César Aira

El escritor francés René Daumal (1908-1944) dejó inacabada su segunda novela, ‘El Monte Análogo’ (Le Mont Analogue, 1944). Murió de tuberculosis dejando esta obra en mitad de una frase, literalmente. La presente edición de la Editorial Atalanta, recoge el texto de Éditions Gallimard de 1972, que incluye los apéndices y planes que tenía Daumal para terminar la novela. Se trata de una historia de aventuras, ciencia ficción, metafísica, filosofía y viaje iniciático, que, pese a show more no tener una conclusión, no deja de ser una magnífica novela.

La historia de ‘El Monte Análogo: Novela de aventuras alpinas no euclidianas y simbólicamente auténticas’ comienza cuando el narrador recibe una carta de Pierre Sogol, todo un personaje: excéntrico, científico, aventurero y profesor de alpinismo, entre otras actividades. En esta misiva, Sogol, después de haber leído el artículo del narrador sobre el simbolismo de las montañas, propone buscar el mítico Monte Análogo, que une el Cielo con la Tierra. El problema estriba en que dicho monte está oculto, encerrado en un espacio curvo que lo convierte en inaccesible. Pero Sogol tiene cierta idea de cómo dar con él, y para ello se embarca junto a Théodore, el narrador, y varias personas más. La aventura ha dado comienzo.

La obra se complementa con un artículo de Dumal, ‘Unos cuantos poetas franceses del siglo XXV’, que a modo de ensayo-ficción nos propone una serie de poetas inventados, que le sirven de despiadada crítica y burla de las corrientes poéticas del presente del escritor.

Extraña, amena y magnífica joya literaria. show less

This small double-feature novella surprised me. I had only read My Life as a Nun by Aira. He’s an odd writer. Like Calvino and Bolano, but containing something of his own as well. He is memorable and forgettable at the same time. He’s easy to read, which is a plus, but only re-readable in bits and pieces. At least that is the feeling I get from these two novellas. They seem like the work of an amateur who has mastered what amateurs only dream of doing. He tells a compelling tale which is show more entirely absurd and unbelievable. He purposefully makes it difficult to suspend disbelief, but at the same time knows how to absorb the reader. I found the story of the Buddhist monk surprising because of the twist ending but also because of the shifting perspective. You get things wholly from the monk’s viewpoint at first, but then it starts shifting until the world takes on the likeness of a photograph. The art of the storytelling takes on the dimensions of its own story. The second novella, called The Proof, only justified the events it depicted in the last line. The last line was brilliant and surprising. The escalation from verbal to physical dread and horror was abrupt in the way that a lot of horror movies advance in fits and starts. The delightful conversation and shifts in attitude that occur seemed nonetheless realistic despite their extreme unbelievability. show less

Another spectacular book by César Aira. If he isn't the best living writer, who is? And how would you make the case?

This time I'll try to zero in on just one quality of his imagination that sets him apart from most other authors. This book begins with a short chapter describing how the author, a certain César, famous writer and "mad scientist," discovers the secret of the "Macuto Line," a mysterious braided cord on the coast of Venezuela. The Macuto Line, César says, was one of the show more world's wonders. It had been constructed by pirates to hide their treasure, but no one had succeeded in figuring out how to retrieve the treasure, which was somehow buried, at the end of the line, under water. César protests that he is not a universal genius, that there is no such thing as universal genius. But he has a particular combination of talents and weaknesses that are both ordinary and utterly unique. Aira spends a couple of pages describing his theory of unique but unexceptional talents. He proposes a thought experiment: think of any three books you've read. There may be hundreds of other people in the world who have read those same books. Now add a book, and only a few people will have read those same four books. Add one or two more, and you will be the only one in the world who has read that particular combination of books. You aren't a genius for having done so, but you have skills and qualities of attention no one else has. Using this individual combination, César does something simple to the braided Macuto Line, and the treasure chest bursts out of its underwater cave and falls at his feet.

Now here's what's different about Aira: any other author would have made that an emblem, a theme, a leitmotif, a central subject. But "The Literary Conference" never returns to the subject, never draws any conclusions from it, never proposes it as a master trope or a key to César's character. It doesn't even function as an introduction to the logic or narrative of the book, but at the same time it isn't an absurdist episode that is meant to be read allegorically as a sign of the illogic of life (or some such thing). the Macuto Line is simply the reason the narrator is rich, and even that doesn't matter much for the novel. There is something extremely peculiar about Aira's way of imagining fiction. The Macuto Line, and other things that happen in this book, are nominally surrealist or magic realist, but only in a superficial sense because they don't reveal any unconscious ideas (as in surrealism) or hidden natural sublime poetry (as in magic realism). And the abstract meditations that introduce things like the Macuto Line are nominally examples of philosophic fiction, but only superficially because Aira has no philosophic arguments to make, only stories to tell. It's not that Aira doesn't care about literature and history, but that his imagination is apparently entirely impossible to control. (In that he resembles Thomas Bernhard, whose vitriol can have a similar deforming effect on his narratives.)

Aira is absolutely wonderful. I wish all 60 of his books could be translated. show less

When this book came in the post a year or so ago, it was a weird looking book. Hardback, oversized, glossy look, silver spine, mustard and teal cover. I had been sent into a spin. This first impression took me to childhood, a brand new hardback Asterix comic. I felt weird. And the font is large, too. At under 60 pages, it's a long story, not a novel.

As in all Aira's works, there is a theme, an area he chooses to write one of his continuous writing projects. he writes quickly, minimum show more editing. He starts and doesnt stop. this one is about writing and the imagination. Does the imagination have limits? Our narrator, perhaps it's the author, or a simulacra of the author, encounters a curmudgeon around the book market he likes to attend on a Sunday walk. This fellow, Ovenda, is annoying, worth avoiding, except our narrator doesn't avoid him. They go to a cafe where Ovenda offers a Faustian pact. Our narrator can learn the art of transforming objects, of controlling the laws of physics for one's own purposes. But, the narrator must give up two things: writing and reading literature.

Our narrator takes this seriously, goes on a little quest to work out what he should do. he has a week to decide. it's a big decision to live outside time and reality, with no limits. Even fiction has limits, the imagination can conjure up what it likes, but it has limits, too. Literature, perhaps doesn't - it keeps coming, endlessly in new forms, new authors, new ways with old ideas. Like all of us here there are more good books to read than we realise our time on earth allows.

That's that narrative, now, the discursive, thematic structure, the discussions about the world of reading and writing operates in parallel.

Magic could do anything: move object, transform them, make them appear and disappear, but always on the condition that that it remains itself, the same old Magic condemned to go on reusing its stale old power. Reading, on the other hand, was always going beyond itself, because it had nothing of its own; it ha what it had provisionally, on loan from the book, which kept changing. Reading's paradoxical weapon was passivity... surrender to a higher objectivity- that is, to the book.

Like many of Aira's works, they end in a surreal reverie, or perhaps they were a surreal reverie from the start. show less