He Who Searches

by Luisa Valenzuela, Helen R. Lane (Translator)

A professor of semiotics who doubles as a psychologist in Barcelona visits (always in disguise) a prostitute in the early morning hours on Mondays and Thursdays in order to analyze her without her knowing it. The story moves from Barcelona to Mexico to Buenos Aires, but above all it is about Argentina: its recent history, its 30,000 missing children, its stunned middle class, its writers in exile. He Who Searches is multifaceted in structure, combining narrative references to old-fashioned storytelling, realism, psychoanalysis, feminism, politics, and suspense, all of them tinged with a patina of eroticism that reflects a feminist perspective. Ultimately the disguises of the plot--transvestism, transsexualism, differing sexual points of view--become pieces in a puzzle that can be taken apart to create other figures, other puzzles. It ends with its narrator back in Buenos Aires: He who searches, finds.

Genres: Fiction, Latin American, Novels, Spanish Literature, Literature, 20th Century, World Literature

134 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 1987

About the author

Luisa Valenzuela is a post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental, avant-garde style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective. She is best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in Argentina. Works such as Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982) and Cola de lagartija (1983) combine a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination of patriarchal forms of social organization and the power structures which inhere in human sexuality and gender relationships.

Reviews

[Grmln · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Didn’t understand a thing.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hallucinatory tour de force resplendent with linguistic playfulness. Highly recommended

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

What was it like for her in Latin America? What tricks can she have learned there, what misery?

This work occupies an uneasy place in the modern world of the Anglo consumption of literature. It is highly grounded in the politics of a particular part of the world that has been secretively and snidely subjugated by one of the main dictators of modern Anglo taste, and so any reader who hails from that particular country and/or any country that considers itself an ally/positively related to said country is going to spend every single moment of time that they spend reading this denying the interpretations that they say that they are aiming to seek; the more WASP the reader, the more severe the doublethink. However, it is also a 'difficult' work, and the fact that I was admittedly initially drawn to it due to its having been put out by a particular Anglo publishing company that I still hold some instinctive reserves of kowtowing reverence for doesn't prevent me from acknowledging that this is the kind of Anglo institution that will hold on to the 'difficult' only if they consider its meaning dissociated/distanced/deep enough that there's little risk of the main takeaway being any issue belonging to those more often than not simply (and lazily) summarized under the heading of 'politics'. I got some of that during my own reading, but I'll be honest, my having just finished The Obscene Bird of Night resulted in my unfairly superimposing my reading of that particular distinct piece of literature onto this one, despite the difference in countries of origin and the near two decade separation of publication dates (although the blurring of gender/sexuality that both books hold onto makes one wonder). Also, even with the blurb outright directing the reader towards the trials and tribulations of the author's native country, I wasn't nearly as confident that I knew what was going on, and in the end I am rather disappointed in my own evaluation of this work. The vagaries of translation/lack of contextualizing notes and all that, but it's enough to make me commit to read more Valenzuela in the future, regardless of what direction my thoughts on this piece end up taking.

A death on paper and in print means a death repeated as many times as readers think necessary

In terms of what this book is about, the blurbs cover the basics: male psychoanalysis, female sex work, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, the latter two largely referenced in a heavily geographical/spatial manner that made me grateful that recent interests has led me to watch a documentary on the Andes. For me, this set up was a mix of scintillating intrigue and off-puttingly presumptuous banality, where everything a human does revolves their possession/lack of a particular size/type of genitals, and if Valenzuela hadn't already been rocketing around the confines of my mind through one list or another (in addition to my being unexpectedly woefully unprepared when it came to a reading challenge involving a reading a work written by a Latin American woman), I likely would have passed it by. I was also incentivized by the assumption that the apolitical initiation would quickly reveal itself to be an introductory façade, and sure enough, it's impossible to finish this work without running into guerilla fighters, land consolidation, and torture involving electrodes on feet/testicles and Brazil-trained personnel. Indeed, you get that latter bit right off the bat, which made me think about Nguyen's The Sympathizer, but for every piece akin to that that I thought I understood, there were anywhere between five to ten more that seemed to be written as the author went along in a manner that would hardly be scrutable to a non-Spanish speaking non-academic like me. I even lengthened my time with it by halving the number of pages that I would have otherwise gone through every other day, but as is the case with certain works, it just was not meant to be. A mistake on my part resulting from a seemingly promising confluence of need and opportunity, perhaps, but Valenzuela is not the type of author that you see obscene levels of representation of on every shelf you peruse, and while this work could have gone better, I don't regret diving into it when the moment arose.

the executioner's hands do not always make history; the hands that execute are not always the real cause of the evil or of the humiliation

