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Varamo
The surprising, magnificent story of a Panamanian government employee who, one day, after a series of troubles, writes the celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry.
Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one.”
Among other things, this novella is an ironic allegory of the poet’s vocation and inspiration, the subtlety of artistic genius, and our need to give literature an historic, national, psychological, and aesthetic context. But Aira goes further still — converting the ironic allegory into a formidable parody of the expectations that all narrative texts generate — by laying out the pathos of a man who between one night and the following morning is touched by genius. Once again Aira surprises us with his unclassifiable fiction: original and enjoyable, worthy of many a thoughtful chuckle, Varamo invites the reader to become an accomplice in the author’s irresistible game.
Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one.”
Among other things, this novella is an ironic allegory of the poet’s vocation and inspiration, the subtlety of artistic genius, and our need to give literature an historic, national, psychological, and aesthetic context. But Aira goes further still — converting the ironic allegory into a formidable parody of the expectations that all narrative texts generate — by laying out the pathos of a man who between one night and the following morning is touched by genius. Once again Aira surprises us with his unclassifiable fiction: original and enjoyable, worthy of many a thoughtful chuckle, Varamo invites the reader to become an accomplice in the author’s irresistible game.
89 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
37 people are currently reading
1315 people want to read
About the author
César Aira
260 books1,148 followersCésar Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. He taught at the University of Buenos Aires (about Copi and Rimbaud) and at the University of Rosario (Constructivism and Mallarmé), and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Perhaps one of the most prolific writers in Argentina, and certainly one of the most talked about in Latin America, Aira has published more than eighty books to date in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Spain, which have been translated for France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Romania, Russia, and now the United States. One novel, La prueba, has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun was chosen as one of Argentina’s ten best books. Besides essays and novels Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 1996 he received a Guggenheim scholarship, in 2002 he was short listed for the Rómulo Gallegos prize, and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
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April 26, 2019
César Aira thrives on improvisation. His eighty or so novellas have been written, so the Argentine author recounts in an interview, one page at a time without rewriting or revision– then he move on to the next page - in other words, like a modern day Scheherazade, César makes it up as he goes along.
Which prompts the question: what kind of stories are we talking about here? Answer: whimsical, quirky, idiosyncratic, flighty. And heady, as if a few drops of Ludwig Wittgenstein or Jacques Derrida were added to the literary cocktail. If you are looking for straightforward storytelling, you'll have to look elsewhere since César takes time out for metaphysical asides, delightful digressions and erudite episodes.
Varamo might be César Aira’s all-time favorite among his books for a few distinct reasons: 1) a prime theme is the very act of improvisation; 2) toward the end of the story, Varamo assumes the identity of a writer; 3) Varamo is fifty-years old, the same age as César when he wrote this novella in 1999.
Varamo takes place in Colón, Panama in 1923 and opens with a civil servant lackey with that name handed his monthly salary of two hundred pesos. But, to his consternation, the two one-hundred peso bills are counterfeit. Huge upset to his routine. We follow our discombobulated grey-flannel flunky throughout his day, in the town square, at his home and then out on an evening excursion. The novella ends with some hack Panamanian publishers convincing Varamo to assume the mantle of a writer and provide them with a manuscript the very next day. Varamo does much more: he writes a celebrated masterpiece, The Song of the Virgin Child.
The eighty-nine pages of this New Directions publication, smoothly translated into English by Chris Andrews, covers the world of Varamo between the time he receives those counterfeit bills and the writing of his famous poem. So, to share some tangy tastes of what a reader is in store for, in the spirit of Cesar’s fickle fancies, I will link my comments with a number of Varamo quotes:
"Light was what made the world work; the world was Colón; Colón was the square. Light dissolved the worries created by its dark twin, thought. . . . . On the one hand light dissolved, and on the other it condensed: its action had produce those colored statues known as plants, people, animals, clouds and the earth." --------- In keeping with the world's mystical traditions, a recognition we have two natures, our particular material individuality and, more importantly, our eternal light nature connecting us with the entire cosmos.
"Varamo had always wondered how people managed to go on living. Now he thought he knew the answer: they could do it because they didn't have to wonder how they would change their counterfeit bills." --------- Such a mindset is a consequence of performing years of drudge-work, locked into a stale routine: thinking the psychic glue holding society together is workaday predictability. And over time, humdrum regularity becomes the alpha and omega, the very reason for rousing oneself out of bed in the morning. Reading between the lines, my sense is César Aira loathes such stagnation which is a blight on improvisation and the creative process.
"His hobby was embalming small animals. . . . The animals had to "turn out" well - whole, shiny, natural, strikingly posed - in other words, they had to turn out to be just as they'd been at the start, before the process began." --------- Ha! Even milquetoast Varamo has an eccentric side. His current project is producing a fish playing the piano. One of the quirkier, fascinating parts. Embalming as a metaphor for a clerk? For the citizens of Colón? For the Panamanian publishers? Questions to have fun with.
"Although this book takes the form of a novel, it is a work of literary history, not a fiction, because the protagonist existed, and he was the author of a famous poem that is studied to this day as a watershed in the development of the Spanish American avant-garde movements." ---------- Intriguing. Of course the narrator can claim "this book" isn't a fiction since, as narrator, he exists within the novella. But can we as readers make a similar claim? César obviously enjoyed playing these philosophic games.
"Free indirect style, which is the view from inside a character expressed in the third person, creates an impression of naturalness, and allows us to forget that we are reading fiction and that, in the real world, we never know what other people are thinking, or why they do what they do. . . . So, far from being just another literary technique, free indirect style is the key mechanism of trans-subjectivity, without which we would have no understanding of social interactions." --------- Now that's profound! Taking this line of thinking into historical context, we may ask: how influential was the birth of the novel in modern European civilization in empowering men and women with a capacity to analyze and criticize their society in new ways. More specifically, did novels fuel such isms as Marxism and socialism?
"Do you write?" Varamo smiled and said no, amused by the thought. It had never occurred to him. "But we're open to local writing, especially if it's the work of intelligent and cultured people like yourself. You wouldn't like to try?" Varamo replied that it was tempting. But he had no experience, he didn't even know the basics of the writer's craft." ---------- The humor of asking a clerk if he writes, suggesting that if a publisher is after money, they will publish books no matter how low the quality, as long as they can make profit. The connection of money and improvisation pops up again and again.
"In barbaric lands like the Americas, writers produced their best work before learning the craft, and nine times out of ten, their first book was the strongest, as well as being, in general, the only one they wrote." -------- I recall César speaking his mind about airport books: horror novels, detective novels, romance novels, crime novels, espionage novels, religious novels. With novels written by the likes of Tom Clancy and Pat Robertson, one can appreciate how a sensitive literary man such as César Aira can shake his head at the state of novel writing in the contemporary world.
None of my quotes are taken from the last ten page. These final pages are the sweetest of the sweet nectar. I urge you to partake of César's sumptuous feast. For connoisseurs of literature, every page of Varamo is a delight.
César Aira, Born 1949
February 5, 2021
This “experiment in literary criticism” may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but the humor grew on me until I was laughing out loud.
When I first encountered academic, aka “scholarly,” literary writing, I was aghast at the practice of using as many words as possible to say next to nothing while espousing over-analysis that becomes a kind of intellectual masturbation signifying nothing. Now imagine a story by a literary analyst about a person who thinks, analyzes his own thoughts, and expresses them as convolutedly as possible in endless mind streams. When this is done unintentionally, my private editor’s definition of it is “word vomit.” But here it is done with comedic intent and it works.
Sometimes well-known and respected literary word vomiters practice their trade by writing analytical introductions to books. This fictional account by such an analyst/critic/vomiter of how a Panamanian clerk came to write a “masterwork of modern Central American poetry” is inventive and, per the book’s blurb, “unclassifiable.” The only thing that would have made it better: since it is essentially a long joke about how a critic can derive true life events of a writer from a poem, I would have loved to have read the poem at the end of the literary treatise; I imagine it to be a page of gibberish with bits of stuff that the literary critic then wildly extrapolated from to form the story he’s just told.
Thanks to Goodreader Phyllis for reviewing this book. Otherwise I’d never have found and enjoyed it.
