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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
I want to say that this is formally interesting, and I want to be pretentious for a minute and compare it to Goya's Capprichios (I think that's how you spell it)-- in the sense that Goya's weird drawings and this novel feel like a doodle, a sketch that is pursued as long as its interesting, which only a slight interest in the overall design.
At least this novella feels like it has that kind of improvisational feel. It's a personalized fantasy about the power of the imagination-- translator, occasional writer, and behind-the-scenes mad scientist Cesar here has mastered the art of cloning, which seems like a pretty good metaphor for what at least translators, and maybe writers do. When he wins a fortune, he has the chance to follow his dream and clone admired writer Carlos Fuentes. Only it goes badly, and the result is more horrible than artistic....
Honestly, I enjoyed this well enough, but it's also the kind of thing I don't want to think about too hard-- I feel like there're good ideas here, but some of them aren't actually developed in interesting ways. But I think asking for that is to miss the point of the exercise, to write as Goya draws, as long as its interesting but not longer. Aira accomplishes that one goal, even if the result is more a sketch than a masterpiece.
At least this novella feels like it has that kind of improvisational feel. It's a personalized fantasy about the power of the imagination-- translator, occasional writer, and behind-the-scenes mad scientist Cesar here has mastered the art of cloning, which seems like a pretty good metaphor for what at least translators, and maybe writers do. When he wins a fortune, he has the chance to follow his dream and clone admired writer Carlos Fuentes. Only it goes badly, and the result is more horrible than artistic....
Honestly, I enjoyed this well enough, but it's also the kind of thing I don't want to think about too hard-- I feel like there're good ideas here, but some of them aren't actually developed in interesting ways. But I think asking for that is to miss the point of the exercise, to write as Goya draws, as long as its interesting but not longer. Aira accomplishes that one goal, even if the result is more a sketch than a masterpiece.
World Leader Pretend
My shadow stretched out in front of me, a human shadow, but also alien, irreconcilable. I stretched out my arms, and the arms of the shadow did the same; I lifted a leg, bent a waist, turned my head, and the shadow imitated me. I abandoned myself to a dance of recognition. When you are travelling the thought that nobody knows you gives you a certain feeling of impunity. Impunity: it’s always impunity that gets you dancing. What did I care about being ridiculous? I was on my way to earning a superior kind of impunity, and nobody knew it.
Exuberant. Absurd. Surrealist. Weird, whimsical, wild. Dizzying. What a ride. Being boxed up between the covers of this slender book reminded me of what Sebastian Faulks wrote about the experience of reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, that it is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car and after a mile or so someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.
As per usual skipping the blurb, I went in blind because unlike life I mostly like books to surprise me and I enjoy to expect the unexpected. I was rewarded with a pretty madcap and nonsensical romp about a translator and playwright annex mad scientist turning fairy-tale rich and world famous overnight not by his outstanding work but because of solving a mystery to retrieve a pirate treasure and who dreams of world domination, to achieve by stealing DNA from Carlos Fuentes by a cloned wasp on a literary conference. If this sounds quite insane, it is – and on top of that are the sizzling thoughts produced by the narrator’s quizzical, hyperactive mind. Anything seem to go for César Aira, as a child in a candy store he picks brightly coloured sweets to add to his outlandish brew: Alice in Wonderland, cloning, cartoonish sci-fi devices, grotesque and giant creatures, pirates, a dollop of schmaltzy romance and some good-natured frolicking with Carlos Fuentes reminiscent of what Boris Vian did with Jean-Paul Sartre (Jean-Sol Partre) in [b:L'Écume des jours|141828|L'Écume des jours|Boris Vian|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332596603l/141828._SY75_.jpg|136792].
Jumping from self-reflection and introspective philosophising on writing, art, reality, time and the mind to scenes worthy of comic books, imagination, creativity and creation, if any, seem the core themes of the novel – whether crystallised in musings on writing, cloning, inventing or the staging of the narrator’s play inspired by Genesis – and unlike the biblical creator, César Aira – the namesake narrator perhaps as well as the writer- doesn’t sit back to admire his achievement but on the contrary acknowledges how creation is essentially a fluid and unfinished process:
But my mania -- to be constantly adding things, episodes, paragraphs, to be constantly veering off course, branching out -- is fatal. It must be due to insecurity, fear that the basics are not enough, so I have to keep adding more and more adornment until I achieve a kind of surrealistic rococo, which exasperates me more than it does anybody else.
