Birthday by Cesar Aira

Argentinean fiction

Original title – Cumpleaños

Translator – Chris Andrews

Source – Personal copy

I am back in Argentina this evening and a writer I came late to I think I did first review AIra in 2010. But then left it till two years ago, and I think it was the frequent mentions on the Mookse and the Gripes podcast about him they did a special episode about him. It reminds me that I need to read more from him. He has written over a hundred books, and they are all fairly short, and a lot of them are focused on Pringles, which is where he grew up as a youngster. His book also features autobiographical details like this, set around the time the writer turned fifty and is about the writer returning to his hometown.

 

My style is irregular: scatter-brained, spasmodic, jokey – necessarily jokey because I have to justify the unjustifiable by saying that I didn’t mean it seriously.But if necessity intervenes, it’s no joke. I wasn’t really joking when I made that stupid quip about the moon.And of course it didn’t fool anyone. The gaps go on being gaps forever, unless some wildly improbable circumstance happens to correct me. If they were only gaps in knowledge, I wouldn’t be so worried; but there are gaps in experience too, and again they can only be  plugged by serendipty.The numbers in this game of chance are so enormus that just thinking about them make me dizzy . Whahcan I hope for , realistically. IF all the pbjective conditions required for such an event  line up once in a million years.

I wonder if that what he means about his own writing ?

He opened up about what it is like to turn fifty. This was, for me, a nightmare mare; I just felt it was a huge turning point in my life in the book, a writer is in his home town of Pringles. But this is what happens after his birthday: a series of small events. A walk with his wife leads him to talk about the moon and a childhood idea that he has kept thinking about. Then there is a section where he visits a shop, and the is a 17-year-old female shop assistant who knows he is a writer, but as she asks him what it is like to be a writer, he actually finds more about her than he even reveals, to her about his life and being a writer. As with other books art creeps up its a book that has ten short chapters and drifts from here to there like the other books i have read by Aira over the last few years.

For the same reason, my mind is in continuous move ment, flittering restlessly. Making a note of everything is beyond the bounds of human possibility. One thing I have idly fantasised about is inventing a notepad capable of capturing the hyperactivity of the brain.That must be the source of my fetishistic attachment to stationery and pens. I really should use some kind of shorthand, but I manage more or less with normal writing. In the end, all these daydreams about being the designer of one’s own peculiarities are futile because they are just metaphors for what ends up happening anyway: I became a writer and my little novels fulfil the roles of mystic writing pad and shorthand.

Again about the writing process maybe for Aira Himself.

I will hold my hand up and say I am late to Aira as a reader I wish I had followed up the first book I  read in 2012 and come back quicker to him.I have seven books by him. But there is a lot more out there, and I feel for me to get him more, I need to line up several books by him. I like the mix of memoir and surrealism at times. In this book, he seems to be a writer that can jump from the everyday to the surreal in such a small book, and it all seems to flow. I like the discussion with the shop assistant that felt like something he may have done I know writers often get asked about the writing process and must often like this hear more about her[person than explaining how it is to be a writer. I struggle with this as it is different from the first one I had read by him but is set around the same place as Artforum this is a writer whom I need to discover more as a reader to build his world and style in my mind. Have you read Aira? If so, which would you recommend buying? I may try and read a run of his books later in the year as they are all short.

Winston’s score: B. I need to read more of his work to discover him more as a writer.