Short Stories

Short Story “Proof of Innocence” by Andrés Neuman in English at Contemporary Argentine Writers

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Contemporary Argentine Writers has a translated short story from Andrés Neuman, Proof of Innocence. It is a funny story and shows a different style of writing for those of you who’ve only read his novel, The Traveler of the Century.

Yes. I like being interrogated by the police. We all need for them to verify our innocence, to confirm that we have paid our dues and can move along. That’s why I love feeling like I’m beyond reproach and demonstrating how well-mannered I am, convincing them that it wasn’t me.

Spanish Writer Javier Tomeo Has Died

~ bythefirelight

The Spanish author Javier Tomeo has died. Among other things, he wrote many short stories, something that caught my eye when his complete stories was recently published. I haven’t had a chance to read him yet, but he sounds interesting, if very fantastical. The notice from El Pais:

La mujer tuerta a la que su marido le recrimina que se ponga el ojo de cristal, el despertador que funciona como un cangrejo, el niño de las dos cabezas y esa bestial unión del bien y el mal que era el gallitigre, cruce del felino enamorado del ave, entre otras muchas criaturas aberrantes, están desde ayer huérfanos después de que el corpacho de su padre, Javier Tomeo, no pudiera resistir más las múltiples complicaciones de una diabetes que en los últimos meses le llevaban a dormir mal y a moverse “como un caracol” (de nuevo su amado mundo animal) y falleciera por una grave infección en el hospital Sagrado Corazón de Barcelona, a los 80 años.

Esos seres que poblaron una de las obras más inclasificables del último medio siglo de las letras españolas no surgieron de la infancia de ese niño nacido en el pueblo oscense de Quicena en 1932. Entonces solo había lecturas de Verne y Salgari, aunque en la genética debía haber algo de la tierra. “Soy aragonés, no puedo escribir más que negro y Buñuel es mi Dios; quizá tuvo la culpa la pintura de Goya”, se parapetaba el escritor. Luego, al poco tras un ligero silencio y una mirada más allá del interlocutor, la confesión: “En parte, mis personajes son nacidos de mis carencias”.

I highly recommend the interview he gave last year. It gives good insight into the man:

P. ¿De dónde sale, por ejemplo, su celebrado gallitigre?

R. Pues de cuando un tigre se enamora de una gallina. Cuando sean posibles los gallitigres, el mundo vivirá una edad de oro. Un gallitigre no es algo negativo, es la unión del bien y el mal, lo mejor del mundo; cada ser extraño mío significa una cosa; no sé, pregúnteme: el niño de las dos cabezas, pues los dos países que hay en este… Todos son fruto de cuando dejo volar totalmente la imaginación y entonces me salen esos hombres desmesurados de muchos ojos, dos y tres cabezas —pero nunca de dos penes, curioso—, mujeres con glándulas mamarias múltiples… Sí, reflejo más hombres porque les conozco más. Mis monstruos sirven para enseñar, para mostrar el camino equivocado o sus resultados.

P. ¿Podemos emparentarlo con la eclosión zombi de hoy?

R. Los zombis son vampiros descafeinados, tonterías americanas como el kétchup… No leo nada de eso.

And there is a great review from Fernando Valls, one of the most knowledgeable writers on the short story, of his complete stories.

No será fácil encontrar en el sistema literario español a alguien menos afectado que Javier Tomeo por todo el boato que el Romanticismo proporcionó a los artistas. Tampoco será sencillo dar con alguien menos al tanto de la parafernalia del mundo cultural. Pero es probable que estos desapegos hayan condicionado la recepción de su obra, desde que empezó a ser reconocido tras la aparición de su novela El castillo de la carta cifrada (1979).

Augusto Monterroso Profiled at La Jornada

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La Jornada has a brief reflection on the importance of Augusto Monterroso, the godfather of the micro story in Spanish.

Augusto Monterroso le debemos tres libros esenciales para entender la historia de las formas breves, Obras completas (y otros cuentos) (1959), La oveja negra y demás fábulas (1969) y Movimiento perpetuo (1972). Pero la obra del guatemalteco se entiende dentro de una tradición que pasa por Julio Torri, Alfonso Reyes y Juan José Arreola. Para los españoles, su pariente más cercano sería el Max Aub de los Crímenes ejemplares. Toda esta espléndida literatura llegó muy tarde a España, muy pendiente casi en exclusiva de los autores del llamado Boom, aunque en 2000 se le concediera el Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras. Las primeras ediciones españolas de Monterroso datan del inicio de los ochenta en la prestigiosa Seix Barral. Después, sus libros encontraron acogida en otras casas editoriales no menos significativas, como Alfaguara, Anagrama, Muchnik y Alianza, o en colecciones de clásicos como Cátedra. Pero estos saltos, de una editorial a otra, no favorecieron la difusión de su obra. En cambio, los géneros que cultivó, el cuento y el microrrelato, el aforismo y la fábula, han gozado de gran predicamento también entre nosotros. Por ejemplo, las fábulas las han cultivado también con fortuna, por sólo citar dos nombres relevantes, Juan Benet y Luis Goytisolo, y han sido antologadas y estudiadas por Enrique Turpin, en su obra Fábula rasa (Alfaguara).

New Collection of Stories from Spanish Writer Eloy Tizón to Be Published

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Eloy Tizon one of the main points of reference for the modern Spanish short story will be publishing a new collection of short stories. Paginas de Espuma will be the publisher. This is good news. I was quite impressed with Parparados which I covered in my article at the Quarterly Conversation. I’m looking forward to reading it when it comes out. El Cultural has an interesting article about the struggles he has had finishing the book.