When I first encountered academic, aka “scholarly,” literary writing, I was aghast at the practice of using as many words as possible to say next to nothing while espousing over-analysis that becomes a kind of intellectual masturbation signifying nothing. Now imagine a story by a literary analyst about a person who thinks, analyzes his own thoughts, and expresses them as convolutedly as possible in endless mind streams. When this is done unintentionally, my private editor’s definition of it is “word vomit.” But here it is done with comedic intent and it works.
Sometimes well-known and respected literary word vomiters practice their trade by writing analytical introductions to books. This fictional account by such an analyst/critic/vomiter of how a Panamanian clerk came to write a “masterwork of modern Central American poetry” is inventive and, per the book’s blurb, “unclassifiable.” The only thing that would have made it better: since it is essentially a long joke about how a critic can derive true life events of a writer from a poem, I would have loved to have read the poem at the end of the literary treatise; I imagine it to be a page of gibberish with bits of stuff that the literary critic then wildly extrapolated from to form the story he’s just told.
Thanks to Goodreader Phyllis for reviewing this book. Otherwise I’d never have found and enjoyed it.
August 23, 2019
Absolute 5 star.. A review following soon...
An update on that following soon thingy!
So, the reviewer, by using the general themes of this novella, decided to write a fictional story involving the creation of God, Holy Mother, Angels, Pre-God beings, and Human beings. It should have been a story of how the God of Death becomes a traitor by joining the Pre-God beings or Satans and gets caught by God, and the ensuing fatal decision of imparting a quality to Human beings, which was till then absent, which would result in the chaotic world we live now. Since what started as a review in a form of a short story but ended in a word length more than what Goodreads can contain (10,000 words story from a small Goodreads's word limit), and in a form which is anything but a short story or a story, the reviewer decided to abort writing the review/story/essay or whatever it was for this novella.
So the reviewer fails in what the protagonist of this short book succeeds i.e to use elements of disparate things to carry out a work to get out of a trouble.
P.S : Not withstanding the temptation of sharing, I am sharing the part of that story.
The song of the virgin child or a tangential cross between Cesar Aira’s Varamo and Aravindakshan’s The story of Paradisians.
The Finale:
Still, God wasn't satisfied, then came with a decision that caused one of the most devastating repercussions throughout the human history. God had decided to add a small layer of bad quality such that they can be well aware of what is meant by a bad quality to safe guard themselves. The concentration of it was only very mild to have any effects apart from a rudimentary knowledge of bad quality. As far as the boredom, God had decided to give jobs according to one's capability demanded, there was much to worry themselves about in the new world. God also, after much deliberation, decided to give free will to Humans. Not that they didn’t possess free will already, it had been there, but still very limited and in its latent stage. As far as the new Yama (God of death) duty was concerned there was a cap for the average age by which humans will die and they will reach paradise post-death.
This had a severe consequence, that God could only wield power over those Elings to an extent.
God had a reason, these were carried out such that they become completely non-contactable by Satan world. Also, God was so confident about his new creations, after all, God has been carrying out the simulating experiment for long years within his secret chamber and results have been thoroughly satisfactory.
The E world would be filled with a vital gas which would not be much different from the gas in the Paradise. Since the concept of death changed, the body too will work in a different way in the E world, it had its own growth, unlike the static state of growth in the body in Paradise.
In Paradise there was no growth, God created Humans as a completely grown up one - both physically and mentally. In Paradise, all were expected to take pills as food, which was filled with vital gas. There was no excretion or egestion just like pre-God beings, all the contents of the pill were fully used by the body for its function.
God also decided to write about all these - the history of paradise, satan world, and all instruction one should follow in this new world called E.
This should be the gospel guide for the rest of the history for this creature. It didn't possess a tone of an authoritarian, but a benevolent tone narrating the satan world, paradise, history of mother, god, Yama, and all that happened through which the nature of good will become obvious and considered most suitable for Humans to follow. At best, God could have just written those few qualities which becomes clear at the end of the book as the most needed - beautiful qualities humans should have, but he had a good reason for not just naming those qualities and asking humans to follow them blindly. It had its own consequences, which this book can't deal with.
Few humans argued with God that they would stay in Paradise and few did stay.
Few for the adventure sake did agree to go to the E world.
After deciding who is staying and who is taking the journey, God called the few Humans who had lived a long life in Paradise and who now had decided to take the journey. Unlike God’s new creation of Humans from his model, these were Paradisians, so they required a new sort of makeover which God needed to give to them.
Since only 5 from Paradise beings decided to go, God didn’t take much time in reworking the body for suiting the E world.
There were totally 50 who decided to make the journey - 45 new Humans and 5 Paradise beings.
In those 45 new Humans, God had already created them keeping in mind their future history in the E world. E world and the new Humans along with 5 Paradisians are going to live a new life there.
God wasn't ready to miss out even smaller detail. God after some time, decided that individualism has to be abolished in favour of the Family concept. For that, he brought the whole system of Gender, reproduction, sex, and emotions etc.
On gender, God decided to create 26 females and 24 males. In those 5 Paradisians - 3 were made female and 2 were males.
The Humans, few in numbers who had decided to live in E were given clear instruction about this new world. The literature was read to them by God himself and doubts were cleared there and then.
God had clearly explained that their body is completely different from Paradisians and its full form, with all of its feature, will emerge only after they reach World E. For 10 months the female and male, marked by plus and dot on their forehead, respectively, should be separated. There will be enormous pain that they have to face for 10 months and then it will become normal. Since time was running away, God couldn’t clarify all doubt but said everything has been clearly explained in the book and moreover God will monitor and help them whenever a problem should arise.
God had written the book in the language of Humans, but ironically named the title of the book in a language that is unfamiliar to humans.
The title was The song of the virgin child.
This caused various other schools of thoughts to develop after many centuries, in opposition to God, that we can't deal here.
God in the meanwhile had created the E world. Since God was also thinking heavily about eradicating any sort of boredom, he created E, not as the paradise, but a sort of a jungle only to be occupied by Humans without any sophistication they enjoyed here.
The route by which they have to travel had been decided and the space vehicle was ready.
The book was given to two Humans (a male and female), who had already lived in paradise for many years.
God after congratulating all, went to his abode and was monitoring his creations as they departed.
As all the humans departed from Paradise to their Eling, with a few crying incessantly, (first indication of emotions) between the moment they stepped out of their paradise and reached their destination, an unprecedented event happened to which God was a mute spectator through his monitoring screen!! The nature of nature had inverted!
In deep crevices, far corners of the heart of one human, the light has been dispelled by darkness. It wasn't the maxim that darkness is the absence of light, but another way - the light is the absence of darkness.
It moved at a speed, maximum than light could do.
At that exact moment, the new Human looked at the book in an altogether new way from a distance and this was preceded by a parting of his lips with a smile. It was glowing brightly in the hands of the veteran Human. This new Human could sense a completely new meaning to this glowing Gospel. The veteran gave a sudden glance to the other Human, and immediately the other human turned his gaze. And as fateful as it may sound, like those events which had had to happen, this exact human who smiled at the book was the last of this generation to survive along with his Lady and he became the Prophet for the rest of Human's History!
God was monitoring all these but could only wield the limited power God had on Elings.
God was profoundly considering the destruction of the whole universe. God would have had destroyed it if not for God’s Mother. That is where the terrible twist comes, because there was another entity along with Mother who has to be considered first. For knowing that one should read another story called “Failure of Grand experiment or Story of Natures' Invincibility”.
But who is going to write it? Not this writer for sure, considering how I have miserably failed in the endeavour I had undertaken.
End of story.
As far Cesar Aira and this work is concerned, this ranks as my most favorite of his works. His is a unique voice in the contemporary literature. I have read his Conversation and An episode in the life of a landscape painter along with this.
On Varamo, this is a short meta fiction featuring a curious protagonist, who busies himself in his weird fish experiment; who gets caught in a trouble when possessing a counterfeit note and to come out of it, he ends up doing a job which I have failed above!
Won't consume more than an afternoon reading or say your binge watching session.
An update on that following soon thingy!
