Kafka-Brod and Arlt-Piglia

Todays' NY Times Magazine gives us this tidbit:

During his lifetime, Franz Kafka burned an estimated 90 percent of his work. After his death at age 41, in 1924, a letter was discovered in his desk in Prague, addressed to his friend Max Brod. “Dearest Max,” it began. “My last request: Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.” Less than two months later, Brod, disregarding Kafka’s request, signed an agreement to prepare a posthumous edition of Kafka’s unpublished novels. “The Trial” came out in 1925, followed by “The Castle” (1926) and “Amerika” (1927). In 1939, carrying a suitcase stuffed with Kafka’s papers, Brod set out for Palestine on the last train to leave Prague, five minutes before the Nazis closed the Czech border. Thanks largely to Brod’s efforts, Kafka’s slim, enigmatic corpus was gradually recognized as one of the great monuments of 20th-century literature.

The contents of Brod’s suitcase, meanwhile, became subject to more than 50 years of legal wrangling. While about two-thirds of the Kafka estate eventually found its way to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the remainder — believed to comprise drawings, travel diaries, letters and drafts — stayed in Brod’s possession until his death in Israel in 1968, when it passed to his secretary and presumed lover, Esther Hoffe. After Hoffe’s death in late 2007, at age 101, the National Library of Israel challenged the legality of her will, which bequeaths the materials to her two septuagenarian daughters, Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler. The library is claiming a right to the papers under the terms of Brod’s will. The case has dragged on for more than two years. If the court finds in the sisters’ favor, they will be free to follow Eva’s stated plan to sell some or all of the papers to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. They will also be free to keep whatever they don’t sell in their multiple Swiss and Israeli bank vaults and in the Tel Aviv apartment that Eva shares with an untold number of cats.

The situation has repeatedly been called Kafkaesque, reflecting, perhaps, the strangeness of the idea that Kafka can be anyone’s private property. Isn’t that what Brod demonstrated, when he disregarded Kafka’s last testament: that Kafka’s works weren’t even Kafka’s private property but, rather, belonged to humanity?

Which brings us to Ricardo Piglia's work, "Assumed Name," which tells the above story. And which presents a story claimed by Piglia to be written by Roberto Arlt. Apparently, the Arlt story was written by Piglia, but it's so cleverly done, and the story of the notes and outlines and sketches is so well put together, in fact, done in a fashion that Jorge Luis Borges himself would have loved, that Mrs. Arlt thought it was real. Was it? Does it matter?

The world is richer for Brod's disobedience of Kafka. And for Piglia's smashing whatever line there is between fact and fiction.

Roberto Bolano's "Ambiguities"

Roberto Bolano

This morning's NY Times treats us to a brief article, "A Chilean Writer’s Fictions Might Include His Own Colorful Past," meaning of course, that some people think that Mr. Bolano was/was not a heroin user and was/was not in Chile on 9/11/73. It's hard to weigh in for either side of either question. Bolano was playing with what I call "faction," mixing fact and fiction, and he was not alone in Latin American fiction of the late 20th century to say that a piece of fiction was actually written by someone else (Ricardo Piglia wrote a piece by Roberto Arlt) or to create "ambiguities" (Juan Carlos Onetti seems to have reveled in this) about what was fact and what was fiction.

Part of the controversy might be financially motivated, an attempt to sell even more books-- "2666", published in English in 2008, and "Savage Detectives," published in English in 2007, both received wonderful reviews-- books to those who would like to speculate about the facts and hunt for clues:

But his widow, from whom he was separated at the time of his death, and Andrew Wylie, the American agent she recently hired after distancing herself from Mr. Bolaño’s friends, editors and publisher, are now challenging part of that image. They dispute the idea, originally suggested by Mr. Bolaño himself, endorsed by his American translator and mentioned in several of the rapturous recent reviews of “2666” in the United States, that he ever “had a heroin habit,” that his death was “traceable to heroin use” or even that he had “an acquaintance with heroin.”

The heroin controversy is fueled by a piece Bolano submitted to a Spanish magazine in response to a request for stories about the worst summer in his life. Others who submitted submitted autobiographical sketches. Was Bolano's, which by all accounts resembed Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"?

And the question of whether he was in Chile or still in Mexico City when he said or let others say he was in Santiago is based on friends in Mexico City and Chile who say he was/ was not actually with them or didn't know what he should have known about Chile if he had actually been there.

Roberto Fresan, interviewed by the Times, summarized the situation perfectly:

Rodrigo Fresán, an Argentine novelist living in Barcelona, said, “Roberto’s biography is going to be interesting to read, and I am thankful that I was only his friend and not the one who is going to have to write it.” Somewhat ruefully, others who know Mr. Bolaño only from his work have come to the same conclusion.

Whose Buenos Aires Is This Anyway?