Técnicas de iluminación es un libro de relatos cuya fuente de inspiración fueron los vagabundeos de Robert Walser, “su manera de mirar, desinteresada y precisa”, explica Tizón, a quien también le resultó esencial “la necesidad de salvaguardar determinados instantes, para que no perezcan del todo. Situaciones que me hacen feliz o desgraciado o me punzan. Siempre procuro que no haya un tono uniforme, sino una mezcla: humor, poesía, drama… Cuando considero que todos los ingredientes están equilibrados, el libro se cierra solo. Pero antes hay que alcanzar ese estado”.

El proceso ha sido largo, “en parte por mi lentitud mental, y en parte por las circunstancias”, insiste. No quiere entrar en detalles, pero estos siete años ha llegado incluso a pensar “que no volvería a publicar más”. El desaliento no le hizo abandonar su disciplina, e intentó salvaguardar espacios (“normalmente por la mañana, a primera hora, con la mente fresca y un café”) en los que se sentaba frente al ordenador, “a ver qué pasaba”, a pesar de saber mejor que nadie que “la escritura y la vida cotidiana son difícilmente compatibles. Aun así , lo intento. No siempre escribo, pero mantengo la continuidad: releo, corrijo, suprimo, dudo. A base de esas tozudeces obsesivas, terminan saliendo los libros.”

Short Story Writer Juan Eduardo Zúñiga Profiled at Lecturas Sumergidas

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The fascinating site Lecturas Sumergidas has an interesting profile and review of Juan Eduardo Zúñiga and his book, Misterios de las noches y los días. Zúñiga is little known in the English speaking world but his stories are a real revelation since I’ve started reading them. He is a master of the sentence, for one thing, and his work is impressionistic and mines memory with complete skill. If you can read Spanish I would encourage you to seek him out.

¿Recuerdan alguno de esos cuentos en los que se relata la fascinación de un grupo de niños escuchando los relatos contados por su abuela una fría tarde de invierno ante el fuego de la chimenea? No sé porqué esta imagen me ha acompañado durante todo el tiempo -feliz- que ha durado la lectura de “Misterios de las noches y los días”, de Juan Eduardo Zúñiga. Ha sido tan estimulante, tan cálida, que probé a ir más allá, a emular las sensaciones de una experiencia similar. Reuní a mi pequeña familia en el sofá del salón y leí tres de los relatos en voz alta. El silencio fue total y el ambiente se llenó de ecos, de sugerencias, de misterios, de luz. Mi hijo de 11 años, que ya anda interesado en Poe y otros escritores de terror, me regaló esos ojos inmensos, abiertos a la fantasía, que tanto me gustan, e hizo que le prometiera que habría más sesiones como esa [desde aquí les invito a que pongan en práctica un plan así. No puede resultar más económico y garantiza aventuras tan fabulosas que ninguna agencia de viajes podría incluirlas en sus ofertas turísticas].

La voz de Zúñiga, las atmósferas extrañas de estos relatos que el autor hubiera preferido que se titularan “Alucinaciones”, según me contó en un encuentro reciente, resultan elementos idóneos para llevar a cabo una propuesta -juego, encuentro, cita- de estas características. La brevedad de las narraciones, el estilo diáfano, el tono evocador, la elección de mundos lejanos, de ciudades nubosas, tan del Norte, contribuyen a ello. Dicho esto, volvamos al sendero inicial, la lectura de este conjunto de relatos de quien es uno de los escritores más secretos y más interesantes del actual panorama de la literatura en español. Un autor al que llevo siguiendo mucho tiempo y a quien admiro como escritor y como persona.

New Collection of Ana María Shua Short Stories, Contra el tiempo, Edited by Samanta Schweblin

~ bythefirelight

Páginas de Espuma recently published a collection of short stories from the Argentine writer Ana María Shua. What caught my interest is Samanta Schweblin, one of the short story writers I mention on this blog with a certain frequency is the editor. The collection is the third in the Vivir del Cuento series from Páginas de Espuma. The series title means both to live by telling stories, but also to be lair or teller of tall tales. I’m quite interested and look forward to reading Schweblin’s introduction. You can read it here (pdf). If you are interested you can also listen to an interview with the two of them of Spanish radio. And read an interview in El Pais:

A través del email y por mediación de Vivir del cuento, la colección que ideó su editor Juan Casamayor, estas dos cuentistas convinieron una antología que “permite ver todos los colores de Shua”, afirma Shweblin. El resultado es una selección de representantes de los narradores en los que se traduce Shua, sus personajes cotidianos que al girar la esquina se transmutan en inquietud, y la mezcla de humor –“del negro”, adjetivan- y mortalidad que estiliza su narrativa. “Este humor es bastante difícil de lograr, camina en una cornisa muy delicada, siempre está al límite”, opina la joven antóloga. “Este mundo me parece un lugar muy absurdo, loco, raro y disparatado”, continúa Shua. “Los seres humanos tratamos de traducirlo a la racionalidad. Hay algo falso en creernos que todo lo podemos entender desde la lógica. En esa conciencia del disparate es por donde yo encuentro mi humor”.

And most importantly you can read the first story of the collection, Como una buena madre, at Culturamas. And finally, there is a long and in depth interview at Lecturas Sumergidas:

– ¿Estás convencida de que con la felicidad no se puede construir un relato de ficción? Muchas veces tus historias empiezan de un modo muy placentero, muy luminoso, pero siempre hay algo que las tuerce, que las conduce hacia lo oscuro, por decirlo de algún modo.

– Sí. Estoy convencida de que no se puede escribir desde la felicidad. No la encuentro narrativa. La felicidad es puntual, no tiene desarrollo en el tiempo. Con ella se puede construir un hermoso poema lírico, pero en un relato siempre ha de pasar algo malo. Si no es así nos quedamos sin cuento (risas).

