SPLALit - Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Literature and Culture

Friday, December 29, 2006

Book Review: The Night Buffalo By Guillermo Arriaga

Manuel loves Tania, his best friend Gregorio’s girlfriend. He is also having recreational sex with Gregorio’s sister. Tania has been sleeping with Manuel for a long time and may or may not love him, but is certainly obsessed with Gregorio. And Gregorio has committed suicide.
What could have been a trite story of youthful passions and betrayal becomes far more haunting and disturbing under Guillermo Arriaga’s pen. Gregorio is insane and brilliant, a doomed genius who manipulates his doctors, friends, and family and is fascinated with death and pain. Alongside, Manuel and Tania thread a delicate razor-edge of sanity, and never succeed in untangling themselves from the maze Gregorio has set for them. As Manuel recognizes, “Gregorio has not finished dying.” Within the scope of this book, he never does.
There are no chapters, no cleanly labeled time frames to ground the reader. Instead, the novel follows Manuel’s frenetic, desperate tumbles through past and present. The short, tense vignettes shade in the relationships between the characters and reveal most of all Manuel, tortured, desperate and tragic. Through his eyes, the women of this novel remain mysterious and merciless, uninvolved in the passionate angst of the men around them. They are an excuse for the actions of the men, not always the true reason.
Arriaga is more famous in the United States for his screenplays: the Academy Award-nominated Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Fans will find the same edgy, urgent pacing and troubled kaleidoscope of characters in The Night Buffalo, the first of three of Arriaga’s novels to be published in the United States.
The flawless English translation is just an added bonus. Alan Page, who has worked with Arriaga on all his screenplays, is a poet. His blend of sympathetic understanding of Spanish linguistic rhythms and taut, meticulous selection of their English counterparts creates a work beyond language barriers. This version will evoke the visceral response of the original text without ever allowing the reader to forget that this is Mexico City in all its tarnished glory. It is a work of art in itself.

Pan's Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Toro

Set in a dark Spanish forest in a very dark time — 1944, when Spain was still in the early stages of the fascist nightmare from which the rest of Europe was painfully starting to awaken — "Pan's Labyrinth" is a political fable in the guise of a fairy tale. Or maybe it's the other way around. Does the moral structure of the children's story, with its clearly marked poles of good and evil, its narrative of dispossession and vindication, illuminate the nature of authoritarian rule? Or does the movie reveal fascism as a terrible fairy tale brought to life?

The brilliance of "Pan's Labyrinth," which is being released worldwide through May, is that its current of imaginative energy runs both ways. If this is magic realism, it is also the work of a real magician. The director, Guillermo del Toro, unapologetically swears allegiance to a pop-fantasy tradition that encompasses comic books, science fiction and horror movies, but fan-boy pastiche is the last thing on his mind. He is also a thoroughgoing cinephile, steeped in classical technique and film history.

Book Review: Ines Of My Soul by Isabel Allende

Allende freely admits her novel is "a work of intuition", that she researched events widely and then "strung them together with a fine thread of imagination". This may be so, but her dramatisation is marred by passages of overwrought, over-ripe prose.

At its worst, the book is strewn with bodice-ripping cliches: bodies burn with impatience, days drag by, Valdivia and his paramour were born to love each other and would do so through all eternity ("Ines of my Soul" is the conquistador's special nickname for his feisty concubine).

More Books of the Year

... or in this case translations of the year. From Words Without Borders selection:

From Esther Allen

An Episode in the Life of a Language Painter
by César Aira
Translated by Chris Andrews
New Directions

"The most extraordinary book in translation of 2006 was César Aira's An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, brilliantly translated by Chris Andrews (and published by New Directions). Aira is a rather unusual writer who composes his short books (more than thirty of them so far) in uninterrupted bursts of inspiration and without looking back or correcting, or so I'm told. As you might expect, such a methodology leads to a highly varied and uneven though always fascinating body of work. In this brief, incandescent book, about an actual incident in the life of the German artist Johann Moritz Rugendas who traveled in Argentina in the early nineteenth century, lightning strikes."

