Cómo me hice monja

by César Aira

Un auténtico terremoto sacudió la literatura hispanoamericana en 1993: la aparición de la insólita novela de César Aira, Cómo me hice monja que se ha convertido en un verdadero clásico de nuestro tiempo, un prodigio de experimentación, delicadeza imaginativa y “elegancia alucinada. Una ficción que vale la pena leer y releer, porque esconde una de las propuestas estéticas más atrevidas y provocadoras de las letras contemporáneas.

Genres: Fiction, Latin American, Spanish Literature, Novella, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

César 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.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible.

Reality is the playground of the writer with memories and the artifacts of their past as the swings and slides for their games. César Aira’s How I Became a Nun is a humorous jaunt through the life of a 6 year old boy—or girl—also named César Aira as s/he learns the magic of blending fact and fantasy to better understand the undercurrent of magic pulsing through plain reality. Through a lonely pilgrimage of childhood, César experiments with fiction in a preparation towards a life of being an author, a sacred undertaking of servitude to Stories much like entering the Sisterhood of Nuns.

‘Fiction and reality were fused at this point; my simulation was becoming real, tinting all my lies with truth.’

As in Elizabeth Hardwick’s exquisite Sleepless Nights, Aira blends biography (though very limited) with fiction to create a lush tale where the lines between reality and fantasy are not only blurred but become irrelevant. The narrator of this story is César Aira, but not necessarily the César Aira writing the story, who is also not necessarily the same César Aira when he is not writing the story. They share the same hometown of Coronel Pringles, Argentina and enough subtle similarities to trick the reader into stepping dangerously toward an Intentional fallacy of assuming the author and narrator are one and the same, but this is all for sport and elevates the playfulness of his often meta-driven novels. César the narrator often identifies as a girl (though once as a boy in the opening chapter), despite all the outsider characters referring to César as a boy. This opens up an intrigue of gender identification, and it could be inferred that César experienced an emasculation of sorts after the tragedy of the opening scene with his father. However, such an interpretation seems too concrete for a book with such playful transparency. It does not matter which gender the narrator is, and the novel works equally well if César is a son or daughter; in the art of fiction an author must be able to identify as many characters, male or female, and must do so convincingly for the story to be accepted into the soul of the reader. César Aira presents both as a reminder that the author’s own gender identification must be pushed aside to fully immerse into the realm of the character.

‘The transformation could go either way, reality becoming delirium or dream, but the real dream turned dreamlike in turn, becoming the angel, or reality.’

César the narrator experiments with blending fact and fiction throughout the novel, preparing for a life as an author. An important lesson is learned early on when sitting on a ledge above a prison in which his father is interned.

All the prisoners were my dad, and I loved him...now I knew that love was more, much more than that. I had to become the guardian angel of all the desperate men to discover what love really was.

The author must watch their characters from an on-high vantage point, and truly love them all in order to understand them and make them work. Later, César spends hours in the bedroom imagining teaching a lesson to a classroom of student, students based on his/her own classmates. Students are imagined with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia. However, ‘I hadn’t invented disorders so much as systems of difficulty. They weren’t destined to be cured but developed.’ It is an act of creation, developing problems not to solve them but to bring them to fruition as a believable aspect of the fictitious classroom. Like a good author, César learns to create individuals that also must serve as a universal idea: ‘they were nobody and they were everyone.’ And through creating and teaching, César also learns and watches ideas form as if on their own power. Like an author, César guides a story while simultaneously being guided by it.

How I Became a Nun is a wonderful little novel in which no Nuns are present. Instead, the nunhood is a vague metaphor for the calling of an author, in which they must devote their lives to the name of art. Like the ‘voice of the radio within the radio’, in which the fictitious voice of God delivers a moral message at the end of a religious radio program, the author must become the radio while also hearing ‘the radio within the radio’ that is the natural growth of the story being transmitted through them. This is a fantastically humorous and brief book that manages to breathlessly juggle a wide-reaching allegory, many aspects of which I have left untouched here. Literature is one of the closest things to magic we have in our world, the sort of magic that dazzles the heart and imagination of a young child, and Aira is a masterful purveyor into this magical world.
3.5/5

My vision couldn’t be satisfied with what was visible, it had to go rushing on, beyond, into the abyss…

[Garima · Rating 5 out of 5]

We lost ourselves in a labyrinth that I can reconstruct step by step.

‘How I became a Nun’ introduces us to an exceptional and somewhat intimidating architect who generously makes use of imagination for constructing a unique narrative. Something keeps on happening here; if not in the form of reality then in the infinite space of fiction. Our belief or disbelief in the strange lives this book depicts is our own business only and whether we derive from it a healthy dose of entertainment or an inedible diet of perturbation hardly matters. What really matters is that nobody and nothing remains homeless in this world.

That was the tragedy of my childhood and my whole life...My vision couldn’t be satisfied with what was visible, it had to go rushing on, beyond, into the abyss, dragging me along behind...

Here’s another knock on the door of childhood with twists and turns galore. With W or the Memory of Childhood and The Notebook The Proof The Third Lie Three Novels, I already had my fair share of unexpected journeys into the erratic minds of children but guess every childhood is different irrespective of the happiness or unhappiness it experiences. The same holds true for this book also. This is the story of Argentina, relocation, parents, kids, ice-cream, hating the ice-cream, school, hating the teachers, deconstructing the reality and inventing a fiction which in turn befuddles the life of our protagonist, who is a 6 year old, César Aira. Although with that name enters the spirit of metafiction in this story but rest assured, whatever is in store for a reader is anything but clichéd tricks.