Today's New York Times has an article with slideshow by Maxine Swann about her life in Buenos Aires. She moved there about 10 years ago. The article concentrates on apartments and neighborhoods. It is, after all, in the Home and Garden section. It doesn't mention a single Argentinian writer or poet. I wish it did. If she were writing about my Buenos Aires, she would have to.

At any rate, I don't think of her City at all as Ricardo Piglia's Buenos Aires. Or the Buenos Aires in his novel, The Absent City. Or Borges's. Or Roberto Arlt's. Or the Buenos Aires in Arlt's novel, Mad Toy. And no, this isn't my Buenos Aires either.

In my Buenos Aires in addition to the Obelisk (above) and 9 de Julio, there are many references to and an acknowledgment of the literary canon, the writers. The neighborhoods are remembered by the books they appear in. The streets also. The cafes. The street corners. And there's an aggressive pride in this. Of course, you're supposed to know this stuff. How could you not? You might ask how I, who have read about but never been in these writers' Buenos Aireses, could be excessively proud of these references. You might as well ask whether these writers have been in my Buenos Aires, or if they're just part of its ornamentation, the backdrop for its events.

Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt (1900-1942)

There is no real road map for US readers to search out and discover the gems in the canon of Argentine writing. I wandered from Ricardo Piglia-- I'm not clear how I found him-- via a story in his novel, Assumed Name, Piglia wrote but attributed to Roberto Arlt, slowly to Roberto Arlt. Of course, my local library had never heard of Arlt or his first novel. But no matter, last week my favorite used book dealer, abebooks.com, delivered El juguete rabioso (1926)("Mad Toy" in English). What a treat this is!

The copy I received formerly resided in the Berkeley Public Library. It was taken out 6 times and then, poof! sold off the shelves. I don't know why this happened, but it's a partial explanation of why my local library's never heard of this book. But I digress.

Arlt was born in poverty /snip After being expelled from school at the age of eight, he learned what he could about literature and life on the streets. He worked at various times as a bookstore clerk, an apprentice to a tinsmith, a painter, a mechanic, a vulcanizer, a brick factory manager and a port worker before managing to get a job on a local newspaper. Arlt's talents for polemical journalism quickly revealed themselves, and he was soon writing a controversial daily column for a national newspaper. Given his background it was natural for Arlt to become attracted to left-wing causes, and the vague (but exciting) rumours coming from the Soviet Union led him to take an interest in Marxism.

His first novel, El juguete rabioso /snip was the semi-autobiographical story of Silvio, a school dropout who goes through a series of adventures trying to "be somebody." Narrated by Silvio's older self, the novel reflects the energy and chaos of early-20th-century Buenos Aires. The narrator's literary and sometimes poetic language contrasts sharply with the street-level slang of Mad Toy's many colorful characters.

Wiki

According to the Notes in this volume (written by the translator, Michele McKay Aynesworth), Jorge Luis Borges in 1929 praised Arlt, "For prose, Roberto Arlt stands out." Julio Cortzar (1914-1984) read Arlt "passionately" in his youth. On re-reading him 40 years later to write an introduction for a book, Cortazar found that his reaction to Arlt hadn't changed, "I find with a surprise that approaches the miraculous [that] Arlt is still the same [great] writer." And Juan Carlos Onetti wrote, "If ever anyone from these shores could be called a literary genius, his name was Roberto Arlt..." Ricardo Piglia calls Arlt "the greatest Argentinian writer of the twentieth century."

I'm not going to spoil this book. That would be extremely unfair. The writing, even in translation, is beyond wonderful. A very brief example (page 122):

And the more the heavenly dome enchanted me, the more sordid were the streets where I did business. I remember...

Those grocery stores, those butcher shops on the edge of town!

In the darkness a sunbeam would highlight the black-red flesh of animals hung on hoods and ropes hear the tin counters. The floor would be covered with sawdust, with the smell of suet in the air and black swarms of flies boiling on pieces of yellow fat, while the impressive butcher sawed away on the bones or hacked at the chops with the back of his knife...and outside... outside was the morning sky, quiet and exquisite, letting the infinite sweetness of spring fall from its bluenesss.

As I walked I was concerned only with the space, smooth as a piece of sky-blue china in its azure bounds, deep as a gulf at the zenith, a prodigious sea, high and still as could be, where my eyes seemed to see islands, seaports, marble cities surrounded by green woods, and ships with flowered masts slipping past sirens' songs toward the fairytale cities of joy.

And so I walked, shivering with delicious violence.

In this small, 1926 book (158 pages), a combination of memoir, pulp fiction, and detective story, Arlt produces gem after gem after gem. I cannot believe this book was written in 1926. I am so very happy to have found it. To me, the book resembles a small box of four exquisite chocolate truffles, something to be savored slowly, something rare, the richness increased by awareness of impermanence.