From Francisco Goldman

Last Evenings on Earth
by Roberto Bolaño
Translated by Chris Andrews
New Directions

"Chris Andrews' translation captures Bolaño's unique and elusive voice perfectly."

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Latin American Literature

Book Review: The Heretic by Miguel Delibes

This international bestseller follows the life of a boy born on the day the Protestant reformation began—when Martin Luther nailed his list of ninety-five theses to a church door in Wittenberg—through his last days in prison and burning at the stake. Cipriano Salcedo, the only son of the Salcedo family, is born in Valladolid, Spain, on October 31, 1517, shortly after which his mother dies. Resented from birth by his father, who refers to him as “that little parricide,” Cipriano grows up in the care of his peasant wet-nurse and later is abandoned to the town orphanage. When his father dies, Cipriano takes over the family leather business and invents a rabbit-fur overcoat that becomes extremely popular throughout Spain and the rest of Europe, creating a small fortune for Cipriano. With his entrance to the aristocracy, Cipriano marries the daughter of one of his suppliers, an unpredictable woman famed for her sheep-shearing abilities. As their efforts to produce a child prove fruitless over time, his wife grows despondent and is eventually committed to an insane asylum, where she dies, supposedly dreaming of the hills where she raised sheep as a girl. Cipriano, guilt-ridden over his wife’s unhappy demise, takes refuge in the company of a small sect of Calvinists that has sprung up in Valladolid. When the members of this brotherhood are inevitably caught and tried, casualties of the Spanish inquisition, Cipriano is the only member of the group who stays true to his convictions; in his confession the night before his burning he admits to three sins--not loving his father, bedding his wet-nurse during his teens, and fatal indifference to his mercurial wife. Like all the sainted martyrs, however, he holds fast to his beliefs, despite the fact that his demise will be all the more ignominious and painful unless he recants.

Teolinda Gersão

A short text from Portuguese novelist and short story writer Teolinda Gersão.

On her way home one day, a humble bank clerk happened to see a red fox fur coat in a furrier's shop window. She stopped outside and felt a shiver of pleasure and desire run through her. For this was the coat she had always wanted. There wasn't another one like it, she thought, running her eyes over the other coats hanging from the metal rack or delicately draped over a brocade sofa. It was rare, unique; she had never seen such a color, golden, with a coppery sheen, and so bright it looked as if it were on fire. The shop was closed at the time, as she discovered when, giving in to the impulse to enter, she pushed at the door. She would come back tomorrow, as early as possible, in her lunch break, or during the morning; yes, she would find a pretext to slip out during the morning. That night she slept little and awoke feeling troubled and slightly feverish. She counted the minutes until the shop would open; her eyes wandered from the clock on the wall to her wristwatch and back, while she dealt with various customers. As soon as she could, she found an excuse to pop out and run to the shop, trembling to think that the coat might have been sold. It had not, she learned, been sold; she felt her breath return, her heartbeat ease, felt the blood drain from her face and resume its measured flow.

My First Language by Bernardo Atxaga

A short text from Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga:

For a brief period during my childhood, euskara, or Basque, was, for me, simply the language I used every day. I had no views about it, and I had no concerns as to its future. I called my father and my mother atta and ama, just as I called the rain ebi and the sun eguzki, for that is what euskara was for—naming people and things with the usual words. In that sense, I was no different from any of the other children who had, in the past, been born in my house, Irazune: they too, regardless of whether it was the twentieth century or the nineteenth or the eighteenth, had said atta, ama, ebi, and eguzki when they wanted to refer to father, mother, rain, or sun. It was the same for other children in my village, Asteasu, and for many others throughout the length and breadth of the Basque Country: we were all euskaldunak, that is, "people who possess euskara."

