Monstruary

by Julián Ríos, Edith Grossman (Translator)

In Monstruary , Julián Ríos takes us into the eerie existence of the painter Victor Mons, who has created a menagerie of personal demons summoned from the disturbing and often erotic images of his past. We follow Mons on nocturnal outings and infernal escapades as he encounters fiendish figures, otherworldly phantasms, and the beautiful models and prostitutes who serve as his muses. Ríos calls up all the monsters of the Western world-from classical antiquity to the silver screen, from the Minotaur to Dracula-and collapses the boundaries between reality and imagination. With playful and inventive language, he shows the dark side of the human heart and the strange places where life and art overlap.

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 1999

About the author

Julián Ríos (born Vigo, Galicia, 1941) is a Spanish writer, most frequently classified as a postmodernist, whom Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes has called "the most inventive and creative" of Spanish-language writers. His first two books were written à deux with Octavio Paz.

His best known work, experimental and heavily influenced by the verbal inventiveness of James Joyce, was published in 1983 under the title Larva.

Julián Ríos currently lives and works in France, on the outskirts of Paris

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In order to evoke that multiple Eva who had vanished years before, the chameleonesque German girl was his dark-haired, wasp-waisted 'La Signorina Spalanzani' with one hand on her pubis, like Manet's Olympia; and his platinum blond 'Future Eve,' a mechanical mannequin, burnished and compact like some of Léger's tubular figures; and his horrific 'Kokoschka's Doll,' a redhead or rather a brunette with hair half-dyed by recently spilled red wine, or perhaps blood; and then she disappeared from Berlin without a trace.


There be wicked wordplay here. I'm a nerd for such: thus reading is nerdplay and I'm a dull boy. The novel concerns a painter named Mons. He paints monsters, most from his own soul. Visions abound of Berlin, London and New York. There is a literary taxonomy but the taxes prove to be axes that chip away to the frozen souls of Lost Time. Forgive the allusions to Franz and Marcel. It was tough cell to mar. If this review is annoying the piss out of you, don't approach this novel.

I found the images powerful, despite the constant crunching underfoot of riddles. A rankness prevails. The odor of sad sex and booze hectors the reader. There is much art on display, but also loneliness. I admit to a trepidation in approaching Monstruary but such fears were unnecessary. I'd like to extend that vein further, other textual dimensions challeneg that decision.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

If your name is Anthony J. Vacca, then you are probably like me, and you love writers who use the language like platespinners, who write novels of extraordinary erudition rich in references to art, literature and music, who strive to produce works of mould-breaking wonder in emulation of the masters of yore, and whose novels are at once impenetrable, enchanting, challenging, and magnificent. This is one of those.

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Vaguely incomprehensible, but less in a way that makes me feel like I'm an incompetent reader or not smart enough to understand a text, and more in a way that makes me feel like I'm having a stroke.

This book is full of things I love - art and literature, mythology and history, strange monsters and religious imagery and references to impossible geometries. But it wasn't really a story, so much as a lot of words on the page.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not for me.

[SabCo T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another book that I found at a thrift store that has been sitting on my shelf for awhile that was in my collection of ‘just fucking read them or donate them’ books that I’ve been slowly making my way through the last year and a half or so.

The title was what first intrigued me. A Monster Sanctuary = Monstruary = sweet? [though it’s surprisingly hard to say without sounding garbled for some reason]

Then I saw the nakie lady on the cover and was like ‘hmmm’ and after reading the synopsis, decided that it was going to be up my alley.

I… don’t know if I was wrong or not. I still actually don’t know what the hell I just read.

The book highlights that it’s been translated into English, which usually I haven’t found to be an issue in previous translated books except for a rare example here and there. I can’t say the same with Monstruary. I’ve read online that some of the first editions of the book still didn’t have the best translation-to-print and I haven’t even checked to see if my copy falls within that but it definitely feels like it. I’m conflicted about it though because it could also just definitely be the writing style of the book [more on that later], but other than some of the sentence structure just doesn’t make sense, there are a ton of run-on sentences and general strange punctuation. Also! It’s not until the very end/last section of the book that speech/conversations have quotations around them. Which I have never encountered in a book before. It’s actually really awful, and caused me to have to re-read sections to try and figure out where a conversation started/ended since it didn’t have quotes around it.

I also started to get extremely frustrated because apparently the main language was translated [Spanish] but all throughout the book, other languages are used besides English that aren’t translated. Which wouldn’t have been a huge issue IF a translation had been offered at the bottom of the page with a * index or even the translation in ( ) afterwards but nooope. And I’m not talking about a word or two every so often, I’m talking full sentences and even small paragraphs in non-English that also don’t have context clues. So if you’re going to be reading this, make sure to have a translator of some kind at the ready.