This is my second Aira read after An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter where I did realize that he was an ‘almost’ great writer and wholeheartedly wanted to believe in Bolano’s enthusiastic recommendation too but a small link between really liked it and it was amazing was missing for me. So I was vigilant with this book and kept looking for that ‘almostness’ but all I got was a unique blend of perfection and perfectly acceptable flaws chapter by chapter. There’s only so much one can demand from a novella and Aira, with his compelling ingenuity and spirited writing has delivered a lot here.

That space, that happiness had a color: rose-pink. The pink of the sky at sunset, a vast, transparent, faraway pink whose absurd apparition represented my life. I was vast, transparent and faraway, and my absurd life represented the sky. Living was painting: coloring myself with the pink of the inexplicably suspended light...

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet the most precocious and contrarian six years old in all Argentina. He (or she) has a story to tell, and it’s a real whopper! When the family moves from small town Pringles (not the one that grows chips, the other one) to bustling Rosario, our undersized and unreliable narrator feels threatened, even when taken out by her (his?) father for a treat : the very first taste of strawberry ice cream.

My anxiety was mounting exponentially. Ice cream seemed the cruelest instrument of torture ever invented.

I can fully sympathize with the little egghead, constantly told what to do by big people who assured him (or her?) that they know better what’s good for a child. I don’t remember much from my pre-school days, but I have a clear picture of being told to do something and doing the exact opposite just to annoy my parents and then bursting into tears of outrage when they tried to use logic on me. The more they pushed me in one direction, the more I moved in the opposite corner, and when else failed, lying through my teeth and not budging an inch from my contrarian stance. (in my case this competition about who is most mulish usually ended with a belt strap and more howling)

The ice cream scene that opens this short novel / long novella is emblematic of this relationship between the two worlds : the child and the adult, and the way language breaks down in trying to translate feelings from one age to another, especially when precocious children are involved.

I was fastened to a pain that towered over my childhood, my smallness, and my extreme vulnerability, indicating the scale of the universe.

Ambiguity and dissimulation drive the narrative, creating a story that is alternatively extremely hilarious then in the next moment heavy with tragedy. Underneath the buffoonery is a real drama, as a young mind is trying to cope with traumatic experiences by refusing reality and taking shelter inside its own imagination.

Everybody tells little Cesar Aira he is a boy, but he knows better: she is a girl and she is persecuted by the grown-ups who conspire to make her normal, like everybody else : Why didn’t I have any dolls? Why was I the only girl in the whole world who didn’t have a single doll? My dad was in prison ... and I didn’t have a doll to keep me company. I never had one and I didn’t know why. It wasn’t because my parents were poor or stingy. There was some other mysterious reason ... . The adults are devious and clueless about what goes on inside this sensitive and imaginative mind. Why should everybody be so fond of strawberry ice cream?

Entrapment and the quest to escape abusive authority start with the fateful ice cream cone and move, chapter by chapter, through being a prisoner in a hospital bed, playing hide and seek in a real prison, becoming a pariah in the classroom and finally, being buried alive in a big vat of ice cream, thus closing the circle . The only weapon little Cesar has is inside his (or her?) own mind, creating endless stories to replace the hostile reality, making scenes in public places in order to get noticed : “Where’s my dad?” (Poor Mom. Who could blame her for thinking I was doing it on purpose?) , or endlessly listening to the fictional lives of people from radio soap operas.

The grown-ups are of little help throughout the few months that cover the narrative. Father is too obtuse to listen to a child’s complaint, mother too tired and worried about the future, the other children too cruel or self-absorbed. My favorite scene is a meltdown of the primary school teacher when faced with our narrator subversive atitude:

That Aira boy ... He’s here among you, and he doesn’t seem any different. Maybe you haven’t noticed him, he’s so insignificant. But he’s here. Don’t be fooled. I always tell you the true, the theck, the trove. You are good, clever, sweet children. Even the ones who are naughty, or have to repeat, or get into fights all the time. You’re normal, you’re all the same, because you have a second mother. Aira is a moron. He might seem the same to you, but he’s a moron all the same. He’s a monster.

I would laugh if it weren’t for those long faded memories of early childhood when I seemed all alone in the world. Why go out and risk getting laughed at, knocked down and rejected when you can live safely inside your own mind, fed by fantasies from books, radio, television? Cesar may be borderline autistic, I don’t know – I haven’t really studied the condition in detail, but some of the feelings on display here don’t go away when we grow up, we just get better at hiding them and at lying to others and to ourselves:

The experienced liar knows that the secret of success is to pretend convincingly not to know certain things. For example the consequences of what one is saying, so that others will seem to discover them first. [...] The governor was bound to fall for my ploy. He would think: It’s too complicated not to be true. That’s what they always think; it’s the golden rule of fiction. He would believe me completely.

I used earlier the most abused literary term of unreliable narrator. I would like to go back to it and issue a retraction : Cesar is not an unreliable narrator, just a confused one, and in this here confession she (or he) makes an honest attempt at describing the experiences of alienation and despair that come into our lives much earlier than acknowledged.

But the panic that I was exhibiting was all too real. As usual, I had managed to confuse her. It was easy: all I had to do was confuse myself.

These layers of meaning and these so relatable emotions are what make the present novella much more than a funny, post-modernist fable. Even the title is ambiguous and subversive: my take on it is that it is a metaphor describing the rejection of reality and taking refuge in a fictional story(religion). I plan to check out other offerings from this intriguing and engaging author.

[Cristian Fassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letto in spagnolo, la lingua originale del autore (e anche la mia), ma potete trovare la traduzione italiana edita da Fazi con il nome "Come diventai monaca".
Questa recensione la scrivo però in italiano, perché chi mi legge qui riesce a capire meglio cosa sto scrivendo in questo momento.

