***REGION 10: South America II

If you have not read the information on the master thread regarding the intent of these regional threads, please do this first.

***10. South America II: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Falkland Islands

ARGENTINA



The Topless Tower by Silvina Ocampo (1968, T 2010, Argentine)

10 year old Leandro is out playing when a strange man, perhaps French, arrives at his family's front door. He is an artist and is selling his paintings, which are of a strange, windowless tower, and of various rooms, including an art studio. The boy begins to make fun of the man and in the conversation that ensues, the boy soon finds himself imprisoned in the windowless tower of the man's paintings. However, with the artist supplies he is able to draw and paint things which come to life, the problem is that the things he paints do not always take the form he wants.

Will the images we've seen throughout our lives remain inside our eyes? Will we be like a modern camera, filled with little rolls of film; of course, rolls that don't require to be developed?

This is an amusing magical realist tale clearly inspired by the surrealists and Alice-in-Wonderland (who makes an appearance in this short novella). Ocampo was an Argentine author, poet and visual artist. She was married to the much younger Bioy Casares, and was also friends with Borges and Calvino.

Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas by Alberto Gerchunoff Published starting in 1910, translation 1998?, Argentina

This charming little book, which I learned about from the Reading Globally theme read on Argentina, looks at a group of Jewish immigrants from Russia to Argentina in the late 19th century. The individual chapters focus on the members of the farming community and their interactions with each other and with the local gauchos. Sponsored by the Baron de Hirsch, this and other similar communities were looked at as a kind of Promised Land, after the pogroms of Europe. I found the stories subtle, moving, and a look at an unusual and little-known page of Jewish history.

A couple of months ago I read Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldan, set in Bolivia, in the only-just-future. It could be described as a dystopian cyber-resistance thriller, interesting enough at the time but resonant recently with all the cyber-activism of various kinds surrounding Wikileaks. I enjoyed it although it didn't quite live up to its ambitions.

URUGUAY





The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez (translation, 2004; Uruguayan author)

A professor has died while reading Emily Dickinson's poetry while crossing the street. A book arrives for her after her death - a volume of Conrad encrusted with cement - and her replacement is intrigued by the mystery it presents and is determined to return it to its owner. As the story unfolds, this novella introduces us to all manner of extreme* bibliophiles and this I thought was the most delightful part of the book. I was a bit disappointed with how it ended though I'm not sure what I expected. Still, it's a quick read that will make you smile, if not chuckle.

* "extreme" - some of these reside on LT... :-)

edited to fix touchstone.

Sounds like a must-read to me.
P.S. Touchstone's not working correctly.

ARGENTINA

Santa Evita by Tomas Eloy Martinez

Eva Peron, wife of Argentine dictator Juan Peron, is a somewhat mythical figure in Argentine history. After her death from cancer at the early age of 33, she became a cult figure--almost a saint--to the people of Argentina. On orders from Juan Peron, her body was preserved, and an elaborate shrine, similar to the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square, was planned for the display of her body to the masses. However, before the shrine could be built, Peron was ousted, and in 1955 Eva's body was seized by the military junta that took control of the country. Her body disappeared for the next 16 years.

In this novel (a novel in the sense that In Cold Blood is a novel), Martinez narrates a version of what happened to Eva's body during the 16 years it was missing, and the effects she had on those who were involved with the protection/hiding/transport of her body. It is not clear where fact ends and fiction begins. Martinez interviewed many of the participants and observers of this dance. The book has been called a 'postmodern fictional montage,' yet it is cited on Wikipedia as a factual source. At the very least, the book fills in some of the blank spaces in those mysterious 16 years. At the most, it is a fascinating recreation in life and in death of a unique woman and the country she so heavily influenced.

ARGENTINA



The Rainforest by Alicia Steimberg (Argentina, 2000, translation 2006)
Translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger

In this autobiographical novel, Celia, an older middle-aged woman from Argentina, has come to a Brazilian spa on the edge of the rainforest to try to move beyond her anxiety and depression. She spends a fair amount of time seeking solace in the rainforest.

As the story moves forward, we also get the backstory of her husband's illness and death, and her drug-addicted son's chronic physical abuse of her. This is a painful and brutal past; however, it is told from a place of recovery and reflection and this place is filled with rainforest naps, good Argentine food, slow dancing, a bit hang-gliding, and the first tenuous steps into a new relationship.

I liked this carefully balanced tale of one woman's struggle to move beyond the past into a cautious joy. While the rainforest is not a major character in the story, and is featured less than I expected, it stands as a metaphor for Ceclia's journey - both "solace and tenuously controlled danger."

URUGUAY

Lands of Memory by Felisberto Hernández (translated by Esther Allen)

I've really gotten into Felisberto this past year. His stories are thoughtful and intoxicating. Lots of downtrodden provincial piano players and animated inanimate objects. Reading his short stories was like reading Cortázar for the first time. I saw a copy of this edition with a gratuitous García Márquez quote on the cover ("If I hadn't read the stories of Felisberto Hernández in 1950, I wouldn't be the writer I am today"), but for me, there's something about Felisberto that exceeds his magical realist descendents. I didn't read this translation, but it does have the novella "Around the Time of Clemente Colling," which I read by itself (and enjoyed immensely) as Por los tiempos de Clemente Colling. In Spanish, there's a good edition of his short stories called La casa inundada y otros cuentos, with the title story being a personal favorite of mine. He's an author that brings you into his world in a unique and meaningful way.

I spend a lot of time reading Argentine and Uruguayan books so I'll try to comment here as much as I can. I'm enjoying your commentaries and am looking forward to learning about new (and contemporary! I'm stuck in the past) authors from the Río de la Plata region. I put that Silvina Ocampo book on my list for my next trip to the library and will try to read it soon; I like reading her stories along with those of her comrades-in-arms.

>9 msjohns615: seems deebee read another of her titles recently...

I read Silvina Ocampo's Leopoldina's Dream (translated by Daniel Balderston) some months ago. It's a collection of 32 of her short stories, all haunting and always, either mystical or fantastical.

The themes are mostly about children and death, where children seem to inhabit a separate world where strange, evil or sometimes, wondrous, things happen that do not conform to what we (adults) know or believe, or even are aware of. The children in her stories seem to be enchanted beings in one way or another, where a separation from this other dimension destroys them. The most memorable story for me is about a group of children who turned into angels.

I found the stories morbidly fascinating, although I did get tired after some time of her constant references to dreams, obsessions, heaven or hell. Very much worth reading, just the same.

CHILE

El Tercer Reich by Roberto Bolano

This novel focuses on Udo Berger, a young German man who spends a summer in Spain with his girlfriend in a village in la Costa Brava where he used to stay when he was a child. Udo befriends a German couple and two Catalan men, called el lobo y el cordero (the sheep and the wolf) with whom he visits new places in the area. The unusual experiences that they share make him feel that the village is dangerous and sombre, which contrasts with his childhood memories of the place. He feels uneasy and focuses on playing solo a board war game called ‘the third Reich’ an activity to which he devotes many hours and in which he has acquired a certain recognition within the war games community. His obsession for the game, a suspicious death and the strange relationships that Udo develops with some of the mysterious characters of the village are the centre of the second part of the book, in which he has several transformative experiences that make him mature. This is a very different book from others by Bolano, although it is interesting and it allows the reader to become involved in a thrilling plot.

ARGENTINA

Turistas by Hebe Uhart

This is an excellent collection of short stories, by a brilliant argentinian woman writer. Most of the stories are about tourism or immigration and some of them focus on characters who feel slightly alienated from the place where they live and travel with their imagination. The characters that populate these stories are diverse, idiosyncratic and with very different narrative voices. Some of the characters travel on their own, others in organized trips; some of them have chosen to go to live in holiday resorts on the coast, while others have emigrated from the country into cities in search of a better life; an Argentinian family decides to visit museums in Italy while, in a different story, a young German male goes to Buenos Aires to learn to dance tango (this story is very funny). Different kinds of journeys and moods are well depicted in these stories, but the most impressive aspect of this book is how the author uses different dialects, and regional and national variations in the Spanish spoken by the different characters who are very well characterized by the language that they use. This is a wonderful collection of short stories, very nuanced, which makes the reader think and smile.

Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel García Márquez, translated Asa Zatz

Gabriel García Márquez faithfully transcribed Miguel Littín's voice in Clandestine in Chile, a book of reportage. Littín is a Chilean filmmaker suffering exile from his homeland, homesick and determined to come back to shoot his documentary. To do this he was forced to impersonate a new identity, as a Uruguayan businessman. The transformation was complete: his physical appearance, his accent, and his family history and emotions were calibrated to another person's. This book turned out to be dedicated not only to exposing life under dictatorship but to describing a voluntary "identity crisis" and the large amount of risks a person was willing to undertake in order to practice his art (filmmaking) for purposes he believed was noble.

The social drama that Littín witnessed was the drama of ordinary people coping with a changed political and economic circumstances. Daily life under the Pinochet regime was, at surface, a veneer of good times, perhaps just as good as life outside Chile. But deep inside was raging silent protest. There was a persistence for ordinary people to continue existing, always hopeful that a better living condition awaited them, because they remember the benevolent past, and it was enough for them to go on. Littín's account of his clandestine shooting was permeated with feelings of nostalgia. Surprisingly, the main pathos of the story derived not from the filmmaker's film rushes but from his living a double life in disguise. While pretending to be someone of different profession and nationality, Littín was unwittingly recapturing his own identity in the pictures of the country he was taking. The documentary which was ostensibly meant to bring to light the injustices of military dictatorship became the same document that eulogized the country of a man dreaming, of the past and the lost possibilities.

In the book's preface, Francisco Goldman said that the book had acquired an extra-literary life after publication, perhaps even eclipsing the actual film made of it. The author being no less than García Márquez who is no stranger to power, and the subject matter being the strongman Pinochet, the conception of the book was far from neutral. Fifteen thousand copies of the book were burned in Chile to stanch any possible damage it may bring to the regime.

Goldman also mentioned that the book never really produced a memorable scene or image that depicted the horrors of the military rule. This is debatable. It did seem that the narrative style of the book, which stuck to the individual voice of Littín, had filtered the horror to the extent that one reads a dry recounting of socio-political and historical events, not an anguished litany of abuses. García Márquez's nonfiction was consciously written in that style, as he explained in his introduction. In a way, the novelist acted as film editor to Littín's director, cutting out extraneous scenes from a very long interview, trying to work with what footage was available, and producing a whole picture out of the whole intrepid project of an exiled man – filmmaker, citizen, son – going home. The editor constrained himself with faithfulness to the vision of the filmmaker. His stylistic decision certainly did not give full dramatic mileage to the horrors of history which was somehow dampened by the nostalgic voice of his subject.

Clandestine in Chile did contain some unforgettable stories. At least two incidents in the book illuminated how the Chileans reacted to violent abuses committed under the regime. A few months before Littín entered Chile, an opposition militant and sociologist named José Manuel Parada, along with two other activists, was kidnapped by military. Parada was an officer of Vicariate of Solidarity, which was critical of the government and was working for human rights. A few days after the kidnapping the bodies of the three men were found bearing the signs of torture; their throats were cut. Public outrage led to the resignation of the police commander believed to be the mastermind of the murders. At the end of this recollection, it was mentioned that the name of one of the streets leading to Plaza de Armas, the location of the vicariate, "was erased by an unknown hand and replaced with that of José Manuel Parada, the name by which it is now known."

The second incident told of a man named Sebastián Acevedo who set fire to himself after failing to find help in stopping the torture of his two children. His son and daughter were arrested by the authorities. As a result of this sacrificial act, the public was outraged and his children were eventually released from the torture chambers. Acevedo was able to speak to his daughter before he died. "Since that time," the story concluded, "the people of Concepción have had a secret name for the place of sacrifice: Plaza Sebastián Acevedo."

These stories showed that the laying down of life under the cloud of injustice is a sacred act that people do not take for granted. More importantly, it showed that people under the iron rule are not prevented to commemorate in order to honor those who were killed in the name of freedom and justice. In loud protest lies liberty and in the record of memory lies salvation. This was true for Chile then, and perhaps will be true for countries where dictatorships still prevail and where freedoms and rights are curtailed.

Full review, including a YouTube video.

CHILE
House of Mist by María Luisa Bombal

In this elegant classic, recently reissued in the States, Helga, the narrator, is a plain-looking orphan given to flights of wild imagination and a passionate love of life. At seven, while out in the abandoned bramble-filled garden searching for Prince Toad with the small golden crown, she happens upon the enchanted bear in her fairytales. He is as irritable and grouchy as any bear and though he remains abrupt, the 12-year-old Daniel nevertheless condescends to help her look for her Toad. And so he becomes her intermittent, capricious friend.

Years later, after some particularly interesting twists in the tale, Helga marries Daniel, now a rich landowner; but she is his second wife. She is completely devoted to him, as she has been most of her life. He, however, is still passionately in love with his deceased first wife, an unreservedly beautiful woman whose beauty and mysterious death remain the subject of many conversations in society.

Daniel has married Helga merely to save her from a life of servitude to others. As she is brought to her new hacienda set deep in the Chilean woods, they are enveloped by a dense, all-encompassing mist that seems to swallow up the surrounds including the lagoon where Teresa, Daniel's first wife, drowned. There are many moments of sadness, as well as joy, for the new bride who becomes absorbed by nagging questions about Teresa's death. This part of the book was deliciously reminiscent of Rebecca, which was, incidentally, published in 1938, three years after the publication of House of Mist.

Bombal's prose is crisp, and this impressive novel draws you into a fairytale experience replete with palaces in the middle of forests, old-fashioned but luxurious horse-drawn carriages, huge dancing halls, and women resplendent in ball gowns. There is even a witch!

One night, they are invited to a ball, but Daniel refuses to attend. He is happy to let Helga go, and she does so with great exuberance. The next morning, after champagne followed by a night of passion with a romantic and attentive lover, she is wracked with guilt. But she also feels so much more hopeful, alive, and happy. This sets off a whole train of events...

When Bombal first wrote House of Mist (La Última Niebla) in Spanish, in 1935, it was hailed with critical acclaim. Bombal had broken with tradition. For the first time in Latin American novels, heroines portrayed an inner psychological world. Helga's thoughts are fuelled by a fondness for fairytales. At 18, she still dreams of fairies and castles, and has trouble distinguishing between her dreams and reality. This engaging novel abounds with an air of drama and mystery that never lets up, and keeps one guessing right till the end!

ARGENTINA

Viaje olvidado--Silvina Ocampo

I remembered to look for books by Silvina Ocampo, and I ended up with this reissue of her first book of stories. I was very impressed by it, both by the language and her particular perspective concerning events from the past. The stories were very short, very poetic, and quite strange in their retelling and analysis of things that happened in the lives of different people, both children and adults.

15: I read La Última Niebla last year and enjoyed it greatly. I'm glad to see that it's been reissued in English. It gives me hope that more classics from that era in Latin American literature will be reissued in translation.

ARGENTINA

Cómo me hice monja (How I Became a Nun)--César Aira

Another book about childhood in Argentina...The edition I checked out from the library contained two novellas (Cómo me hice monja and La costurera y el viento), along with a short story entitled El infinito. The title story was a blast; I didn't expect something so funny. La costurera y el viento shed some light on a mysterious place known as Coronel Pringles, Argentina (the author's hometown).

I bought How I Became a Nun a while ago, but after being somewhat mystified by Aira's An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (although I enjoyed a lot of it), I kind of put it on the back burner. But now that I know it was funny, I may dig it out.

ARGENTINA

62/modelo para armar (62: A Model Kit)--Julio Cortázar

I really, really enjoyed this book. It was a challenging "model" to put together, but as I thought about it, researched it, and went back and forth from chapter 62 of Rayuela and the text of this book, I started to appreciate Cortázar's representation of life and human interaction more and more.

ARGENTINA

Mundo animal (Animal World)--Antonio Di Benedetto

Antonio Di Benedetto is an author who is new to me, although I had actually already met him in Roberto Bolaño's short story "Santini," which documents Bolaño's real life epistolary correspondence with Di Benedetto in Spain in the 1980s. This book of short stories was full of strangeness, with hallucinatory, bizarre transformations between humans and animals. I enjoy fiction that deviates from the norm, and I also thought the author did an amazing job of blending human life with animal violence and savagery. Very unique book.

>17 msjohns615:, 18 I read How I Became a Nun in 2007, here is what I wrote at the time: "A clever little novelette that wanders in and out of a child's imaginings (whether delirium-based, fear-based, fantasy-based) - supposedly the child is César, but he thinks himself a girl. It might've been tedious in a full-length novel, but I enjoyed it in short form."

