An obvious one in a book from twenty years ago Cesar Aira He regrets the readers who come up to him and tell him they “laughed” at his latest book. “I can say that without exaggeration – it’s on the first page of how I laughed–that these comments have poisoned my life as a writer.” It can be nothing more than another boutade straight out of the hat, but you get what he means: his literature doesn’t aspire to be humorous; If this creates hilarious sections that cause wild laughter, this is a direct result of the narrative mechanism, which does not depend on plausibility but on the mere fact of moving to unpredictable places.
Perhaps this misunderstanding is one of the reasons why Aira (Colonel Pringles, 1949), although recently included on the lists of Nobel candidates, has lower chances of winning the prize than forecasts say. Swedes don’t reward laughter – whether intentional or not – but certainly not those who make literature an eternal and impressive game. His finger would never have rested on Lewis Carroll (if the author of Alice would have reached the 20th century), as he did not mention Raymond Queneau or Thomas Pynchon more recently. Samuel Beckett or the brand new winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai They have humor, one will say, but it is dark humor that does not lack existential notes. It is enough to look at the text explaining why they were chosen to see that what was thought to be seen in them was a vague humanism.
Perhaps it is indifferent or even beneficial to Aira’s literature, which continues to come out at a rapid pace, as it has for decades, releasing more than one title per year. At this point, her work is a galaxy that is much more than a century old – in short published volumes – with a dynamic that always produces unique books, which justifies that although Aira always looks like Aira and can exhaust more than one person, you can continue reading as if you had just started. The room And The archaeologistthe youngest, strangely enough, belong to different eras.
The author has a habit of closing his books with the date he finished writing, a chronological indication that does not necessarily reflect the order of publication. The room. a French novel (dated June 3, 1996) is one of those delayed novels (as was always the case). Lugones), which the Pringles author takes out of his drawers at the wrong time.
Why the subtitle? On the one hand, because it takes place in a model Paris; on the other hand, because – according to the legend that the short volume would confirm – it was originally written in French. Perhaps a reflection of a stay abroad (like the unattainable). New impressions of Petit Maroc), The room In any case, it meets the requirements of the Aira, which the idiosyncratic avant-garde Raymond Roussel (more recently) cited as inspiration Different ideashowever, claims that upon closer inspection they are not very similar). Writing in French can be a challenge, an exercise in style, or a show-off. Or perhaps the gesture is different: just as he conquered literary territory book after book, jumping from publisher to publisher, this “little novel” allows him to extend his insatiable influence into the space of another language.
The room It is an example of his famous “forward flight”. More than causes and effects, as in the classic novel, there are effects of effects, events or sudden appearances of characters that redirect everything. The narrator, an electrician, leaves the suburbs for the center of Paris with the idea of becoming a writer. There is a cinema nearby where only Koreans come and they show strange films about graves. The events happen with the fluctuations of a comic book. More than once the character thinks he sees Marguerite Duras (as in The literary congress (another writer appeared, Carlos Fuentes), although this always leads to confusion. A kind of oriental gangsters lead him to amass objects in his room, his ex’s “harpy” seems to demand money for the two twins of which he is the father, and he falls in love with a certain Lin. In the absence of psychology, chance structures this chain of events. The exchange at the end, in which changing the numbers on a building’s doorknobs creates new configurations and fictional pairings between characters, is the ultimate dice game.
Perhaps the central hub – what gives the story its Parisian raison d’être – is the Eiffel Tower, created by the protagonist in his room, made up of glowing circuits: an icon par excellence transformed into a literary toy complete.
Just like Paris The room doesn’t try to convince us that it’s Paris, and Moldova isn’t one of them either The archaeologistwhich is more recent (July 20, 2022). In it, the specialist of the title, who has great importance in his country but suffers the consequences of retirement, is the vehicle for a series of reflections that run through the narrative – much more closely linked to the character than in the other book. The scientist feels like a toad from another well, archeology in this country reminiscent of the Soviet era is no longer what it was, and his thoughts and questions – following Aira’s logic – develop into crazy implications. It is not difficult to see the exhumer as a distant doppelganger of the author. Colleagues questioned him about his productivity: “If the objects and data to be recovered had waited for centuries and millennia,” they thought, “their discovery could not be a matter of weeks.” He, on the other hand, had covered their mouths with his arrogance at work, filling “museums and collections with his discoveries with good reason,” although, despite the many awards, this never earned him the “Peace Star of the Kremlin,” for which he was a perpetual candidate. Aira may not like making people laugh, but the results of her inventions sometimes make it unavoidable.
The room
By Caesar Aira
Random house
92 pages
$27,999
The archaeologist
By Cesar Aira
Blatt&Ríos
104 pages
$25,900
About The Author
