Juan José Saer (1937–2005)

A fascinating, beautifully written story of one young man's formative experience as an unwilling guest of a foreign, unknowable indigenous tribe. Told from the perspective of an old man assimilating and reminiscing about his decade-long life in another world, the story intersperses remembered events with ruminations on the nature of memory and the fabric of experienced reality as well as the attempt to faithfully commemorate the worldview of the indigenous tribe.

More good literature from Argentina. A telepathist of obscure origins, escaping Europe after humiliation at the hands of ‘scheming positivists,’ acquires some valuable rural property and a fateful acquaintance in mid-19th c. Argentina. The Event is a story of exile and dislocation that develops with deliberate pacing and precise, descriptive prose in long spellbinding sentences, a sense of time spiraling away and back, characters not so much tossed about by events as responding to their show more own obsessive psychologies, thoughts swirling into doubts and delusions and petty paranoias, the small indecipherable gestures and routine insincerities of human relationships reflected against the oppressive openness of the pampas. In the use of space and place it is of a kind with Borges’ story “The South” and César Aira’s Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter. show less

"I realized that when someone throws himself through a window and falls to the ground from the third floor, he doesn't break anything at the moment of impact with the glass or with the pavement - nothing - because he's already been broken to pieces and all he's doing is tossing out an empty shell. The guy had hollowed himself out to the bone, then thrown the shell out the window."

Long at 500 pages but not-quite monolithic, this scattered Argentinian novel about a confusing literary movement called Precisionism, is less precise than the dependably inaccurate blurbs led me to believe. Jumping from close-knit characters to disparate scenes to clandestine moments of startling imprudence, through days and nights and the tired territory of restaurants and bedrooms, childhood and romantic entanglements, I was propelled through the narrative in the same way I enjoyed many show more bigger, better Spanish language tomes in the past. But unlike Terra Nostra or Infante's Inferno, Le Grande appears at times hastily composed. Many sentences rely on similes and strained metaphors, but as often as they shed light on pithy topics, they distract from action and tension, going on at exuberant length to prove a point I might have gleaned from a few choice words. Nonetheless this was an occasionally entertaining, readable, slightly tedious novel, with mesmeric atmosphere and an effective setting. Disregarding the politics it describes (not my department), the South America is presents is both exquisitely beautiful and rife with commonplace sin and disillusion.

Like Bolaño's contrived literary movement in Savage Detectives, you might read a thousand pages more about the bit players of Precisionism before being swayed by their views.

I counted six pages in a row describing one character threading a needle. It really got to me. I recall passages in Beckett minutely cataloging inconsequential actions, but since Saer didn't prepare the reader for this side-quest, it came as an unwelcome surprise. The majority of the pages contain mundane descriptions of one sort or another interspersed with just as many good literary choices. Most of the paragraphs take up 2 full pages, cut through by sparse resuscitation of dialogue. Great lines might pass you by if you aren't paying attention, and when the description isn't fantastic it is just long. The main and only downfall of this book is the perspective. It is difficult to zero in on and understand these literary characters, bewildered as we are by the flood of detail.

La Grande is a twisted look at a fascinating culture and time, but made for an uneven reading experience in my opinion. Admittedly, there are unifying themes, images and motifs (especially wine). The characters are not shallow puppets but fleshed, flawed, damaged individuals. A dense and complex amalgamation of memory and texture, fruitful relationships and a definite, disturbing undercurrent. Read it for the publisher, who is making a valiant effort to fill the gaps in foreign literature available in English. Read it for Saer, who put his impassioned talent to use, reaching for a greatness he might not have fully attained, but certainly approached.

I may tackle more of Saer's books in the future, but I see myself enjoying the rest of Cortazar first. show less