ARGENTINA

Museo de la Novela de la Eterna (The Museum of Eterna's Novel)--Macedonio Fernández

It is very hard to explain what this book is about. After 51 prologues, a group of characters interact on an estate outside Buenos Aires and eventually generate a project to conquer the city in the name of Beauty. I thought it was maddeningly difficult to unravel Macedonio's complex prose, and I felt that I only understood a small portion of his project. However, I loved learning more about him, and I think he is one of the more interesting authors of the 20th century. He was about as much like a modern-day incarnation of Don Quijote as I can imagine. a young Jorge Luis Borges idolized him, and there are some who say (only half-jokingly) that Borges was entirely a creation of Macedonio. His wife, Elena, died when he was 36, and in this book he ponders how love can conquer death through one's memory of the beloved. He is well-versed in philosophy (I'm not) and this book could be appreciated from a lot of different perspectives.

I think I have an easier time coming to any sort of understanding with Macedonio in his shorter works, and am very fond of his poem Elena Bellamuerte. This book was a real struggle, and although I'm glad I finished it, I wish I had chosen to read it when I had more time to devote to it. I'm surprised and happy to see that it was translated into English last year.

>7 arubabookwoman:

a great companion piece to Santa Evita is THe Peron Novel which preceded it. It too is a mixture of fiction and fact and the result is a surrealistic portrayal of the rise and fall of Peron.

it is unfortunate that Tomas Eloy Martinez died this past year. He is a favorite of mine. He also wrote THe Tango Singer which is a mysterious and entertaining book that "reeks" of Buenos Aires.

ARGENTINA

Zama--Antonio di Benedetto

A story about a man living and working in Asunción in the 1790s as he waits for a promotion that will let him leave. This book was really good, and was a compelling bridge between earlier debates about civilization and savagery and late-20th century narratives about exile. While it has not yet been translated, it appears that the translator Esther Allen is currently working on one that may (hopefully) be published in the future. Here's a link to an interview with her:

http://www.arts.gov/artworks/?p=3916

I hope this book does come out in English; I couldn't recommend it enough.

Thanks bethirsch for the recommendations of The Peron Novel and The Tango Singer.

My House Is On Fire by Ariel Dorfman

Ariel Dorfman is probably most famous for Death and the Maiden, later made into a film starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley, in which a woman believes that a stranded traveller is the man who tortured her (she was blindfolded during the interrogations and recognises him by his voice).

My House Is On Fire is a collection of short stories, which consider life under an authoritarian regime - that of Pinochet's Chile - and in particular, how the constraints of such an existence interact with family and other loyalties. The first story, 'Family Circle', is about a conscript whose father despises the uniform he is wearing. Some of the stories are genuinely chilling - in the title story a child almost gives her family away because she doesn't understand the seriousness of what she hears, and in 'Putamadre' a group of navy sailors encounter anti-Chilean protests in San Francisco. Others have a funny/sardonic edge - in 'Lonely Hearts Column' a woman doesn't know whether she has lost her husband's affection to another woman, or to resistance to the regime, in 'Trademark Territory' Dorfman imagines a doorbell which will keep the poor away from the doors of the wealthy.

I enjoyed this collection, with its range of content and style.

Sample: He accepted for publication a collection of poetry, replacing the word 'lion' with 'sheep' four times. 'Approved with changes,' he wrote on the appropriate page. The book would have to go back to the printer, the pager and the linotypist. That should serve as a warning to the publisher. As for the reader, he would end up confused, unable to read any hidden political meaning into a text that seemed so incoherent. The beauty of the verses was not greatly altered.

CHILE

Tengo miedo torero (My Tender Matador)--Pedro Lemebel

I'd been wanting to read this book for years, and I finally found a copy in Spanish. I wasn't disappointed at all. The stories of an unorthodox couple (the aging transvestite La loca del frente and Carlos, a young "student") and the first family of Chile (Augusto Pinochet and wife) are told in an alternating fashion that artfully depicts a lot of the deep divides in 1980s Chilean society. By inserting an older, cross-dressing man in the role normally played by a young, beautiful woman, Lemebel tells a very strange and interesting romance. The setting, the language and the story were all great.

In a way, it made me think of the TV show Big Love...I'm a big fan of HBO telenovels, and I just watched the last episode last night. The fact that the show is about a polygamous family, not a traditional family, allows them to in many ways remain faithful to the family drama genre, yet still tell a very unique story. Here, Lemebel puts a fairly standard romantic story at the center of the book, but the one change (replace young woman with older transvestite) really shakes things up and holds your attention.

ARGENTINA

De la elegancia mientras se duerme (On Elegance while Sleeping)--Visconde de Láscano Tegui

I was excited to learn of this book due to its inclusion on the list for the Best Translated Book Award. It is the journal of a man native to the French town of Bougival, on the banks of the Seine. He's an odd fellow, and his observations are pretty dark and twisted. Tegui is an intriguing figure about whom I've been able to find little information. He dedicates this book to, among others, Ricardo Güiraldes. His style certainly reminds me a bit of Güiraldes, who wrote his own book in journal form a few years before Tegui, Xaimaca. In terms of content, this book was also also a bit like something Roberto Arlt might have written in some odd pastoral phase of his life.

CHILE

Entre paréntesis (Between Parentheses)--Roberto Bolaño

I enjoyed this collection of nonfiction by Roberto Bolaño; I thought it functioned both as an autobiographical account of his last years and an ode to the books and authors he loved. It was well-organized and flowed well from transcripts of speeches to literary articles written for a Santiago newspaper to reflections on Catalonia and the author's native Chile, to which he returned for a visit after an extended absence.

CHILE

The Shadow of What We Were by Luis Sepúlveda

In this short novel, which won the Premio Primavera de Novela in 2009, three aging Chilean anarchists are summoned by their former leader, Pedro Nolasco, to conduct one last revolutionary act, 30 years after a spectacular bank robbery after the fall of Salvador Allende's Marxist government to a coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet. Before the meeting can take place, Nolasco is felled in a bizarre accident by the wife of another former revolutionary, Coco Aravena, a bumbling dreamer who spends his days watching classic American crime novels and drinking red wine while his wife fantasizes about her past life in Berlin. Coco strips Nolasco of his gun and a piece of paper with a phone number on it, and attends the meeting, to the shock and chagrin of the other anarchists. The men decide to go ahead with their act despite the loss of Nolasco, in a tribute to the spirit of their former comrade.

Despite the interesting story line, this book was somewhat disappointing, as the characters and their motives were not as fully developed as they could have been, and the author spent too many pages on the political history of Chile before and after Pinochet, which I could not fully appreciate. I would guardedly recommend this novel for those readers familiar with Chilean history, but not for the general reader.

Another curiosity about the jewish experience in Argentina is The Moldavian Pimp by Edgar Cozarinky. A strage, at times depressing tale, about the organized criminals who brought Jewish girls from eastern Europe under the guise of marrying them only to turn them into prostitutes.

I recommend this book.

#31, berthirsch, I've seen that book recommended before on LT (maybe by you?) and will have to take another look at it.

PARAGUAY

Yo el supremo (I, the Supreme) by Augusto Roa Bastos

Portraits of dictators are relatively common in Latin American fiction. This book, by Paraguay's most famous author, is told from the perspective of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who ruled that country for its first 26 years of independence, from 1814 to 1840. Roa Bastos does a remarkable job of getting into character, essentially becoming The Supreme for the duration of this book. There are many different modalities of narration: dialogues with his secretary, a long-running "Circular Perpetual" that documents the history of independent Paraguay from its ruler's perspective, entries from Francia's personal diary, extensive footnotes incorporating excerpts from chronicles written by outsiders who spent time in Francia's Paraguay, and other odds and ends. The language is inventive and representative of Paraguay's unique linguistic heritage as a bilingual country where most people speak both Spanish and Guaraní. I really enjoyed this book.

#33, I the Supreme sounds fascinating, especially since I haven't read anything by a Paraguayan author. The LT work page says it's #2 in a trilogy: have you read the first novel? I assume from your review that this one can stand alone.