– Otra cosa que te gusta mucho es jugar al contraste, ya sea de planos temporales (el pasado y el presente vistos a través de la mirada de una persona que recuerda, que rememora instantes vividos), ya sea a través de los estados de ánimo enfrentados que buscas provocar en el lector: La risa que se congela ante situaciones que estremecen, que llegan a poner los pelos de punta…

– Aquí hay dos preguntas en una. Por una parte, respecto a lo primero que se plantea, creo que los seres humanos estamos hechos de recuerdos. La memoria nos constituye, y el recordar, el vivir simultáneamente en varios tiempos, es una característica tan humana como saber que alguna vez vamos a morir. Sí, evidentemente, es un registro que me gusta mucho, aunque no sea muy consciente de ello cuando me pongo a escribir. En cuanto a lo de la conjunción entre humor y horror, resulta que para mí están absolutamente entrelazados. Las circunstancias más terribles pueden hacernos reír en un determinado momento. El humor es, además, una característica muy mía, forma parte de mi personalidad. No puedo escribir sin humor y al mismo tiempo tengo una suerte de placer infantil en relatar acontecimientos truculentos (carcajadas). Me gusta que a mis personajes les sucedan cosas tremendas, espectaculares. Como lectora admiro muchísimo a los autores que crean climas sutiles a partir de una situación en la que no pasa prácticamente nada. Arrancan de ahí y son  capaces de montar catedrales, término que nos hace recordar a Carver. Pero cuando yo me pongo a escribir prefiero, sin duda alguna, los acontecimientos truculentos, las escenas terribles, las situaciones muy violentas. Y, al mismo tiempo, todo eso lo puedo contar con un cierto humor, porque lo veo así. En la peor situación encuentro siempre algo con lo que reírme.

El último libro de Sergi Pámies (Sergi Pámies’ Last Book) by Sergi Pámies – A Review

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El último libro de Sergi Pámies (Sergi Pámies’ Last Book)
Version del autor
Sergi Pámies
Anagrama, 2000, pg 139

Sergi Pámies is a Catalan short story writer, novelist and journalist whose work has been widely translated in Europe but has yet to have a collection come out in English yet. He’s probably as well known in Spain and Cataluña for his essays in La Vanguardia, a Spanish language daily in Barcelona. El último libro de Sergi Pámies is the Spanish translation of L’últim llibre de Sergi Pámies, originally written in Catalan and apparently translated by the author. (Typically I don’t read translations into Spanish, but this is the only way to get access to his books, which I’ve been interested in reading every since I saw an interview with him in 2010.)

Pámies work does have some similarities to the Catalan author Quim Monzo in that there is a humor, always a little dark, and an interest in parable like stories that push the characters to desperate paradoxes. While Pámies tends towards the fantastical, the collection opens with the wrenching El precio. One breakfast a son endures his father’s assault of tired and over used sayings all of which culminates in the phrase, everyone has his price. Later when the son calls his father to check on how he is, the son hears the father talking to his wife who has died years before. The son realizes as he is surrounded by the people passing through the train station living seemingly normal lives, that his price is falling and that his next step, that of playing along with his father, diminishes his price. It is an astute story, whose brevity captures the changing roles of father and son: from the adversarial when the son was young and striking out on his own and the father his own powerful figure; to that of the caretaker relationship that requires him to become something different, something that goes against his nature and diminishes his self worth.

La máquina de hacer cosquillas also has the same touch of melancholy loss as a father returns to the same book store he has frequented with his young daughter. He hopes to get in and buy something quickly without the old clerk noticing him. He fails and she sees him. Her greeting is warm, and her gift of the sweet for the girl would normally be accepted with happily, but it only brings back the memories of a tragedy and the quick journey to the little book shop is anything but quick.

In a funnier vein is El océano Pacifico which makes up half the book. It follows “the man” who has bought a new Audi A6 and discovers that every time he plays a CD in it the musician dies shortly after. First there is Barbara, then Stephan Grapelli, and finally Sonny Bono. He flees to Paris for the Christmas break to avoid the celebrations at home, noting

Una corona de muérdago convierte la puerta en una especie de atud en posición vertical

A crown of mistletoe made the door into a kind of vertical coffin.

Paris is not a particularly festive city for him. It is a gray city of mourning and as he walks the streets and endures the rain Pámies turns Paris into one of those dark places of noir or French new wave where only isolation and darkness exist. Taking the metro he sees a street musician playing a clarinet. She is beautiful and he falls in love with her enough that he buys her CD. At his hotel he opens the case with trepidation, afraid his curse will kill her, but it’s empty. He searches through every metro station looking for her and when he finds her, they make a bargain. If she can survive 12 hours after playing her CD, he will give her 10,000 franks. She takes the offer and the man and the clarinetist play a game of waiting, she not trusting him, he limiting his desires for a woman he desperately wants but cannot have and is afraid he will kill. Ultimately, when he is returning home he takes pride in his ability to fall out of love. It was something, like Paris, that was a passing infatuation. What does it say though, that everything he loves dies (although the fate of the clarinetist is left open). Instead we are left with the death of Carl Perkins. It is a strange tale whose insights about Paris are colored with a loneliness and quiet desperation that is chilling and comedic.

Perhaps in his most fantastical and paradoxical, a man who can see into the near future sees himself in a hospital and has no idea how sick he is or what will happen. Even though he has the power to see into the future, he is powerless to see beyond the room. What he finds himself wanting to know is what will he know when he is actually in that moment in the hospital. Even for those with the power to see the future, the future is not enough. He needs to be in the future to see the future. It is his most Borgesian story whose brief pages belie a paradox.

Sergi Pámies’ work is an excellent mix of the satirical, fantastical, and humorous, bridging social satire, to political cometary, to family stories of loss. An astute observer, especially in his descriptions of Paris, his stories are filled with observations on modern life. For those interested in Catalan literature, perhaps one day he will be translated.