So now finally to the actual story. I still don’t really know what the hell I read. The entire book to me seemed to be written almost like someone describes a dream that they can’t quite remember. Some parts were very detailed, vivid, and clear to understand. But then other parts were all over the place, kinda vague, and hard to follow. The story mostly follows an artist named Mons, who creates monstrous versions of people and events and he collects these in his ‘Monstruary.’ It also surrounds his interactions with other artists that he semi/regularly mingles with who have their own strange lives and their creations, and a surprising number of these other artists either meet untimely ends or suffer physically in some way, usually relating to the art project they were working on.

The book also, as the synopsis suggests, gets a bit erotic. But by ‘a bit’ and ‘erotic,’ it means ‘full on smut’ because there is actual just straight up pornographic written scenes in the book. And of course it felt like every time I got to one of these scenes, I was reading my book in public, and people were behind me. I often had to shrivel into my seat with my book closer to myself than I actually read it because it just felt weird to be reading porn in public places lmao. An additional content warning for the book is that it was written late 90’s/early 2000’s and in a different country. A lot of the descriptions of people are cringe-y. Expect racism and sexism, and lots of slut shaming [despite that most of the male characters are the ones who are working with sex workers and trying to get women to sleep with them.]

I seriously considered stopping and giving this book up five different times while reading. But for some reason, right as I was about to give up and mark it as ‘DNF’ and put it in the donate pile, I got to a part that drew me back in. Some of the descriptions of the various strange monsters and happenings in the book and the weird adventures of Mons are genuinely interesting. But you have to wade through the ‘unclear/vague/hard to follow’ parts to get to the good ones. I decided finally I should finish the book to get through it and not have wasted time in all my attempts to read it when I could have read other books by now.

I give Monstruary 2/5 Tauromachies

Perhaps as the result of another Bloody Mary, he was out like a light, submerged in a soft eggshell from which his blond head peered out like a pale yolk in the half-light of strange spiders that hung like lamps and moved up and down luminous threads in the rocokitsch room crowded with strange furniture and repulsive objects like the beetle or cockroach telephone that dragged itself across the rug. And while he was still nodding it seemed to him that a wig or hairy round black spider smiled at him with the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

- - - - -

She would not permit anyone, not even her husband, to see her on Saturdays, because on that day her beautiful legs were transformed into a serpent’s tail. Melusine’s Striptease is the title of the painting in which a naked Armelle holds up a stocking that looks like a snakeskin.”

- - - - -

Death is also a funky facepainter.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Julián Ríos is a Spanish writer, and this is the first of his books that I’ve read. I have another, "Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel," in a box. Although "Monstruary" is a novel, its ten chapters read like a set of interconnected short stories. It is a fictional artist’s biography about a fictional artist, Victor Mons, and it is written by his intimate confidant–his Boswell really–Emil. The book seems to build toward the final chapter, which reads like an exhibition catalog, but it is of works destroyed by Mons in the first chapter, works that were not exhibited. So, circular structure. The other eight chapters are either about Mons or one of the artists or friends within his circle. So, the structure is circular, but Emil produces a larger social and cultural network to fill in the background: Mons in a slightly larger context. The setting is Europe, mostly the large culture centers (Berlin, London, Paris). The characters hang out in studios, galleries, coffee shops, restaurants, and museums; they drink a lot of wine, and they smoke a lot. Since money is never mentioned, everyone seems quite comfortable: well-financed artists in a secure cultural world.

I finished the novel, and I don’t care about it or the characters or the artistic world within which they live. From chapter to chapter, there is an extraordinary amount of death, sadomasochism, blood, and suicide. I’m surprised that Mons is not dead by the end, but he isn’t. I felt less like a reader and more like a voyeur the further I worked into the book. I was not being engaged by story, character development, cultural milieu, or narrative style. I was just watching and was never particularly enlightened. I thought again and again, “What is this shit?” The one chapter that works for me in the book is Chapter 6, because it develops a story that does not depend on blood, sadomasochism, or death.