So, the reviewer, by using the general themes of this novella, decided to write a fictional story involving the creation of God, Holy Mother, Angels, Pre-God beings, and Human beings. It should have been a story of how the God of Death becomes a traitor by joining the Pre-God beings or Satans and gets caught by God, and the ensuing fatal decision of imparting a quality to Human beings, which was till then absent, which would result in the chaotic world we live now. Since what started as a review in a form of a short story but ended in a word length more than what Goodreads can contain (10,000 words story from a small Goodreads's word limit), and in a form which is anything but a short story or a story, the reviewer decided to abort writing the review/story/essay or whatever it was for this novella.
So the reviewer fails in what the protagonist of this short book succeeds i.e to use elements of disparate things to carry out a work to get out of a trouble.
P.S : Not withstanding the temptation of sharing, I am sharing the part of that story.
The song of the virgin child or a tangential cross between Cesar Aira’s Varamo and Aravindakshan’s The story of Paradisians.
The Finale:
Still, God wasn't satisfied, then came with a decision that caused one of the most devastating repercussions throughout the human history. God had decided to add a small layer of bad quality such that they can be well aware of what is meant by a bad quality to safe guard themselves. The concentration of it was only very mild to have any effects apart from a rudimentary knowledge of bad quality. As far as the boredom, God had decided to give jobs according to one's capability demanded, there was much to worry themselves about in the new world. God also, after much deliberation, decided to give free will to Humans. Not that they didn’t possess free will already, it had been there, but still very limited and in its latent stage. As far as the new Yama (God of death) duty was concerned there was a cap for the average age by which humans will die and they will reach paradise post-death.
This had a severe consequence, that God could only wield power over those Elings to an extent.
God had a reason, these were carried out such that they become completely non-contactable by Satan world. Also, God was so confident about his new creations, after all, God has been carrying out the simulating experiment for long years within his secret chamber and results have been thoroughly satisfactory.
The E world would be filled with a vital gas which would not be much different from the gas in the Paradise. Since the concept of death changed, the body too will work in a different way in the E world, it had its own growth, unlike the static state of growth in the body in Paradise.
In Paradise there was no growth, God created Humans as a completely grown up one - both physically and mentally. In Paradise, all were expected to take pills as food, which was filled with vital gas. There was no excretion or egestion just like pre-God beings, all the contents of the pill were fully used by the body for its function.
God also decided to write about all these - the history of paradise, satan world, and all instruction one should follow in this new world called E.
This should be the gospel guide for the rest of the history for this creature. It didn't possess a tone of an authoritarian, but a benevolent tone narrating the satan world, paradise, history of mother, god, Yama, and all that happened through which the nature of good will become obvious and considered most suitable for Humans to follow. At best, God could have just written those few qualities which becomes clear at the end of the book as the most needed - beautiful qualities humans should have, but he had a good reason for not just naming those qualities and asking humans to follow them blindly. It had its own consequences, which this book can't deal with.
Few humans argued with God that they would stay in Paradise and few did stay.
Few for the adventure sake did agree to go to the E world.
After deciding who is staying and who is taking the journey, God called the few Humans who had lived a long life in Paradise and who now had decided to take the journey. Unlike God’s new creation of Humans from his model, these were Paradisians, so they required a new sort of makeover which God needed to give to them.
Since only 5 from Paradise beings decided to go, God didn’t take much time in reworking the body for suiting the E world.
There were totally 50 who decided to make the journey - 45 new Humans and 5 Paradise beings.
In those 45 new Humans, God had already created them keeping in mind their future history in the E world. E world and the new Humans along with 5 Paradisians are going to live a new life there.
God wasn't ready to miss out even smaller detail. God after some time, decided that individualism has to be abolished in favour of the Family concept. For that, he brought the whole system of Gender, reproduction, sex, and emotions etc.
On gender, God decided to create 26 females and 24 males. In those 5 Paradisians - 3 were made female and 2 were males.
The Humans, few in numbers who had decided to live in E were given clear instruction about this new world. The literature was read to them by God himself and doubts were cleared there and then.
God had clearly explained that their body is completely different from Paradisians and its full form, with all of its feature, will emerge only after they reach World E. For 10 months the female and male, marked by plus and dot on their forehead, respectively, should be separated. There will be enormous pain that they have to face for 10 months and then it will become normal. Since time was running away, God couldn’t clarify all doubt but said everything has been clearly explained in the book and moreover God will monitor and help them whenever a problem should arise.
God had written the book in the language of Humans, but ironically named the title of the book in a language that is unfamiliar to humans.
The title was The song of the virgin child.
This caused various other schools of thoughts to develop after many centuries, in opposition to God, that we can't deal here.
God in the meanwhile had created the E world. Since God was also thinking heavily about eradicating any sort of boredom, he created E, not as the paradise, but a sort of a jungle only to be occupied by Humans without any sophistication they enjoyed here.
The route by which they have to travel had been decided and the space vehicle was ready.
The book was given to two Humans (a male and female), who had already lived in paradise for many years.
God after congratulating all, went to his abode and was monitoring his creations as they departed.
As all the humans departed from Paradise to their Eling, with a few crying incessantly, (first indication of emotions) between the moment they stepped out of their paradise and reached their destination, an unprecedented event happened to which God was a mute spectator through his monitoring screen!! The nature of nature had inverted!
In deep crevices, far corners of the heart of one human, the light has been dispelled by darkness. It wasn't the maxim that darkness is the absence of light, but another way - the light is the absence of darkness.
It moved at a speed, maximum than light could do.
At that exact moment, the new Human looked at the book in an altogether new way from a distance and this was preceded by a parting of his lips with a smile. It was glowing brightly in the hands of the veteran Human. This new Human could sense a completely new meaning to this glowing Gospel. The veteran gave a sudden glance to the other Human, and immediately the other human turned his gaze. And as fateful as it may sound, like those events which had had to happen, this exact human who smiled at the book was the last of this generation to survive along with his Lady and he became the Prophet for the rest of Human's History!
God was monitoring all these but could only wield the limited power God had on Elings.
God was profoundly considering the destruction of the whole universe. God would have had destroyed it if not for God’s Mother. That is where the terrible twist comes, because there was another entity along with Mother who has to be considered first. For knowing that one should read another story called “Failure of Grand experiment or Story of Natures' Invincibility”.
But who is going to write it? Not this writer for sure, considering how I have miserably failed in the endeavour I had undertaken.
End of story.
As far Cesar Aira and this work is concerned, this ranks as my most favorite of his works. His is a unique voice in the contemporary literature. I have read his Conversation and An episode in the life of a landscape painter along with this.
On Varamo, this is a short meta fiction featuring a curious protagonist, who busies himself in his weird fish experiment; who gets caught in a trouble when possessing a counterfeit note and to come out of it, he ends up doing a job which I have failed above!
Won't consume more than an afternoon reading or say your binge watching session.
November 23, 2017
The stars were an overwhelming surprise. But since each scene was linked to the one that that had gone before, he continued to see the dominoes and dishes, twinkling among the constellations.
Came home last pondering when to begin the traditional chili verde, thought better of rushing in, fearful angels and all that. My better half was knitting and watching a PBS documentary on puffer fish and how the males make these ornate designs of ocean floor to attract potential mates. I ruminated on that and decided I didn't need a beer- recovering from Strep and prudence. I deal exclusively in shit parables. I had read half of Varamo previously but suddenly felt too knackered to complete the slim volume. I slept and dreamt I was chased in the streets and beaten as a communist.
Brilliant sun here today. Beethoven sonatas and espresso assisted in the chili prep. It was then that I finished the convoluted saga of a day in the life of civil servant become one time poet. The novella is a fascinating exercise. A miniature heavy in loose ends but somehow satisfying. 3.4 stars -- rounded up in the esprit of largesse.
Came home last pondering when to begin the traditional chili verde, thought better of rushing in, fearful angels and all that. My better half was knitting and watching a PBS documentary on puffer fish and how the males make these ornate designs of ocean floor to attract potential mates. I ruminated on that and decided I didn't need a beer- recovering from Strep and prudence. I deal exclusively in shit parables. I had read half of Varamo previously but suddenly felt too knackered to complete the slim volume. I slept and dreamt I was chased in the streets and beaten as a communist.