Short Story “Natalia Franz” by Edgardo Cozarinsky at Contemporary Argentine Writers

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Contemporary Argentine Writers has a short story from the Argentine writer, Edgardo Cozarinsky, called Natalia Franz. It’s worth a read:

I had been observing her for some time. Openly at first, not hiding my fascination with her face, which appeared to be designed by scalpel. Later, my glances were furtive; I was afraid that my staring would make her uncomfortable, although she seemed not to notice.

When she was invited out on the dance floor, however, I felt free to unabashedly admire her tall, slender figure, the elegant casualness of her movements, the grace with which she held her head high on a delicate neck that was revealed and then concealed by her ash-blond hair as it bobbed to the rhythm of the music. But it was her face, barely corrected with makeup, that caught my eye; there were traces of where the artificial merged with the monstrous, resulting unexpectedly in a sort of Medusa-like beauty (as Praz would put it): sunken eyes that seemed to have awakened in skin other than the one they were born in; cheekbones and arches over the eyebrows that were overly pronounced, as if sculpted from non-malleable material; full but swollen-looking lips that lacked the sensuality that plastic surgery promises.

Airships by Barry Hannah – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Airships
Barry Hannah
Grove Press, (Original publishing date) 1978, pg 209

Barry Hannah was a master of a certain style of American short story, one that prizes a discontinuity of humor and the absurd over more common modes of the perfectly wrought short story as in his contemporaries, such as Carver. Certainly there is an echo of an America that you can find in Carver, but for Hannah every story is an opportunity for a joke or a black humor that is suspicious of everything. In Hannah you seldom find a character that you can, in that most tiresome of literary criteria, relate to, nor do they seem to live in a world that you might recognize. What you see are stories that live at a distance from everyday experience, and form, instead,  fables and allegories of hubris and overreach that collapse in surreal plots and finds characters performing outrageous acts. At times it is funny, but there is also a distance in the stories that once the joke is understood leaves them flat, the reader saying, “oh, I get it.” The danger with absurd humor is that distancing, a phenomenon where there are no stakes left for the reader but a kind of smugness. This is not a case for a moralistic fiction, but the humor in Hannah has an attitude that just laughs without really providing much ambiguity.

Despite these faults, his stories are so well written with their American literary vernacular that passages of his work are a marvel to read. He can capture an image of a life in a brief paragraph that makes the whole story seem alive. Take this example from Deaf and Dumb

She had a certain smile that would have bought her the world had the avenue of regard been wide enough for her. They loved it at the Bargain Barn. But the town was one where beauty walked the walks as a matter of course, and her smile was soon forgotten by clerk and hurried lecher on the oily parking lot. She never had any talent for gay chatter. She could only talk in brief phrases close on the truth. How much is this? Is this washable? This won’t do, it’s ugly.

It perfectly captures a down on her luck woman who doesn’t have much luck with men. I should mention Deaf and Dumb is one of the few stories that doesn’t feel completely jokey. There is a real sense of a human inhabiting that woman. Even when a story fails to be alive, Hannah can still create paragraphs like those that can make one think this story is going to dazzle. Unfortunately, all too often a story will turn into something like Quo Vidas, Smut. For me this was the worst story of the bunch, one that meandered amongst a fugitive tale, then to a kind of rural pastoral, to surreal when a jet takes off from a farm field, ultimately finish with sex. It is here with when his surrealism fails, and his literary jokes, referencing other stories that have touched all these themes seriously, fall flat.

One of Hannah’s preoccupations is the Civil War, and more specifically, Jeb Stuart, the dashing carvery general and martyr to the cause. Something about Stuart didn’t sit right with Hannah and in one story he has a character take credit for killing the General. The irony here is the man who killed him was first a confederate soldier who loved to kill and later, when he joins the Union side, does he kill him, finding as he looks back as an old veteran that the Confederate veterans don’t want to have anything to do with him. It is an interesting story because, one, it deflates one of the sacred generals of the south, and, two, it plays with the idea of legend. As the veteran tries to take claim for the killing it could well have been him, but he finds you can’t be the hero to both sides. And if it was him, that truly was brother on brother in a way that doesn’t fit the sanctified cliches of a hundred year-old war. In Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed, a gay soldier relates his encounter with Stuart one night. He tries to proposition him, which the general refuses, but does not otherwise notice. At the same time there is a slave who won’t shake the soldier’s hand, Stuart chastises him then hugs him as if they were lovers. Again, the general, the Christian defender of the Confederacy is satirized by treating a slave as some sort of equal and lover.

One of the better stories is Testimony of Pilot. Testimony of Pilot is a Vietnam era piece that seems cold, narrating the life story of two friends, one who joins the air force and the other, the narrator, who lives his life as an ex drummer gone deaf from too much rock and roll. Between them is a woman Lillian, a stewardess. The pilot is cold and lives his life fr the war participating in mission after mission. He won’t even kiss Lillian when he lands at an airfield just to see her (a scene that is straight out of a movie). None of them come to a good end and there is no reason for it, either. As is common in Hannah, the narrative isn’t the most important element. He works his stories to serve the humor, which often doesn’t leave room for a more character based reason. Character driven stories are not required, but when Lillian dies in a crash it is off handed, as if the fun is showing how pointless these lives have been. In small doses it works to great effect, but in a collection full of these kind of elements, it can get a little off putting.

Barry Hannah was certainly a good writer and I’m curious to see what stories published a decade later, perhaps in the 80s, would be like. The humor, often rooted in a 70s sensibility, is just too unfunny to make this collection a stand out. There are great elements to it, but the flaws just overwhelm them.

The Micro Short Story in Spanish – A New Collection and an Overview

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El Pais has an overview of a new collection of micro short stories in Spanish, edited by Fernando Valls whose blog La Nave de los Locos is a must if you are interested in the Spanish language short story, and published by Menoscuarto, called Mar de pirañas (Sea of Piranas).

