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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
this was a wild ride but I liked it
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Een grote verzameling deus ex machina's en een onsympathieke hoofdpersoon, ik geloof niet dat ik dit boek snapte. Een beetje te meta.
very strange. this is such a meta-fictional game that I’m not sure I should obsess over potential interpretations. But it’s a fun read if you like Borges or Kafka, then check this little book out!
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The main character in this book sets up a metaphor of himself as a Mad Scientist. But this metaphor is actually more apt for Cesar Aira himself, as his books always seem like experiments in the best sense of the word. But not the type of experimental writing (a la Joyce or Stein) that is more interested in pure language play (not that Aira isn’t interested in language, but it is only one part of his experiment)... In most experimental writing you at least have a sense of the experiment being somewhat finished, predetermined, or at least a manifestation of an aesthetic leaning that the author is trying to work out, the endpoint being the ultimate artistic vision. But here the writing style is more conventional. But it is precisely those conventions (of narrative, of language...) which are the alchemical ingredients in Cesar Aira’s mad scientist lab. These experiments have no predetermined ends, not even a hypothesis before the scientific process commences, they are simply ‘mad’--ideas and literary devices are used, or rather, bent, to accomplish no specific purpose but to see what the end result would be.
That is why to appreciate Cesar Aira, one must be him/herself a little obsessed, a little mad, or at least open to playfulness and adventure, and a little bit interested in ‘what would happen if...’. His books may not all be good, but they’re always fascinating. Every once in a while his experiment succeeds beyond even his own wildest expectations, like in [b:An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter|152809|An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter|César Aira|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327932983s/152809.jpg|147499]. But most of the time, he will fail, but fail so amazingly that you cannot help but love reading it...
This novel in particular presents ‘Cesar Aira’ as a writer/translator/scientist, and in most cases I wouldn’t assume an autobiographical component to a book just because the name of the protagonist is the same as the name of the author (Cesar Aira appears in [b:How I Became a Nun|152808|How I Became a Nun|César Aira|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328032897s/152808.jpg|147498] too). But in this case, I feel justified in at least reading into it a bit more. Not only is the mad scientist metaphor so apt for his playfulness, but also parts of this read as if he were looking back and musing on his own process.
If you’ve ever been frustrated with his wacko plots, imagine what he feels about them! As I read Aira (the character in the book) talking about a performance of a play that he wrote many years ago, I imagined the real Aira’s voice talking (about his books):
More writers should include a review of their own work in their novels... it makes my job easier ;)
That is why to appreciate Cesar Aira, one must be him/herself a little obsessed, a little mad, or at least open to playfulness and adventure, and a little bit interested in ‘what would happen if...’. His books may not all be good, but they’re always fascinating. Every once in a while his experiment succeeds beyond even his own wildest expectations, like in [b:An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter|152809|An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter|César Aira|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327932983s/152809.jpg|147499]. But most of the time, he will fail, but fail so amazingly that you cannot help but love reading it...
This novel in particular presents ‘Cesar Aira’ as a writer/translator/scientist, and in most cases I wouldn’t assume an autobiographical component to a book just because the name of the protagonist is the same as the name of the author (Cesar Aira appears in [b:How I Became a Nun|152808|How I Became a Nun|César Aira|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328032897s/152808.jpg|147498] too). But in this case, I feel justified in at least reading into it a bit more. Not only is the mad scientist metaphor so apt for his playfulness, but also parts of this read as if he were looking back and musing on his own process.
If you’ve ever been frustrated with his wacko plots, imagine what he feels about them! As I read Aira (the character in the book) talking about a performance of a play that he wrote many years ago, I imagined the real Aira’s voice talking (about his books):
Gone were the many doubts that I had written it, for there were my recurrent themes, my little tricks... the idea had been to create something equivalent to those figures that was both realistic and impossible, like Escher’s Belvedere, figures that look viable in a drawing but could not be built because they are but an illusion of perspective...I was able to sustain it in this play only through the strength of ambiguities...but my mania--to be constantly adding things, episodes, characters, 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 surrealist rococo, which exasperates me more than it does anybody else. It was like a nightmare (the mother of all nightmares) to watch the living defects of what I had written materialize in front of me...it was grotesque, repulsive; I was mortified... Difficult as it is to believe, people liked that crap. (p55-60)
More writers should include a review of their own work in their novels... it makes my job easier ;)
"Under my interior magnifying glass, or inside it, each thought takes on the figure of a clone in its rhetorical anamorphosis: an overdetermined identity." - pg. 20
"The lights were very low, we were practically in the dark. Or rather, the beams and pulses of the colored lights allowed us to see what was going on but not reconstruct it in our minds. This is the astute discovery such night spots have made. Their lighting arrangements reproduce subjectivity thereby nullifying it, a process further assisted by the alcohol and the noise." - pg. 46
In a literary floor routine worthy of an Olympic medal Aira contemplates the nature of subjectivity, the relationship between the reader and the author, the value and flow of intellectual ideas as Lyotard-ian self-replicating viruses, the limits of perception, even the nature of reality itself wrapped inside a brilliant and entertaining package of allusions to Frankenstein, giant B-Movie monsters, and secret pirate's treasure. HE DOES THIS IN 68 PAGES.
In a very self-conscious departure from Aira's usual third person POV, and in the only way he ever could write in first person, this novel revels in the subjective trappings of its perspective, doubling back on it, justifying it, getting completely tangled like an entire film made between Hugh Grant's stuttering from one idea to another.
"At least I had the good sense not to mix my drinks, but rum is deceptive, always so smooth, so calming, like a perennial cause with no effect, until the effect shows itself, and then you realize the effect had been there from the beginning, even before there began to be a cause." - pg. 42
Themes in this novel scale and like fractals in the natural world and it all feels like magic to me as a reader. How did Aira pull off such virtuosity in such bold concision?
His interests, playfulness, and intelligence have quickly won me over. I'll be reading a lot more.
"The lights were very low, we were practically in the dark. Or rather, the beams and pulses of the colored lights allowed us to see what was going on but not reconstruct it in our minds. This is the astute discovery such night spots have made. Their lighting arrangements reproduce subjectivity thereby nullifying it, a process further assisted by the alcohol and the noise." - pg. 46
In a literary floor routine worthy of an Olympic medal Aira contemplates the nature of subjectivity, the relationship between the reader and the author, the value and flow of intellectual ideas as Lyotard-ian self-replicating viruses, the limits of perception, even the nature of reality itself wrapped inside a brilliant and entertaining package of allusions to Frankenstein, giant B-Movie monsters, and secret pirate's treasure. HE DOES THIS IN 68 PAGES.
In a very self-conscious departure from Aira's usual third person POV, and in the only way he ever could write in first person, this novel revels in the subjective trappings of its perspective, doubling back on it, justifying it, getting completely tangled like an entire film made between Hugh Grant's stuttering from one idea to another.
"At least I had the good sense not to mix my drinks, but rum is deceptive, always so smooth, so calming, like a perennial cause with no effect, until the effect shows itself, and then you realize the effect had been there from the beginning, even before there began to be a cause." - pg. 42
Themes in this novel scale and like fractals in the natural world and it all feels like magic to me as a reader. How did Aira pull off such virtuosity in such bold concision?
His interests, playfulness, and intelligence have quickly won me over. I'll be reading a lot more.
adventurous
funny
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
this is the blueprint. This is what literature should be and aspire to
Aira is a wizard. Simply must get more of his books