César Aira Book Club Selection #1: “Ghosts”
by Lucas de Lima on Apr.10, 2012, under Uncategorized
Myself and a couple of other Montevidayans are currently floating across the Río de la Plata to nearby Buenos Aires. Our occasion: to haunt the living body of work written by the enigmatic César Aira and moan to each other, in alleyways, about our findings.
Our first destination is, of course, Ghosts, originally published in 1990 before New Directions blessed us with Chris Andrews’ translation in 2008. The book takes place entirely on December 31st in an unfinished luxury apartment building whose only tenants are a Chilean worker’s family. To kick things off, I have just three questions I’d like Joyelle and Feng Chen to think about on our journey through this wispy 139-pg vortex.
1. Who or what are the ghosts?
2. In this interview, Aira states, “The one thing I’m sure about is that I don’t write novels, an anachronistic genre that exhausted itself in the nineteenth century, experienced all of its posthumous transformations in the twentieth century, and today only retains its relevance in ‘commercial fiction’. What I do might be labelled ‘short stories’ or ‘fiction’, or, more precisely, ‘Dadaist fairytales’.”
How does Ghosts address the novel’s extinction?
3. What is gained, if anything, in an unsentimental suicide?
April 11th, 2012 on 2:08 am
[...] 1. Who or what are the ghosts? [...]
April 11th, 2012 on 2:13 pm
Lucas, so you were in Montevideo, my hometown? What did you think of it? Did you meet any of the poets there?
Aira: Bolano revered him as the greatest. I just finished Aira’s latest, titled Varamo, a slim book, out from ND, translated by Chris Andrews. It’s about a Panamanian government clerk who one day, through a series of weird circumstances, comes to write the “greatest avant-garde poem” of Latin America. A terrific read.
I have to share an anecdote about Aira, in fact, I think I might have mentioned it more passingly here some time back; here is a more detailed account:
Forrest Gander and I spent the afternoon with him in Buenos Aires close to three years ago, just the three of us. We wandered around a very cool bookstore in the Palermo neighborhood and then went to a very cool bar and drank a bunch. It was really great. At the bar, I related this almost impossible series of coincidences that had occurred to me earlier in the day, impossible but true. When I was done, Aira began to laugh and laugh, clearly delighted by the story. Then we got on to something else.
About nine months later, Forrest (who has translated one of Aira’s novels, not yet out) wrote to tell me that Aira had just communicated to him that his latest novel begins with a scene that’s directly based on my story! So you can imagine that I am eager to have this book appear. Maybe it has, but it hasn’t yet been translated.
News of Montevideo, please.
April 11th, 2012 on 2:15 pm
By the way, I have a really nice photo of Aira from that afternoon, taken by Forrest, but I don’t know if I can share it here as an attachment somehow? If someone can tell me how, I’ll do it.
April 11th, 2012 on 4:30 pm
[...] ghosts and therefore he must be interested in a dead technology of the novel despite disavowing it in the interview which Lucas quotes. In that passage, Aira contends that the novel is an “anachronistic genre that exhausted itself [...]
April 11th, 2012 on 4:37 pm
I’d like to see that. Do’nt knwo how though.
Johannes
April 11th, 2012 on 6:41 pm
Kent, I wish I really was in Montevideo! I’m just playing out my fantasies by pretending this website is the real thing.
Love the anecdote. If you want to e-mail me the photo I can put it in my upcoming post.
It’s interesting that in the interview I linked to–or another one, I can’t remember now–Aira says that Bolaño is not his cup of tea.
L
April 13th, 2012 on 12:19 am
I find this utterly delightful!: “Kent, I wish I really was in Montevideo! I’m just playing out my fantasies by pretending this website is the real thing.”
It’s funny because for me the blog Montevidayo is much more tangible/concrete than the “actual” place!