YO QUISIERA PREPARAR UNA COLECCIÓN DE CUENTOS DE UNA SOLA FRASE, O DE UNA SOLA LÍNEA, SI FUERA POSIBLE. PERO HASTA AHORA NO ENCONTRÉ NINGUNO QUE SUPERE EL DEL ESCRITOR GUATEMALTECO AUGUSTO MONTERROSO: "CUANDO DESPERTÓ , EL DINOSAURIO TODAVÍA ESTABA AHÍ". ITALO CALVINO

AUGUSTO MONTERROSO ES UN ESCRITOR FUNDAMENTA, FORMIDABLEMENTE INTELIGENTE, MISERICORDIOSAMENTE BREVE. CARLOS MONSIVÁIS

Augusto Monterroso (1921-2013) - Short story writer from Honduras known for his satire and wit

Tongue-in-cheek dark humor, subtle irony and offbeat satire, anyone? Here’s a book of tall-tall tales and short-short stories from a Latin American ‘boom’ generation author large in literary stature but short in physical stature (he was 5’3”) – Honduras’s Augusto Monterroso. And before I say anything else, “Complete Works and Other Stories’ contains perhaps the shortest story ever written. Here it is: THE DINOSAUR – “When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.” And also a close second: FECUNDITY – “Today, I feel well, like a Balzac; I am finishing this line." Also a close third: THE WORLD – “God has not yet created the world; he is only imagining it, as if he were half asleep. That is why the world is perfect, but confused.” But, please, don’t be thrown off; there are longer pieces – 1 and 2 pages, 3 and 4 pages and, occasionally, even up to 15 and 20 pages. Observations on several of my favorites:

MISTER TAYLOR
One of the most memorable short stories you will ever read, while you’re still alive and not turned into a shrunken head, that is. Anyway, an American anthropologist travels to Central American and lives with a forest tribe. He sends the tribe's shrunken heads back to the US and makes a fortune. The demand for shrunken heads skyrockets but the tribe runs out. Well, when the government realizes a huge fortune can be made via exported shrunken heads, a strategy is developed in concert with the anthropologist’s field work to maximally cash in on shrunken heads. How? Let’s just say that if you are poor and living in that country, you had better watch out!

I DON’T WANT TO DECEIVE YOU
Once upon a time at a move theater in Central America, the director, the actors and actresses who star in the movie arrive from France (quite the sacrifice, traveling to Central America) and, after being introduced by a bald, frenetic master-of-ceremonies, take turns at a mic to express a few words of thanks to the locals who’ve turned out to watch their movie. All goes smoothly until one actress, the director’s wife, a beautiful blonde covered in jewels, comes to the mic and starts rambling on endlessly about her fears, phobias, self-consciousness, abysmal lack of talent as well as the details of her childhood schooling and personal habits -- exactly what the good townspeople do not want to hear. The bald, frenetic master-of-ceremonies attempts to save the evening’s event but the crowd flares-up: hooting, hissing, jeering, foot-stomping and where is a rotten tomato when you need one? Once I started laughing, with every additional sentence, I laughed even harder. Thanks for this one, Augusto!

THE CONCERT
A bitter-sweet tale about an influential businessman who faithfully attends his daughter’s classical piano concerts. But, there is a serious problem: he loves handling money and controlling world financial markets. Ah, the soul of a businessman! And what does this father/businessman really hate? What bores him to tears? Why, of course – classical music. Ever sentence of his narrative builds and builds like a scherzo or toccata until his hatred of his daughter and her Bach, Mozart and Beethoven reaches both a touching and comical crescendo. Bravo, maestro author.

HOW TO STOP BEING A MONKEY
“In the United States and in Europe they have recently discovered a species of Latin American monkey capable of expressing itself in writing, identical perhaps, to that diligent monkey who, by hitting the keys of a typewriter at random, eventually reproduces the sonnets of Shakespeare.” Augusto has his tongue deep in his cheek as he explains how Latin American writers can serve as evidence that the peoples south of the Rio Grande are capable, amazing though it may seem, of actually producing something that looks remarkably similar to high quality literature.

