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Gesell Dome
Winner of the 2013 Dashiell Hammett Prize
"Through a skillful weaving of characters and plotlines, coming together like a completed puzzle, Saccomanno has crafted a monumental novel where individual stories unnerve us while building to the unexpected and explosive finale."—El Mundo
Like True Detective through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos, Gesell Dome is a mosaic of misery, a page-turner that will keep you enthralled right until its shocking end.
Opening with reports of a child abuse scandal at an elementary school, then weaving its way through dozens of sordid storylines and characters—including various murders, corrupt politicians and real-estate moguls, and the Nazi past of the city—Gesell Dome chronicles the dark underbelly of a popular resort town tensely awaiting the return of the tourist season.
Two-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize, Guillermo Saccomanno is Argentina's foremost noir writer, crafting incisive, unflinching books that reveal the inequities of contemporary life.
Guillermo Saccomanno is the author of numerous novels and story collections, including El buen dolor, winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura, and 77 and Gesell Dome, both of which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize. He also received Seix Barral's Premio Biblioteca Breve de Novela for El oficinista and the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for nonfiction for Un maestro.
Andrea G. Labinger is the translator of more than a dozen works from the Spanish, including books by Ana María Shua, Liliana Heker, Luisa Valenzuela, and Alicia Steimberg, among others.
"Through a skillful weaving of characters and plotlines, coming together like a completed puzzle, Saccomanno has crafted a monumental novel where individual stories unnerve us while building to the unexpected and explosive finale."—El Mundo
Like True Detective through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos, Gesell Dome is a mosaic of misery, a page-turner that will keep you enthralled right until its shocking end.
Opening with reports of a child abuse scandal at an elementary school, then weaving its way through dozens of sordid storylines and characters—including various murders, corrupt politicians and real-estate moguls, and the Nazi past of the city—Gesell Dome chronicles the dark underbelly of a popular resort town tensely awaiting the return of the tourist season.
Two-time winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize, Guillermo Saccomanno is Argentina's foremost noir writer, crafting incisive, unflinching books that reveal the inequities of contemporary life.
Guillermo Saccomanno is the author of numerous novels and story collections, including El buen dolor, winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura, and 77 and Gesell Dome, both of which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize. He also received Seix Barral's Premio Biblioteca Breve de Novela for El oficinista and the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for nonfiction for Un maestro.
Andrea G. Labinger is the translator of more than a dozen works from the Spanish, including books by Ana María Shua, Liliana Heker, Luisa Valenzuela, and Alicia Steimberg, among others.
648 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
June 21, 2016
An unrelenting trip to the Inferno (with Dante as our tour guide, cast here as a discerning hack), featuring a revue of crooked businessmen, politicians, lawyers, and powermakers, stomping on the bedraggled masses in the most violent and messed-up Argentine villa to ever set itself up as a utopian tourist beach resort. Opening with a case of child molestation known as los abusaditos, a foul stench that permates the novel, the pages proceed to pile up with one shooting, suicide, murder, corrupt activity, gruesome child killing after another, most of the citizens of the town depicted as crazed sex maniacs on the steal and shoot and stab, with Dante the lone sane voice, writing emotionless reports in the villa newspaper fed to him by evil mastermind Alejo Quiros. Far from becoming intolerable, the novel piles up the carnage to the point the reader is no longer shocked and appalled (barring several extreme acts), cranking up the pain to comic-book levels of hurt (the author is a former comic writer). As an exploration of modern violence, the novel is less certain—is the writer revelling in the carnage? is he forcing us to confront the animal within?—however, there are moments of reflection and a sombre tone to reassure us that the moral compass is pointing in the right direction.
December 28, 2019
Another well-done production from Open Letter Press. Great cover, good book.
A Gessel Dome, as the introduction explains, is the two-way mirror used to observe, suspects, children and animals in a "natural environment." This is the perfect double entendre to describe Villa Gesell, a real place, much like every other tourist town, except for the undercurrent of racism, sodomy, pedophilia, incest, murder, gang violence, mass rape, pillaging, burglary, gossip, blackmail, adultery, and every other imaginable corruption Saccomanno describes with journalistic detachment. The sentences are short, but the stories are dense. Probably gleaned from thousands of newspaper accounts, the author compiled short sections in this novel, centering the events around recurring main characters, and interpolating occasional commentary, snide humor, and reflections.