Questo romanzo (è molto più di un racconto) inizia come una storia per bambini, con un fanciullo a volte maschio a volte femmina, tutto in uno (Cesar Aira era già inclusivo nel 1993). Nella storia però vengono inserite riflessioni approfondite, una teoria sulla memoria, elementi autobiografici, un umorismo molto personale, un finale folle e un tono indefinibile, che non assomiglia a quello di nessun scrittore contemporaneo.

Cesar Aira ha una tecnica di scrittura tutta sua, scrive sempre nei bar, su dei quaderni con una penna - una delle sue debolezze -, le sue storie partono da un'idea, da una situazione che si sviluppa senza mai tornare indietro, senza modificare nulla di scritto e quindi semplicemente aggiungendo una cosa e poi un'altra cosa ... Da quella restrizione, dal divieto di correggere o ristrutturare sorge l'assoluta libertà della sua scrittura, forse la più libera di tutta la letteratura, da molto tempo.

"Ese espacio, esa felicidad, tenía un color: el rosa. El rosa de los cielos al atardecer, el rosa gigante, transparente, lejano, que representaba mi vida con el gesto absurdo de aparecer. Yo era gigante, transparente, lejana, y representaba al cielo con el gesto absurdo de vivir. Mi vida era mi pintura. Vivir era colorearme, con el rosa de la luz suspendida, inexplicable…"

(tradotto magari infelicemente da me in...)

"Quello spazio, quella felicità, aveva un colore: il rosa. Il rosa dei cieli al tramonto, il rosa gigantesco, trasparente, remoto, che rappresentava la mia vita con il gesto assurdo di apparire. Io ero gigantesca, trasparente, remota e rappresentavo il cielo con il gesto assurdo di vivere. La mia vita era la mia pittura. Vivere era colorarmi, con il rosa della luce sospesa, inesplicabile..."

... come il gelato alla fragola.

[Jim Elkins]

The Unhelpful Lingering Influence of Magic Realism

The first two chapters of this book are absolutely excruciating to read: incredibly well managed, funny, weird, tense, and utterly bizarre. The narrator is a boy, but then again, he might be a girl: that's strange enough, because the ambiguity is managed offhandedly -- someone refers to the protagonist as "he," and someone else as "she." (The offhandedness of references to gender outdoes Yann Martel's attempt at similar insouciance.) The child is offered a strawberry ice cream. It's a special treat, because he, or she, has never had ice cream. He, or she, nearly gags on it, and Aira's description is intense and nauseating. The father doubts his son (or daughter), argues angrily with them (that pronoun is an anachronism here; it's more a suspension than an assertion of gender fluidity), and then tastes the ice cream himself--and realizes it's poison. And then the father flies into a rage and kills the ice-cream vendor.

After that very memorable start the book unravels, or rather, Aira relaxes into a sequence of set-pieces that could have been independent short stories. It's a Bildungsroman, and you follow the little girl, or boy, through various adventures to an ending that aspires to be as willfully strange as the opening.

Aira is a stupendously talented storyteller, and I used to read everything of his that was translated. (My reasons for dropping off are in other reviews.) In this case, the form is episodic for no clear reason, and some of the eccentricities are artificially concocted. I'd argue that the problem here is the lingering pernicious influence of South American (as opposed to German) magic realism. This isn't magic realism, because nothing is supernatural, and it's programmatically unromantic and unsentimental. But it's determinedly quirky and persistently exaggeratedly eccentric, and those traits are leftovers, echoes, of the frissons and surrealist pleasures of magic realism. Aira writes quickly, and without revising, so his books are unusually uneven—and given that working method, magic realism isn't always a help. He can be more engaging when his unexpected, improvised changes of direction create things other than magic-realist juxtapositions and detours.

c. 2010, revised 2024

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

César Aira writes a book about a mischievous boy (or girl) named César Aira that begins with terrorists poisoning strawberry ice cream with cyanide and ends a brisk 117 pages later with, well, a LOT of strawberry ice cream. Sandwiched between all the strawberry ice cream, César Aira relates César Aira's formative years as an androgynous imp, terrorizing superstitious nurses, his (or her) prison-bird father and long-suffering mother, a fragile school teacher and a schoolyard friend with an affinity for tacky suits and exaggerated decorum. César Aira's prose goes down savory and sweet as, say, ice cream, even if César Aira's narration disturbingly hints at the ease with which we can learn duplicity young, which, unseen, will poison our lives like, say, cyanide. Whether this is an offbeat riff on the kind of cautionary fables that made the Brothers Grimm famous or a sly treatise on the birth of the creative life, what I can promise you is that César Aira delivers a charming way to pass a thoughtful evening alone--so long as you weren't expecting any nuns to appear in the actual text.

[Maria Yankulova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Една от онези шантави, странни и извратено готини книги, които ти се иска повече хора да прочетат, но знаеш, че малко са тези, които ще я харесат, а ти самият трудно обясняваш кое точно е това, което те спечели.

По някакъв странен начин ми напомни за “Отрова” на Саманта Швеблин без реално да ги срявнявам сюжетно. И при двете книги имаме аржентински автор, щипка магически реализъм (но не онзи класическия, както в творчеството на Алиенде, а шантав и ъндърграунд, онзи, в който разказвача ни уж е момче, а говори за себе си от името на момиче) и темата за цианидите в почвата на Аржентина, които са отровили и довели до смъртта на страшно много деца.

Няма такива виртузи на шашавите сюжети и странни, необясними (чисто логически) истории като латиноамериканските автори. Първа среща със Сесар Айра, но в никакъв случай последна.
Със скромните си 124 страници книгата не отстъпва на някои любими мои заглавия, които са 500+ стр.

Страхотен превод на Нева Мичева!