@34: Yes, it can certainly stand alone. I'm not really sure why Son of Man, I the Supreme and El fiscal are referred to as the "Paraguay Trilogy." They're completely independent of each other. I took Son of Man on a trip with me a few years ago and ended up liking it so much that I read it twice as I waited in airports, coming and going. I'd highly recommend it as well. I'd like to re-read El fiscal, because I remember struggling through it and I hardly remember it.

Did you read Hijo de hombre in Spanish? I can only find pricey or beat-up copies of the English translation on ABEBooks.

Hmm, I had meant to buy I, the Supreme last month at City Lights, but for some reason I didn't get it. I'll get it the next time I see it.

36: Yes, I did read it in Spanish. I see what you mean about the price. I buy a lot of books in Spanish off of Abebooks, and it's interesting to see how prices compare between Latin American books and their English translations.

My Spanish is in no way up to reading a novel, alas.

URUGUAY

Juntacadáveres (Body Snatcher) by Juan Carlos Onetti

This book, like many of Onetti's novels and short stories, takes place in the fictional town of Santa María. It documents the rise and fall of a brothel run by Larsen, alias Juntacadáveres, the same man who later returns to town to work at the decaying shipyard of El astillero, one of Onetti's most celebrated novels. The events related to the brothel are so controversial and have such an impact on the citizens of Santa María that the author is able to weave in a series of stories involving other characters central to his Santa María cycle. This book is almost like a crossroads, with the brothel providing the point of contact between people whose stories were told in other places. I heartily enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone who would like to get to know one of Latin America's more compelling imaginary cities and its inhabitants.

The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinksy ARGENTINA 2004 Translation 2006

This delightfully written and yet sobering novella, harking back to the 1920s yet utterly modern, was recommended to me when I read Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas last year, and I am sorry it took me so long to get it and read it. The tales within tales start when a contemporary Argentinian student meets a dying man and acquires a treasure trove of old theater posters. This leads him to a 1920s Yiddish musical entitled "The Moldavian Pimp," and the story morphs to that of the dying man when he was young, a tango musician and possibly a gangster and pimp as well, and the two young women who were his girlfriends/wives, then switches to his son, now middle-aged and living in contemporary Paris, and then back to the student. Through these different tales, all told in beautiful, spare, elliptical prose, as well as the different times and different people, a picture of a period of Argentinian Jewish history, little known and considered shameful by the Argentinian Jewish community, comes alive, as full of questions as it is of answers, and connects to questions of prostitution today. It is a meditation, as well, on how we try to understand a history we can never really know.

In fact, there was a large and thriving group of Jewish gangsters, known as Zwi Migdal, which imported thousands of young eastern European Jewish girls to Argentina to work in brothels, many if not most under false pretenses. Who knew?

The Moldavian Pimp sounds fascinating -- I'll try to get my hands on it, although I've already cheched and it won't be through my library system.

Sitting on my TBR sheld is Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas by Isabel Vincent -- the Zwi Migdal are mentioned in the cover blurb. The two books may prove to be complementary.

ARGENTINA

Evaristo Carriego (Evaristo Carriego: A Book about Old-time Buenos Aires) by Jorge Luis Borges

This is one of my favorite books by Borges. The core series of essays was originally published in 1930. There's a brief prologue, then an extended chapter about the history of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo. It was a rather rough, poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city until the 20th century. There are then two chapters about the poet Evaristo Carriego, who was a friend of Borges' father. Borges sees him as the neighborhood poet, the person who was best able to represent Palermo, a place between urban Buenos Aires and the rural pampa.

Additionally, the book includes a series of essays on Argentine topics published a couple of decades later. There's an essay on the card game truco, an essay on the signs on the sides of delivery carts, and essays on horsemen, the dagger, and the origins of the tango. Borges' perspective has changed somewhat, and he effectively relates these rather local topics to more universal traditions, that is, he sees all horsemen in the Argentine gaucho, for example.

It's a good introduction to the author's Argentine roots, and the supplementary essays, published in the 1950s, are of special interest because they return to the Argentine topics that he first investigated in the 1920s.

>41 rebeccanyc:
Rebecca- excellent summary of a special book.

a good companion piece is Scum by IB Singer. A middle aged well-to-do Argentine Jewish businessman leaves his unloved wife in Buenos Aires as he goes to middle Europe in search of new loves.

Bert, I've read a lot of Isaac Bashevis Singer, although mostly several decades ago, and I have Scum but never have read it. I'll take another look -- thanks.

>45 rebeccanyc:

if you do read i, I look forward to your comments.

ARGENTINA Originally published 2001, translation 2004

The Bride from Odessa by Edgardo Cozarinsky

This collection of stories highlights many of the themes and ideas expressed in Cozarinsky's novel, The Moldavian Pimp, which I read and loved earlier this month. Characters move from country to country, search for their true identity and their ancestors, sometimes change their identity, feel lost in a new (or old) land, obsess over the past, and find or lose love. Like Cozarinksy himself, many character are, or were once, Jewish Argentinians, but nearly all of them (or their ancestors) wander between Europe and the "new" world. Some of the stories, such as the title one, are extremely compelling, others less so, but it is overall a fine collection and Cozarinsky is an excellent writer.

ARGENTINA

El congreso de literatura (The Literary Conference) by César Aira

César Aira solves a puzzle and obtains a treasure chest that ensures him financial stability for the rest of his life. He then attends a literary conference in Mérida, Venezuela and while he's there he obtains a cell of Carlos Fuentes and uses his cloning apparatus to clone him. Then one of his plays is performed at the Mérida airport and eventually the spawn of César's experiment descends upon the city.

I like César Aira and I will continue to seek out and read his books. They're always entertaining and unique. Next up: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter.

I enjoyed An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter but was somewhat mystified by it. However, I've bought a couple of other Airas How I Became a Nun and The Seamstress and the Wind and will read them eventually. Which other books of his have you liked?

@49: My favorite so far has been How I Became a Nun. I thought it was a funny, funny book. I also enjoyed The Hare, which I read last year.

The invention of Argentina by Nicolas Shumway is a fascinating tale of the history of ideas and conflicts that have resulted in one of the more bizarre democracies in the world. The tension between the european influence - the Unitarians of Buenos Aires- and the provincial Federalists- is still being played out in the current political climate of the Peronists and the Radicals.

Among his references is a fair smattering of great writers who put forth ideas that are still relevent.

This is an essential read for anyone who wants to learn more about how Argentina ended up where it is today. Fascinating.

ARGENTINA

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
First published in Spanish 1948
English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden 1988

 

"I was suffering the tortures of the damned in my personal hell of analyzing and imagining." The narrator of this short novel finally realizes the truth about himself only after he has murdered the woman he loves. From his prison cell he tells us how it happened.

Juan Pablo Castel is a successful artist in Buenos Aires, but despises the very critics who praise his work because they praise it for the wrong reasons. One day at a showing he sees a young woman gazing intently at a detail in one of his paintings--the one detail in all his work that, in Castel's mind, has meaning. It is a a detail all other have overlooked or ridiculed. Castel later obsesses about this woman. She understands him! They are meant for each other! He must find her! Finally he does find her. He learns that her name is María Iribarne. She is the woman he will murder.

Ernesto Sábato gives us a remarkable portrait of a disturbed mind, but one that never ceases analyzing itself. "Before the words were out of my mouth," he recalls, "I was slightly repentant. Behind the person who wanted the perverse satisfaction of saying them, stood a purer and more compassionate person ready to take charge." Repeatedly he acts on a cruel and selfish impulse, then abjectly begs forgiveness, only to repeat the cycle minutes later.

Castel sees himself imprisoned in a tunnel through which he travels from birth to death, unable to veer from its "dark and solitary" course. Other people he sees as being free to relish life, make choices, party and be happy, but not himself. His only hope is to find another troubled soul in a her personal tunnel somehow parallel to his own. But having found the woman of his dreams, he is consumed by an irrational jealousy that destroys them both.

The Tunnel is a grim but captivating study of the darker side of human behavior. Highly recommended.

Just the initial quote along would work as a hook for this book, but you make it sound like an excellent book indeed.

Has anyone read The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto. It's a novel about the aftermath of the Peruvian Civil War and was named the favorite book by the blogger Tyler Cowen. The author is Peruvian born in 1954, the book was published July 2012. I don't see any reviews on Librarything.com for the English version but it looks like an interesting read for this category.

