'To write you have to be young; to write well you have to be a young prodigy. By the time you get to fifty, much of that energy and precision [that makes for good writing] is gone.'

'All my life I pursued knowledge, but I pursued it outside of time, and time took its revenge by unfolding elsewhere.'

This book is not so much about a birthday but signifies (or rather 'signified' as this UK edition has been released some 20 years later and Aira is now 70 years old not 50) a point in the author's life where he takes stock of his existence. Upon realising he has incorrectly learnt the explanation for moon phases, he ruminates on other gaps in his 'knowing', his limitations, time's passing and what he has done in its stead.

Despite being only 93 pages long, it is a complex and thoughtful blend of ten mini-essays, loosely orbiting the idea of frailty and purpose especially in relation to the unnoticeable and irretrievable passing of time. I have previously only read one of Aira's novels and I think to have read a greater number would have enriched reading this. Even so, there were lots of interesting (not to mention sobering!) reflections here, reminding us that time waits for no one; cherish the fraction you have been given.
( )

No sé cómo empezar a escribir esta reseña. Ni siquiera sé cómo condensar todo lo que este libro me dijo. Después de quedar confundido y atónito con la lectura de [b:Cómo me hice monja|152810|Cómo me hice monja|César Aira|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355800652s/152810.jpg|147498], no sabía qué pensar del escritor argentino. Un par de meses después leí este extraño libro, a raíz de asistir una charla que daría Aira en mi ciudad. Ha sido una de las más gratas sorpresas que me he llevado este año.

Todo comienza con el narrador, que acaba de cumplir cincuenta años. Digo narrador, porque me siento inseguro de hablar de Aira como si de verdad fuera él, como si se valiera siempre de una sinceridad tramposa. En todas sus novelas "César Aira", una especie de ente sin forma, aparece como una niña (o niño) que se convierte en monja (o no), en un científico loco, en un explorador... En esta especie de ensayo narrativo, el César Aira que nos habla directamente es lo más parecido posible al de carne y hueso, al que yo tuve la oportunidad de ver hace un par de días.

En su ya característico estilo (risomático e inconexo), César nos habla sobre la vejez, la juventud, sobre la gente extraña, la lectura y los libros, sobre el oficio de vivir y el de escribir (que muchas veces terminan siendo el mismo), todo en una prosa magnífica y transparente.

Esa misma transparencia es la que me conmovió y me perturbó. Después de probar cientos de máscaras, el autor hizo un maravilloso descubrimiento: la careta que mejor lo oculta es la suya propia. ( )

An author of some stature, renown for writing dozens of short novellas in a contemporary style, is turning fifty. Although his birthday passes largely without notice, he nevertheless stops to take stock of what that milestone actually means. However, rather than look backward to reflect on his myriad accomplishments and disappointments, he instead looks forward to ruminate on where the rest of his life and career might be headed. After all, this approach is consistent with the “flight-forward” method he has popularized in his fiction, whereby he refrains from using today’s writing time to revise yesterday’s work, but rather improvises his way around any narrative problems he has created for himself.

Birthday is the result of that self-reflection. Falling somewhere between a memoir and a philosophical treatise, the book consists of ten brief essays in which Aira expounds on a series of topics that appear to have been on his mind at the time. He begins with a story about his misunderstanding of how phases of the moon happen and uses that as a metaphor for everything else in his life that he has not figured out. In subsequent essays, he offers his observations on many other topics, such as the possibility of an after-life, various processes and styles for creating fiction, the literary challenges of predicting the future, what makes each reader unique, the difficulty of translating work from other cultures, the omnibus “Encyclopedia” project he has yet to begin, and how the production of literature and mathematics differ.

To be sure, some of these musings were interesting and thought-provoking. More often, though, the work came off as a hurriedly constructed series of random thoughts that were, at best, loosely connected to one another and very specific to the author’s personal experiences. However, the real problem I had was trying to answer the following question: Why exactly am I reading this book? I suspect that if I was more familiar with Aira’s fictional catalog, these essays might have given me some great insights into his writing method and his message. Unfortunately, that was not the case and so anything that was special about this collection was mostly lost on me. I am afraid that might also be true for any other potential reader who is not already a fan of the author. ( )