Brilliant sun here today. Beethoven sonatas and espresso assisted in the chili prep. It was then that I finished the convoluted saga of a day in the life of civil servant become one time poet. The novella is a fascinating exercise. A miniature heavy in loose ends but somehow satisfying. 3.4 stars -- rounded up in the esprit of largesse.
October 17, 2012
Most traditional literature is somewhat like a series of nested matryoshka dolls: You come back out the way you go in. In the process, all unresolved issues are neatly resolved (one hopes), and one has experienced a real 19th century experience.
Well, that doesn't seem to be happening any more, except perhaps in some whodunits. It certainly isn't happening in the slim novels of César Aira, an Argentinean from Coronel Pringles who writes the way a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot cleans: He just moves in a straight line until he encounters a barrier that sends him off in another direction.
In Varamo, we are in the city of Colón in Panama some 20 years after the Panama Canal was built. Varamo is the name of a Chinese-Panamanian who works for one of the government ministries in Colón. The story begins when, as his pay, he is handed 200 counterfeit pesos which he at once recognizes and is afraid to cash. He walks to the cafe one evening and witnesses an accident in which one of the government ministers is severely injured. That makes him late to the cafe, where he runs into three pirate publishers who urge him to write a book, which Varamo gladly does. It turns out to become a Central American poetry classic: The Song of the Virgin Boy.
Along the way, he encounters other adventures, but this will do for now. In the last paragraph, Aira gives a kind of apologia for his own highly individualistic writing style:
Well, that doesn't seem to be happening any more, except perhaps in some whodunits. It certainly isn't happening in the slim novels of César Aira, an Argentinean from Coronel Pringles who writes the way a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot cleans: He just moves in a straight line until he encounters a barrier that sends him off in another direction.
In Varamo, we are in the city of Colón in Panama some 20 years after the Panama Canal was built. Varamo is the name of a Chinese-Panamanian who works for one of the government ministries in Colón. The story begins when, as his pay, he is handed 200 counterfeit pesos which he at once recognizes and is afraid to cash. He walks to the cafe one evening and witnesses an accident in which one of the government ministers is severely injured. That makes him late to the cafe, where he runs into three pirate publishers who urge him to write a book, which Varamo gladly does. It turns out to become a Central American poetry classic: The Song of the Virgin Boy.
Along the way, he encounters other adventures, but this will do for now. In the last paragraph, Aira gives a kind of apologia for his own highly individualistic writing style:
The result was Varamo's famous poem, except that it was less a result in itself than a way of transforming what had preceded it into a result. It produced a kind of automatism or mutual fatality, by which cause and effect changed places and became the same story. Far from diminishing the poem's initial vigor, this circle intensifies it. Which is, in fact, what always happens. If a work is dazzlingly innovative and opens up unexplored paths, the merit is not to be found in the work itself, but in its transformative effect on the historical moment that engendered it. Novelty makes its causes new, giving birth to them retrospectively. If historical time makes us live in the new, a story that attempts to account for the origin of a work of art, that is, a work of innovation, ceases to be a story; it's a new reality, and yet a part of reality as it has always been for everyone. Those who don't believe me can go and see for themselves.Now there's a manifesto! Aira's "new reality" has, with me, fallen on receptive ears. I have read every Aira book that I could get my hands on. They are all relatively short, but always succeed in defying any attempt at speed-reading. This Argentinean knows how to throw curve balls that bounce all over the place. Following their trajectory across space and time is not only great fun, but also profound, in a weird way.
December 26, 2021
All writing seems silly when you analyse it. Varamo works for the government of Panama and one day he is paid his salary in counterfeit bills. He knows it when it happens, but does nothing. So we are already inside Varamo’s mind.
Aira tells us along the way that his third person narrative is in the school of “Free Indirect Style”.
But this is relevant since money and the Free Indirect Style are connected in the narrative. The first clue is the point of view – why would anyone be silly enough to say nothing when receiving a counterfeit bill from their employer? It explains character, but also propels plot. And Aira novels feel plotted, though they may or may not be. I can’t tell.
Free indirect style and money, are, in their respective domains, causes that operate at a level apart, above or below other causes
A long treatise on how the free indirect style affects this story continues:
The only possible, though tenuous justification, lies in the fact that the counterfeit bills, precisely because they are counterfeit, bring an element of irreducible materiality to a space of abstraction…
During a tortuous night of encounters, Varamo meets people who transform him, too, like his neighbours the Gongoras sisters, women he has never met, who live in his street. Everyone in Panama is racially mixed. Nothing is in fact an abstraction, but a meeting of blood, creeds, like the two oceans that bring east to west. Varamo’s family is Chinese on his mother’s side. The Gongoras are mixed blood, too, kept apart from others by innuendo, gossip and human miserliness. They bring him into a plot he must take part in.
Unplanned parties are always the most fun one of them says.
Having encountered them, Varamo is in a better place. Connection is really everything.
Later Varamo will write a long poem for publication. It seems writers are in demand by pirate publishers who meet in bars looking for content. It is the early 20thC. The Caribbean is still the domain of piracy and plunder, only writing and art are its focus.
Varamo is an anxious man, full of vulnerabilities. He is the perfect subject for the free indirect style. When reading books, we like to be transformed, if we are truly reading. Varamo is thankfully transformed by this book, too. His life is likely better after a day in Cesar Aira’s hands. And so are we as its reader.
Aira tells us along the way that his third person narrative is in the school of “Free Indirect Style”.
But this is relevant since money and the Free Indirect Style are connected in the narrative. The first clue is the point of view – why would anyone be silly enough to say nothing when receiving a counterfeit bill from their employer? It explains character, but also propels plot. And Aira novels feel plotted, though they may or may not be. I can’t tell.
Free indirect style and money, are, in their respective domains, causes that operate at a level apart, above or below other causes
A long treatise on how the free indirect style affects this story continues:
The only possible, though tenuous justification, lies in the fact that the counterfeit bills, precisely because they are counterfeit, bring an element of irreducible materiality to a space of abstraction…
During a tortuous night of encounters, Varamo meets people who transform him, too, like his neighbours the Gongoras sisters, women he has never met, who live in his street. Everyone in Panama is racially mixed. Nothing is in fact an abstraction, but a meeting of blood, creeds, like the two oceans that bring east to west. Varamo’s family is Chinese on his mother’s side. The Gongoras are mixed blood, too, kept apart from others by innuendo, gossip and human miserliness. They bring him into a plot he must take part in.
Unplanned parties are always the most fun one of them says.
Having encountered them, Varamo is in a better place. Connection is really everything.
Later Varamo will write a long poem for publication. It seems writers are in demand by pirate publishers who meet in bars looking for content. It is the early 20thC. The Caribbean is still the domain of piracy and plunder, only writing and art are its focus.
Varamo is an anxious man, full of vulnerabilities. He is the perfect subject for the free indirect style. When reading books, we like to be transformed, if we are truly reading. Varamo is thankfully transformed by this book, too. His life is likely better after a day in Cesar Aira’s hands. And so are we as its reader.
December 29, 2015
L'arte di improvvisare
“Nonostante si presenti come un romanzo, questo è un libro di storia letteraria; non è un'opera di fantasia, perché il protagonista è esistito, ed è stato l'autore di un famoso poema tuttora studiato come un momento cruciale nella storia delle avanguardie ispanoamericane. […] La nostra invasione nella coscienza di Varamo, tuttavia, non è magica, e nemmeno fantasiosa o ipotetica. E' una ricostruzione storica. Il fatto è che l'abbiamo presentata a rovescio, mettendo all'inizio i risultati finali della nostra indagine”.