HOW I GOT RID OF FIVE HUNDRED BOOKS
A topic all readers here can relate to: the inevitable purging of one’s personal library. In the process of picking and choosing which books to box up, the narrator observes, “What an incredible amount of poetry, of novels, of sociological solutions to the ills of the world! One supposes that poetry is written to enrich the spirit, that novels have been conceived, at the very least, to entertain us; and even, optimistically, that sociological solutions are a guide to solving something. Viewing the situation calmly, I realized that the first (poetry) was capable of impoverishing the richest spirit, the second (novels) of boring the most joyful, and the third (sociology) of confusing the most lucid.” Ironic, perhaps, but I suspect many of us have entertained such reflections at one time or another. This little tale is chock-full of bibliophilic gems.

HEIGHT AND POETRY
A laugh-out-loud autobiographical piece where Augusto expatiates on how authors in general and poets in particular tend to be short. “Without standing on tiptoe, I easily measure five feet, three inches. I have been little since I was little. . . . I realized at the age of fifteen that I was growing into a very short man.” He also alludes to one poetry contest where, on the contest’s application, poets were required to indicate their height in inches! And, in case you were wondering about my noting the shortness of Augusto (he’s 5’3”) in my opening paragraph, it’s a nod to the humor of this piece. In fact, I might be on the all-time short-list of reviewers noting the shortness of the short author under review. And, on the topic of height, shortness and stiffness, although I’m a 6’0” gringo, I’m sure Augusto wouldn’t mind my taking a short amount of space to share my own short short shorty:

THE STIFFS

A cartoonist starts a new comic strip about dead people, called “The Stiffs.” The humor is strictly deadpan, the action dead serious and the Stiff family a bunch of real stiffs – stiff enough, that is, for all the readers to die laughing.
-------------------------------------------------

Will H. Corral writes a splendid 12 page introduction. At one point he states, “Monterroso fascinates and confuses us, he shakes us out of our complacency and neat little mental boxes.” And at another, “Monterroso’s work is, in the final analysis, a testimony for love of literature and the condition of Latin American culture.” On both counts, a short-story writer worth anybody’s time. ( )

Wonderful stories, like a Guatemalan Coover or Barthelme. There's an introduction by an academic, Will H. Corral, which must be one of the worst pieces of writing I've ever read. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to remove funding from every English Literature university department. ( )

I really enjoyed this collection. Short story collections often leave me yawning, but the majority of stories here were really worthwhile. Monterroso is clearly a master of wit but he knows how to handle serious topics, too. ( )

Augusto Monterroso (1921-2013) - Short story writer from Honduras known for his satire and wit

Tongue-in-cheek dark humor, subtle irony and offbeat satire, anyone? Here’s a book of tall-tall tales and short-short stories from a Latin American ‘boom’ generation author large in literary stature but short in physical stature (he was 5’3”) – Honduras’s Augusto Monterroso. And before I say anything else, “Complete Works and Other Stories’ contains perhaps the shortest story ever written. Here it is: THE DINOSAUR – “When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.” And also a close second: FECUNDITY – “Today, I feel well, like a Balzac; I am finishing this line." Also a close third: THE WORLD – “God has not yet created the world; he is only imagining it, as if he were half asleep. That is why the world is perfect, but confused.” But, please, don’t be thrown off; there are longer pieces – 1 and 2 pages, 3 and 4 pages and, occasionally, even up to 15 and 20 pages. Observations on several of my favorites:

MISTER TAYLOR
One of the most memorable short stories you will ever read, while you’re still alive and not turned into a shrunken head, that is. Anyway, an American anthropologist travels to Central American and lives with a forest tribe. He sends the tribe's shrunken heads back to the US and makes a fortune. The demand for shrunken heads skyrockets but the tribe runs out. Well, when the government realizes a huge fortune can be made via exported shrunken heads, a strategy is developed in concert with the anthropologist’s field work to maximally cash in on shrunken heads. How? Let’s just say that if you are poor and living in that country, you had better watch out!