Overall, I found the author's method engrossing and effective. Spread over 600 pages, this technique of recounting gruesome incidents, one after another, without much framework or context, felt a little like scanning newspapers in a particularly grisly time and place, trying to solve some sort of case, the extent of which keeps expanding infinitely in every direction. It was as if he picked out the worst and most representative parts of journalism's intellectual territory and pasted them together in a sociopathic album.
It is easy to believe that the author wrote for film and cartoons, given the absurd level of antics he includes. The sheer number of events and the amount of perversity strains credibility, but it is satirical in its use of the subject matter. The book has one foot in the realm of pulp fiction and the other planted fully in the arena of great literature. The use of short sentences is key. It is written in a quickly paced, fully fleshed style, cyclical and recursive, mirroring the mindset of addiction, of consumption, of sin, and encouraging the reader to race forward in an ever-increasing enthusiasm, throwing caution and morality to the high winds. But those jettisoned scruples are the same ones that hover accusingly in our wake.
There is continual reaffirmation that the plots occur on the same street corners as one another, right around the corner from the last atrocity, in the same neighborhood, the same stores and bars, where the same sorry individuals relive these horrendous crimes and tragedies, until the grotesque level of death, sexuality, miscarriages, brutality, etc., become a microcosm, the opposite of the Garden of Eden, or a prison...
"We are strangers to ourselves." We know more about strangers than we know about ourselves - that is what the Dante tells us. He is the aptly named narrator. The storyteller, though he is not immune to partaking in the derelict culture of the domain that is his jurisdiction. He is the one publishing the events in the Villa, and many people blame him for spreading the virus of their own troubles.
A cacophony of voices confessing, accusing, and hectoring, but rarely taking responsibility for their ethical failures, the tragedies depend as much on human folly as on Fate's whimsy. Like characters observed in a fish tank, the reader will pick out favorites from the catalogue of vice, men and women in their darkest moments, much like the menu of death served up in Bolaño's 2666.
The gritty, grisly, suicidal town is also concerned with the symbolic construction of a sewer system that will clear out all of the accumulated stink and pave the way for greater commerce and an influx of purity into their lives. Really, they just want more tourists to come next season and drop a dime. What tourist would want to come to such a place, the reader wonders? And we all know things are not going to get any better for these people. They have dug themselves so deep, what hope is there for them? It is rather sad, if a bit entertaining to vicariously experience their cruel existences.
The Villa is defined by the scandals within it. "Los abusaditos," the victims of child abuse, brutally described throughout the novel, brought up like a dark stain on the inhabitants' consciences, are a shared responsibility, and the focal point in the whole state of affairs, while the underfunded police force, complain about their lack of car batteries and weapons, their inability to clean up the festering corpse of a community they call home.
I enjoyed the parallel to "Waiting for Godot," which the townsfolk bastardize and interpret in their own way. In fact, I enjoyed all of it, and will read more by this author.
A Gessel Dome, as the introduction explains, is the two-way mirror used to observe, suspects, children and animals in a "natural environment." This is the perfect double entendre to describe Villa Gesell, a real place, much like every other tourist town, except for the undercurrent of racism, sodomy, pedophilia, incest, murder, gang violence, mass rape, pillaging, burglary, gossip, blackmail, adultery, and every other imaginable corruption Saccomanno describes with journalistic detachment. The sentences are short, but the stories are dense. Probably gleaned from thousands of newspaper accounts, the author compiled short sections in this novel, centering the events around recurring main characters, and interpolating occasional commentary, snide humor, and reflections.
Overall, I found the author's method engrossing and effective. Spread over 600 pages, this technique of recounting gruesome incidents, one after another, without much framework or context, felt a little like scanning newspapers in a particularly grisly time and place, trying to solve some sort of case, the extent of which keeps expanding infinitely in every direction. It was as if he picked out the worst and most representative parts of journalism's intellectual territory and pasted them together in a sociopathic album.
It is easy to believe that the author wrote for film and cartoons, given the absurd level of antics he includes. The sheer number of events and the amount of perversity strains credibility, but it is satirical in its use of the subject matter. The book has one foot in the realm of pulp fiction and the other planted fully in the arena of great literature. The use of short sentences is key. It is written in a quickly paced, fully fleshed style, cyclical and recursive, mirroring the mindset of addiction, of consumption, of sin, and encouraging the reader to race forward in an ever-increasing enthusiasm, throwing caution and morality to the high winds. But those jettisoned scruples are the same ones that hover accusingly in our wake.