Non si può ricordare la trama di questo breve romanzo senza sorridere ad ogni nuovo aneddoto che torna alla memoria. Varamo è la storia surreale di un uomo comune, un impiegato statale, che in un'avventura visionaria e sorprendente scopre l'essenza tragicomica della realtà storica nei suoi risvolti più nascosti e inattesi. Varamo è un anonimo funzionario di un ministero, residente nel 1923 a Colòn, città dello stato di Panama, dove vive con la madre; è un individuo abitudinario e ordinario e si troverà senza volere (mentre vuole scrivere un trattato sulla sua passione, la tassidermia) a scrivere un poema d'avanguardia modernista, Il Canto del bambino vergine, creazione finzionale dietro alla quale si costruisce dissimulato criticamente il testo stesso di Cesar Aira, in un ironico e sperimentale ribaltamento metaletterario: quello che Aira chiama “fuga in avanti”. Il racconto ha inizio con un'anomalia nel corso della sua antica quotidianità: Varamo riscuote lo stipendio e scopre di aver ricevuto due banconote false. Il suo intelletto si protende ora alla soluzione del caso e dell'assurdo; come sopravvivere con la paura di venire incriminato per possesso illegale e non creare alcuno squilibrio nel suo mondo privato, cosa fare e come comportarsi in seguito a questa falsificazione, a questo incidente inquietante. Qui cominciano gli esilaranti e indimenticabili avvenimenti di Varamo, letterato per disgrazia e per condanna. La critica sottolinea nello stile di Aira la naturalezza espressiva, la coesistenza fantastica e eterogenea di elementi sconcertanti e familiari, l'invenzione talentuosa e spregiudicata. Si tratta sempre di una narrazione metodica e disciplinata, fino alla ossessione formale, che appare nello stesso momento improvvisata, spontanea, intuitiva, facile e illogica. Manifesto di quella relazione estetica tra autore e lettore che fondandosi sul discorso indiretto libero crea un'area di comunicazione intersoggettiva, premediata, in virtù della quale personaggi e pensieri e azioni assumono questa veste di verosimiglianza e genuinità. “Vale a dire che il materiale con cui si fabbricava la fantasia era la verità”. E questa operazione letteraria è una consistente riflessione di Aira sulla natura della scrittura come inganno o contraffazione. L'idea che fonda il racconto del timido e inconsapevole Varamo è la composizione di una forma che si crea nella relazione tra ordine e caos, tra realtà e finzione, tra fatto e teoria, dalla quale scaturiscono eventi che sono coerenti e simbolici e insieme insensati e illogici: l'imbalsamazione del pesce pianista, la lettera anonima della madre da cui dipende, l'avvelenamento del cibo, la gara di regolarità, l'attentato anarchico, la casa delle sorelle Gòngora con le mazze da golf, la macchina che legge le voci della cospirazione, l'amante misteriosa e i suoi codici, gli editori pirata e la poesia che nasce automatica dalle molteplici combinazioni della casualità (Varamo conserva appunti e note su ogni evento accaduto nella tasca). Così emerge lo sguardo marginale e allusivo di Aira, antiromantico e dadaista, che disorienta e diverte, definendosi in un frammento di realtà, un atomo di tempo, in una scomparsa di tempo. Parodia kafkiana delle digressioni saggistiche, simulacro scherzoso di romanzi strutturalisti ipotetici, le storie di Aira essenzialmente sono fantasie e sottotrame con un suono efficace e profondo, sono pensieri ancora da pensare: non richiedono di essere teoricamente decifrate, ma semplicemente elaborate e felicemente vissute, rinnegando fino in fondo, ad ogni strato, qualsiasi vocazione.
“Nonostante si presenti come un romanzo, questo è un libro di storia letteraria; non è un'opera di fantasia, perché il protagonista è esistito, ed è stato l'autore di un famoso poema tuttora studiato come un momento cruciale nella storia delle avanguardie ispanoamericane. […] La nostra invasione nella coscienza di Varamo, tuttavia, non è magica, e nemmeno fantasiosa o ipotetica. E' una ricostruzione storica. Il fatto è che l'abbiamo presentata a rovescio, mettendo all'inizio i risultati finali della nostra indagine”.
Non si può ricordare la trama di questo breve romanzo senza sorridere ad ogni nuovo aneddoto che torna alla memoria. Varamo è la storia surreale di un uomo comune, un impiegato statale, che in un'avventura visionaria e sorprendente scopre l'essenza tragicomica della realtà storica nei suoi risvolti più nascosti e inattesi. Varamo è un anonimo funzionario di un ministero, residente nel 1923 a Colòn, città dello stato di Panama, dove vive con la madre; è un individuo abitudinario e ordinario e si troverà senza volere (mentre vuole scrivere un trattato sulla sua passione, la tassidermia) a scrivere un poema d'avanguardia modernista, Il Canto del bambino vergine, creazione finzionale dietro alla quale si costruisce dissimulato criticamente il testo stesso di Cesar Aira, in un ironico e sperimentale ribaltamento metaletterario: quello che Aira chiama “fuga in avanti”. Il racconto ha inizio con un'anomalia nel corso della sua antica quotidianità: Varamo riscuote lo stipendio e scopre di aver ricevuto due banconote false. Il suo intelletto si protende ora alla soluzione del caso e dell'assurdo; come sopravvivere con la paura di venire incriminato per possesso illegale e non creare alcuno squilibrio nel suo mondo privato, cosa fare e come comportarsi in seguito a questa falsificazione, a questo incidente inquietante. Qui cominciano gli esilaranti e indimenticabili avvenimenti di Varamo, letterato per disgrazia e per condanna. La critica sottolinea nello stile di Aira la naturalezza espressiva, la coesistenza fantastica e eterogenea di elementi sconcertanti e familiari, l'invenzione talentuosa e spregiudicata. Si tratta sempre di una narrazione metodica e disciplinata, fino alla ossessione formale, che appare nello stesso momento improvvisata, spontanea, intuitiva, facile e illogica. Manifesto di quella relazione estetica tra autore e lettore che fondandosi sul discorso indiretto libero crea un'area di comunicazione intersoggettiva, premediata, in virtù della quale personaggi e pensieri e azioni assumono questa veste di verosimiglianza e genuinità. “Vale a dire che il materiale con cui si fabbricava la fantasia era la verità”. E questa operazione letteraria è una consistente riflessione di Aira sulla natura della scrittura come inganno o contraffazione. L'idea che fonda il racconto del timido e inconsapevole Varamo è la composizione di una forma che si crea nella relazione tra ordine e caos, tra realtà e finzione, tra fatto e teoria, dalla quale scaturiscono eventi che sono coerenti e simbolici e insieme insensati e illogici: l'imbalsamazione del pesce pianista, la lettera anonima della madre da cui dipende, l'avvelenamento del cibo, la gara di regolarità, l'attentato anarchico, la casa delle sorelle Gòngora con le mazze da golf, la macchina che legge le voci della cospirazione, l'amante misteriosa e i suoi codici, gli editori pirata e la poesia che nasce automatica dalle molteplici combinazioni della casualità (Varamo conserva appunti e note su ogni evento accaduto nella tasca). Così emerge lo sguardo marginale e allusivo di Aira, antiromantico e dadaista, che disorienta e diverte, definendosi in un frammento di realtà, un atomo di tempo, in una scomparsa di tempo. Parodia kafkiana delle digressioni saggistiche, simulacro scherzoso di romanzi strutturalisti ipotetici, le storie di Aira essenzialmente sono fantasie e sottotrame con un suono efficace e profondo, sono pensieri ancora da pensare: non richiedono di essere teoricamente decifrate, ma semplicemente elaborate e felicemente vissute, rinnegando fino in fondo, ad ogni strato, qualsiasi vocazione.
March 31, 2012
Based on the reviews I've read, and I even did my best to read a few in spanish, I'm going to say that this little expirement was a failure. I will also say that even fans of Aira's books, who read it because they really like his other books, may think that this is a subpar novel for him. Readers who haven't read any of his books should start elsewhere.
Even so, I'm giving it 5 stars, because I think it's that good. This is a very complicated, very slim, novel about abstraction and critism. Many of the reviews (if not all) have described this as a book about a bureaucrat turned poet, and the circumstances under which he wrote his masterwork. That's a mistake. This is a novel about a literary critic, who also happens to the narrator of our story about the bureaucrat, and whom many readers have mistaken for Aira. (It's a common occurance, readers mistaking the narrator's voice for the author's voice, so it's no surprise that it's happened here.) By the way, this review contains spoilers, so you may want to stop reading here.