Whereas I was mostly wondering where the novel was going plotwise or meaningwise and I am aware I am not literary literate enough to fully appreciate Aira’s meta toying, I experienced this first foray into Aira’s prolific oeuvre as gently humorous and mildly entertaining. I was charmed by a couple of Aira’s quirky meditations and some of the colourful, moving and funny scenes (the finely crafted miniature cage in the shape of a Swiss chalet and the funeral of the wasp, the shadow dancing) including some exquisite swooning on blue. And is there anything more beautiful and intriguing than blue, whatever the shape it comes in?
(***1/2)
My shadow stretched out in front of me, a human shadow, but also alien, irreconcilable. I stretched out my arms, and the arms of the shadow did the same; I lifted a leg, bent a waist, turned my head, and the shadow imitated me. I abandoned myself to a dance of recognition. When you are travelling the thought that nobody knows you gives you a certain feeling of impunity. Impunity: it’s always impunity that gets you dancing. What did I care about being ridiculous? I was on my way to earning a superior kind of impunity, and nobody knew it.
Exuberant. Absurd. Surrealist. Weird, whimsical, wild. Dizzying. What a ride. Being boxed up between the covers of this slender book reminded me of what Sebastian Faulks wrote about the experience of reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, that it is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car and after a mile or so someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.
As per usual skipping the blurb, I went in blind because unlike life I mostly like books to surprise me and I enjoy to expect the unexpected. I was rewarded with a pretty madcap and nonsensical romp about a translator and playwright annex mad scientist turning fairy-tale rich and world famous overnight not by his outstanding work but because of solving a mystery to retrieve a pirate treasure and who dreams of world domination, to achieve by stealing DNA from Carlos Fuentes by a cloned wasp on a literary conference. If this sounds quite insane, it is – and on top of that are the sizzling thoughts produced by the narrator’s quizzical, hyperactive mind. Anything seem to go for César Aira, as a child in a candy store he picks brightly coloured sweets to add to his outlandish brew: Alice in Wonderland, cloning, cartoonish sci-fi devices, grotesque and giant creatures, pirates, a dollop of schmaltzy romance and some good-natured frolicking with Carlos Fuentes reminiscent of what Boris Vian did with Jean-Paul Sartre (Jean-Sol Partre) in [b:L'Écume des jours|141828|L'Écume des jours|Boris Vian|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332596603l/141828._SY75_.jpg|136792].
Jumping from self-reflection and introspective philosophising on writing, art, reality, time and the mind to scenes worthy of comic books, imagination, creativity and creation, if any, seem the core themes of the novel – whether crystallised in musings on writing, cloning, inventing or the staging of the narrator’s play inspired by Genesis – and unlike the biblical creator, César Aira – the namesake narrator perhaps as well as the writer- doesn’t sit back to admire his achievement but on the contrary acknowledges how creation is essentially a fluid and unfinished process:
But my mania -- to be constantly adding things, episodes, paragraphs, to be constantly veering off course, branching out -- is fatal. It must be due to insecurity, fear that the basics are not enough, so I have to keep adding more and more adornment until I achieve a kind of surrealistic rococo, which exasperates me more than it does anybody else.
Whereas I was mostly wondering where the novel was going plotwise or meaningwise and I am aware I am not literary literate enough to fully appreciate Aira’s meta toying, I experienced this first foray into Aira’s prolific oeuvre as gently humorous and mildly entertaining. I was charmed by a couple of Aira’s quirky meditations and some of the colourful, moving and funny scenes (the finely crafted miniature cage in the shape of a Swiss chalet and the funeral of the wasp, the shadow dancing) including some exquisite swooning on blue. And is there anything more beautiful and intriguing than blue, whatever the shape it comes in?
(***1/2)
Do you like innovate, avant-garde fiction polished superfine? Introducing César Aira from Argentina, author of dozens of quirky, quizzical, lyrical novellas and novels, many translated into English, his best known An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, a surreal yarn of a nineteenth century German artist's travels in Latin America and Ghosts, a tale about a haunted luxury apartment complex in the city of Buenos Aires.
Why haven’t I heard of César Aira before? Perhaps because he takes delight in being somewhat obscure. As he stated in an interview, nearly half of his ninety titles are pamphlets or booklets, many less than twenty pages. Since by his reckoning every story is a book, he prefers small, independent publishers willing to print a limited run. Therefore, he surmises, if someone really wants to read his books, they will find them.
I'm delighted I did just that! The Literary Conference is my first César Aira and it will certainly not be my last.