Book Review: The Lonely Hearts Club by Raul Nuñez

It has been said that the past is another country; if so, then Barcelona in the early 80s must be another planet. Dirty and grim, a capsized ship in the port, whores lining the Ramblas, a shantytown of squatter restaurants down on the open-sewer beach. These are my pre-Olympic memories. Then the city got spruced up and the tourists came in hordes. I mention this because this latest reprint of Nuñez’s book makes great mention of Barcelona and its landmarks on the cover blurb, and readers who only know the new, post ’92 city might be baffled by a thing or two, particularly the fact that the street and place names appear in Spanish rather than Catalan as they are now. No matter, as there is really no great reason the book couldn’t be set in any other seedy Mediterranean port. Knowledge or ignorance of Barcelona won’t hinder the enjoyment of this story one iota.

The original (1984) Spanish title was Sinatra because the protagonist, Antonio Castro, looks like the singer. Frankie, as he therefore gets called, is a forty-year-old night porter in one of those clapped-out no-star ‘hotels’ you can still just about find off the Ramblas. His wife has left him and he is lonely, leading a tedious, directionless life. He knows that things must be bad when he gets a severe case of diarrhoea. An answer may lie in an ad in a paper for a lonely hearts club. He joins up and the letters start arriving. Now Frankie is quite a sweetie in his way, generous and wouldn’t hurt a fly - but remember, he is a lonely, frustrated male controlled by macho pride. This brings out a nasty side, revealed at times in comments like: ‘She wasn’t much to look at but who cares’. The letters, however, aren’t just from plain, lonely widows and widowers, nothing that simple. There’s a boozy armed robber fresh from prison wanting to move to Barcelona, a gay barman, and a dwarf who writes lousy poems and is desperate to have a man inside her. Then there are those that Frankie just happens to bump into on and around the Ramblas; for example Natalia, a junkie teenager who believes a ratty doll is her baby. Somehow Frankie gets involved with all of them and it gives him bad dreams. He is himself too emotionally weak to help those who ask and he begins to crack. Then, just when it looks like his luck has changed, disaster strikes. His floundering makes a sad but wonderful human story.

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Raul Nuñez was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Barcelona from 1975 until his death in 1988.

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Latin American Literature

Book Review: Adios Muchachos by Daniel Chavarría

Back in the distant past books and films in translation always seemed to verge on the arty side. This has changed over the last ten years or so with the proliferation of popular fiction in translation. The last two offerings I have read for TBR (both from the Spanish) - Raul Nuñez’s The LonelyHearts Club and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s Dirty Havana Trilogy - are typical of this trendy new wave. These novels are anything but arty; in fact, I doubt there is a word as long as ‘pretentious’ in either one. Adios Muchachos follows in this tradition. For those having a sense of déjà vu this is the UK’s first publishing, and Serpent’s Tail, following the 2001 release in the US, have given the book a graphic-design cover, but made it brighter, more modern and, appropriately, toned down the illustration to a less tarty looking girl. The cover boasts ‘2002 Edgar Award Winner’ for best original paperback; and Martin Cruz Smith’s blurb: ‘Pulp fiction in Castro’s Cuba…sex, scheming, and, well, more sex’. So, we have a mystery-cum-sex book (sic).

The opening line says a lot about the speed, style and content of what follows: "When Alicia decided to become a bicycle hooker, her mother agreed to sell a ring that had been in the family for five generations." Straight in, no messing about, we know mum is going to invest heavily so her daughter can become a prostitute. Not your everyday family setup then. In fact mum cooks fantastic meals for the foreign-tourist-johns that Alicia brings home through a scam with her built-to-break-down bike. It is a good investment and soon the two have a healthy stockpile of refrigerators, air conditioners and so on as Alicia doesn’t really do it for money; she is even insulted if money is offered. No, what she wants is a stinking rich husband who lives anywhere other than Cuba, so to blatantly come across as a hooker is not on.