The novel is very small, only 89 pages in my edition, but it took me a whole week to finish. It was so mentally stimulating that every three paragraphs or so, I had to stop and mull, and then I'd usually go back three paragraphs to get my bearings and then maybe have to stop and mull again. It might be the most challenging book I've read this year, and I loved it for that.
Even so, I'm giving it 5 stars, because I think it's that good. This is a very complicated, very slim, novel about abstraction and critism. Many of the reviews (if not all) have described this as a book about a bureaucrat turned poet, and the circumstances under which he wrote his masterwork. That's a mistake. This is a novel about a literary critic, who also happens to the narrator of our story about the bureaucrat, and whom many readers have mistaken for Aira. (It's a common occurance, readers mistaking the narrator's voice for the author's voice, so it's no surprise that it's happened here.) By the way, this review contains spoilers, so you may want to stop reading here.
The novel is very small, only 89 pages in my edition, but it took me a whole week to finish. It was so mentally stimulating that every three paragraphs or so, I had to stop and mull, and then I'd usually go back three paragraphs to get my bearings and then maybe have to stop and mull again. It might be the most challenging book I've read this year, and I loved it for that.
March 10, 2018
Trebuie să recunosc că n-am fost cucerită de la bun început, căci m-am acomodat mai greu cu universul straniu și imprevizibil al lui César Aira, în care, din câte am aflat, improvizația joacă un rol important. Nu pot să zic că am înțeles tot (probabil că nici nu e cazul), iar unele intervenții ale naratorului m-au nedumerit, însă „Varamo” s-a dovedit o carte greu de uitat, încântătoare prin salturile imaginative neașteptate, dar și foarte ciudată, e drept, motiv pentru care nu va fi pe gustul tuturor.
Varamo este un conțopist oarecare, angajat la un minister din orașul panamez Colón. Este anul 1923, la numai două decenii de la crearea statului și la unsprezece ani de la terminarea Canalului Panama. Încă nu există legislație referitoare la falsuri, pirateria cărților este în floare, în Colón chiar și femeile pariază și fac contrabandă, iar prin oraș circulă o legendă despre niște planuri sinistre de a otrăvi populația, urzite de o putere străină ce uneltea să pună stăpânire pe Canal. Până și Varamo, în universul său strâmt și banal, are o legendă de familie, legată de dualitatea Mamă-Fiu, pe care mama, micuță și paranoică, „agitând un pumn ca o alună”, o perpetuează cu încăpățânare.
În decursul unei singure nopți, când este atras într-o serie de evenimente ieșite din comun, singuraticul Varamo scrie un lung poem, „Cântul Copilului Neprihănit”, care devine imediat o capodoperă a poeziei moderne din America Centrală. Un miracol inexplicabil, având în vedere că bărbatul nu manifestase vreun interes pentru acest gen literar. „Dar pe lumea asta totul are o explicație”, spune naratorul cărții, care și-a propus să reconstituie întâmplările ce au condus la conceperea poemului, insistând că demersul său nu este o ficțiune, ci istorie literară.
Puteți citi aici recenzia mai lungă, scrisă pentru blog: http://lecturile-emei.blogspot.ro/201...
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Varamo este un conțopist oarecare, angajat la un minister din orașul panamez Colón. Este anul 1923, la numai două decenii de la crearea statului și la unsprezece ani de la terminarea Canalului Panama. Încă nu există legislație referitoare la falsuri, pirateria cărților este în floare, în Colón chiar și femeile pariază și fac contrabandă, iar prin oraș circulă o legendă despre niște planuri sinistre de a otrăvi populația, urzite de o putere străină ce uneltea să pună stăpânire pe Canal. Până și Varamo, în universul său strâmt și banal, are o legendă de familie, legată de dualitatea Mamă-Fiu, pe care mama, micuță și paranoică, „agitând un pumn ca o alună”, o perpetuează cu încăpățânare.
În decursul unei singure nopți, când este atras într-o serie de evenimente ieșite din comun, singuraticul Varamo scrie un lung poem, „Cântul Copilului Neprihănit”, care devine imediat o capodoperă a poeziei moderne din America Centrală. Un miracol inexplicabil, având în vedere că bărbatul nu manifestase vreun interes pentru acest gen literar. „Dar pe lumea asta totul are o explicație”, spune naratorul cărții, care și-a propus să reconstituie întâmplările ce au condus la conceperea poemului, insistând că demersul său nu este o ficțiune, ci istorie literară.
Puteți citi aici recenzia mai lungă, scrisă pentru blog: http://lecturile-emei.blogspot.ro/201...
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October 28, 2019
Varamo plays with ideas of causation, creation, contradiction, time, reality, fantasy, history, criticism and art in a way that makes fun of itself and its characters on a variety of levels. The book purports to reconstruct the night on which a famous poem was written, relying solely on the content of the poem itself. The narrator claims that every detail of the actual history is embedded in the poem, but sequence and time are mixed up, which we learn at the end was due to Varamo's use of a code book in writing his poem, but which is of course more deeply a reflection of art and reality. The basic story is the poem, which is embedded in Varamo's story, which is embedded in the unreliable narrator's telling of Varamo's story, which is embedded in Aira's telling of the whole thing. It is a lot to have packed into such a short work, but it is all there. Aira makes use of ideas of post-structuralism and semiotics, but does so in a satirical way, so that he mocks the ideas that he uses to construct his story. This book is not for everyone, but I loved it.
sampled
September 6, 2016I read the first fifty pages and had no interest in the ploy or writing or character or derivative metafictional pale fire stuff. Aira has written about how the time period during which a book is written should be studied and he time stamps his books at the end -- I suppose there's some exploration of those ideas here, but I just couldn't hang with it, couldn't pay attention, couldn't care less. As Bolano said, I too find Aira mostly boring -- a lot of that is in the approach, the whimsicality, the narrative unwillingness to rest. It feels like fiction to me, same as super conventional dull American lit. Won't rate this but will mark it read. Might come back to it someday. Two of his little books in english have been great for me -- the four others not so much.
August 11, 2012
god i love this guy. nothing is anything. it's all just movement, and a twirl.
December 24, 2020
Me costó dejarme llevar por el flujo de ideas y sucesos de los que está construido este relato. Pero cuando lo hice, estuvo bueno. Tiene momentos increíbles y otros en los que me perdía por la velocidad en que ocurría todo.
March 25, 2012
For full review click here: http://bit.ly/GPzqMF This latest little recently translated gem by Cesar Aira is only 89 pages long but packs in more fanciful ideas and crazy images than you would find in most 200+ page novels. This book took me about an hour to read (maybe a little less) and by the end I felt like I’d just woken up from a really trippy, weird food inspired dream.
The basic plot of the book concerns the titular character, Varamo, a 1920′s government employee in Panama. In the opening scenes of the novel, he is handed his paycheck, which unfortunately turns out to be counterfeit money. In the last pages of the book, he sits down and writes “the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy,” despite having never previously written or read a single line of poetry or any form of literature.
The way that Varamo gets from Point A (counterfeit money) to Point B (literary infamy) is the the book’s main subject. Aira has a lot of fun with this idea of sequences–in a way it’s the perfect subject for him, because a lot of his fiction plays with how one thing can lead to the next. Aira is famous for his writing style, in which nothing is discarded but instead he just keeps the pen moving and goes on to the next page. It’s like all his books are one giant freewrite. This occasionally gives his books a slightly improvisatory feel–in the middle of reading a page you sometimes you feel like you’re “reading” the act of him coming up with his ideas.
A great example of this “one thing leads to another” method is the sequence in which we learn about Varamo’s side hobby: embalming dead mutant animals. First of all, the idea of embalming as a hobby is just plain hilarious. I also liked how Aira uses the description of embalming as way to mention all the pollution and toxic metals that are getting thrown into the water by the foreign companies digging the canal (it’s a great way to make an important point without hitting us over the head with a long political rant). I loved his description of how he tries to embalm a fish to look like it’s playing a miniature piano, before he realizes (what a mistake!) that fish have no arms, so then he’s stuck with trying to make it look like it’s playing a wind instrument instead.
The other aspect I enjoyed most about this book was the way that things that appear in earlier pages reappear later on in the book in unexpected and delightful (or sometimes just plain weird) ways. A candy that Varamo throws away in a bush in the main square, for example, reappears on the next to last page as the inspiration for Varamo’s last epiphany before he heads home to start work on his masterpiece.
