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ilse 's review for:
The Literary Conference
by César Aira
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)