ARGENTINA

Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Originally published in 1973
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Reissued by New York Review Books in 2004

  

Lucio Bordenave lives in a modest home in a small alley, along with his wife Diana, a woman of modest beauty and frequent, unpredictable tempers, and Doña Ceferina, an older relative who serves as the couple's housekeeper but excels at stirring up trouble between them and Diana's cantankerous family. Lucio is also surrounded by meddlesome neighbors who offer less than helpful advice on his troubled marriage, and his only escape is to his room, where he earns a profitable living as a repairer of clocks.

A friend of Diana's, noting her difficult behavior, encourages Lucio to have her committed to a nearby mental institution, as the man is a close friend of the head physician there, who he thinks can help her. Lucio reluctantly does so, but almost immediately regrets his decision. When she is released weeks later she is a changed woman, happy and full of life and love for her husband, but Lucio realizes that something isn't quite right, even though likes the "new" Diana considerably better. He visits the friend who recommended Diana's institutionalization, then returns to the asylum, where he makes a discovery that is shocking to him and a threat to his marriage and to the residents of his community.

Asleep in the Sun is a surreal and allegorical novel, mixed with wry humor, menace and a touch of magical realism. This is normally the type of book that I thoroughly enjoy; however, unlike The Obscene Bird of Night, the brilliant novel by José Donoso, I found myself far less interested in Casares' characters or the plot as a whole. Part of the reason may be that I read the description of the book on its back cover, which negatively influenced my approach to the novel, as other reviewers have said. It was an moderately enjoyable read, albeit a disappointing one, and I may give it another chance in the future to see if I like it better on a second reading.

>55 JMC400m: Just after I posted the review above I noticed Quailjulia's question about The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto. As it turns out I bought a copy when I was in London two weeks ago, and I plan to read it this month.

CHILE

A House in the Country by José Donoso
Originally published 1978; English translation 1984.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



This is a remarkable book, and I hardly know where to begin to talk about it. Starting as a seemingly straightforward tale of the hugely rich and aristocratic Ventura family, consisting of seven sisters and brothers, their spouses, and their 33 surviving children, it quickly becomes convoluted, bizarre, disturbing, comic, perverse, shocking, postmodern, and puzzling. At the same time, Donoso has said that this book was his response to the 1973 coup by Pinochet and that he has even included word-for-word excerpts from both Pinochet and Allende (in this article on the Dalkey Archive website).

The story begins at the Ventura's house in the country, Marulanda, where the parents are preparing to take their huge retinue of servants and go for a day-long excursion to a fabulous woodland glade and waterfall, leaving the cousins, ranging in age from 6 to 16, locked inside the "park" that surrounds the the house and separates it from the grassy plains and native populations outside with hundreds of metal lances tipped with gold and embedded in cement beneath the ground. The servants are not just servants but, led by the huge Majordomo, enforcers of the parents' rule over the children, doling out cruel punishments that leave no marks. And the native people have been conquered by the Venturas' ancestors and now work for them, mining and laminating the gold that is the source of the their wealth. The white people all believe the natives are cannibals, and threaten the children that they will be eaten if they misbehave.

So the stage is set for intrigue and trouble when all the adults leave: all the adults but one. For Uncle Adriano, who married the totally frivolous and somewhat slow-witted Balbina Ventura, and who is the father of 9-year-old Wenceslao, has been enclosed in a straitjacket, drugged, and locked in a tower ever since he "went crazy" because of a truly horrifying and shocking event. (A doctor, he was the only family member to have any relationship with the native people.) Wenceslao is determined to take advantage of the absence of the adults, which it develops has been engineered by a group of the children, to free his father. Other groups of children are engaged in plots of their own, and most of them believe the adults will not return at the end of the day as they have promised. Some of them try to leave.

That's about all I can tell to set the stage, both because I don't want to spoil all the surprises and because there is so much else going on in this novel, or "fable," as the author, who intervenes occasionally to explain what he is doing with the plot and the characters, persists in describing the work. Towards the end, he also notes that the characters are "emblems" and "a-psychological." I am sure I didn't understand everything Donoso was doing in this book, but here are some thoughts.

First of all, there is an artificial feel to a lot of the book. Not only are the characters "emblems" (although Donoso has accomplished quite a feat in making so many characters understandably different, it is extremely helpful that he includes a list of parents, children, and ages at the beginning), but several of them engage in a long-running improvised "play" called La Marquise Est Sortie à Cinq Heures. The "play" allow them to use flowery language, flirt and plot, and remove themselves from the reality of life in the summer house. Further, the house is filled with trompe l'oeil frescoes and wall decorations; the highly liveried servants melt into the walls, and the people on the walls spring to life. There are also revelations about the library and other aspects of the house that are not what they appear to be. Tying in with this, there are people who are blind, or practically blind, or dependent on very strong eyeglasses, and there is a whole network of tunnels beneath the house (for reasons revealed later) in which people have to find their way by feeling the edges.

Then, there is the whole idea of cannibalism. Whether the native people ever were cannibals is never quite clear, but the idea that they "still" are serves the function of keeping the children in place. At the same time, the mothers are always saying things to the little children like "oh, you're so delicious" and "oh, I could just eat you up with kisses." The idea of cannibalism threads its way through the novel.

There is also a theme of holding back nature. The lance "walls" of the park hold back the grasses of the plain, but every year in the fall there are winds that bring what are called "thistledown blizzards" that make it almost impossible to breathe. And many of the tunnels under the house are brimming with the unstoppable growth of wild mushrooms.

The second half of the novel relates to the return of the adults, after what seems to them only a day. Denying the reality that appears before they even reach the house, they dispatch the servants to return to the house and straighten everything out while they return to their homes in the capital until order is restored. This section gets really wild and crazy, with turmoil, fighting, cruelty, bravery, and revelation after revelation; at this point, "reality" becomes even more tenuous than it has already been, and the author returns more often to discuss his choices.

So what to make of this book? I was really impressed by Donoso's ideas and imagination. I was less able to detect the political ideas; although it was possible to see the servants, on their return, as the army, it was a lot less clear who other groups of people might represent. My conclusion is that this is, as Donoso, said, a "response" to the Pinochet coup and crackdown and that he is not trying to make complete analogies. I think I spent too much time trying to figure out who might stand for whom and not enough just experiencing the novel.

Although I've written at length, I've only scratched the surface of this complicated book. If I didn't have so many other books I want to read, I would start it all over again.

ARGENTINA

Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo
Originally published 1946; English translation 2013.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.

This fun novella is both a mystery story and a gentle parody of a mystery story, with poisons, atmospheric events, people who aren't who they seem to me, a dead bird, literary allusions, and lots of subtle humor. It begins as a somewhat pompous and self-satisfied doctor travels to a remote Argentine beach resort, owned by his cousin who, he points out, owes him money so he gets to stay without charge. He encounters a group of other visitors, one of whom is poisoned to death that very night. Soon, everyone is a suspect for one reason or another; a vicious storm that blows sand everywhere starts up; and more mysterious things begin to happen.

Although I enjoyed the mystery, I was more delighted by the writing style of Bioy Casares and Ocampo, and especially liked it when one of the amateur detectives/suspects revealed that his favorite novel was The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo, which I read earlier this year. This was a quick read, and a fun one.

Note: There is a problem with this book that LT staff are trying to solve, in that my copy doesn't link up with the other copies of the book and the Bioy Casares author page doesn't show that I own it. So, above, I have provided an HTML link to the page that shows my copy of the book; if you do a regular touchstone, it goes to a German edition of the book, which is the only one the Bioy Casares author page shows, not all the others. It also isn't letting me save my review on the book page.

ARGENTINA

The Hare by César Aira
Originally published 1991; English translation 1998; republished 2013.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



Aira is known for his novellas -- I've read one and have others on my shelves -- so this book, at 266 pages, is a tome for him. Although I hesitate to generalize from the one other Aira I've read, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, I think the shorter length works better for him, as there were definitely sections that dragged a little. And this book was more dependent on plot which, again probably unfairly generalizing, is not necessarily his strong point. Also, I found his depiction of the Indians a little grating, although I realize that they were partly described through the lens of the late 19th century protagonist and partly symbolic in a philosophical way. Nonetheless, Aira shines in his sly humor, his absurdity, his stunning descriptions of nature, his imagination, his light-hearted philosophical digressions, and his love of language.