I was under the impression The Literary Conference would be about, well, a literary conference, featuring famous Latin American authors discussing the aesthetics of literature. I found to my astonishment, what begins as international adventure shifts to a comic version of mad scientist taking over the world via cloning and then again to B-movie, a science fiction monster flick, all the while offering meditations on the nature of art and creativity - contained in a mere eighty-five pages.
The narrator, a playwright with the name César, travels to Venezuela, to the coastal town of Macuto wherein he solves the centuries-long enigma of the Macuto Line and its sunken treasure. Just the right vibration from his fingers on the old hemp line and ta-da! - treasure miraculously falls at his feet. My sense is this piece of authorial legerdemain serves to remind us we are, after all, being told a tale and if the storyteller wants riches at the feet of César (perhaps César Aira himself?), then that’s what will bloody well happen.
Moreover, the Macuto Line could be taken as metaphor: the author engaging his imagination as the rope to guide himself down to the lower depths of his own psyche in order to mine a treasure chest of images and words he can bring to the surface and thus compose the very novella we are reading.
We arrive at the actual conference itself, not exactly a round table discussion, more an extension of César’s internal dialogue. One of the first observations made is how the tale he is relaying must be kept clear since poetic fog horrifies him. However, he acknowledges a fable provides the foundational logic for his story and that fable requires the underlying logic of yet again another fable. And the story we are reading provides the logic for a second story. Does all this Russian dolls story within a story remind you of anything? It does for me: One Thousand and One Nights of Scheherazade, among César Aira’s favorite modes of storytelling.
César goes on to relate how there was once a mad scientist who allowed the clones he created to roam the streets of his neighborhood. Ultimately the mad scientist needed CONTROL and the best way to maintain such control was to clone a superior man. And what will be the nature of such a superior man? Ah, according to the mad scientist, an individual having achieved greatness in the realm of high culture, things like philosophy, literature, history and being steeped in the classics.
César then reveals the truth: the mad scientist in question is none other than himself. And who does César judge the superior man fit for cloning? Why, of course, that giant of world literature – Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes. Permit me a side note: a number of years ago American men and women were asked what individual should be cloned to improve the quality of life within the United States. The results were divided: half the Americans polled voted for Albert Einstein and the other half for Michael Jordan. Perhaps a combination of both would be ideal - theoretical physicists who could tear up a basketball court.
Wacky weird, bugged out bizarre and Kool-Aid kooky from here on out. Thus I will shift from the narrator's singular story to a number of his reflections sweetly seasoning this literary conference confection. Firstly, how “language has shaped our expectations so extensively that real reality has become the most detached and incomprehensible one of all.”
Indeed, our view of ourselves and others, our notions of life and death and everything in between is a combination of fact and fiction. And because we coat our world with the thick syrup of language, I suspect the split is along the lines of 2% fact, 98% fiction.
“My Great Work is secret, clandestine, and encompasses my life in its entirety, even its most insignificant folds and those that seem the most banal. Until now I have concealed my purpose under the accommodating guise of literature.”
Hmmm, is the narrator (César Aira himself?) suggesting there is an underlying riddle to be solved along the lines of Hugh Vereker’s literary puzzle in Henry James’ The Figure in the Carpet? What a tantalizing prospect! No wonder a number of literary critics have linked Aira with his fellow countryman, Jorge Luis Borges.
“I was considering, with amazement, the quantity of things that were happening to me while nothing was happening. I noticed this as my pen was moving: there were thousands of tiny incidents, all full of meaning. I’ve had to pick and choose carefully, otherwise the list would be endless.”
Thank goodness César can choose wisely; otherwise The Literary Conference might include enough peregrinations, colloquies and bagatelles to fill hundreds of pages.
“Only through minimalism is it possible to achieve the asymmetry that for me is the flower of art; complications inevitably form heavy symmetries, which are vulgar and overwrought.”
At eighty-five pages, The Literary Conference undoubtedly qualifies as minimal in terms of length. And César Aira’s style is the opposite of heavy, vulgar and overwrought; rather, the author has created a little book chock full of ideas and philosophy that’s sheer fun, all within a breezy storyline too preposterous to be read without a smile.
"The soldiers got out and fanned out in front of the blue mass. At that moment denial was no longer possible: the men looked like insects next to the monster - and pathetically ineffectual. This became obvious once they began to shoot at it with their machine guns."
