long and thick as a pillar of a house, but no shoes could size his feet in this world" (282).  Hardly a cause for concern, much less outrage, in a writer navigating a book in a second language, esp. one (book) in which the tradeoffs include scenes of Death tending his yam garden, a cosmovision in which people "and also spirits and curious creatures from various bushes and forests" (201) freely intermingle, and this stupendous intersection between the sensibilities of the olden days and the realities of modern air war: "I could not blame the lady for following the Skull as a complete gentleman to his house at all.  Because if I were a lady, no doubt I would follow him to wherever he would go, and still as I was a man I would jealous him more than that, because if this gentleman went to the battle field, surely, enemy would not kill him or capture him and if bombers saw him in a town which was to be bombed, they would not throw bombs on his presence, and if they did throw it, the bomb itself would not explode until this gentleman would leave that town, because of his beauty" (207).  On a related note, Tutuola's 1954 follow-up, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, is said to be even more unhinged and poorly written than The Palm-Wine Drinkard although of course "poorly written" might not apply to anybody already accustomed to book bloggers' English.  I can't wait!

Amos Tutuola (1920-1997)