Mar de pirañas (Menos cuarto) reúne bajo mando de Fernando Valls nuevos y viejos nombres del microrrelato en español. Sin pretensiones de teorizar sobre el estado de la cuestión, los textos van tramando la cartografía de un género conciso en el lenguaje, radicalizado en el uso de la elipsis, constreñido en el espacio físico, envuelto por una muralla de aire por donde discurre la evocación y lo inesperado. Una compilación que demuestra que la brevedad no tiene por qué estar unida a la celeridad de estos tiempos. “El tope de edad está en 1960”, describe Valls su selección de escritores. “He querido excluir a los más consagrados como Luis Mateo Díez y mezclar a autores que no lo cultivan habitualmente como Almudena Grandes o Eloy Tizón, que solo han escrito uno o dos”.

Inspirada en una pieza de Ana María Shua, escritora argentina, madre hispana del microrrelato con permiso del dinosaurio de Augusto Monterroso, las piezas se organizan en un ejercicio casi de arte marcial: pulir, pulir y pulir. “El género condiciona el tipo de historia, no se desarrolla la psicología de los personajes, ni siquiera tienen nombres la mayoría de las veces”, apunta el compilador. “Hay mucho simbolismo, la metáfora se multiplica al no poder explicar las cosas, hay que afinar y la manera más potente es decir una cosa y que el lector entienda otra”, apostilla el escritor Rubén Abella, uno de los participantes en Mar de pirañas.

In addition, there is an article  (and a blog post) where a few authors pick their favorite micro stories.

Ana María Shua elige Los dos reyes y los dos laberintos, de Jorge Luis Borges.

Andrés Neuman, Metamorfosis, de Juan José Arreola.

Fernando Iwasaki, Continuidad de los parques, de Julio Cortázar.

Clara Obligado, Le régret D´Héraclite, de Borges.

Te invitamos a que nos digas cuál es el tuyo, el microrrelato que más te gusta y que lo compartas en la sección de comentarios de este post.

 

Andrés Neuman on the Guatemalan Writer Augusto Monterroso

~ bythefirelight

A couple interesting articles about the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso appeared in El Pais recently. One is from a favorite of the blog, Andrés Neuman, who gives a good account of how Monterroso, in the midst of the Boom, went in completely the opposite direction, eschewing the nation building novels and looking towards the humorous short stories.

Augusto Monterroso encarna cierto tipo de intelectual latinoamericano en las antípodas del boom, cuya ambición no persigue el proyecto total ni las esencias nacionales, sino el atentado contra el tótem y la discreción irónica. A dicha estirpe, tan desertora del canon como fronteriza en lo estético, pertenecen también Alejandro Rossi, Marco Denevi o Rodolfo Wilcock. Quizá no casualmente, en la obra de estos cuatro autores, humor e inteligencia son dos formas de leer entre líneas. A caballo entre el ensayismo bonsái y la micronarrativa, todo texto de Monterroso contiene un género y su parodia. Los motivos de esa confrontación interna tienen que ver sin duda con una poética, pero también con una actitud. A diferencia de quienes consideran que un ceño fruncido es signo de genialidad, Monterroso (Tegucigalpa, 21 de diciembre de 1921 – Ciudad de México, 7 de febrero de 2003) no aspiraba a exhibir su conocimiento, sino a desconfiar de él.

The second from El Pais comes from Javier Rodríguez Marcos‘ blog Letra Pequeña. A new collection of his stories has come out and he sounds interesting. A nice dosage of humor that turns ideas around and is more than just jokes.

a algo tenían que servir los aniversarios: vuelve Augusto Monterroso. El escritor guatemalteco exiliado en México murió, con 81 años, en febrero de 2003 y Debolsillo publica ahora El Paraíso imperfecto, una “antología tímida” preparada por Carlos Robles Lucena. La nota de prensa que acompaña el libro utiliza las expresiones “deliciosa antología” y “célebre autor”, y no es difícil imaginarse al célebre autor de la deliciosa antología sonriéndose ante tales epítetos. Todo adjetivo supone un criterio de clasificación y a Monterroso le gustaban las clasificaciones, no en vano decía que toda su obra era una variación sobre la de Borges. Cuando en el libro de entrevistas Viaje al centro de la fábula le preguntaron “¿Qué sensación te produce ser considerado o designado, generalmente, como un humorista?” Monterroso respondió: “Agradable, no por lo de humorista, sino por el hecho de ser clasificado. Me encanta el orden”. Basta echar un vistazo a las cinco toneladas de documentos que atesora su archivo –actualmente en la universidad de Oviedo- para certificarlo.

If you can read Spanish I suggest you read his short story El eclipse. It has a great twist on the westerner, the savage and the eclipse type stories that have shown up in more than a few books and movies.

A Few More Memorials About Medardo Fraile

~ bythefirelight

Over the week several more interesting memorials for Medardo Fraile have come out that are worth reading.

The show Ojo Critico has a memorial.

Jose Maria Merino wrote a quick memorial.

Fernando Valls has one of the more interesting ones.

Juan Ángel Juristo

And finally one from Miguel Angel Munoz.

Gabriela nada – Short Story from Andrés Neuman at Pagina 12

~ bythefirelight

Pagina 12 has a short story from Andrés Neuman called Gabriela nada. Don’t miss the little piece El cuento por su autor.

¿Quién se anima a nadar hasta El Cerrito?, preguntó Gabriela con cara de, no sé, de algo mojado y muy luminoso. Me imagino una galletita del tamaño del sol, una galletita enorme hundiéndose en el mar. Un poco de eso tenía cara Gabriela cuando nos lo preguntó.

¿Nadie se anima?, insistió ella, pero ya no puedo decir qué cara puso porque la vista se me fue más abajo. Su traje de baño era verde, verde como, no sé, ahora no se me ocurre ningún ejemplo. Era un verde clarito y la pieza de arriba pinchaba un poco por el centro. Gabriela siempre se reía de nosotros. Y tenía derecho, porque nos llevaba dos años o a lo mejor tres, era casi una mujer y nosotros, bueno, nosotros le mirábamos la pieza de arriba del traje de baño. Valía la pena que ella se riese de nosotros, porque sus hombros subían y bajaban y la tela verde clarita se le movía también por adentro.