I DON’T WANT TO DECEIVE YOU
Once upon a time at a move theater in Central America, the director, the actors and actresses who star in the movie arrive from France (quite the sacrifice, traveling to Central America) and, after being introduced by a bald, frenetic master-of-ceremonies, take turns at a mic to express a few words of thanks to the locals who’ve turned out to watch their movie. All goes smoothly until one actress, the director’s wife, a beautiful blonde covered in jewels, comes to the mic and starts rambling on endlessly about her fears, phobias, self-consciousness, abysmal lack of talent as well as the details of her childhood schooling and personal habits -- exactly what the good townspeople do not want to hear. The bald, frenetic master-of-ceremonies attempts to save the evening’s event but the crowd flares-up: hooting, hissing, jeering, foot-stomping and where is a rotten tomato when you need one? Once I started laughing, with every additional sentence, I laughed even harder. Thanks for this one, Augusto!

THE CONCERT
A bitter-sweet tale about an influential businessman who faithfully attends his daughter’s classical piano concerts. But, there is a serious problem: he loves handling money and controlling world financial markets. Ah, the soul of a businessman! And what does this father/businessman really hate? What bores him to tears? Why, of course – classical music. Ever sentence of his narrative builds and builds like a scherzo or toccata until his hatred of his daughter and her Bach, Mozart and Beethoven reaches both a touching and comical crescendo. Bravo, maestro author.

HOW TO STOP BEING A MONKEY
“In the United States and in Europe they have recently discovered a species of Latin American monkey capable of expressing itself in writing, identical perhaps, to that diligent monkey who, by hitting the keys of a typewriter at random, eventually reproduces the sonnets of Shakespeare.” Augusto has his tongue deep in his cheek as he explains how Latin American writers can serve as evidence that the peoples south of the Rio Grande are capable, amazing though it may seem, of actually producing something that looks remarkably similar to high quality literature.

HOW I GOT RID OF FIVE HUNDRED BOOKS
A topic all readers here can relate to: the inevitable purging of one’s personal library. In the process of picking and choosing which books to box up, the narrator observes, “What an incredible amount of poetry, of novels, of sociological solutions to the ills of the world! One supposes that poetry is written to enrich the spirit, that novels have been conceived, at the very least, to entertain us; and even, optimistically, that sociological solutions are a guide to solving something. Viewing the situation calmly, I realized that the first (poetry) was capable of impoverishing the richest spirit, the second (novels) of boring the most joyful, and the third (sociology) of confusing the most lucid.” Ironic, perhaps, but I suspect many of us have entertained such reflections at one time or another. This little tale is chock-full of bibliophilic gems.

HEIGHT AND POETRY
A laugh-out-loud autobiographical piece where Augusto expatiates on how authors in general and poets in particular tend to be short. “Without standing on tiptoe, I easily measure five feet, three inches. I have been little since I was little. . . . I realized at the age of fifteen that I was growing into a very short man.” He also alludes to one poetry contest where, on the contest’s application, poets were required to indicate their height in inches! And, in case you were wondering about my noting the shortness of Augusto (he’s 5’3”) in my opening paragraph, it’s a nod to the humor of this piece. In fact, I might be on the all-time short-list of reviewers noting the shortness of the short author under review. And, on the topic of height, shortness and stiffness, although I’m a 6’0” gringo, I’m sure Augusto wouldn’t mind my taking a short amount of space to share my own short short shorty:

THE STIFFS

A cartoonist starts a new comic strip about dead people, called “The Stiffs.” The humor is strictly deadpan, the action dead serious and the Stiff family a bunch of real stiffs – stiff enough, that is, for all the readers to die laughing.
-------------------------------------------------

Will H. Corral writes a splendid 12 page introduction. At one point he states, “Monterroso fascinates and confuses us, he shakes us out of our complacency and neat little mental boxes.” And at another, “Monterroso’s work is, in the final analysis, a testimony for love of literature and the condition of Latin American culture.” On both counts, a short-story writer worth anybody’s time. ( )