Now that I've finished this, I have some theories on metamorphosing identities, exile, and the intersection of indigenous values with the ideologies of those who are not content to stamp on the thousands below them in order to join the stability of the few above, all of which pluck and pull at the veins of that hydra known as the kyriarchy that feeds as much in my own country today as it did in the Argentina of the late 1980's. All this, however, didn't come about as a cohesive experience/interpretation on my part, so it wouldn't feel right to change my rating from what it currently is. A shame, but honestly, it's a reminder that I need to maintain my reading collections a bit more carefully, as the complacency that led to my completely running out of a certain demographic of literature certainly could be explained away as yet another result of COVID fatigue, but that won't justify it forever. So, another hem haw review from me, but so it goes. All I can do is promise that I'll be back with this author eventually when the time comes.

to go from here to there, to travel in the most remote regions is like winding up a time machine or turning on the tape recorder that all of us carry around in our heads, through my travels I tried to erase the old tape and re-record it. but I didn't succeed at all: I could re-record often enough but then again there are recordings that are superimposed, recordings one on top another (the triviality that suddenly attacks me like a punch in the face). I traveled to forget, of course, like everyone else, not to flee as you might think but rather in search of something, I don't know what yet, perhaps a person like yourself but I don't think so. at least I took a step forward by agreeing to the search.

[Darby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still don't understand what happened in this book. Don't care. Love love loved it anyway.

[hence · Rating 5 out of 5]

if kafka was a girlie; made me cry and that is rare

[Kia]

Evita?!

[Anesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this short work, designated “a novel,” by Lisa Valenzuela. The most intriguing part for me was a confrontation of wills between a man and woman who knew each other (intimately?) in Buenos Aires and now meet again, veiled by new identities, in Barcelona. There is a hint of Puig’s theme of love betrayed by ideological obsession, but this did not become clear to me.

I’m sorry to say, the experimental quality of the narrative—almost an aversion to spelling things out—kept me from following either the intrigue or the characters’ actions. Maybe this was meant to represent a state of psychosis? I lost the thread amid decentered imagery, unclear events, and strange recurrences. It’s the type of thing that’s better suited (in my opinion) to visual art, rather than the printed page. Language has too essential a linear dimension to successfully convey the tedium of psychic chaos that I can only assume Valenzuela had in mind.

I would imagine that she believes shattering experience leads to shattered language or mentality, overall. Probably true, but I’m not sure I can gain greater understanding from struggling with such a challenging narrative. Some of us are better off reading good journalism about the social struggles alluded to here.

[Lauren]

Giving up on the BookRiot 80 countries list. I dislike so many of these.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beginning is amazing!-

[Troy S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Admirable, funny at times, but ultimately cliché and unsuccessful.

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably should not have read two books in between reading this, but I loved the writing, didn't know what was going on.

[Andy Stallings · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult novel, but ultimately proved more rewarding than frustrating. It is structured in four sections -- "The Discovery," "The Loss," "The Journey," and "The Encounter." The first is lively and mildly disturbing, erotic and psychologically violent. The second section almost tripped me up -- the narrator seems to undergo a traumatic transformation, but the prose is extremely difficult to follow. The final two sections are no less lively than the first, no less shifty than the second, but much more realized than either, thematically and linguistically.

It's unclear to me whether the third and fourth sections take place in the same reality of the first two, or whether they are meant to be an extended dream of the narrator's. It doesn't matter in terms of narrative continuity or ultimate resolution of the novel, but it is an occasionally nagging question that the author seems to want to encourage.

Big complaint -- the inclusion of several passages of free-association in the book's first section. I understand that this is a novel partially about psychoanalysis, but it seems to me to be no excuse for the deterioration of writing quality in those passages.

On the other hand, any novel that gathers psychoanalysis, prostitution, marriage, religious purification, cannibalism, the city and the jungle, transvestitism, flight, backwoods thespians, extended quest, animal totemism, and guerilla operations into 130 pages is worth the time it takes to read it, at the very least.

It's beyond me how a single author can write something as banal as the first sentence in this paragraph, and as beautiful as the two that follow:

"I am not seeking definitions but complete explanations and only she can talk to me without talking and give it to me without even mentioning its name. one only sees the eyes of night fauna, evergreen eyes, a green deep as the sea, a gynecological green. she knows everything and I have no reason to lose her on the other side of a gesture, in some corner where the birds of disaster, toothless and voracious, make their nests."

Or rather, it's not beyond me -- more, that is the frustration of this novel, which keeps it from being truly wonderful, and very nearly overwhelms its momentum in the second section, of which the above paragraph is a part.

Anyhow, it's thought-provoking.

[Andreea Tanase · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've never struggled with a book as much as with this one! As a complete coincidence and irony, one of my friends accidentally dropped it in the toilet and my first thought was: how befitting! Absolutely horrendous book.

[Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

laila laila laila I think you would love this book! I can’t bring this copy back to school with me because it has all the little mementos of my dad in the pages but I might get my own copy whichhhh I would let you borrow for sure

[sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is all kinds of nuts, encompassing multiple realities and a list of themes longer than's worth typing out. I'm into quests and Borges; Valenzuela's work has features of both.

[Emily]

This was a deeply strange, unpleasant book, and I'm sorry to say I didn't get a whole lot out of it.