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And a brief biographic note on Daniel Chavarría.

Writer, professor of Greek and Latin. Daniel Chavarria is considered one of the greatest pen of the Spanish Literature, despite his work was published for the first time on 1978. He lives in Cuba since 1969. As fluent speaker of five languages, he has been serving as German translator for the Cuban Institute of Book and professor of Latin, Greek and Classic Literature at the Havana University among 1975 and 1986.

Author of literary and political papers, movie and TV scripts, he considers himself as a pupil of who is, in his opinion, an ''extraordinary fable narrator'', Alejo Carpentier. ''I consider myself his pupil, he was master of Spanish language during the last century, a figure to whom I devoted ''El Ojo de Cibeles'', my novel awarded in Mexico.

Book Review: The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

In The Buenos Aires Quintet, first published in 1997, we find Pepe in Buenos Aires, bringing that city to life in the way he does Barcelona. Pepe’s been hired by an uncle of his who wants to locate his son, now back in Argentina after years of exile in Spain. What does Pepe know of Argentina? "Tango, the disappeared, Maradona," he flippantly answers, although Pepe is fully aware of Argentina’s history. Once there, he encounters people of around his age who fought against the military take-over in 1976; i.e., the "subversives," most of whom have "disappeared." The nephew he is sent to find, Raúl Tourón, was aligned with these left-wing Perónists, although he worked as a research behavioral scientist and, in fact, made an important discovery in working with rats: that a link exists between animal behavior and the quality of animal feed. Put another way: "he taught how to treat people like rats." The military dictatorship stole his research, putting it to use for their own ends. The following year Raúl’s house was raided and his wife, the lovely, militant activist Belma was shot and their baby daughter taken away. Raúl was taken into custody as was his sister-in-law Alma, but they were later released. Raúl doesn’t learn the facts until much later, but it was his father, already in exile in Spain, who made a deal with the military junta to spare their lives and get them out of prison.

Book Review: An Olympic Death by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

An Olympic Death, which first came out in 1991, is set in a pre-Olympic Barcelona, a city far different from the one it was soon to become, with its newly created beach front and the inevitable arrival of cruise ships, turning it into slick, urban tourist attraction. 1991 was an emotionally wrenching year for many of us who lived here as we watched the city being dug up, torn down and rebuilt. Construction work was everywhere you looked; cranes dominated the landscape. At that time the Barceloneta "chiringuitos" (the tattered but colorful open-air restaurants) dotted the beach. You could sit at a wooden table smack on the sand and enjoy an affordable paella year-round (some even provided wool blankets to keep the customers warm in winter). When those were pulled down that, for me, marked the end of an era. Beach dining shifted to the overly priced Olympic Port, which doesn’t even provide a view of the sea in most cases. A hastily and ill-conceived Olympic Village was constructed which looked like standard-issue welfare housing (with apartments selling for extraordinary prices) that within a few years was looking run down. The "community" that was to have grown around this area never developed and is now surrounded by much dead space. A superfluous airport-like mall went up at the other end of the port (trendy bars, including one of the city’s many new Irish bars, and a miniature golf course are located on its terrace rooftop; a McDonald’s and a Ben and Jerry’s sit below.)

Book Review: Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piñol

Already translated into fifteen languages, Cold Skin (originally titled La pell freda) won the Ojo Critico Narrativa prize on its original publication in Catalan in 2002, an amazing feat for anthropologist Albert Sánchez Piñol, born in Barcelona in 1965, who debuted with this darkly beautiful novel. Consider a discrete synopsis:

A young, nameless narrator arrives by ship sometime after World War I at a remote island somewhere in the south Atlantic near the Antarctic Circle. It is there—far away from the normal shipping lanes, apparently more than six hundred leagues from the nearest large landmass—that he is to remain alone for a year. He will take on the unlikely job at this desolate outpost as the weather official for a company that has an incomprehensible need for such a person.