The first thing that can be seen in This Heart, Lost is its resolute commitment to the mixture of genres and indeterminacy. It is a text that sometimes falls within the narrative, at other times it seems closer to an article, and at other times it is close to poetry. Divided into seven chapters, the book escapes every sin: “Surubi in the Floating Forest” recounts some of the narrator’s memories of his father who died in the epidemic, linked to an outing between the two to go fishing; The tale derives from a reference to Ulysses’ sailors in the Odyssey, when they arrive at the island of the Lotus Eaters. The text delves into the drifts and unexpected bends of memory. High Peaks stops on a trip by the narrator—named Denis, like its author—to San Javier, a small town in Traslassierra, where a mechanical malfunction leads to a drift in the narrative and reflections on the act of writing. In “Like a Zebra,” the narrator tells of a trip to Chilean Patagonia with his girlfriend and an experience living with horse flies. “Biological Resilience” takes the form of an essay delving deeper into the world of fungi, especially with regard to their hallucinogenic properties. Informational passages alternate in the present tense and in the strict third person with other passages narrated in the first person of the narrator’s subjectivity. “Una estampita del Pity” (perhaps the least successful chapter, since the prose becomes somewhat hackneyed and the autobiography is little more than a collection of anecdotes told to a gathering of friends) focuses on the hero’s Catholic education and his discovery of the world of rock, “blowing up everything in his path.” Maybe “taiga” is “article?”, chapter? More solid: from the reference to Monolithic Village, a town of one hundred and forty inhabitants on a Siberian island described in the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, by Werner Herzog, where three hermit hunters must go hunting in order to survive for a year; The text goes on to mention The Plague Diaries by Pivo Berardi: “Could it be, says Berardi, that we end up living isolated in our consciences? Will we be able to merge our physical existence with our symbolic existence on the planet?” asks the narrator. Immediately afterwards, he imagines himself in the skin of one of these experienced hunters, while in reality what is happening around him is the Covid virus spreading to all continents.
This heart, the desolation, sometimes shows its verbal ideal, and provokes the impossibility of writing. “Is it possible that literature does not allow me to live in the moment? Or vice versa: is it possible that experience does not allow me to write?” Confronted with these questions, the text embarks on a stimulating exploration of literature, abandoning the certainties and guarantees offered previously.
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is an essential pillar of democracy. This is why it bothers those who believe they are the bearers of the truth.
That heart, a waste
Author: Dennis Fernandez
Genre: Novel
Other works by the author: Fish Trainer; Tucson, Arizona; geometric monsters; Zero Gauss. wild species; A thousand wonders
Publisher: Hexagon, $22,000