There were a lot of ideas I loved in this book, and I don’t have enough time to cite or fully describe them all. I do need to namecheck regularity racing, a concept that is just plain delightful. Regularity racing is a form of auto racing that Varamo witnesses, in which the winner is the person who drives the most punctually at the most average speed on the race course and reaches the top-secret checkpoints at pre-determined times. “In fact,” Aira writes, “competing in a regularity rally was so nerve-wracking that it could turn a normal and previously law-abiding citizen into an anarchist.”
I could go on and on about things I liked about this book; Aira is always like a rich little treasure trove for me.
The basic plot of the book concerns the titular character, Varamo, a 1920′s government employee in Panama. In the opening scenes of the novel, he is handed his paycheck, which unfortunately turns out to be counterfeit money. In the last pages of the book, he sits down and writes “the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy,” despite having never previously written or read a single line of poetry or any form of literature.
The way that Varamo gets from Point A (counterfeit money) to Point B (literary infamy) is the the book’s main subject. Aira has a lot of fun with this idea of sequences–in a way it’s the perfect subject for him, because a lot of his fiction plays with how one thing can lead to the next. Aira is famous for his writing style, in which nothing is discarded but instead he just keeps the pen moving and goes on to the next page. It’s like all his books are one giant freewrite. This occasionally gives his books a slightly improvisatory feel–in the middle of reading a page you sometimes you feel like you’re “reading” the act of him coming up with his ideas.
A great example of this “one thing leads to another” method is the sequence in which we learn about Varamo’s side hobby: embalming dead mutant animals. First of all, the idea of embalming as a hobby is just plain hilarious. I also liked how Aira uses the description of embalming as way to mention all the pollution and toxic metals that are getting thrown into the water by the foreign companies digging the canal (it’s a great way to make an important point without hitting us over the head with a long political rant). I loved his description of how he tries to embalm a fish to look like it’s playing a miniature piano, before he realizes (what a mistake!) that fish have no arms, so then he’s stuck with trying to make it look like it’s playing a wind instrument instead.
The other aspect I enjoyed most about this book was the way that things that appear in earlier pages reappear later on in the book in unexpected and delightful (or sometimes just plain weird) ways. A candy that Varamo throws away in a bush in the main square, for example, reappears on the next to last page as the inspiration for Varamo’s last epiphany before he heads home to start work on his masterpiece.
There were a lot of ideas I loved in this book, and I don’t have enough time to cite or fully describe them all. I do need to namecheck regularity racing, a concept that is just plain delightful. Regularity racing is a form of auto racing that Varamo witnesses, in which the winner is the person who drives the most punctually at the most average speed on the race course and reaches the top-secret checkpoints at pre-determined times. “In fact,” Aira writes, “competing in a regularity rally was so nerve-wracking that it could turn a normal and previously law-abiding citizen into an anarchist.”
I could go on and on about things I liked about this book; Aira is always like a rich little treasure trove for me.
June 10, 2018
לספר "וראמו" אין תקציר עלילה וכאשר מגגלים ומנסים להבין את תוכנו של הספר, לא מוצאים ברשת עדויות, אפילו לא מינוריות לתוכן העלום הזה. ואין זה פלא. אין לספר עלילה.
המוטיבציה לכתיבת וארמו, כפי שמתאר אותה הסופר בתחילת הספר היא לתאר את השתלשלות האירועים שהובילה לכתיבת הפואמה ע"י לבלר בשם וראמו.
אותו לבלר יוצא את עבודתו כשבכיסו 200 פסו מזוייפים ששולמו לו כשכר עבודה. מדוע שילמו לו בשטרות מזוייפים הסופר לא מבהיר ולאחר התעסקות לא מעטה עם החרדות שהשטרות המזוייפים יוצרים בגיבור, הוא מתגלגל לאירועים הזויים פחות והזויים יותר כשדוק סוריאליסטי נוגה עליהם.
אם תהיתם מדוע בכריכת הספר מופיע דג, הדבר יתבהר לכם במהרה כאשר גיבורנו המוכה חרדות, באקט לא ברור יבצע ניסויים להפוך דג לנגן.
הספר מתגלגל מאירוע הזוי ובלתי מוסבר אחד לאירוע הזוי ובלתי מוסבר אחר. דמותו של הגיבור החרדתי שלנו מהלכת בעולם עיוועווים שפישרו מובן רק לו. הוא פוגש דמויות שונות וחווה אירועים שונים אבל הם לא מתלכדים לכדי קו עלילתי ליניארי, או קו עלילתי בכלל.
עד שבפרק השלישי הסופר שוטח בפני הקורא טראקטט מנומק בדבר החשיבות הספרותית של הספר שאותו הוא קורא. חשתי כי הסופר פשוט צוחק עלי בפנים או כפי שהסופר כותב על גיבורו: הוא חש מסוחרר במקצת, מעורער במקצת, תחושה מובנת לאור הנסיבות...
קראתי את הספר כתרגיל אינטלקטואלי, או כפי שבאחרית הדבר נכתב: אמירה אסטתית אמנותית.
המוטיבציה לכתיבת וארמו, כפי שמתאר אותה הסופר בתחילת הספר היא לתאר את השתלשלות האירועים שהובילה לכתיבת הפואמה ע"י לבלר בשם וראמו.
אותו לבלר יוצא את עבודתו כשבכיסו 200 פסו מזוייפים ששולמו לו כשכר עבודה. מדוע שילמו לו בשטרות מזוייפים הסופר לא מבהיר ולאחר התעסקות לא מעטה עם החרדות שהשטרות המזוייפים יוצרים בגיבור, הוא מתגלגל לאירועים הזויים פחות והזויים יותר כשדוק סוריאליסטי נוגה עליהם.
אם תהיתם מדוע בכריכת הספר מופיע דג, הדבר יתבהר לכם במהרה כאשר גיבורנו המוכה חרדות, באקט לא ברור יבצע ניסויים להפוך דג לנגן.
הספר מתגלגל מאירוע הזוי ובלתי מוסבר אחד לאירוע הזוי ובלתי מוסבר אחר. דמותו של הגיבור החרדתי שלנו מהלכת בעולם עיוועווים שפישרו מובן רק לו. הוא פוגש דמויות שונות וחווה אירועים שונים אבל הם לא מתלכדים לכדי קו עלילתי ליניארי, או קו עלילתי בכלל.
עד שבפרק השלישי הסופר שוטח בפני הקורא טראקטט מנומק בדבר החשיבות הספרותית של הספר שאותו הוא קורא. חשתי כי הסופר פשוט צוחק עלי בפנים או כפי שהסופר כותב על גיבורו: הוא חש מסוחרר במקצת, מעורער במקצת, תחושה מובנת לאור הנסיבות...
קראתי את הספר כתרגיל אינטלקטואלי, או כפי שבאחרית הדבר נכתב: אמירה אסטתית אמנותית.
February 5, 2012
The back cover of this short novella compares it to Borges, which seems to be a common comparison among Argentine authors, at least the ones more available in English translation. Although if you had asked me, I would have said the book was 80 percent Chesterton (of The Man Who Was Thursday), 15 percent Nabokov (of Pale Fire), and at most 5 percent Borges. And a reasonably well executed version of that.
It describes less than twenty-four hours in the life of a Panamanian civil servant in the 1930s, beginning with his getting paid in counterfeit currency and ending with his writing what the novella describes as the greatest Central American poem. The book explains that this entire story is derived from textual evidence from the poem itself, often a single word or syllable, which allow the precise reconstruction of the sequence of events that resulted in the composition of the book itself. A sequence that includes a bizarre but memorable car "race", descriptions of golf club smugglers, the revelation of an underground anarchist society, and much more in a paranoid, hallucinatory vision. But it all has an internal logic. All that is missing (contra Pale Fire) is the poem itself.
