Fernando Arrabal

Nunca en Nueva York hizo semejante bochorno. Tan simbólico para aquel puritano que volvió a la vida, en estado de «coma profundo». Sin poder hablar, ¿cómo hacerles ver a sus abnegadas enfermeras que su vestir es indecente?, ¿que sus masajes terapéuticos torturan su misticismo?, ¿que su tratamiento solivianta sus convicciones morales?, ¿que la tentación le corroe? ¿Por qué «dos adolescentes tan hermosas como puras» le conducen hacia el infierno del pecado? Y cuando pensaba show more salvarse con ellas, ¿va a iniciarle al misterio del pecado más infame un hombre dominador? ¿Y llamado precisamente Lucifer?
En Levitación se afrontan, sin escándalo ninguno, dos conceptos en un siglo que ¿será espiritual... o no será? show less

A warning! Not for the faint of heart!

The Compass Stone tells the story of a young woman who lives in a 'dysfunctional' family unit and has a relentless taste for blood, death and a penchant for sado-masochism.

As the above may indicate, the book is extremely dark. Written in an almost dream-like manner, the narrative is penned in the first person by the woman as she catalogues her sexual adventures with unsuspecting men. During these encounters she sets out to murder them taking great show more pleasure in the act of their death.

We are also shown the other side of her life which is almost as surreal as her sexual encounters. In her spare time off from her sexual fantasies (or realities? ), she observes the insects in her greenhouse and, in minute detail, recalls their habitats, habits and lives. She also gives us glimpses of an unusual family relationship where she isolates herself from her sisters who care for her dominating and bullying father. Questions about the family situation always remain as we are merely left with hints about the family dynamics, especially her fathers relationship with his daughters. The narrative also explores, first hand, her views as she philosophises about love, hate, death, good and evil.

The Compass Stone is a wonderfully surreal book. I would like to say I 'enjoyed' it, however, the subject matter relating to the murders is not something one would 'enjoy'. That said, I found it an extremely thought provoking and beautifully written book.

I was always left with a sense of disbelief and questioning. Is the young woman actually living this life? Are the murders she commits real? Are her sexual fantasies being played out for real? Or is it the active imagination of a young woman exploring her sexual fantasies or building an imaginary world around her as a means of escaping the reality of her life. Right up to the end of the book I was unable to decide. This still remains today!

A wonderfully imaginative, thought-provoking, dark and atmospheric book written with such ease and poetic mastery. show less

Very strange play. A man (the Emperor of Assyria) crash lands on an island where another man (whom the Emperor baptizes the Architect) has lived in solitude for quite some time. After two years of cohabitation, they've established a nominally teacher-student relationship and spend their days play-acting, with each man taking on a number of different roles. The Architect has great powers: for instance, he's able to communicate with the other living creatures of the island and he can make show more night fall on command. Their little routines are often obscene and blasphemous, and they're both really emotional. They are pretty crazy.

In the second act of the play, they enact a trial in which the Emperor is accused of killing his mother after having an extended incestuous relationship with her. He plays the role of the witnesses for the prosecution, speaking as his brother, his wife, and a few others who had intimate knowledge of the relationship between mother and son. The Architect is the judge. They sometimes pull off their masks and interject as themselves, and as the trial goes on the lines between fiction and reality are blurred. The Emperor finally decrees that, due to his guilt, the Architect is to enact a rather extreme form of justice. The end of the play shows us that this is only one cycle of existence on the desert island.

There are a few books by Fernando Arrabal that I see from time to time in used bookstores and I'd never thought to buy one. I kind of figured that their persistent presence was a sign that maybe he wasn't the most amazing author. I often draw these conclusions based on the idea that if books by certain authors are always at used bookstores, that means they weren't good enough for previous readers to want to hold on to. I bear a mild prejudice against Carlos Fuentes for this reason: when can't you find a Carlos Fuentes book (or have your choice of Carlos Fuentes books) at the used bookstore? But my experience with this play has led me to see the error of my ways. Fernando Arrabal is a really cool guy: he's known for forming the "Grupo Pánico" (as in "Pan," not "Panic!") along with the Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, and their work is known for its neo-Dada bent. He went to Paris in the 1960s and spent a few years frequenting a cafe where André Breton held court with the old guard of Surrealism, and he went on to write a huge quantity of plays, novels, essays, books of poetry and books about chess. He's had a long career and seems to be one of those special people who never stops creating, or never runs out of ideas.

I've been reading chapters from a book called Modernisms, by Peter Nicholls, that defines and explains the different -isms and explains their place in the greater Modernist paradigm. I've read about Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. The book has helped me understand works of fiction from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Alfred Jarry really was the man), and it also helped me appreciate Arrabal's play. I had at least a basic conception of Dada ideas on theater and its aspirations to create "great, negative works of destruction" (I think that's how Nicholls put it), so as I read the interactions between the Emperor and the Architect, which were often bizarre, vile, blasphemous, and downright disgusting, I could think of it as not just a unique work whose author isn't afraid of crossing some lines (or crossing every line), but as a play that fits into the European traditions of the 20th century.

Arrabal also has his own web site at http://www.arrabal.org/. It's surprising to see an author who once hung out with André Breton in Paris still alive and present on the internet. Sometimes those modernist movements seem so distant in time, and I enjoyed experiencing in this play a sort of bridge between the European avant-garde of so many decades ago and the 21st century. show less

Elías Tarsis y Marc Amary son dos genios enfrentados. Ante ellos, el tablero sobre el que se decidirá el campeonato del mundo de ajedrez. A sus espaldas, dos complejas historias personales marcadas por el amor, las fobias, las intrigas políticas y la casualidad. Ganadora del premio Nadal de novela y del Nabokov internacional de novela, «La torre herida por el rayo» recorre, al ritmo de las jugadas que se suceden sobre la mesa, las trayectorias de estos dos antagonistas, conduciendo al show more lector por entre los vericuetos del singular y siempre sorprendente mundo nacido de la pluma de Fernando Arrabal. show less