The story begins with a somewhat extraneous look at the activities of the Restorer of the Laws, i.e., the dictator, of Argentina. He then gives his blessing, and his best horse, to the English naturalist, Clarke, who is mounting an expedition to the pamaps to look for the extremely rare, and perhaps nonexistent, Legibrereian hare (which, it turns out, may not even be living creature). The rest of the novel covers Clarke's travels through the pampas with Carlos, a 15-year-old would-be artist, and Gauna, a taciturn guide who, it develops, is on a quest of his own. In the course of their travels, they encounter three very different groups of Mapuche Indians, get to know several individuals in each group, get caught up in various plots and "wars" (without generally understanding what they're about), reveal aspects of their pasts (including that both Clarke and Carlos were adopted), and ultimately experience several plot revelations, at least one of which was obvious to me about halfway through the book.

But this is only the plot, and the plot is the least important part of the book. As mentioned, Aira loves philosophical digressions, and some of the ideas he explores in this book are simultaneity, identity and twinhood, transformation, continuity and time, and myth and reality. In a way, the book is all about story-telling: the myths groups live by, how these myths differ from "scientific" and "rational" explanations, the imaginary world versus the real world, the stories we tell others about ourselves and the stories other tell us, and, of course, the story that is this novel. (I do think Aira is playing with the reader at times, especially in the way he somewhat ridiculously ties up a lot of loose ends in the final chapter.) Thinking about a story Gauna told him about why he wanted to come to the pamaps, Clarke muses:

"He had to admit it was a very solid and plausible story, but that was entirely due to the fact that it included all (or nearly all) the details of what had happened in reality; by the same token, there must be other stories that did the same, even though they were completely different. Everything that happened, isolated and observed by an interpretive judgment, or even simply by the imagination, became an element that could be combined with any number of others. Personal invention was responsible for creating the overall structure, for seeing to it that these elements formed unities." p.170

As in the previous novel I read by Aira, there is a lot that is absurd in this book, and it can't be read in a literal way. If it weren't so much fun to read him, and if he weren't such a good writer, I might find this irritating. I think this book was a little bloated, but I enjoyed it, and I will read more Aira.

ARGENTINA

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
Originally published 2008; English translation 2013.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



I really liked the central idea of this book -- a painting created over the course of 60 years on rolls of canvas ultimately extending more than 4 kilometers. And some of the writing was beautiful, and I could see that the author wanted to use the painting to explore communication among families. But the plot that went along with this was a little convenient, and the revelation of family secrets a tad obvious.

Juan Salvatierra has died when the novella opens, but the reader learns his backstory: after a gruesome riding accident as a child, he became mute (whether for physiological or psychological reasons is unknown). He was apprenticed to a painter, later got a job at the post office, married, and had children. At the age of 20, he starts painting on these canvas rolls, recording what is happening in his life and in the community, and continues, with one roll per year, until is death. His two sons return from Buenos Aires (Salvatierra lived, and they grew up, near a river that forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay) to figure out whether a cultural institution will take the rolls of painting. While looking at the rolls, they discover that one is missing, hence the missing year, and the narrator, son Miguel, decides to investigate. Needless to say, family secrets are revealed in the course of his exploration.

I read this novella in one afternoon, and I did enjoy it. Especially after reading Zola's The Masterpiece, it was interesting to experience another artist's mode of creation and read about the images he painted. But, in the end, I felt the author was trying to do something "meaningful" and didn't quite achieve it, and I also felt he tied up the loose ends too neatly.

ARGENTINA

Paradises by Iosi Havilio



This novel is set mainly in modern day Buenos Aires, narrated by a woman who has moved there from a small town after her husband has died and left her and her young son destitute. She finds lodging at a rooming house, where she is befriended by a Romanian immigrant who helps her land a job at a local zoo. She subsequently moves into a nearby abandoned building, which houses a community of squatters that is headed by a woman dying of cancer, who relies on the new resident to give her intravenous injections of morphine to relieve her pain. The narrator integrates herself into the settlement and its shady characters, while maintaining close relationships with her Romanian friend and a running buddy from her old neighborhood, who has moved in with a wealthy drug addict nearby.

All three women and those around them are lonely, desperate people, bored with life and in search of temporary pleasure, in order to mask their anxieties and fears. The narrator frequently abandons her rambunctious son, as danger exists within and outside of the squatter settlement and whenever she meets up with her old friend.

Paradises was a pleasant and well written but not particularly memorable read, with characters who live on the edge of society. I didn't find them or the story to be particularly unique or enlightening, as people like these can be found in any major city in the world, but I liked this book enough that I would be willing to try other books by this author.

ARGENTINA

Scars by Juan José Saer
Originally published 1969; English translation 2011.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books thread.



When I read on the Reading Globally South American theme read thread that Saer is considered one of the top Argentinian authors, I knew I had to move this book to the top of my TBR pile. And yes, Saer is an amazing writer, whose language flows on the page. And yes, he has an imagination and a remarkable ability to focus on details. But while I admired this book, I never warmed to it.

At the heart of the novel is a murder: a husband and wife go out duck hunting with a bottle of gin, and she winds up dead. But, until the last section of the novel, which is told from the point of view of the murderer, the book focuses entirely on the narratives of three other people, a journalist, a nonpracticing lawyer, and a judge, all of whom are connected to the aftermath of the murder. These narratives start months before the murder, so the murder is only a peripheral part of their stories.

And what of their stories? The journalist is an 18-year-old who lives with his still partying 36-year-old mother and writes the weather reports for a local paper, although he seems aspire to become a crime reporter. He hangs out with some friends, fights with his mother about their individual bottles of gin and her slutty mode of dressing, thinks a lot about sex, and becomes obsessive about thinking he sees his exact double on the street. In fact, all the narrators are obsessive. The nonpracticing lawyer has become an obsessive gambler, and the details of his lengthy nightly baccarat games are described in infinite detail. The judge is disillusioned about humanity and endlessly describes his automobile routes around the city as well as the "gorillas" who inhabit it. Only the murderer, in his brief section, seems to have the spark of humanity. Also, with the exception of the murderer, the narrators are all involved in literary ventures: the journalist, aside from writing, is a big reader and likes to talk about books; the gambler writes essays about comic book characters, and the judge is translating The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Needless to say, I had to think about why this author is great and what on earth he was trying to do with this book. And here's what I came up with. Partly, Saer is looking at identity and how we create meaning in our lives: the journalist who sees his double and is trying to figure out what his life is about, the lawyer who has become a gambler and obsessively tries to figure out systems for winning, the judge who reduces humanity to "gorillas," yet doesn't hang up on a threatening caller who repeatedly phones him. Partly he is getting inside his characters' heads and relentlessly recording their obsessions. Partly he is showing that what's important to one individual may be meaningless or just a blip to others.

In the end, I was left scratching my head. Saer writes well and gave me food for thought, but I didn't enjoy reading this book. Further, the women in the book are all just adjuncts to the men; none of them rise to being full characters.

I have read Saer twice. The event and Nobody, nothing, never. I know he has a very good reputation but personally I didn't care for either book.

There are a number of Argentine writers I do like--starting with Arlt, Piglia and Medina and probably another 15 or 20 or so. Saer just doesn't happen to be one of them.

I might try one more book by Saer, but that would be it for me if I don't like it. I was thinking of The Event, because it's available in translation.

ARGENTINA

Open Door by Iosi Havilio
Originally published 2006; English translation 2011.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



There are several unanswered questions in this puzzling and brief novel by a writer who has been hailed as a great young Argentine writer, among them what happened to a girl who was thought to be dead and why a rare old book turns up in the simple home of an aging ranch worker. But most of the novel is the story of a somewhat hapless young woman, originally an aspiring veterinarian living in a city, who ends up moving in with the aging ranch worker out in the country and doing relatively little other than having a hot romance with a neighboring girl who seems to be sexuality personified. Oh, they try various drugs too.

What gives the novel its title, and the country town its name, is the Open Door, a psychiatric hospital that operates on the principle that the mentally ill shouldn't be locked up but should be able to wander around on their own and find activities that they enjoy; there are no locked doors or gates, but apparently the inmates don't run away. And isn't that just a tidy metaphor for life! We all wander around trying to find ways to enjoy life and there isn't any way to escape.

Havilio writes well, and this was an easy and quick book to read, but I didn't really engage with the narrator or the other characters: the narrator herself seems so passive and the other characters more symbolic than real. There is another book by Havilio that continues the narrator's story, but I'm not very motivated to read it.