[Gastón · Rating 5 out of 5]

En "Cómo me hice monja" de Cesar Aira hay líneas paralelas que se mueven entre el pensamiento y las acciones del, o la, protagonista. Ella habla y se piensa a sí misma como chica y los demás lo ven como un chico en la niñez plena. Hay un extraño desdoblamiento en llamarse a sí misma como mujer y que los demás la vean como un chico. Ella, quien habla, es observadora, crítica, condescendiente con el poderío adulto, se asombra por todo y repiensa el mundo de acuerdo a su edad, con ingenuidad pero sin perder la inteligencia. En paralelo, él, quien actúa, quien acciona sobre el mundo es un caso que parece salirse de sí, es lento, es callado, es particularmente retraído, actúa en la re-estructuración de sus pensamientos y movido por una voz (ella) que se escapa de lo que, se supone, creen los niños, pero actúa, sin embargo, como ellos. Es un niño lento por fuera y una niña inteligente por dentro actuando ante las figuras de poder que lo rodean. Lo particular está en el armado psicológico de ella, quien entiende todo lo que la rodea pero no actúa en consecuencia, genera un submundo mental donde se aprende a sí misma sin saber que afuera también existe lo que está aprendiendo. Todo esto contenido en una historia simple y ágil, identificadora de las clases medias argentinas en 1989 (año en el cual se sitúa la novela). Cómo me hice monja es el redescubrimiento de la niñez, es pensar lo infantil desde una óptica adulta pero sin actuar como tal. Es, quizá, la mejor novela de niñez que he leído hasta ahora.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How I Became a Nun by César Aira is a short, hallucinatory novel. It seemed to me it's about becoming a writer. The convent Aira enters is that of fiction, where the rules of reality are suspended and the possession of an individual reality is renounced (“So I gave up the idea of imitating him and having a personality dimly intuiting that my only hope of being someone lay in this renunciation”).

Despite the brevity of the book, it felt packed, although I'm not sure with what. I found myself highlighting constantly.

The central character is, like the author, is named Aira and switches gender frequently. Aira is six years old. S/he is compulsive game player-like every child but also like every writer. S/he creates the rules but is also created by them. The rules are complicated but have their own fascination and failure provides a greater impetus to growth than success. The game-also reality-is determined by the shifting nature of the subject, reality springs from the subject rather than the usual reverse order. Like any good writer, Aira follows the development of the fiction by following its own inherent nature wherever it goes.

Reality, like the narrator, is a constantly shifting construct, the nature of which is both fluid and determined (by the "rules" of the narration). There is a theme of "going too far"not only the narrator, but his/her father (in the opening episode of the book), the mother (who goes to Aira's school to "protect" him/her but becomes hysterical), Aira's friend who wears bizarre clothes that underpin the construction of his personality/reality, and others.

Aira writes of the "free wheeling complications of reality" and moments of "sheer permutation," that are indeed reflections of the story and, perhaps, the nature of writing. Similarly, Aira writes "contradictory" nature of reality (such as the lead character being both male and female).

To write more is to risk giving away the "surprise" ending, although there are hints of this ending beforehand (or at least to the nature of the ending if not the actual facts of it).

The style of my review seems to me to strongly reflect my reading of this book, which was a strange and delightful experience. I will be reading more of this author.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completamente único, divertido y aterrador. Lo leí mientras tomaba helado, no de frutilla, pero sí de cereza (casi lo mismo). 10/10 de experiencia.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Without a doubt the worst most unsatisfying book I've read this millenium. I hated everything about it, with every fibre of my being. A boy/girl and his dad eat cyanide-tainted strawberry ice cream: the enraged dad kills the ice cream man and goes to jail. The kid recovers. Nothing else in this horrible little book made sense or was funny or the slightest bit interesting. Did I mention that I hated it?

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A boy no a girl no a boy child.
Written as if the grown up self is remembering the events of his life at age 6, and trying not to filter it through the lens of reality.
A child's reality is different. Dreams may be real. Reality may seem dream-like. Dreams and reality may be the same. The experience is the reality, whether it is felt in conventional consciousness or altered states.
Memories are distorted, incomplete and fleeting. They are warped by dreams, and dreams are warped by memories.
All culminating in a Grimm-like ending.

[A. Raca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beklediğimin oldukça dışında bir okuma oldu.
Anlatan çocuğun kız ya da erkek oluşu sürekli değişen, tam emin olamağımız bir durumda ve bu merak uyandırıcı oluyor kitap boyunca.
Bir çilekli dondurmayla bir çocuğun hayatı değişiyor ve başına gelenleri okuyoruz.
Anlatım çok yalın ama bazı şeyler havada kalmış gibi.

“Öyle yalnızdım ki, yıldızların tiyatrosunun kıssadan hissesinin, sadece yetişkinlerin aşık olabileceği ve hiçliği her şeye, ya da en azından herhangi bir şeye, dönüştürmenin yalnızca geceleri tıka basa dolan gökyüzüne mahsus olduğunu zannediyordum.”

[Neva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Трети подстъп към връх Айра с шерпа yours truly след „Мрамор“ и „Разговорите“ (това са трите ми най-жизнеутвърждаващи приключения от последните три години).

Авторът казва (не с тези думи, но с подобни), че е написал книгата в нещо като пристъп, вихър, и че макар събитията в нея да са повече или по-малко явно измислени, всяко от чувствата е лично негова житейска реалност. Преводачите сме най-мудните и внимателни читатели, така че когато истините на авторите са далеч от нашите (или от усещането ни за истина изобщо), помежду ни се получава брак по сметка. Тук обаче всичко е любов.

[Cosimo · Rating 4 out of 5]

La bambina che non ero

“Ebbene: la mia memoria si confonde con la radio. O, per meglio dire, io sono la radio. In virtù della perfezione senza difetti della mia memoria, sono la radio di quell'inverno. Non l'apparecchio, il meccanismo, bensì ciò che ne veniva fuori, la trasmissione, il continuum, quello che si trasmetteva sempre, anche quando la spegnevamo, o quando dormivo o ero a scuola. La mia memoria contiene tutto, ma la radio è una memoria che contiene se stessa, e io sono la radio”.

