Reading through “Celeste Goes Dancing,” a collection of
Argentine short stories, I came across a story called “Javier Waconda’s
Sisters,” by Fernando Sanchez Sorondo.
What a masterful tale. It
seems very little of the writer’s work is translated into English, which means
I really do need to learn to read Spanish with a little proficiency, if for no
other reason than to read more of Sanchez Sorondo. While many of the stories in
the collection are outstanding, this one stands out to me for three reasons:
1.)
The author’s pacing.
Sanchez Sorondo uses uncertainty in the story to create tension, yet
brings instances and characters into view at an almost leisurely pace. Because the reader wants the
uncertainty resolved (which of the title character’s sisters has died,
something he must speculate about until he can travel to his parents’ home), we
eagerly plow forward. The story
continually slows that progress, building tension without killing it. I think this pacing issue is a very
underappreciated aspect of fiction, and often those very bad stories we read
are bad particularly because of pacing.
The cheap boilerplate novels of third rate scribblers feel so third rate
because we go from character introduction to explosions, secret ops bases, and
kung fu masters in the space of a paragraph. Uncomfortably fast pacing is usually a result of
stories constituted mainly of plot, not of character or much
contemplation. On the other end of
the pacing spectrum, we have the navel-gazing, lethargic, bloated and
self-important novels of recently graduated MFAs who have overdosed on David
Foster Wallace and now try to mimic him, often with dreadful – yet amusing –
results. DFW had something to say,
and that something took a bit of time (much like Javier Marías in that way, if
not in style), whereas these books don’t.
(I fear this will be a perfect description of my writing)
2.)
The
prose. Gorgeous stuff. Many writers can turn a phrase or two,
but every paragraph? The story is
only a few pages long, yet my marginalia was nearly as long. Some things I wrote, not very literary
but honest, were: “Holy shit, this is good,” and “Where the hell has this
writer been all my life,” and “I need to not read this in a public place. Weeping from beauty is still frowned
upon,” and “who cares about shedding manly tears. This is amazing.”
I wrote some quasi-intelligent commentary too, but that’s all pretty dry
and technical.
3.)
The story beneath the story. Hemingway famously described his iceberg theory as one of
omission, where superfluous details are left out and only the immediate actions
and settings are there, leaving the reader to construct the rest of the iceberg
that makes up the “whole story.”
While “Javier Waconda’s Sisters” is nowhere near as sparse as a Hemingway tale, there is
a great deal of the iceberg still left below the waves. One interesting aspect of this
submerged portion of the tale is the disintigration of the country of
Argentina, which we see falling into ruins, dying in unknown portions, as the
title character travels through the land by bus. Another aspect is the relationship Waconda has with his
sisters, which is hinted at in recounted memories, conjuring speculations ranging
from the grotesque to the sublime.
A wonderful story. Now, to work on learning Spanish.
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