>65 rebeccanyc: It needs to be requested from NYPL (BPL used to have a copy -- I read it -- apparently it has gone missing), but I would recommend The Witness by Saer. See StevenTX's review (post 49) in the October-December South American Literature thread (his review is much more eloquent and thoughtful than mine).

Thanks for the recommendation of The Witness. I may order it with the Amazon gift certificate I have!

ARGENTINA



Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This dose of early aviation fiction was quite an enjoyable read, but not quite as good as I'd hoped. There are though passages of beautifully lyrical and quite poetic writing - basically when Saint-Exupéry writes on flying, and we follow the story of the brave newly-wed Patagonia airmail pilot Fabien - and then some lengthier interludes of less memorable passages from the perspective of the middle aged and no-nonsense airmail company Monsieur le Directeur Rivière. Both characters are apparently based on the author's own experiences in each role at one time or another.

Written and published in 1931, S-E describes in this short novel the story of the pioneering Airmail lines which criss-crossed southern South America at that time, bringing the post from Patagonia, Paraguay, and Chile over to Buenos Aires, before its dispatch to Europe across Atlantic skies. The tale in particular tells how the pilot Fabien is at the sharp end of the director's orders. Rivière suffers the internal anguish and doubting of one who has staked his career on the commercial wisdom of advancing the cause of night flying. With Fabien we ferry the precious cargo through the black, often in unpredictably harsh weather, close to the massive Andes range, and are inside his very dimly illuminated cockpit with at times scant visibility, together with the operator and his faltering radio reception...

An hour later the radio operator of the Patagonia mail-plane felt himself softly heaved up, as by a giant shoulder. He looked about him: heavy clouds were extinguishing the stars. He leaned over and peered down at the earth, looking for the lights of villages, hidden like glow-worms in the fields, but nothing shone in this black grass.

As an horrendous storm closes in and slowly snuffs out the weak airborne communications and banishes any remaining glimpse of the path ahead, Rivière hovers nervously near the night-shift clerks and operators at the other end of those brief radio connections, constantly asking them to ring to the way-stations to get the latest messages from the planes in flight. Fabien meanwhile, fights on:

As he climbed, he found it easier to counteract the air currents by taking his bearings on the stars. Their pale magnets attracted him. He had struggled so long for a glimpse of light that now he would not have let even the faintest get away from him. Having found the inn-lamp he yearned for, he would have circled round this coveted sign till death. And thus he rose towards these fields of light.

A straightforward book with some very moving descriptions of early flying in fearsome conditions. I liked it, but I think I'll prefer his more extensive memoir Wind, Sand and Stars which I hope to read one day.

ARGENTINA

could it be possible that no one has yet to mention the great Jorge Luis Borges ?

Penguin Classics has a wonderful Collected Fictions that has most of his short fictions. Strange tales and historic glimpses of Argentina are both well represented.

The 1st collection 'A Universal History of Iniquity" captures the gaucho mystique.

For other wordly effects I recommend "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", 'The Library of Babel" and "Funes, His Memory".

there are dozens of other gems in this collection.

Also, Purgatory by Tomas Eloy Martinez, published last year shortly after his death is an engrossing tale that elicits the lasting scars of the Dirty Wars and the Dictator Videla in the 1980's.

ARGENTINA (& France)

Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Julio Cortázar (1963)



This is a book I've wanted to read for a long time, and have been putting aside "for when I learn Spanish". I've read quite a number of novels in Spanish in the mean-time, but this is by far the most challenging book I've attempted yet, and I'm conscious that I must have missed a lot of Cortázar's wordplay and allusions to other texts. But I'm looking forward to enjoying those next time I read it, when I will of course be taking the chapters in a different sequence...

I read it as an e-book, which should really be the best way to read it: if e-books had been available in 1963, I'm sure Cortázar would have had a lot of fun pushing the new medium to its limits. Finally, a tool that takes away the enforced linearity and sequential nature of the printed book. The e-book certainly does make it easier to follow Cortázar's complicated instructions. Instead of constantly leafing backwards and forwards, you simply click on a link at the end of the chapter and it takes you to the one the author suggested you should read next. However, this rather undermines the whole subversive nature of the book. It no longer feels wild and experimental to be leaping from Chapter 45 to Chapter 120 and back to Chapter 23 (or whatever it was): it's just button-pressing. What ought to happen, perhaps, is that the sequence of links is randomly generated for you at the moment you buy the book, and that your e-book is subtly different in its sequence from every other copy of the e-book. But we're not that far yet.

The real interest of the book is probably not so much its experimental form, but the playful elegance of Cortázar's writing. He manages to allude to just about everything you can think of — from Shakespeare and Proust to La Bohème and Tristram Shandy; from Dostoevsky to Henry Miller — but it never gets heavy, and he is always poking fun at himself for doing it. Similarly with jazz, which takes up a lot of space in the first part of the book, and even with classical music. The contemporary music concert given by a would-be Nadia Boulanger figure is one of the funniest chapters, and the other great set-piece, the bridge-building chapter, is magnificent.

Definitely a book that lives up to the claim to be one of the great 20th-century novels: at the very least it's something you could unhesitatingly put side-by-side with La vie, mode d'emploi (and it's a good deal funnier than Perec, too).

ARGENTINA

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal



The sons of Juan Salvatierra have returned to their home village in an Argentinian border town to claim their inheritance, a decade after their father's death. Salvatierra, rendered mute by a childhood accident, spent much of his free time during the last 60 years of his life painting on long scrolls of canvas, one scroll for each year of his life beginning at the age of twenty. His works, housed in a shed, give voice to the history of his town and the lives of his family and close friends, in a continuous fashion akin to a book of non-fiction:

Salvatierra painted without any lateral divisions so as to achieve continuity between the different scenes. That was something that obsessed him. He wanted his painting to encapsulate the fluidity of a river, of dreams, the way in which they can transform things in a completely natural way without the change seeming absurd but entirely inevitable, as if he were revealing the violent metamorphosis hidden within each being, thing, or situation.

Salvatierra received little attention for his work during his life, but after his death several European museums expressed interest in purchasing and displaying his canvases, while his own country's institutions seemed largely disinterested in it.

As the two sons examine the canvases, they discover that the scroll painted in 1961 is missing. The youngest son embarks on a quest to find this scroll, in order to complete the collection, but also to investigate what led to its disappearance. In doing so, he learns about his father's life, family secrets, and how his past life fits into the story told in the canvases.

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra is a short but multilayered and evocative novel, which would appear to be a mystery novel but is also an homage to the life of an artist who is voiceless, yet uses his paintings to tell his story and communicate with those who view his work. The rich descriptions provided by Mairal allowed this reader to easily envision and reflect on Salvatierra's paintings, and, like a work of art that reveals more of itself on a repeat viewing, this book would seem to lend itself to a second or third reading to appreciate it more fully.

ARGENTINA

The Topless Tower by Silvina Ocampo
Originally published 1968; English translation 2010.



This a charming and very brief novella (almost a long short story) that explores, well, it's hard to say what it explores. Young Leandro is magically transported into an initially windowless tower after he laughs at an artist (the Devil???) who is displaying some paintings to his mother as they relax in the garden, including one of this very tower. There, in a completely timeless way, he discovers that if he draws or paints objects they spring to life. He creates, initially, a monkey and a bird, but during a game he is playing with them they disappear out of the window he has created. Oh, by the way, at least initially, when he attempts to draw something, something else appears on the paper. The tower seems to belong to the Devil, who at least plays a vivid role in Leandro's imagination. Eventually he creates a boy who is and isn't him, two girls including one who says she is Alice in Wonderland, and a dog named Love. But he is really trying to draw his mother so that she will reappear.

Painting and drawing play a big role in this book, and the introduction helpfully explains that Ocampo was initially a visual artist. She married Adolfo Bioy Casares, with whom she wrote the delightful Where There's Love, There's Hate (which I read last year), and was friends with Borges and Calvino. I am happy that NYRB is going to publish a collection of her stories early next year.

This book is completely playful and magical, but at the same time it shows that with persistence, creativity can develop. Although Leandro is a child, and has a childlike interest in playmates and circuses and games and automobiles, he also takes himself seriously. He tells the reader at the very beginning that "I even imitate the way people write. Like some famous writers, I use the first and third persons simultaneously. . . . I'll underline the words I don't understand." And at the end he says "Will the images we've seen throughout our lives remain within our eyes?" In this novella, Ocampo takes Leandro's images and makes them real, for him and for us.