Non sono molti gli scrittori che riescono a esprimersi in una prosa imprevedibile e mutevole, che in una logica rovesciata comunica con insistenza la presenza nelle nostre vite di un aspetto di comico orrore, fondandosi su creatività e molteplicità di linguaggio e idee. L'incredibile Cèsar Aira è tra questi autori dalla vocazione antiletteraria e originale. Complessa e inspiegabile la sua trama, fino alla dislessia, come un sistema di difficoltà verbale, come forma dell'infinito possibile e inconscio, tanto vertiginose e carnevalesche risultano a tratti le costruzioni surreali e fantastiche di questo prolifico e visionario narratore. Egli stesso descrive il suo humour nella penna come un terribile fallimento. Como me hice monja è la storia di come un bambino-problema adotta un punto di vista adulto e diviene un bambino-comune: un bambino di nome César Aira che è tanto sensibile da parlare di sé al femminile e con concreta iperbole esce dall'infanzia, trasformando se stesso con un percorso allucinatorio, in una storia di allegra assurdità e disgustoso umorismo, conclusa da una fantasia tanto nera e surreale, quanto tragicamente coerente. Cèsar Aira non si stanca di rintracciare dentro il reale, dietro l'apparire, rivelazioni, sorprese, nascite, metamorfosi, epifenomeni, cambiamenti, scoperte, ossessioni: in una consapevole finitezza c'è sempre spazio per diversità, mostruosità, errore e maledizione. I suoi caratteri: ideali e virtuali nella mente, difettosi congegni linguistici e biologici nella pratica, compulsivamente bugiardi e ingenui. Aira ha un'idea inimitabile e irripetibile di lieto fine, che è enigmatico e ha a che fare con la categoria del bizzarro, dello strano (raro, in spagnolo) che proviene dalla sua attività di traduttore, dalla familiarità con la pratica del tradimento, delle attese e degli equivoci del senso, del gioco con il lettore e con se stesso come ecologia di significato, mentre ricercano entrambi l'altro dentro di sé (o in un luogo immaginario e ingannevole come la scrittura). Questo testo è un contenitore atipico, come una scatola magica senza fondo, dentro si trovano magnetiche corrispondenze, metafore sovversive, cecità gestuali, attraversamenti, negoziazioni con il reale che ne scoprono il lato beffardo. E' una fuga formale dalla combinazione del caso lo scrivere di Aira, Aira bambino o bambina di sei anni che fugge dall'abbraccio materno, e poi lo insegue, e infine ne è definitivamente defraudato, smarrito e catturato in un abbraccio ben più inquietante e sinistro. Il trionfo della morte sulla vita in questo breve racconto metafisico è semplice e radicale nella sua negatività, tanto da apparire grottesco, ma così essenzialmente difficile da non poter non essere vero. Aira in una modalità irreale ci racconta la sua infanzia, ne traveste il ricordo in un limbo, per una straordinaria inclinazione a nascondere, tramite la magia della letteratura (“io non so leggere”, confessa tra disarmonia e vergogna il piccolo César). Roberto Bolano scrisse che Aira è uno dei migliori scrittori in lingua spagnola: accostandolo visceralmente a Fernàndez, Gombrowicz e Roussel, annotava queste parole sul suo talento: “argentino di Coronel Pringles, città della provincia di Buenos Aires che non posso fare a meno di accettare come reale, anche se sembra inventata da lui, il suo figlio più illustre, l'uomo che ha scritto le parole più lucide sulla madre (mistero verbale) e sul padre (una certezza geometrica)”. Tutto questo con una breve novella che sembra una fiaba, una biografia emotiva dove un padre accoppa un gelataio, completamente aperta ad ogni genere di interpretazione: anche questa, come una prova di realismo eccentrico, sarà del tutto inventata.

“In questo caso, e forse anche in tutti gli altri, ebbi la meravigliosa consolazione di sapere che ero un angelo. Questo fatto trasformava la situazione, la rendeva un sogno, ma come realtà. Era una trasformazione della realtà. Anche i crudeli deliri patiti quando avevo la febbre erano una trasformazione, ma di segno opposto. Il sogno reale era la forma della realtà come felicità, come paradiso. Nello stesso movimento la realtà diventava delirio o sogno, ma anche il sogno diventava sogno, e quello era l'angelo, o la realtà”.

Schenardi intervista Aira

Sotto il Vulcano Aira e Traduzione

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the more striking characteristics of césar aira's fiction is how much fun it seems he must be having while writing his stories. not limited by the constraint of genre, aira's novellas often move effortlessly between them, without ever an inkling of it seeming forced or contrived. despite their relative brevity, aira's works (though i am unable as yet to determine just how) have an enduring effect far greater than books i thought i enjoyed more than his. this lasting mark may well be testament to aira's unrestrained storytelling style, as well as his allegiance to originality.

how i became a nun is the tale of an aberrant, somewhat precocious six-year old boy named césar aira (whom refers to himself as a girl). after a tainted ice cream cone leads to illness and hospitalization, young césar's reality begins to blend with fantasy. as compulsion and curiosity take over, césar must learn to navigate the hardships of both the first grade and the world around him (her).

aira's works are neither linear, narrative fiction nor surrealism simply for the sake of it. he instead crafts works of great imagination that seem to have been written, above all, for the love of a good story itself. the variety and creativity of his short works is simply bewildering. as his dozens of books slower make their way into translation, i imagine the immense talent of this prodigious argentinean will become more widely recognized.

translated from the spanish by chris andrews (aira's ghosts and an episode in the life of a landscape painter, as well as most of roberto bolaño's works to appear in english).