There is continual reaffirmation that the plots occur on the same street corners as one another, right around the corner from the last atrocity, in the same neighborhood, the same stores and bars, where the same sorry individuals relive these horrendous crimes and tragedies, until the grotesque level of death, sexuality, miscarriages, brutality, etc., become a microcosm, the opposite of the Garden of Eden, or a prison...
"We are strangers to ourselves." We know more about strangers than we know about ourselves - that is what the Dante tells us. He is the aptly named narrator. The storyteller, though he is not immune to partaking in the derelict culture of the domain that is his jurisdiction. He is the one publishing the events in the Villa, and many people blame him for spreading the virus of their own troubles.
A cacophony of voices confessing, accusing, and hectoring, but rarely taking responsibility for their ethical failures, the tragedies depend as much on human folly as on Fate's whimsy. Like characters observed in a fish tank, the reader will pick out favorites from the catalogue of vice, men and women in their darkest moments, much like the menu of death served up in Bolaño's 2666.
The gritty, grisly, suicidal town is also concerned with the symbolic construction of a sewer system that will clear out all of the accumulated stink and pave the way for greater commerce and an influx of purity into their lives. Really, they just want more tourists to come next season and drop a dime. What tourist would want to come to such a place, the reader wonders? And we all know things are not going to get any better for these people. They have dug themselves so deep, what hope is there for them? It is rather sad, if a bit entertaining to vicariously experience their cruel existences.
The Villa is defined by the scandals within it. "Los abusaditos," the victims of child abuse, brutally described throughout the novel, brought up like a dark stain on the inhabitants' consciences, are a shared responsibility, and the focal point in the whole state of affairs, while the underfunded police force, complain about their lack of car batteries and weapons, their inability to clean up the festering corpse of a community they call home.
I enjoyed the parallel to "Waiting for Godot," which the townsfolk bastardize and interpret in their own way. In fact, I enjoyed all of it, and will read more by this author.
October 6, 2019
Yet another superb book I chose after finding out about it from my GR friends.
Fear, loathing, corruption, infidelity, violence, it's all there in this multi-voiced tale of an out of season seaside resort in Argentina.
Highly recommended
Fear, loathing, corruption, infidelity, violence, it's all there in this multi-voiced tale of an out of season seaside resort in Argentina.
Highly recommended
April 8, 2017
Well, the blurb on the back makes the unthinkable assertion that GESELL DOME is like "TRUE DETECTIVE through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos." Yee. Indeed, to invoke something as inane as TRUE DETECTIVE is a marketing-minded stretch of tremendous dubiousness, though the name-drop of Dos Passos is apt. This is not a detective novel, and though Saccomanno may indeed be "Argentina's foremost noir writer," this is very much a network-style narrative of daunting scope in the Dos Passos tradition. This is a novel that is an entire world, densely populated and amply variegated. There are a number of voices, a number of different stylistic approaches, and a generous elasticity of form creating maximum potential for episodic variety. This was an impulse buy for me; I knew nothing about Saccomanno, but thought the synopsis looked promising, and that the split meaning of the title (elucidated well in the translator's introduction) was brilliant. I was a ways into the book before it began to finally dawn on me that I was reading a masterful book of literary fiction. It is impossible to talk about GESELL DOME (for a number of reasons) without acknowledging its relationship to Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, and especially INFERNO. Many readers are going to see this novel as a book about a very salacious kind of hell on earth, and may well see it in those terms as a kind of cartoon maximalism (Saccomanno's history working in comics speaking to this). I actually see the book as being easily understood as addressing realities. Specific realities, certainly - germane to a particular time and place - but also, ultimately, universal ones. It does not read like a thriller, or like page-turner genre titillation. This is a hefty read, requiring a deliberate approach. Though I didn't exactly tear through it, my experience was enlightening and productive of more than a little awe. GESELL DOME was a really special discovery.
March 3, 2024
Saccomanno escribe increíble, pero en un libro de 550 páginas, los recursos se empiezan a parecer entre sí, y para ser una novela coral muchos personajes terminan hablando similar, y les empiezan a pasar las mismas cosas. Tiene momentos increíbles y momentos tirando a prescindibles por lo repetitivos. Guillermo se tenía una confianza tremenda cuando sacó este libro, o bien le importaba una mierda lo que pensaran de él. Celebro que lo haya hecho.