I took a reading trip to Argentina via Philip Kerr's excellent thriller, A Quiet Flame. This is the fifth in Kerr's terrific "Bernie Gunther" Berlin noir series. In book five, it is 1950, and Gunther has been falsely accused of Nazi war crimes. He escapes to Argentina, where he is, of course, soon involved in crime solving. There is a lot, here, about political conditions in Argentina during the Peron administration. But Kerr, according to his author's notes, seems to have gotten just about all of his information via academic rather than on-the-ground research. So interest levels, in terms of reading this book as a "visit" to Argentina, may vary. It's a very good thriller, though.

>73 rebeccanyc:
thanks for the review. Ocampo financed a major literary journal that helped support Borges before he became well-known to the wider world. I look forward to reading her short stories.

>74 rocketjk:
2 other books you may be interested in:

The Buenos Aires Quintet - a fun "who-done-it" that takes place in BsAs.

also
The Real Odessa by Uki Goni , an Argentine journalist, who spent years researching the conspiracies resulting in dozens of Nazi war criminals escaping to Argentina, many under the sponsorship of the Catholic Church. A sad legacy speaking to dark secrets that still need sunlight to undo. It is hopeful that Obama just announced he will release secret US files regarding the Dirty Wars of the 70's - 80's in Argentina.

>75 berthirsch:
Great information. Thanks! And I agree about getting all the information about the Dirty Wars out in the light.

I wonder if the Catholic Church will one day release files on its support of horrific right-wing dictatorships, not just in Argentina, but throughout the region. They have so far refused even to acknowledge much of what they did, and may well have destroyed incriminating paperwork. I was hoping that the current pope might try to begin the process of criminal trials.

I believe Papa Francisco did say they would release the Argentine church records related to the Dirty war. The dark side history of the Church's political activities will probably never see the light of day.

What a disgrace. One would have thought that there would be one or two Vatican insiders - if not priests, then at least lay managers - with enough moral fibre to want to come clean on what went on (and continues to go on). It's a sad indictment of the institution that they still feel they need to keep these things secret - presumably therefore their actual deeds are a lot worse than we already know, or can imagine. A book containing such information could be a best-seller and would do the world a real service. The direct victims of church-supported violence certainly deserve it.

I read a few books by South American writers this year. Details in my CR thread for Q1 (see also my Club Read thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/278102):

La invención de Morel (1940) by Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina, 1914-1999)
El viajero del siglo (2009) by Andrés Neuman (Argentina, 1977- ) - this counts as one of my books of the year. An amazing novel, compulsory reading for anyone who loves Schubert...
Bestiario (1951) by Julio Cortázar (Argentina, 1914-1984)

The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof is a slim volume containing two novellas by Argentinian author César Aira. The first The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof by César Aira. The first ostensibly takes place in Korea and the second on the streets of Buenos Aires, but really they both take place in the realm of the senses and the imagination. What they also have in common is that both begin in relatively commonplace settings with seemingly realistic characters, and then spin gradually but inexorably into the realm of the hallucinatory. They are meditations on the nature of reality, perception and cultural expectations. That's a fairly cliched phrase I just wrote, I know, but it Aira's deft way with phrasing and description and, not incidentally, his sense of humor, these swift rides are actually (or at least were to me) happily refreshing and even thought-provoking. At any rate, I'm listing this book as a reading trip to Argentina not so much for the subject matter but because Aira is such an important figure in contemporary Argentinian literature.

CHILE

Tierra Del Fuego is a collection of nine exquisite stories by revered Chilean author Francisco Coloane. Coloane spins tales in spare, expressive prose about life in the lonely pampas, mountains and rugged islands and coastlines of Chile's southernmost country. For the most part, the characters are men, in small groups or in pairs, interacting for good or ill with the hazzards of land and sea and with their own frailties, both spiritual and physical, and, of course, with each other. In one of my favorite stories in the collection, "The Empty Bottle," two men, unknown to each other, meet at random as they ride their horses across the pampas. Their journeys are taking them in the same direction, so they ride along together for a while, lost in their own thoughts. The younger of the two thinks of his fiance, waiting in a far off town, and his desire to return to her. The older thinks of a murder he has committed years back in almost identical circumstances.

One of the blurbs on the book's cover refers to Coloane as "the Jack London of our times." I suppose in terms of subject matter, this might be apt. Stylistically to me it seems less so, though admittedly it's been a long time since I read much London. This is going to be a fairly obscure reference, but Coloane's writing brought to mind for me that of Finnish author Väinö Linna's "Under the North Star" trilogy. Another of my favorites, here, "How the Chilote Otey Died," about a group of survivors of a failed uprising on the run from pursuers intent on deadly retribution, particularly reminded me of Linna.

Here is Pablo Neruda's quote as offered on the back cover of my Europa Edition copy of this collection:

"Long arms, arms like rivers, are necessary to fully embrace Francisco Coloane. Or perhaps it's necessary to be a squall of wind, gusting over him beard and all. Otherwise, take a seat across the table from him and analyze the question, study him deeply; you will surely end by drinking a bottle of wine with Francisco and happily postponing the matter to some later date."

I had never heard of Coloane until my wife and I traveled in Argentina and southern Chile this past November. We spent almost a week on the large Chilean island of Chiloe, and happened to visit the town of Quemchi, where Coloane was born, and where there is a statue of him in the town square. In fact, the square is basically dedicated to him. My curiosity piqued, upon returning home I immediately went online and ordered two collections of his stories in translation, this one, and Cape Horn and other Stories from the End of the World. I will immediately be putting Cape Horn into my "between book" reading rotation.

CHILE

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende's most recent novel tells the story of two families, and in particular one member of each (one man and one woman who end up together; no shock, there), living through the Spanish Civil War and then immigrating to Chile. The story takes the two through their entire lives.

I didn't ultimately find the book satisfying, but if you're interested in a quick moving fictional narrative of Chilean history from about 1940 through the erosion of the Pinochet dictatorship, you might well find this an interesting reading experience.

CHILE



By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
Published 2000, English translation 2003, 130 p.

Father Urrutia Lacroix is on his deathbed, confronting the "wizened youth" of his idealistic younger self, and ranting in a semi-confessional, desultory style that runs the entire book without pause. He relates his desire to write poetry and how that brought him into the circle of literary critic, Farewell, where he met many illustrious members of the literary intelligentsia, including Neruda. But Urrutia remained on the outside and eventually fell into a despondency broken only by an offer from two shady members of Opus Dei to travel Europe investigating ways to preserve the integrity of the Church. Upon his return he is drawn into a complicit relationship with the Chilean military junta, until he even he finds it hard to justify his actions.

By Night in Chile is a stinging indictment of the literary elite and their role as bystanders, if not contributors, to the terror that permeated Chile under Pinochet. Replete with references to literary figures ranging from Dante to Ernst Jünger, as well as Chilean historical personages, the novel is best read with easy access to the Internet. Bolaño also condemns the Catholic Church for being "the well in which the sins of Chile sink without a trace." His imagery of the priests of Europe using falcons to bring down the pigeons and even doves of the people they supposedly guide is chilling. In addition to it's intellectual interest, the novel is wonderfully written with lines that are both concise and illustrative. Impressive.

Chile. The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros - 3 stars



This book is a bit confusing because the author, a journalist, starts his story by stating that his book is fiction, when in reality he is the son of the infamous Chilean General Cisneros who is omnipresent in some of the most black pages in the country's more recent history.
When he falls into depression after a broken relationship, his psychologist advises him to look for the life story of his deceased father in order to come to terms with his own past.
Little by little he reconstructs his father's life, but he continues to struggle with this very enigmatic figure: a ruthless, unyielding man who did not shy away from putting his bold statements into practice, but also a man who wrote sentimental love poems and who enchanted women with his charm.
I found the fact that the author also includes the ancestors in the story and shows that a large part of his father’s personality was already ingrained in his genes. I also liked the writing style. But every now and then he faltered a bit too long at certain events. If it is a fiction book, it could have been a little more condensed. But no doubt the author wanted to tell the whole, complex story, including his own experiences.
The unclear line between fiction and non-fiction made it difficult for me to empathize with the story. A difficult book to place, but in a strange way, well worth reading it.