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il libro, che ho appena concluso di leggere, é stato uno dei (se non il più) sbalorditivo che abbia mai letto. Il motivo é presto detto: quando inizio a leggere un libro e da subito mi scatta la scintilla della comprensione insita nel romanzo, attenzione non per presunzione, non che io sia un supermegagiga critico letterario, allora tutta la lettura é in crescendo e così é stato con questo enigmatico e caustico libro.
Il titolo, la copertina, i personaggi, le situazioni, la narrazione: tutto è un enigma continuo e mantenuto tale per tutto il romanzo dall'autore, perchè la sua scrittura é ricca di tensione, é densa di sfumature perlopiù psicologiche ed infine quel pizzico di oniricità, che io classificherei come la fatidica ciliegina sulla torta.
Ottima sorpresa, devo assolutamente leggere altro dell'autore!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrs1x...

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bir top çilekli dondurma hayatınızda nasıl bir değişikliğe sebep olabilir? Pembe, tatlı, güzel kokulu bir top çilekli dondurma, oldukça masum oldukça sıradan.
Öyle mi dersiniz?
Hayatınızı kökten değiştirene kadar her şey masum görünebilir gözünüze. En sevdikleriniz bile.
.
Cesar Aira ile tanışma kitabım oldu ‘nasıl rahibe oldum’. Kabına sığmayan, elle tutulamayan bir anlatım onunkisi. Bir kız çocuğu da olabilir anlatan, bir erkek çocuğu da. Kafa karıştırıcı olarak görülse de anlatımı öyle diri kılıyor ki bu seçim.
Okuyucu bu kısa metinde sürekli uyanık tutuluyor. ‘Dikkat! Şimdi her şey değişebilir!’ Ve sonu.. Sonu ile son bir tokat atıyor Aira. Şöyle diyor : ‘Kabul et bunu isterdin, seni şaşırtmamı ve seni yerle bir etmemi’
Dediğini de yapıyor.
.
Kapak tasarımı bir kitabı ne denli özetleyebilirse o denli uygun hazırlanmış ki çok sevdim: Utku Lomlu’ya ait-
Karmaşık bir anlatıma sahip olabilecekken akıcı bir çeviriyle yüreğimize su serpen kişi ise Emrah İmre.
.
Sırada yazarın bir diğer kitabı var. Büyük keyifle okuyacağımı şimdiden biliyor gibiyim..

[Jeff Jackson]

Here's another case where ratings fail.
5 stars for the first half of the novel.
3 stars for the second half.
1 star for the ending.
Which equals...?
A lot of reader turbulence for such a short book.
Or:
I'm glad I read this but also glad I read "An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter" and "Ghosts" first. Look forward to more Cesar Aira in the near future.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

No such thing! The "I" of César Aira's How I Became a Nun does not, in the course of this short novel become a nun. All the more so, because the main character morphs incessantly from being a little girl (unnamed) and a little boy named César Aira, who, like the eponymous author, is from Coronel Pringles in the State of Buenos Aires.

But then we are in Aira country, where strange things happen and in turn morph into even stranger ones. The story begins with the narrator of indeterminate gender being taken by his/her father to an ice cream store to taste -- for the first time -- ice cream in the big city of Rosario to which the family had just moved. The strawberry ice cream cone does not have the desired effect, however, and the narrator finds it completely inedible. The father upbraids the hero/ine until, finally, he takes a taste himself and spits it out. He marches back into the store and demands that the clerk taste the cone, which he refuses to do. We learn from author Aira that:

I was a victim of the terrible cyanide contamination ... the great wave of lethal food poisoning that was sweeping Argentina and the neighboring countries that year ... The air was thick with fear, because it struck when least expected, any foodstuff could be contaminated, even the most natural ... potatoes, pumpkin, meat, rice oranges ... In my case it was ice cream.

The father pushes the clerk's head into the vat of strawberry ice cream until he dies. He is arrested and made to serve an eight-year term for his crime.

In any case, once she gets released from the hospital, the narrator gets on with his/her life, being called alternately a boy or a girl -- sometimes even within the same scene. As I read the book, I kept noting the gender with the male or female symbol as appropriate. (There were approximately forty such switches.)

There are two quotes in the novel that give you an idea of how the crafty Aira the author was leading us on. On page 68: "Because reality, the only sphere in which I could have acted, kept withdrawing at the speed of my desire to enter it ..." Then, on page 106: "I was incorrigible. The game was my freedom."

I will not divulge the odd surprise ending, but do note that any number of endings were possible by the time the narrator has lived a full year after the ice cream incident. It just happened to be the one that Aira the author pulled out of his capacious top hat.

[☆LaurA☆]

Eccomi, vediamo cosa ne esce fuori sta volta. Il voto in stelline non so darlo quindi....

Non ci sono né monache, né conventi, né chiese, né santi. È una truffa bella e buona, ma....... leggendo in giro (perché davvero io non mi capacitavo, io non ci ho capito granché) dicevo, leggendo in giro, vengo a conoscenza di dettagli importanti su questo libro, cosa che così nemmeno con le note a margine lo avrei capito, sul perché e il percome di questo delirio di César Aira.
Praticamente è la sua autobiografia grottesca di come nasce la sua voglia di scrivere, la sua perdita dell'infanzia.
César Aira usa il femminile quando parla di sé ma, cosa destabilizzante, fa parlare di lui al maschile quando gli altri personaggi lo interpellano. Avrò riletto alcuni passaggi tre volte prima di capire che non ero completamente rimbesuita.
Un viaggio allucinatorio, immerso nella stramba fantasia di un/una bambina di sei anni, risulta quasi impossibile che possa aver anche solo lontanamente pensato ad alcune cose.
Boh, non so se mi sia piaciuto o meno, so che se non avessi letto altre recensioni non avrei colto il messaggio dell'autore e forse allora non è così lampante. Non sono una cima eh, ma non dovrebbe essere compreso dai più il messaggio del libro? Forse perché non conosco l'autore, forse perché leggo da troppo poco, forse non lo so.
Il finale? Degno di questa parola e forse la cosa che mi è piaciuta di più.