Por otro lado... el recurso de usar la aposición delante del sujeto. Me es molesto incluso cuando lo usa un Andrés Rivera. Esa búsqueda de la voz campechana que se hace mierda sola. Cansador en un mal sentido.
Es un librazo. Jamás le reclamaría a nadie que recorte pedazos de algo porque algunos se supone que saben lo que hacen y se pueden dar el lujo de irse a la mierda. Pero me parece que de tanto intentar abarcarlo todo, y de tanto querer enfatizar la crudeza y el cinismo de la propia voz narrativa, se le terminan zafando varios de los cables que sostienen el relato.
Por otro lado... el recurso de usar la aposición delante del sujeto. Me es molesto incluso cuando lo usa un Andrés Rivera. Esa búsqueda de la voz campechana que se hace mierda sola. Cansador en un mal sentido.
Es un librazo. Jamás le reclamaría a nadie que recorte pedazos de algo porque algunos se supone que saben lo que hacen y se pueden dar el lujo de irse a la mierda. Pero me parece que de tanto intentar abarcarlo todo, y de tanto querer enfatizar la crudeza y el cinismo de la propia voz narrativa, se le terminan zafando varios de los cables que sostienen el relato.
July 27, 2017
En Cámara Gesell, una novela coral, con demasiados personajes y demasiadas voces que narran, la historia o historias pueden ser las noticias policiales que suceden en cualquier ciudad mediana a chica de la argentina, a eso se le suma la cotidianidad de ciudades o pueblos donde todos se conocen “pueblo chico infierno grande” es una novela de momentos, los que mas me gustaron son los que hacen referencia a la soledad y la melancolía en la que se sumerge un destino turístico fuera de temporada, después todo lo referente a lo crímenes se vuelve demasiado repetitivo y se vuelve medio extensa para lo que cuenta.
De Saccomanno había leído "Terrible accidente del alma” un libro que me gusto bastante, novela de genero fantástico también coral pero con menos personajes, donde ahonda mucho en los infiernos personales a diferencia del infierno colectivo de Cámara Gesell, Guillermo escribe bien, genera buenos climas y personajes creíbles, difícil ser indiferente con sus historias.
De Saccomanno había leído "Terrible accidente del alma” un libro que me gusto bastante, novela de genero fantástico también coral pero con menos personajes, donde ahonda mucho en los infiernos personales a diferencia del infierno colectivo de Cámara Gesell, Guillermo escribe bien, genera buenos climas y personajes creíbles, difícil ser indiferente con sus historias.
June 9, 2024
desagradable
considering
October 28, 2016Feinmann dice que hay que leer a Saccomanno. A mí mucho no me llama la atención.
April 6, 2021
review of
Guillermo Saccomanno's Gesell Dome
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 26, 2021
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I started reading this so long ago I don't even remember when it was. I think there were dinosaurs around at the time & constant mist. I might've had a tail. Then again, it cd've been much later, say in 2018. More likely I started it in 2019. Since around the fall of 2018 I've been reading 8 bks that're important to me for 1 reason or another but I've been COLOSSALLY BORED by them. I'm sure that my general disatisfaction during the QUARANTYRANNY hasn't helped but it started before then. I might've finished 2 of those 8 bks during this time.
I don't mean to imply that this was a hard bk to read, I don't mean to imply that it's not well-written &/or well-translated. I might even say that it's exceptional.. but that doesn't mean that I even recommend it! Somehow, my mind has changed in a way in recent yrs that made this bk just. not. for. me.
It's explained in Andrea G. Labinger's Translator's Introduction:
"The Gesell Camera [more commonly known as Gesell Dome]... was conceived as a dome for observing children's behavior without their being disturbed by the presence of strangers. The Gesell Dome consists of two rooms with a dividing wall in between in which a large, one-way mirror allows an observer in one room to see what is happening in the other, but not vice-versa." - p viii
It was the author's intention to describe the activities in an Argentinian sea resort as if it were enclosed in a Gesell Dome - in other words: as if he were privy to all sorts of private lives. This was very ambitious & I think he did a wonderful job. The novel is all short sections about a wide variety of recurring characters.
"Similarly, the novel is peppered with examples of vesre, a feature of lunfardo that involves the reversal of syllables, e.g., Monra for Ramón or tordo for do[c]tor, creating a cryptolect comparable to Pig Latin, back slang, or—distant cousin, perhaps—Cockney English." - p x
The translator's dilemma. She decided against "reversing syllables in the translation" b/c "the effect in English would be too jarring". I kindof wished she'd done it anyway b/c that part of the original is lost.
