JoaquÃn Pérez Azaústre
Author of The Swimmers
About the Author
Works by JoaquÃn Pérez Azaústre
El querido hermano (Spanish Edition) 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
Members
Reviews
Statistics
- Works
- 15
- Members
- 41
- Popularity
- #363,652
- Rating
- 3.1
- Reviews
- 4
- ISBNs
- 17
- Languages
- 2
Jonas becomes interested again in his artistic photography that he abandoned as he concentrated on his photo journalist job for a city newspaper. This is possible because he is getting fewer paid assignments as he fails to meet his obligations, taking uninteresting photos and not showing up at designated news scenes. The renewed artistic interest focuses on the obsession Jonas has with the moments in people's lives that occur when their threatening life experiences teeter on the razor's edge of time and they have immediate mixed feelings of possibility and determinism. Jonas believes if he can freeze these exact moments, he can have peace without further action. During his swims in the amniotic fluid of the pool, the photographer feels a separate peace of freedom of movement without the requirement of interpersonal action.
As Jonas continues to dissociate from reality, he loses track of an increasing number of people, including his mother and a fellow more artistic photographer. His memories, rich in symbolism, dominate his consciousness. Archetypes of Man, Woman, Birth, Death, and Infinity determine his behavior anchored by the peace of his regression to the solace of the city swimming pool. Jonas's unconscious urge to review his life brings up numerous razor's edge experiences from his past that offered opportunities to take action, only to be missed by his snapshot observation of people rather than an artistic and prescient capture of their lives. Like Goethe's Faust, however, there was one moment in his life when he did capture with his camera a social event so sweet and full that he wishes he could stay within its moment forever.
This is an excellent novel, reminiscent of the work of Verlaine, Proust, and Kafka. Immerse yourself in this book (if you dare) and you will see your own gradual slipping away from reality and view your own missed opportunities on the razor's edge of past time.… (more)