[Susana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un niño, una niño, una bicha, que piensa como niño, como adulto, como adolescente, que es Cesar Aíra, personaje y autor. En resumen, el libro más loco que he leído en mi vida, pero no me atrevo a decir si loco bueno o loco malo, que cada quien se asome a los terenos de Cesar Aíra a su propio riesgo.
El final más sorprendente, también.

[María Carpio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aquí nadie se hace monja. Siento el spoiler, pero la narración así empieza aunque termina en algo completamente distinto, casi un thriller de horror. César Aira es un escritor desconcertante, un escritor de lo breve y desconcertante. Esta novela corta es diferente en fondo y forma a todo lo que había leído de él, es narrativamente mucho más tradicional, no rompe la cuarta pared del lector, pero aún así se lanza a la estratósfera para narrar desde allí. El lugar desde el que narra Aira es otro, está afuera, es desconocido. Él es un explorador de lo desconocido a través de la construcción del lenguaje. Aquí hay una historia que sigue una línea temporal clásica, con drama, nudo y desenlace, y sin embargo al leerla, no se parece a casi nada de lo que uno ha leído en ficción. Y es porque Aira saca constantemente al lector de su comodidad (apenas acomodado) y da una vuelta de tuerca que se puede ir tanto hacia el recurso narrativo (un giro inesperado argumental) como hacia la exploración del mundo subconsciente de la/él protagonista; quien se llama César Aira, como el autor, pero es una niña para sí mismo y un niño para el exterior. Ahí tenemos dos vidas a la vez o, más que eso, dos universos paralelos: nunca sabemos si esa dualidad niño/niña obedece a una disociación práctica (identidad de género) o es un simple juego de posibilidades de la ficción. Quizás son ambas al mismo tiempo, ya que en una parte la narradora en primera persona nombra que tiene un compañero de clase cuyo padre es mujer y su madre es hombre, y ambos fallan en los roles asignados según su género pues, porque el hombre no sirve para la casa ni la mujer para trabajar. Esto se puede interpretar en su superficie literal, pero el juego de Aira va más allá. Y creo que esa voluntad lúdica en las letras es su mayor cualidad. Cómo me hice monja es la historia trágica y de tono inocente (a veces siniestro) de una niña que es consciente de la fuerza inconciente de sus actos, mientras sus padres hacen frente a una cotidianidad como cualquier otra, en la que el azar y lo fortuito empujan la vida hacia la desventura. Un helado que sabe mal, una niña que no lo quiere tragar mientras su padre no le cree que está malo, un heladero, una pelea... Esta situación de apariencia casi común (aunque sea extra-ordinaria) se convierte en la chispa que empieza a consumir la vida de esta familia de tres, hasta llegar a un final completamente inesperado y un poco rocambolesco, sí, pero completamente posible en el espacio de ficción construido por Aira.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

In case it isn't already obvious, I judge people who consider themselves booklovers but have not read any César Aira, or (worse) have read him and don't like him, as "not real readers."

It's like in that scene from Scott Pilgrim where Knives Chau laments that she'll never be as cool as Ramona Flowers because Knives only discovered good music "like two months ago." For me, if you've never read an Aira novel, you're Knives Chau.

However, a dark day has now come unto me: I've read an Aira novel that I didn't particularly like. Worse, I didn't like it for the worst reasons you might not like an Aira novel -- it's sort of pointless, I didn't really understand it, and besides, we never find out how the protagonist becomes a nun.

For reference, this is like someone who purports to being a film buff saying, "Yeah, but what's a Blade Runner, anyway?"

Like, not being charmed by the weird ridiculousness of an Aira novel? Wanting it to be about something? Christ, being annoyed by the title?

If I wasn't me, I'd resolve never to talk about art with myself ever again.

But I am me, and I didn't really like How I Became a Nun. I will likely try it again at some point -- it's probably the breeziest of his books I've read thus far -- and hopefully I'll be less of a philistine next time.

Oh, but this doesn't let the rest of you who haven't read any Aira off the hook. Not by a long shot.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aira’s experimental style of writing, his disregard for a conventional plot, is particularly evident here.
It is a fascinating novella, and raises the question of whether the reader needs to understand the theme of, or reason for, the book in order to enjoy it. Not necessarily I think, but it helps.
That plot, as muddled as it is, follows what appears to be the narrator (or does he destroy this assumption in the novel’s last line), looking back at the year of his life when he was 6 years old, a year he has a particularly ‘vivid memory’ of. I use ‘he’, though from ‘his’ own point of view, he is female. It is only others who refer to him as a boy. This begins with him on a trip with his father he eats poisoned ice cream and a murder results.
Typical of Aira the plot then turns in directions that would be impossible to guess, as if he has decided on a whim. The are moments of absurdity, but then it recovers some structure. The reader remains alert after a relatively dull page as great tension is likely to follow. It succeeds though in entertaining, because of its humour, both slapstick and deadpan.
It’s meaning? I think that is open to interpretation, but for me, in giving the boy the name of César Aira, he is writing about a formative year in the life of an author of fiction; fiction being key, as it is not autobiographical. Such a step into the unknown future is a challenge that compares with entering a nunnery.
Regardless though, I really enjoyed it.

[Aslıhan Çelik Tufan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Böyle kısacık bir yazımın içinde bu kadar güzel bir sarmal ve böylesi baş döndürücü bir labirent!

Takdire şayan!

