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Conversations (2007)

by César Aira

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MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
936289,076 (3.88)None
Daily conversations in outdoor cafés with cultured friends can help make reality a little more real. Unfortunately, however, during one such conversation, one man spots a gold Rolex watch on a TV soap opera's goatherd. This seemingly small absurdity sets off alarms: strange sensations of deception, distress, and incipient madness. The two men's uneasiness soon becomes a nightmare as the TV adventure advances with a real-life plot -- involving a mutant strain of killer algae -- totake over the world!The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.… (more)
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English (5)  Spanish (1)  All languages (6)
Showing 5 of 5
got absolutely plowed by work so had to blaze thru a cesar to get back in the reading riddims -- reading cesar aira is spiritually the same thing as watching sunday night hbo -- feels good on your brain in the same "unchallenging-and-knows-it's-n0t-challenging-but-your-coworkers-think-it's-challenging-for-idk-what-reason" way

that being said idfw this one so much, boss -- the last book of his i read was artforum which hit the exact kinds of walserian manic notes i was looking for. this attempts to do a variation on that theme, but the dream-framing in this really took me out of the conversation-framing which really took me out of the movie's arc which left me feeling like this was purely an exercise in Cleverness and one thing you should know about me is that (despite my aforementioned fondness for sunday night hbo programming) i am stridently anti-cleverness
( )
  slimeboy | Jan 3, 2023 |
They were not searching for a vein of gold, except as a metaphor. The difference was that they were searching for something that resided in a mind, even if it was also recorded on a piece of paper or as an object.

Conversations excels at pace, at a creeping along, exhaling the languid sighs of the insomniac, sorting through the clues of the day, hoping against all hope to make any sort of sense of it all. Nominally the focus is of a higher state. The protagonist's days are spent in contemplation and philosophical discussion. Parse away the bullshit and it is everyman's sleepless night.

This is my first work by Aira and it is a remarkable effort. It was a masterful stroke to create an invented film to lie at the core of the titular debate.
( )
  jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |
Frames inside of frames. A typical Airan story, which is to say, lovely and perfectly subtle with its humor and absurdity. ( )
  jantz | Jan 1, 2017 |
Conversation considered from every angle imaginable by a narrator who runs over it again and again [as in a tape] when he can't sleep. A Rolex shows up in a movie, sets up a whole absurdist chain of events (or, at least potential events). Considering each and every conceivable aspect, in conversation and then in the tireless lack of light of later reconstruction, our narrator hits tangent after tangent. ( )
  dbsovereign | Jan 26, 2016 |
Reading Aira is always a treat. This is another long, rambling, stuck-in-the-head-of-the-narrator books that feels like you're sitting with the narrator at a cafe listening to him explain the strange things that go on in his head. I just love his crazy books. ( )
  bostonbibliophile | Mar 29, 2015 |
Showing 5 of 5
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
César Airaprimary authorall editionscalculated
Silver, KatherineTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Daily conversations in outdoor cafés with cultured friends can help make reality a little more real. Unfortunately, however, during one such conversation, one man spots a gold Rolex watch on a TV soap opera's goatherd. This seemingly small absurdity sets off alarms: strange sensations of deception, distress, and incipient madness. The two men's uneasiness soon becomes a nightmare as the TV adventure advances with a real-life plot -- involving a mutant strain of killer algae -- totake over the world!The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.

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