1 Monstruary: Is about an artist, Mons, who is Spanish but living in Berlin He has been injured somehow: head, hands, and arms bandaged. His friends are rallying around him. He is the center of attention and maybe a bit unstable. The monstruary is his collection/creation of monsters (paintings) He may have destroyed it all. He in infatuated with a red headed woman. The life of a decadent artist. I’m not sure what is going on.
2: Mons Veneris A biography of Mons by someone who knows him well, Emil. Mons has pained lots of women in pornographic poses. His wife and another commit suicide. Mons sketches of his dead wife, seemingly without feeling. Why is he attracted to the sexual, perverse, abject? Mons is a voyeur, and he paints his voyeuristic self into the paintings. Emil voyeuristically watches Mons. As the reader, I too become a voyeur.
3 Cezanne Ends in Anne: Emil is still writing about Mons, but now he turns to one of their friends, Anne. She is supposed to join Emil for a Cezanne exhibit in Tubingen, Holderlin’s hometown. She doesn’t show up. He wanders through the exhibit and waits at the cafeteria, with a book of Holderlin’s poetry, but she doesn’t show up. Turns out she is dead, killed in a single car accident. Another dead woman.
4 Anne with Cezanne or the Apple of Concord: Two years after Anne dies, the artist friends gather for an exhibit. The pine tree that she ran into is the symbol of the show and her life, emotionally fraught. This time another artist, Klaus, is mentioned, as is an art dealer, Double Uwe. Remembering her and and her sculpture. Filling in for her absence. Why? Toothy, spiky, razory sculptures. Why? I don’t understand what this novel is doing or what it is building toward.
5 The Architect’s Destiny: Ziegel is the architect, and he commits suicide. His book, "The Book of Imaginary Architecture" has 410 pages, just like the rooms in Borges’s “The Library of Babel” have 410 shelves. Mons painted the author portrait for the book. Ziegel seemed Borgesian before Borges is mentioned, but so what? What is he here for? Another dead artist? Why? Another smart europhile who has been around, seen a lot, has a keen eye for architecture, but then he commits suicide. Why?
6 The White Lady of the Metropole: The best chapter of the book. It actually has a story that is not steeped in death and sadism. Mons stays at the Metropole Hotel in Brussels and thinks that he has encountered a ghost, an old woman in old-fashioned dress and very white. Turns out she is an old widow who is an art collector, and she travels from major European hotel to major European hotel collecting art. Mons finds an interesting story and a patron. They get along, and there is no sex, suicide, or blood. There is just her fear of fire, because her husband died in a fire, and the weird story that the person Mons has been encountering is not Rosa Mir, but an actress Rosa Mir has hired to play herself, because she was badly burned in the fire that killed her husband. A complex little story worth reading.
7 Paris is Paradise: Another shift away from Mons. Now we have the biography of a fictional Joyce scholar, Frank M. Reck, who has written a book, Epiphanies without End, for which Mons provided illustrations. The chapter begins with the death of Reck’s wife, Joyce, and ends with Reck’s death, hit by a cab in Paris. The chapter is a pun filled, double entendre filled telling of Reck’s life and the last trip to Paris that ended in his Barthesian death. This is another eurostory, taking place in major European cities and hotels, restaurants and cafes. This is more than bourgeois comfort but represents a level of wealth that allows for a perpetual cultural vacation. Cigarettes and wine are important, too. Well written. The chapter clips along nicely. Death and art are predictable in this book. It is just kind of boring.
8 Bullfight in Berlin: Focus shifts to Adelbert Stock, artist friend of Mons, who paints/draws/sculpts bulls and bullfighting. No one dies in this chapter, but there is lots of blood near the end as Stock accidentally/purposefully falls on a nail and takes out one of his eyes. Somehow, though, this act turns around his career. He gets a show, becomes famous. He does sketch his wife nude with a bullfighter’s cap. He does begin his career selling his drawings on the street in front of the Prado. A euro-story about redemption? Again, I’m not sure I care.
9 With Bouvard and Pécuchet in Cyberspace: Mons and Emil in Paris, imitating B&P. They walk around like B&P, sit on the same bench. Mons sketches. So? Bouvard and Pécuchet, Flaubert’s unfinished last novel about two hapless copyists who want to know everything. Failed Pantagruels, which is Flaubert’s point. More than any of the others, this chapter wraps itself in literary and cultural references and doesn’t seem to do anything with them. Again. So what?
10 Mons en Enfer Enfer(Hell) is a town in France, where Mons has a studio. This chapter is subtitled Pictures at an Exhibition (obvious Mussorgsky reference), and it reads like an exhibition catalog, or a catalog for a set of works that were destroyed by the artist, his monstruary, in the first chapter and were never exhibited. Emil provides more background on these now non-existent works. Given how much death impregnates this book and how unstable Mons is, I expected that he would die–some way, some how–at the end, but he doesn’t. In spite of all the destruction, death, and loss, he is off to create more monsters.

[Robert Wechsler]

Too over-written/wrought for my taste. I love written descriptions of artworks, but these put off, partly by the showy language, partly because they focused on content and story rather than form.

[Octavio Villalpando · Rating 4 out of 5]

En lo personal no había leído jamás a Julián Ríos. Algo sabía de que tenía algún trabajo conjunto con Octavio Paz, pero nada más. Así que por azar, "Monstruario" cayó en mis manos y ante un título tan tentador no pude resistirme y abordé su lectura y ¡zaz! ¡Qué enorme sorpresa me he llevado! De clara naturaleza joyciana, la obra es toda una celebración de la magia de la que son capaces las letras cuando son dominadas por alguien con muy buen oficio. La forma de hilvanar cada enunciado que la compone, la composición del mismo, son de una manufactura de altos vuelos. La verdad a las pocas páginas del primer capítulo ya estaba enganchado, tan así que me demoré en su lectura lo suficiente como para disfrutar a plenitud el inmenso océano de letras que contiene.

La historia es lo de menos, pero claro, no lo menos importante. Creo que es un caso en que la forma puede opacar el contenido sin ninguna dificultad... es de lo mejor que he leído en un buen rato.

[Andrew]

Liked his short story in Best European Fiction 2010