Tavsiyemdir!

[María Carpio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aquí nadie se hace monja. Siento el spoiler, pero la narración así empieza aunque termina en algo completamente distinto, casi un thriller de horror. César Aira es un escritor desconcertante, un escritor de lo breve y desconcertante. Esta novela corta es diferente en fondo y forma a todo lo que había leído de él, es narrativamente mucho más tradicional, no rompe la cuarta pared del lector, pero aún así se lanza a la estratósfera para narrar desde allí. El lugar desde el que narra Aira es otro, está afuera, es desconocido. Él es un explorador de lo desconocido a través de la construcción del lenguaje. Aquí hay una historia que sigue una línea temporal clásica, con drama, nudo y desenlace, y sin embargo al leerla, no se parece a casi nada de lo que uno ha leído en ficción. Y es porque Aira saca constantemente al lector de su comodidad (apenas acomodado) y da una vuelta de tuerca que se puede ir tanto hacia el recurso narrativo (un giro inesperado argumental) como hacia la exploración del mundo subconsciente de la/él protagonista; quien se llama César Aira, como el autor, pero es una niña para sí mismo y un niño para el exterior. Ahí tenemos dos vidas a la vez o, más que eso, dos universos paralelos: nunca sabemos si esa dualidad niño/niña obedece a una disociación práctica (identidad de género) o es un simple juego de posibilidades de la ficción. Quizás son ambas al mismo tiempo, ya que en una parte la narradora en primera persona nombra que tiene un compañero de clase cuyo padre es mujer y su madre es hombre, y ambos fallan en los roles asignados según su género pues, porque el hombre no sirve para la casa ni la mujer para trabajar. Esto se puede interpretar en su superficie literal, pero el juego de Aira va más allá. Y creo que esa voluntad lúdica en las letras es su mayor cualidad. Cómo me hice monja es la historia trágica y de tono inocente (a veces siniestro) de una niña que es consciente de la fuerza inconciente de sus actos, mientras sus padres hacen frente a una cotidianidad como cualquier otra, en la que el azar y lo fortuito empujan la vida hacia la desventura. Un helado que sabe mal, una niña que no lo quiere tragar mientras su padre no le cree que está malo, un heladero, una pelea... Esta situación de apariencia casi común (aunque sea extra-ordinaria) se convierte en la chispa que empieza a consumir la vida de esta familia de tres, hasta llegar a un final completamente inesperado y un poco rocambolesco, sí, pero completamente posible en el espacio de ficción construido por Aira.

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un ballo in maschera.

Come diventai monaca è uno stranissimo romanzo di formazione, che a partire da un ricordo banale, l'acquisto di un gelato alla fragola, mostra come le imprevedibili conseguenze di questo episodio condizioneranno l'esistenza futura del protagonista. Ad un punto di vista apparentemente innocente, quello del bambino, e ad uno stile narrativo semplice, fa da controcanto la maniera di rappresentarsi il mondo del ragazzino, tutt'altro che lineare.
L'autore stesso è il protagonista di questa surreale autobiografia "spuria", un bambino così consapevole della propria diversità al punto da immaginarsi con un'identità femminile. Viene in mente Gombrowicz nel leggere come il giovinetto viva appartato dagli altri, intento ad un gioco solitario che consiste nel riprodurre il mondo esterno e le sue dinamiche secondo regole personali, gioco che finisce per diventare il suo unico scopo, mezzo che gli permette di trascendere la realtà per crearne una che sia solo sua.
La tesi sostenuta da Aira in questo romanzo e che ritorna anche in altre opere dello scrittore argentino, sembra essere quella dell'esistenza di due realtà, quella degli altri e la nostra: la vita sarebbe così il risultato dell'eterno conflitto tra come sono le cose e come ci appaiono. Conflitto impari, nel quale siamo destinati a soccombere perché la realtà è troppo forte per le nostre forze; anche in Come diventai monaca il giovane César non sfuggirà al suo destino così che quando la realtà verrà a prenderlo lui non farà nulla per resisterle, anzi si consegnerà spontaneamente a lei, consapevole (forse) della necessità di chiudere il cerchio.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generous three stars for this intentionally confounded, maybe too readable story about the confusions of early youth. It starts promisingly, with a vivid, clear, clever, simple scene, but soon after devolves into Celinesque delirium (lots of ellipses, I mean), and thereafter rarely accelerates. Representative thematic (not stylistic) sentence is probably: "It was a transformation of reality . . . The transformation could go either way, reality becoming delirium or dream, but the real dream turned dreamlike in turn, becoming the angel, or reality." At best, the varyingly male or female narrator's story makes sense in terms of the forward-flowing, rationally irrational spirit of childhood, but I probably would've abandoned this if it were much longer than 117 pages. Typos on page 100 ("though" instead of "thought") and page 111 ("that" instead of "than") suggest that even the copyeditor/proofreader wasn't so engaged. Awarded an extra star because sometimes the sensibility and talent of the same writer who wrote Episodes in the Life of a Landscape Painter seemed to seep through . . . An OK little book, a forgettable entertainment with a bit of an edge, like a one-peso cone of strawberry-cyanide ice cream.

[iva° · Rating 2 out of 5]

čudnovata ispovijest šestogodišnjeg dječaka koji o sebi govori u ženskom licu. neshvatljivo zašto... neobjašnjivo. tekst podjednako uvrnut kao i sam naslov knjige.
početnih nekoliko stranica su najsmislenije i obećavajuće, ali sa svakom daljnjom stranicom, smisao se raspada i gubi, dok ne nastane totalni čušpajz.
sve u svemu, čudno, vrlo čudno. promaknuo mi je smisao.
zapravo uopće ne znam što sam pročitala... na mahove lucidno, a na mahove potpuna bljezgarija.