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.
I enjoyed Varamo (published here in Australia in 2012) but I’ve never come across anything else since then.
Varamo was published in Giramondo’s Southern Latitudes collection, which is badged as covering “writing from the southern hemisphere – Southern Africa, New Zealand, the South Pacific, South-East Asia and South America” but there’s only been 10 in the series since 2017, and none of them are from Southern Africa which was what I was hoping for. They’ve never produced anything else by Aira either.
I’ve not read Aira either, but I’m keen to explore!
I love Aira! I’ve read The Literary Conference and Dinner and they are both wild,
personal ranking of what’s been englished so far, best first, with synopses culled from litforum:
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (Chris Andrews): Humboldt’s physiognomy naturally rearranged, gone awry.
How I Became a Nun (Chris Andrews): Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Little did I think this would be the icing on the cake, a novella that begins and ends in strawberry ice cream. Not so much writing about becoming a writer as such, but as with the first two above, textual manifestation, it trumps Butor (from a six-year-old rather than adolescent perspective), and renders Vila-Matas’ disappearance in the text unbecoming. Fundrous!
Varamo (Chris Andrews): one of the better efforts (but not the best, Episode) to be translated so far (1E6s gets it, so too MAO) and oddly apposite to my delving into Picabia
Ghosts (Chris Andrews): an episode in the afterlife of an architectural site
Conversations (Katherine Silver): Critical discourse talking the talk on a tightrope with the cameras rolling (on the floor, laughing)
The Hare (Nick Caistor): twice as long as what else has been englished, which makes for greater proliferation of loose ends (all tightly tied in the denouement of course)
Ema, the Captive (Chris Andrews) I’d hesitated on the latest englishing in part because it was his early sophomore effort but this turned out to be a virtue, as plotwise loose ends not resolved into tight knots, and otherwise opening up metaphorically, playing with and against the captive narrative; I’d say The Hare not so much compares to as counterpoints Ema, together the two say more tho not by talking directly to each other
Shantytown (Chris Andrews): still more good stuff, nicely involuted, though too tightly tied, as is so often the case.
The Linden Tree (Chris Andrews): childhood smalltown circuitry less tautly tied
Fulgentius (Chris Andrews): been a while since last read, welcome addition, englishing a more recent effort
The Divorce (Chris Andrews): four stories coming together by chance
The Seamstress and the Wind (Rosalie Knecht): surreality’s child, in pringles patagonia paris … (harsh places)
The Musical Brain (Chris Andrews): display of mastery of form, tho some miss (tho not technically, defect is in the conceit, tho longer stories can overlabor); favorite: “In the Café”
The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (Katherine Silver) Treating a paranoiac world one thing at a time
Dinner (Katherine Silver): ornate book-ends lend context to a mediocre middle, parabolically; among the least of his so far despite a great set-up
Birthday (Chris Andrews): writer’s life on turning 50 (now 70), diminishing returns, the slightest of what’s been englished so far but interesting in juxtaposition with On Contemporary Art (essaying the scene in his signature fashion)
Artforum (Katherine Silver): light and slight and so of less interest than most everything else available
The Literary Conference (Katherine Silver): the least of his work that’s been englished so far, even given the parodic (and pomo) potential of cloning Carlos Fuentes … still, a few good bits, not a total waste of time.
Glad I popped into the comments for the above guide – I would definitely say that the top two there are my top two!