César Aira, born 1949
"And there, with a prodigious crack and a burst of foam, the treasure chest at the sunken end of the Line leapt so forcefully out of the sea that it rose about two hundred feet in the air, hung there for an instant, then shot down in a straight line, while the Line retracted, pulling back, until the treasure fell intact onto the stone platform, about three feet from where I was standing, waiting for it." - César Aira, The Literary Conference
A post-post modern and extremely quirky novel.
A pseudo-science fiction novel (not pejorative) about a scientist who wants to invade the world by creating multiple clones from Mexican novelist Carlos Fuente's cell.
This is the third novel I read by Aira, but his style is still too eccentric for me.
His insights are witty, but the sheer implausibility of the plot line left me musing and stopping.
A very good humor though.
----------------------------------------------
It is not that I am a genius or exceptionally gifted, not by any means. Quite the contrary. What happened (I shall try to explain it) is that every mind is shaped by its own experiences and memories and knowledge, and what makes it unique is the grand total and extremely personal nature of the collection of all the data that have made it what it is. Each person possesses a mind with powers that are, whether great or small, always unique, powers that belong to them and to them alone. This renders them capable of carrying out a feat, whether grandiose or banal, that only they could have carried out. In this case, all other had failed because they had counted on the simple quantitative progression of intelligence and ingenuity, when what was required was an unspecified quantity, but of the appropriate quality, of both. My own intelligence is quite minimal, a fact I have ascertained at great cost to myself. It has been just barely adequate to keep me afloat in the tempestuous waters of life. Yet, its quality is unique; not because I decided it would be, but rather because that is how it must be.
the texture of my days and nights since the day I was born..
(writing a book only I can write because of...)
Twenty years passed, thirty... She gained weight, that delicate and shy girl I had adored turned into a mature woman full of middle-class respectability.. She must be a grandmother by now. How incredible! How life flies by! For the heart, time doesn't pass.
The coincidence of Adam with Eve in a world where it was unnecessary to seek each other out through the exhaustive labyrinths of the real is one theory of love
Deep down, the marriage of Adam and Eve was the myth of absolute contingency: sex preceded and made possible by cloning.
The idea (literature) had been to create something equivalent to those figures that was both realistic and impossible, like Escher's Belvedere...
A pseudo-science fiction novel (not pejorative) about a scientist who wants to invade the world by creating multiple clones from Mexican novelist Carlos Fuente's cell.
This is the third novel I read by Aira, but his style is still too eccentric for me.
His insights are witty, but the sheer implausibility of the plot line left me musing and stopping.
A very good humor though.
----------------------------------------------
It is not that I am a genius or exceptionally gifted, not by any means. Quite the contrary. What happened (I shall try to explain it) is that every mind is shaped by its own experiences and memories and knowledge, and what makes it unique is the grand total and extremely personal nature of the collection of all the data that have made it what it is. Each person possesses a mind with powers that are, whether great or small, always unique, powers that belong to them and to them alone. This renders them capable of carrying out a feat, whether grandiose or banal, that only they could have carried out. In this case, all other had failed because they had counted on the simple quantitative progression of intelligence and ingenuity, when what was required was an unspecified quantity, but of the appropriate quality, of both. My own intelligence is quite minimal, a fact I have ascertained at great cost to myself. It has been just barely adequate to keep me afloat in the tempestuous waters of life. Yet, its quality is unique; not because I decided it would be, but rather because that is how it must be.
the texture of my days and nights since the day I was born..
(writing a book only I can write because of...)
Twenty years passed, thirty... She gained weight, that delicate and shy girl I had adored turned into a mature woman full of middle-class respectability.. She must be a grandmother by now. How incredible! How life flies by! For the heart, time doesn't pass.
The coincidence of Adam with Eve in a world where it was unnecessary to seek each other out through the exhaustive labyrinths of the real is one theory of love
Deep down, the marriage of Adam and Eve was the myth of absolute contingency: sex preceded and made possible by cloning.
The idea (literature) had been to create something equivalent to those figures that was both realistic and impossible, like Escher's Belvedere...
adventurous
challenging
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
funny
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
César Aira is a delight to read; one never knows where he will take you, how the story will unfold, or if it will even land. There were quite a few moments in this that made me smirk and chuckle out loud. The writing is so clever and funny as well.
Poverty, which had caused him so much frustration, revealed its positive aspect when he saw that he could only achieve his goals by radically transforming his methods, something he could do without any adverse effect on his investments or installations, which either didn’t exist or were worth nothing at all.