the literary conference (césar aira)

As ever one isn’t quite sure what to make of Aira’s fiendish mind. Is it that of a genius or a madman? This story involves, among things, cloning Octavio Paz and his tie, pirate’s loot, a lecherous writer, big blue worms. All of which occurs at a Venezuelan literary festival. It’s dotty, but it also feels calculated, in the way that extreme improvisation needs to be underpinned by an unlikely coherence. It’s reminiscent of Saer, rather than Borges, lacking the blind man’s love of logic. It’s also reminiscent of Aira’s cinematic compatriot Lucia Seles, another who comes from a small town on the edge of Buenos Aires, with his roundabout tales that engage but infuriate. There’s a fine line between madness, the artistic equivalent of scratching an itch until  you bleed, and otherworldly genius, which the margins of Argentina’s capital seem to provoke. Bolaño describes Aira as one of the best Hispanic writers of his generation in the introduction, and who are we to argue with Bolaño?

ghosts (césar aira, tr chris andrews)

Ghosts is another of those slight, elliptical novels that the Argentines seem to specialise in. Apparently Aira has written more than 80 novels, his name is ubiquitous in this part of the world, but I had never read him. Ghosts has the feel of having been written in a few sessions. It’s a disconnected novel, which starts by focussing on one character, a teenage boy, then shifts focus to his female teenage cousin, Patri. Both are part of an extended Chilean family who have moved to Buenos Aires, where the men work in the construction of a luxury tower block with a swimming pool on the roof.  The family lives in the building as it is built, but will have to move out when it’s completed. There is one added complication: the building is haunted by masculine ghosts who wander around in the nude and have no qualms about being seen. They take a liking to Patri, inviting her to a party, although she can only come if she’s dead.

Aira appears to be touching on at least three themes in the novel: the immigrants who arrive in Buenos Aires to work in industries like construction; the expansion of the city as old barrios are replaced by anodyne tower blocks, and lastly, the ghosts themselves hint, inescapably, at the disappeared from the dictatorship. The extent to which these themes coalesce is perhaps debatable; at times it feels as though the weight of these subtexts sits uneasily within the architecture of the novel.