Spanish Short Story Writer Medardo Fraile Has Died

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

The Spanish short story writer Medardo Fraile (1925-2013) has died. While not known well in English, he is considered one of the best of his generation, which included Aldecoa, Martín Gaite, Sánchez Ferlosio, Matute, and Fernández Santos. The writers of later generations such as Navarro, Tizón, Sáez de Ibarra have recognized his work, which is realistic than his contemporaries, as masterful. A few of his stories have been translated in English and In August Pushkin Press is going to bring out a translation of Cuentos de verdad. 

There are several obituaries and remberances at El Pais but the best I’ve read is from Andres Neuman who notes that he always remembers a phrase of Fraile’s:

«La estuvo mirando tres minutos; dos de ellos los dedicó a la nariz»

He watched her for 3 minutes; two of them dedicated to her nose.

From El Pais:

Era metafórico y minucioso, como en sus cuentos; y narraba lo que pasó en la guerra, más de setenta años después, con el mismo vigor con que hubiera contado el presente. Creía que el cuento era “un puñetazo lleno de realidad posible”, y a aquel tiempo le concedía una vigencia insoslayable, por eso hablaba de lo que pasó entonces como si estuviera narrando oralmente lo que quizá entonces se contó a sí mismo, mientras paseaba, bajo el ruido de las bombas, por estos escenarios entonces devastados.

Contaba sin pudor su vida, y hablaba con libertad de amigos y de adversarios, a los que zahería en voz baja; su recuerdo más emocionado, en las memorias y en persona, era para Ignacio Aldecoa, prematuramente fallecido en 1969, a los 44 años. Aldecoa era el jefe de filas de la generación de Medardo, “era el hermano mayor”. Evocando esa muerte, Fraile, que supo la noticia por casualidad en su exilio escocés, dijo que aquel compañero era sin duda un escritor de una voz “inconfundible, ejemplar”, el mejor de su tiempo, y mientras lo iba diciendo de sus ojos nítidamente azules fueron brotando unas lágrimas que al fin le quebraron la voz.

Nunca se fue del todo de España, o nunca estuvo del todo en Escocia. Cuando venía a Madrid llamaba a sus amigos, a sus editores, explicaba su nostalgia en función del frío que pasaba en Glasgow, pero en realidad sintió que aquella larga estancia fuera de su país había desnaturalizado el conocimiento que él mismo, y sus estudiosos y animadores —José María Merino, Ángel Zapata, Eloy Tizón…—, creía que merecía su producción literaria. Le pregunté por qué seguía viviendo allí, tan frío y tan lejos. “Pues ni yo mismo lo sé”. Dio clases en la Universidad de Strathclyde, desde los años setenta. Allí se casó, allí nació su hija. Explicando por qué seguía en Escocia dijo: “Allí estoy, recordando; yo vivo en Escocia, pero lo único que hago allí es recordar España”.

A few other articles and interviews from El Pais:

Short Story Black Holes by Samanta Schweblin up at Contemporary Argentine Writers

~ bythefirelight

Dario at Contemporary Argentine Writers has published a translation of Samanta Schweblin’s Black Holes from her collection El Núcleo del Disturbio.

Dr. Ottone halts in the corridor and begins to balance on the balls of his feet, very slowly at first, with his eyes fixed on one of the hospital’s black and white floor tiles, and so Dr. Ottone is thinking. Then he makes up his mind, returns to his office, switches on the lights, leaves his things on the couch and rummages through the papers on his desk until he finds Mrs. Fritchs’ file, and so Dr. Ottone is preoccupied with a certain case and has determined to resolve it, to find an answer or, at the very least, to refer the patient to another doctor, for instance, Dr. Messina. He opens the file, looks for a specific page, finds it and reads: “… Black holes. Do you understand what I’m saying? Like, you’re here, and then suddenly you’re at home, in bed, with your pajamas on, and you know for certain that you haven’t locked up the office or turned off the lights or traveled the distance you had to travel to get home; what’s more, you haven’t even seen me off. So, how could you possibly find yourself in bed with your pj’s on? Well, that’s an empty space, a black hole is what I say, zero hour, whatever you want to call it. What else could it be? …” 

 

8 Untranslated Spanish Authors at Words Without Borders

~ bythefirelight
Words Without Borders has a great edition this month featuring 8 untranslated Spanish authors. This is an exciting edition because it features one of my favorites, Cristina Fernández Cubas. It has several I don’t know well, but Juan Eduardo Zúñiga is someone I’ve been looking forward to for some time and will be reading this year. I think they missed a few which you can read about here.
This month we present poetry and prose by twelve Spanish masters whose dazzling work has been unavailable to the English-language world. Exploring scenes ranging from the devastating Madrid subway bombing to the idyllic coastline of Greece, in rhapsodic poetry and anguished prose, these writers provide new insight into Spanish literature today. Read Fernando Aramburu, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Miquel de Palol, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Antonio Gamoneda, Pere Gimferrer, Berta Vias Mahou, César Antonio Molina, Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas, Olvido Garcia Valdés, Pedro Zarraluki, and Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, and discover the breadth and depth of contemporary Spanish writing. This issue is part of the SPAIN arts & culture program and was made possible thanks to a charitable contribution from the Spain-USA Foundation. We thank the Foundation for its generous support, and our guest editors, Javier Aparicio, Aurelio Major, and Mercedes Monmany, for their excellent work in selecting the authors and pieces presented here.

Elsewhere, we present writing from Syria, as Zakariya Tamer tells tales of djinns and talking walls, Abdelkader al-Hosni reflects on friendship, Golan Haji considers magic and loss, and Lukman Derky mourns a history of war.

Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling – a Review / Reflection

~ bythefirelight

9780141442396HPlain Tales from the Hills
Rudyard Kipling
Introduction Edited with an introduction by Kaori Nagai
Penguin Classics, 2011, pg 292

I wanted to know, is Kipling readable? Is there something more to him than jungle stories or a colonial apologies? And what is he like as a craftsman? He was immensely popular once,  but that doesn’t necessarily make him an interesting writer. More than enough junk has climbed the best seller lists and has long been forgotten for good reason.  However, as certain fiction styles have ossified into best practices, it is good to look back and see the approaches writers of other days used. His first collection of short stories Plain Tales from the Hills seemed like a good choice for two reasons: it was published early in his career and would show him possibly less guarded; and two, the stories are less well know and wouldn’t merge with the various film versions of his works I’ve seen over the years. And, of course, I like short stories.

Taking these issues one by one. The issues with colonialism are certainly there and it is worth noting that the stories are rarely about Indians. The world of these stories are of the civil servants who exhibit all the concerns of late Victorians: class, social standing, reputation, and money. When Indians appear it is often in a transgressive story where the British have entered into a world they don’t belong, one that is indecipherable to the westerner. He returns twice to the character of a police officer who has learned the ways of the Indian under class, knows how to disguise himself and speak in their slang. He, though, is looked at as a freak who needs civilizing, in other words, needs to get married to change his ways. What we never see is exactly what he does amongst the people he is so capable of being with. Kipling appears to understand from a distance what life is like for these people, but is in no ways close enough to describe it like he does the British. Of course, there is always a subtlety to this: the best way to know a people is to be among them. Several times Kipling suggests this in his stories, but that knowledge comes at a cost of loosing oneself amongst the other. With Kipling, though, you are never sure if he is conscious of this dichotomy or it slips through.

For the British citizen and Kipling’s readers in Britten, the real danger was not the Indians, it was not being able to withstand the life in the colonies. The idea that the life in the colonies was harder and more difficult than that of Brittan is present throughout the book. It isn’t just the heat and food, it is the chance that one might loose one’s Britishness. Going native, or more to the point, letting one’s side down is the issue. It also points towards and ideal type of Englishman, who is strong enough to keep himself inline. Early on there is a story about a young man, probably a dandy, who kills himself because he can’t take life in India. The narrator and a friend do the only thing they can do and bury him and tell everyone he died of a fever. They send his parents a letter that praises his life. They will know nothing of the truth, one these two men of the Empire have had to do to keep Brittan content. Empire is a messy business and only certain men are called to it. Kipling is often noted for his ability understand the life of the average Brittan in India and render it in fiction, and that is his strongest element in these stories. The colonial enterprise is never questioned, but the hardships on the individual are often right at the surface.

Still, Kipling is writing about a mostly British world and his preoccupation with what seem like drawing room romances played against the Raj can get a little tiresome. Women in his stories are often interested in the petty, gossipy side of life. His portraits are not crude, but the lives of women are limited, not only by the times, but a little more insight into their actual lives. For example, there are a series of stories about two women who hate each other and both kenive to undo the machinations of each other. The narrator even notes how one, who was always self centered, helped a young man and beat the other woman at her own game. It is that sense of constant game that sours on the women, and gives the sense of a narrator winking at the audience, look how petty these women are. There are exceptions, of course, and in Three and – An Extra he describes a woman who on loosing her baby goes into grief and her husband begins to look at another woman. The wife through her maneuvers (feminine wiles might be the narrator’s choice) at a dance one night, wins her man back. The sensitivity to the situation is quite perceptive and shows him at his best. The story does, like many of them, end on a whimsical note: ‘Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.’

As a short story writer he proposes some interesting challenges to the modern read used to the well wrought story with an epiphany. Certainly, these are stories, but you might also call them tales, little vignettes. The stories originally appeared in an Indian newspaper and can’t be more than 3000 words. It gives them a brevity and economy that is refreshing. While all the stories are in first person in the sense that the narrator makes himself known to the reader, and occasionally is the primary character of the story, the narrator is describing events at second hand, which means the stories lean more towards summary than detailed action. It may seem limiting to be writing about events from an unprivileged narrative position, but it gives Kipling room to play with the narrator. You are never quite sure what the narrator believes. Are there the occasional criticisms of British life in India? Take a line like this: “She was a Miss Tallaght, and men spelt her name ‘Tart’ on the programmes when they couldn’t catch what the introducer said.” Is this supposed to be taken as evidence of her lowly standing, or an example of how bad the men are, or something else? Another trick he employs is to start on a short tangent and stop midway through and say, but that is a story for another time. Occasionally, he actually returns to tell the story. All these touches make for a richer stories and the shifting of the narrative and the narrator throughout the book makes Kipling’s writing surprisingly interesting.

A note on the edition. In addition to the fine introduction which notes how the book was put together with an eye towards explaining India to Brittan, the notes make quite clear where Kipling, later in life, began to remove elements that suggested his characters had more contact with natives and had taken on more of their ways. In The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows, he takes what are the confessions of a British subject and opium addict and changes it to a non British character; thus, he limits the notion that an Englishman could descend into such a disgraceful life. This is the most egregious example, there are little changes throughout that show the younger Kipling, Kipling the journalist in India, had a wider vision and a freer sense of decorum, before he became the defender of Empire.

In all, Plain Tales from the Hills, despite it’s problems, has a surprising liveliness to it that marks Kipling as an interesting writer. I might not recommend reading all the stories cover to cover, they can get a little claustrophobic and you may need to read a little Orwell to counter balance,  but they are certainly better than one would suppose.