It describes less than twenty-four hours in the life of a Panamanian civil servant in the 1930s, beginning with his getting paid in counterfeit currency and ending with his writing what the novella describes as the greatest Central American poem. The book explains that this entire story is derived from textual evidence from the poem itself, often a single word or syllable, which allow the precise reconstruction of the sequence of events that resulted in the composition of the book itself. A sequence that includes a bizarre but memorable car "race", descriptions of golf club smugglers, the revelation of an underground anarchist society, and much more in a paranoid, hallucinatory vision. But it all has an internal logic. All that is missing (contra Pale Fire) is the poem itself.
July 25, 2020
“Veramo si era proposto di fare un pesce che suonava il pianoforte”. Veramo è un impiegato ministeriale panamense qualunque, scapolo, tassidermista amatoriale, che vive con l’anziana madre e che per una serie di disguidi si trova a scrivere un capolavoro letterario, anzi il capolavoro.
La vicenda è ambientata nel 1923, poco dopo l’inaugurazione ufficiale del canale ed è un intreccio di storie condensate in un centinaio di pagine. Non è solo un romanzo, ma, come dice il narratore “nonostante si presenti come un romanzo, questo è un libro di storia letteraria”, e ricorda molto Calvino (Se una notte d’inverno....) e Quiriny (La biblioteca di Gould). Fantasioso e surreale, è una lettura veloce, densa e gradevolissima.
La vicenda è ambientata nel 1923, poco dopo l’inaugurazione ufficiale del canale ed è un intreccio di storie condensate in un centinaio di pagine. Non è solo un romanzo, ma, come dice il narratore “nonostante si presenti come un romanzo, questo è un libro di storia letteraria”, e ricorda molto Calvino (Se una notte d’inverno....) e Quiriny (La biblioteca di Gould). Fantasioso e surreale, è una lettura veloce, densa e gradevolissima.
June 15, 2018
A wonderful little book about a day in the life of a clerk who concludes his day by writing a famous work of poetry. Beautifully written, philosophical, metafictional. One of Aira's more accessible works, and a fascinating meditation on artistic inspiration.
April 26, 2021
La releí. Me gustó más. Está bueno pensarlo con el concepto de 'nachträglich' de Freud, porque la narración de Aira en Varamo es eso; siempre abierta y proyectada hacia adelante, hacia un futuro narrativo que nutre retrospectivamente todo lo que fue. Cada escena está viva y a la espera de una sensación que la llene todavía más; una flauta ceremonial, una golosina devenida líquido pegajoso, una lata de conservas con historia. Aira dispone elementos en una trama y rompe con los criterios de originalidad que rigen la lógica cotidiana. En la Panamá de Varamo (en la Panamá y el Varamo de Aira) siempre hay nuevos elementos, nunca el pasado lograr cerrarse, ni orgánico ni redondo. La narración ilumina el pasado siempre a la luz de un presente narrativo que mira hacia atrás como el angel falopa ese del que habla Benjamin en las tesis sobre la historia.
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May 30, 2015It all started with Ghosts - my first encounter with Aira. We got off on the wrong foot and I can be a moody reader. The Nun book was great, and I liked Literary Conference. This takes me back to that first day when I read and was disappointed, and a little afraid that I was just following the trend. I've still got hopes for Landscape Artist, but otherwise I'm ready to hang it up.
August 8, 2018
Not bad. Difficult reading sometimes. Wierd in some place. Was that fish a symbol? I don't get what the story wanted to say.
December 10, 2023
Mi fa pensare ad una scala a chiocciola, questo romanzo. Breve e inaspettato, ti fa perdere l'orientamento: un momento sei con Varamo a ritirare lo stipendio, un gradino dopo sei immerso in tentativo di tassidermia; scendi ancora e trovi una madre cinese, assurde gare di regolarità, attentati; non puoi fermarti, le pareti della scala incombono, ancora un passo ed ecco il contrabbando di mazze da golf e un gruppo di editori ad un tavolino di un bar. Arrivi a terra che non sai bene cosa sia successo, quanto sia durata la discesa, la testa gira leggermente e ti dici che forse vorresti rifarlo.
3,5
3,5
July 19, 2014
Aira's ability to create these surreal, domestic little fabulations seems to have no end. He blends melodrama, farce, technical data and latin American history together around a weirdly compelling protagonist whose greatest achievement in life the entire book basically serves as a run up to. The more metaphysical strain in Aira's writing comes out in full force in Varamo more than it does in some of his other books, his musings about causality, art, repetition and finitude are as deftly handled and as thoughtful as they ever are. It might lack the jaw dropping brilliance of Episode in the life of a landscape painter, but Varamo is still very much a book about creators and creating, and since the character in question goes on to create a poem that we know little to nothing about, the whole thing feels a bit more artistically biographical than some of Aira's other works.
April 22, 2013
I definitely enjoyed the prose, (big fan of Aira in general) and the book over all. My only complaint is the book took me below the surface on philosophical tangents several times that essentially just dangled there. For instance very early on in the book Varamo can not find change for his bills. There being a shortage in money the common man is paid in(coins), as coins are to expensive to manufacture. Those in power are paid in paper money(higher denominations) that are cheaper to make thus no shortage of big denominations. Varamo who works for "the man" was just paid in counterfeit bills by "the man". So I'm thinking great the no change thing counterfeit payment is a metaphor-foreshadowing of a story about your typical Central American Oligarchy. pfft Aria seemed to return to his old reliable meta fiction hat trick.
December 25, 2018
sometimes you read a book and you're like this is definitely like some Kafka-eqsque post-Dada something-like-that allegory for something but I have literally no idea what, and if I were smart then I would love this book for expertly lampooning a political system or historical event, but I'm not really, so it's just kind of a nonsensical story but I do love the idea of a fish taxidermied (verb?) to look like it is playing the piano, and also the idea of an epic poem written overnight
And then you're like well since this is the Digital Age I could look this up and become Educated ("Cultured") but anyway the book isn't an allegory as far as the internet can tell and I made up my own ignorance / the book's academic allusions in my head which I guess is its own dumb mode of thinking sorry that you read this entire review
And then you're like well since this is the Digital Age I could look this up and become Educated ("Cultured") but anyway the book isn't an allegory as far as the internet can tell and I made up my own ignorance / the book's academic allusions in my head which I guess is its own dumb mode of thinking sorry that you read this entire review
May 18, 2020
This short little book really made me laugh out loud, perhaps even more than was intended. It is sort of a meta over meta over story kind of novel. At its base, it is simply the events occurring one day in the life of Señor Varamo, a mid-level Panamanian government bureaucrat, during which he inexplicably manages to write a "celebrated masterpiece of modern Central American poetry." Then along the way, the narrator explains that we know actually what occurred minute-by-minute during that day, because it is irrefutably deduced from the poem itself. Stacked on top and bottom and middle of it all are philosophical musings about time & its direction, the larger & smaller relationships of things, cause & effect and mysteries about them, and other matters of intrigue including the publishing business.
March 3, 2017
Aira, katanya, seorang penulis Amerika Latin kontemporer yg menyenangkan. Ini novel keempatnya yg saya baca, dan belum bisa merasakan asyiknya di mana. Mungkin karena sedang kejar setoran (membaca), novelnya yg pada pendek-pendek saya pilih. Varamo sendiri bercerita tentang Varamo, seorang pegawai negeri yg diberi gaji dengan uang palsu, yg kemudian menerbitkan puisi kanon garda-depan Amerika Latin meski dirinya enggak punya minat dan bakat dalam sastra. Premis itu yg saya ingat betul, selebihnya entah apa.
June 3, 2015
After having choked on The Hare, Varamo's mutant fish went down much more smoothly. Next up Shantytown.
February 26, 2012
Another winner! This one, while not haven't the outright surrealism of The Seamstress and the Wind, has a much more, at least for Aira, plot and it really paid off. I love this guy!
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May 19, 2020viste cuando lees algo y decís no estoy 100% seguro de haberlo entendido pero lo disfruté un montón? bueno así. me voy a quedar acá sentadita esperando a que los profesores me suban los textos de análisis y vea si entendí bien. ja. JA. pero la disfruté!!!!! me divertí un montón! solo había leído un cuento de aira en el que de vez en cuando me encuentro pensando (el del picasso) y me alegro mucho de haber podido adentrarme en el mundo de sus novelas. espero leer más pronto!
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