The Comps Reading Project part 13

We now return to my regularly scheduled reading--and the end of all the novels on the Latin-American half of my historical list!

Rayuela [Hopscotch], Julio Cortázar.

1963 novel considered to be the masterpiece by the famed Argentine writer.  The titular hopscotch is rendered literally by the text, as the chapters are shuffled all out of linear sequence; you must follow the directions at the end of each chapter in order to know where to "hop" to next.  It's a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure book but without any choice.  As the introduction explains, the text can be read two ways: reading it straight from Ch. 1-56, at which point the reader can "end with a clear conscience," or begin at Ch. 73 and follow the instructions to hop around until every chapter is accounted for.  That is, there are multiple ways to approach this text, and each reading will deliver a different experience; there are in fact multiple potential books contained within this book.  (A philosophy that is positively Borjesian--it is a literal "Book of Bifurcating Paths"--which is ironic, given how Cortázar and Borjes were set up in stark opposition to each other in 1980s Argentine literary criticism).

What's strange about these competing approaches to this novel (besides the gimmick itself), is the fact that neither approach appears to provide any sort of clear narrative or through-line that coheres together; any narrative unity is instinctively imposed upon the text by the reader, not naturally suggested by the text itself.  Really, one does not need to follow any order when encountering this text; one could just as easily mix and match any number of potential readings of this bizarre text.  I've noted before the recurring theme of the labyrinth in Latin-American literature, and this is as literally laberintine as it gets; I hadn't realized how much I rely on weighing how many pages are left in my right hand to feel how much of the book is left.  When that convention is disrupted, I quickly lost all certainty as to how far along I was in this mammoth, 600+ page tome; I felt as disoriented as the text's characters themselves.

On the cast and plot (as much as there is one); the novel is more philosophical that plot driven, and centers on a small group of passionate, unhinged, starving Argentine artists living in post-war Paris.  Innumerable references are made to their native Buenos Aires (not to mention their daily ritual of drinking mate), though the action largely centers in Europe.  Note to self: revisit ch. 113.

Adios, Happy Homeland!, Ana Menéndez.

2011 short-story collection by the Cuban-American novelist and journalist, with settings that bounce between Cuba proper, New York, New Jersey, and Miami (includes a parody of the Emilio Gonzalez fiasco mixed with the ridiculous self-help book The Secret) all across the 20th century, with a recurring thematic focus upon family history, as well as upon flight--whether in the form of airplanes, parachutes, hot-air balloons, V2 rockets, Laika, and Cold War spacecraft allusions.  Added to my list by my Spanish professor, due to the opening and middle stories centering upon Irish expats either in Cuba or expressing tension with the labyrinth of Cuban poets (can the Cubans alone edit their own poetry?  Or is there something the Irish can understand about them better than them, too?).

La Guaracha del Macho Camacho [Macho Camacho's Beat], Luis Rafael Sánchez.

1976 Puerto Rican novel.  The various vignettes and chapter breaks are structured around a radio DJ singing the praises of the titular Macho Camacho's new hit song "Life is a Phenomenal Thing."  In the prose style, with its repetitions, deceptively simple wording, and syntactical tweaks, it reads like a sort of Latin-American Gertrude Stein, drenched in all the sweat and passion of a Puerto Rican traffic jam.  This short novel captured the novel's disjointed rhythms in such a manner that it was almost like I was living there again.

La vida breve [A Brief Life], Juan Carlos Onetti.

 Famed 1950 novel by the Uruguyan novelist and member of "la generación de 45."

From a British newspaper: "A Brief Life, Onetti's finest novel, begins in bed. Brausen, the main character, is lying there waiting for his wife to return (after her mastectomy). Through the wall, Brausen hears noise and laughter from the woman next door. It is soon obvious that, like all of Onetti's heroes, he prefers what he can imagine on the other side of the wall to the difficult reality he has to face on this.

"The hypothesis which sustains A Brief Life is that we are capable of only a brief period of concentration on the horrors of whatever life we find ourselves dumped in, before we struggle to get beyond it, seeking consolation in what for a short while at least seem like the infinite possibilities offered elsewhere. But this escape brings with it lingering doubts, plus a sense of guilt, which infect the imagined world, and convert it into the poisoned reflection of what we were so desperately trying to flee in the first place.

"In his own brief life, Brausen is a failed copywriter in a Buenos Aires advertising firm. At the same time as he has one ear pressed to the wall, he is also busily writing a film script, again in the hope of escaping his grim everyday reality.[...] By the middle of the book, the reader is drawn into three levels of fiction, which Onetti masterfully conducts in counterpoint. On the first, we find descriptions of Brausen's 'real life' with his by now estranged wife and his few friends in the bars and suburbs of Buenos Aires. Then there is the story of Arce, the character Brausen has invented for himself in order to infiltrate La Queca's life.

"Arce/Brausen even moves into an office owned by a person called Onetti - 'the man with the bored face: he didn't smile, wore glasses, and let it be divined that he only had time for vague scatterbrained women or intimate friends' - while he starts to live out the scenario of revenge and self-disgust he has imagined for himself. Events in the screenplay Brausen is writing become increasingly disturbing; by the extraordinary final chapters set during Carnival, all three levels have become so intertwined that the characters of the 'real' fiction mingle with the 'fictional' ones, and the ending of the book is resonantly ambiguous." (Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/book-review--listening-through-the-wall-with-a-dirty-realist-a-brief-life--juan-carlos-onetti-tr-hortense-carpentier-serpents-tail-999-pounds-2322028.html).

I've included this synopsis from a 1993 review by the Independent because I honestly don't know what else to say, other than, well, it's an Onetti novel.  It contains the same preoccupations with sex, violence, and drugs--it is in effect El Pozo stretched out to full novel length.  It features (along with seemingly every other Rio de la Plata writer not named Borjes) the same focus upon desperate men paralyzed into inaction such that their lives can now only be expressed in a never ending stream of philosophic monologues and dialogues (perhaps restoring the primacy of orality).  More broadly, it is defined by the same anxieties about epistemology, art, and metafictionality that have obsessed all Spanish art since Cervantes and Velasquez.  As for the actual experience of reading the text, it is almost a sort of Tropic of Cancer set in Montevideo.  I'll have to re-read this one day when I have far more time to delve into it--though as the title itself warns, life is too brief as it is.  (Note to self: revisit pg. 48). 

And of course the text's recurring song "La vie est breve" is French.

Pasion de historia y otras historias de pasion [Passion of (Hi)story and Other (Hi)stories of Passion], Ana Lydia Vega.

1987 short-story collection by a highly-awarded Puerto Rican author popular on her home-island but largely unknown stateside, such that there aren't even any English translations of this particular work.  And of course she is a former French professor at UPR-Rio Piedras, and the opening story features a Puerto Rican in France (we just can't seem to escape that countries' orbit, can we).  Noted for her Puerto Rican dialect and good humor, paired with a strong sense of ethical awareness.   Like so much of Spanish literature (and as her own title indicates), she is preoccupied with the blurring between fiction and history, particularly with exploring how "official" documents can actually de-stabilize our sense of concrete understanding--that is, the official, by its very nature, just may be the most fictional of all.  Not for nothing is "history" and "story" the same word in Spanish.