Short Story “Carpe Diem” by Abelardo Castillo Available at Contemporary Argentine Writers

~ bythefirelight

Dario has published an English translation of the short story “Carpe Diem” by Abelardo Castillo at Contemporary Argentine Writers. It is a interesting story and has some nice touches, especially the way the he plays with how narrators describe things.

“She liked the sea and walking barefoot in the street. She wanted to have kids. She talked to stray cats. She wanted to know the names of the constellations. But I’m not sure if that’s truly what she was like. I’m not sure if I’m really describing her for you,” said the man with the tired face. Since sundown we had been sitting together in the fishing club by the windows that looked out onto the river; it was nearly midnight and for the past hour he had been rambling non-stop. The story, if it even was a story, was difficult to follow. He had begun to tell it three or four times, from different starting points, and always interrupted himself to back up to an earlier time, never getting past the moment when she, the girl, stepped off the train one afternoon.

Cristina Fernández Cubas Has Published a New Novel – La puerta entreabierta

~ bythefirelight

One of my favorite short story writers, Cristina Fernández Cubas, has published a new novel called, La puerta entreabierta (The Half Open Door). It is her first work since the death of her husband several years ago, and marks a bit of a transition for her. When she was trying to write after her husband’s death she found it difficult and melancholy work. At a certain point she hit on writing with a pseudonym, Fernanda Kubbs. It is a fascinating thing to do. It isn’t uncommon, but usually using a pseudonym is to hide or create a marketing line between two different literary personalities. Here, though, it is something more. The review from El Pais sounds interesting and not too dissimilar to the short stories collected in Todos los cuentos (See my reviews here and here).

If you understand Spanish there is a good interview at Pagina 2 that I would recommend you watch.

A good overview of her recent struggles at her conceptualization of her work can be found at El Pais.

A veces para cicatrizar la herida que supone una gran pérdida necesitamos un cambio que nos distraiga del dolor. A Cristina Fernández Cubas (Arenys de Mar, 1945, Barcelona) le llevó un tiempo abordarlo. Perdió a su esposo, el escritor Carlos Trías, de un cáncer de pulmón en 2007. La pareja, entre otras complicidades, compartía la pasión por la lectura y la escritura. A medida que pasaban los días, el placer se tornó en martirio. “No podía seguir como si nada hubiera ocurrido. Todo lo que tenía a medio hacer lo mandé a la porra”, cuenta la escritora en un céntrico hotel de Barcelona, decorado en ese estilo minimalista que tanto abunda. La puerta entreabierta, su nueva novela, firmada con el seudónimo de Fernanda Kubbs, rompe un largo silencio en el terreno de la ficción e inaugura una nueva etapa en su carrera que va a mantener en paralelo con su etapa anterior.

Entre la inestabilidad que proporciona uno de esos asientos en los que te hundes, Fernández Cubas alisa su melena revuelta por el viento. De negro, de la cabeza a los pies, solo la espina de una sardina, tallada en plata, pone un destello de color en su atuendo. Habla con voz neutra de su melancolía: “Lo de leer lo solucioné pronto a base de disciplina, pero escribir me inducía a la tristeza. No podía con ello. La bola de cristal (en la que queda atrapada precisamente la protagonista de su novela) estaba allí, de manera perversa en mi cabeza; escribía en círculo y no hacía más que ahondar en la tristeza y, bueno, un poco de melancolía vale, pero no podía seguir con aquello”. La puerta entreabierta no nació como un proyecto, sino como un juego que le permitió “salir, disfrutar y gozar. De repente, surgió Isa, una joven periodista, y la magia. La magia siempre me ha gustado y fue ahí donde me di cuenta de que ese cambio de registro o de mirada me había envuelto y recuperaba las ganas de levantarme. Casi enseguida, creo que al final del primer capítulo, pensé en dos cosas: una, yo tiro para adelante, ya veremos dónde me lleva y, otra, que me llamaría Fernanda Kubbs”.

There is also a review at El Pais.

En Fernanda Kubbs está Cristina Fernández Cubas como en La puerta entreabierta están las múltiples sendas narrativas transitadas por la autora en un buen puñado de cuentos inolvidables, la aventura y actualización de un tema clásico pasado por el peculiar tamiz del sueño en la novela El año de Gracia (1985) o los recuerdos y evocaciones de las Cosas que ya no existen (2001) que acaban imponiéndose como un libro de memorias y a la vez conforman un conjunto de relatos sobre la vida de los otros: en apariencia historias sueltas, retazos de memorias, anécdotas de viaje, fotografías que se animaban de repente y, “acabada la función, regresaban a su engañosa inmovilidad de tiempo detenido”. Pero no nos confundamos. No es un totum revoltum lo que ahora nos ofrece la escritora barcelonesa sino un viaje —muy bien organizado pese a la frontera que traspasa y los múltiples territorios de la ficción por los que transita—, a través de sí misma en su faceta de impar fabuladora. Y es también un homenaje a quienes la invitaron —o enseñaron— a recorrer el territorio de la fantasía y la invención literarias: los Grimm, Andersen, Hoffmann, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle… y Ana María Matute.

Finalists for the Spanish Short Story Prize Premio Ribera del Duero Anounced

~ bythefirelight

The short list fr the third Premio Ribera del Duero for short stories in Spanish has been announced.  I have only read one of these authors, Tizon, which I reviewed in my article on the Spanish Short story. I didn’t realize he had a new book last year. Rossi sounds familiar as does Padilla, but I haven’t read them. It feels more international this year which is a good thing (via)

– Ernesto Calabuig (Madrid, España, 1966), con Caminos anfibios.

– Guadalupe Nettel (México DF, México, 1973), con Historias naturales.

–Gustavo Nielsen (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1962), con Novela.

–Ignacio Padilla (México DF, México, 1968), con Lo volátil y las fauces.

– Cristina Peri Rossi (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1941), con Los amores equivocados.

– Eloy Tizón (Madrid, España, 1964), con Técnicas de iluminación