In general this bk is grim, maybe that's why I didn't ultimately enjoy it. Here's a sample from the beginning:
"one of the gunmen from El Monte, is selling crack to a bunch of kids, and those boys and girls, dressed in hoodies, have just finished poisoning your Rottweiler and in a minute will be pointing a gun at you, forcing your wife to suck them off, fucking your daughter, and you'd better tell them where you keep your cash because you don't know what they're capable of with that iron you won with supermarket bonus points, the iron they've plugged in and is starting to heat up." - p 4
This violence isn't relentless but it is somewhat the norm.
"But we all wear skinny jeans. Stovepipe pants—in my day we called them stovepipes." - p 11
The above is a minor detail but it's the sort of thing I notice. "Stovepipes" are straight, "skinny jeans" taper. Is this a translator error? A deliberate error in the original text? Neither?
"Everyone, I'm saying, including the natives, call this town the Villa. And when they say "Villa," they feel like a superior, chosen race. The kids, on the other hand, those who were born here, almost all share the single goal of getting the hell out. The stoner snobs who want to keep on kicking back take their surfboards to Costa Rica. The blue-collar kids who are looking to earn some cash go to Spain to become dishwashers or to the States to scrub toilets. Wherever it is, they'll be better off. Anywhere but the Villa. This damn town, they call it." - p 12
The Villa does seem like a type of hell, even tho its natural environment is promising, it's all tainted, corpses washing ashore, constant crime, a history of secret nazism, public relations seem like a band-aid over a festering black plague bubo.
"In those days, as the Allies were winning the war, the three or four measly cabins started to multiply. Soon there were a dozen; the settlement grew, taking the shape of a Villa that was recommended by one friend to another among the Buenos Aires German community. During that period the Hotel Wagner was built, with a movie theater, which, according to the old timers, showed The Triumph of the Will. It had a radio and a transmitter, which, they say, communicated with submarines along the Huns' route. Here, at night, a twinkling of light could sometimes be seen where the sea met the sky. Nazi bigwigs disembarked, bringing with them the Führer's gold; they carried passports, like I said, allowing them to return to Hamburg and come back again with more fugitives. Odessa, let's call it. Everyone knows. No one tells." - p 28
Now, an aside here is that once upon a time many or most readers wd understand the reference to The Triumph of the Will as a reference to the (in)famous film of the 1934 nazi Nuremburg rally by Leni Riefenstahl. Many wd've seen the film & had the chance to decide for themselves whether it's a great film or a horrible one or whatever. I've seen the film, I'm very much against its message & I'm not that impressed by it otherwise. I even used excerpts from it in a movie of mine called "P@rty Prop@g@nd@", a movie meant to expose & subvert 20th century propaganda. These days, the film is banned from YouTube & probably not shown much, if at all, in academia. Will an understanding of how propaganda works be lost w/ this censorship? Will people be just as easily duped again?
"Even though she would drag Alba to church, my sister was more of a bookworm. From Little Women to Das Kapital, she read everything that fell into her hands. And whatever didn't fall into her hands, she searched for." - p 41
I'm reminded of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her son had this to say about her in his foreword to her mystery novel Mother Finds a Body:
"She read any book she could buy or shoplift, which resulted in an eccentric range of topics and authors: Decameron, The Blind Bow Boy, Das Capital, and Droll Stories to name a few." - p 6 [ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
The Gesell Dome has no secrets.
"And so you find out. In the end you find out. And in the end everyone finds out. Even if you don't want to. I'll give you an example: you have a nieghbor that you never said hello to in your whole life, and without wanting to, you find out: something he's hiding, because we're all hiding something, a humiliation, a vice, a sorrow, and that something comes to light when you least expect it, and the ones you least expected to find out will find out, and after a while the whole town knows, because there are no secrets to be kept here." - p 49
Then there's the classic Western movie stand-off:
"As soon as the posse discovered that the Commissioner had captured one of the suspects, they gathered in front of the police station. It was still nighttime when the 4X4s braked to a halt at the station. Commissioner Frugone came out to meet them. Dobroslav was the one to speak for the group. He demanded that the Commissioner hand over Ramiro. They'd get a confession out of him. Insecurity had its limits, they said. And that you don't screw around with kids. They were prepared to enter the police station by force. Over my dead body, Frugone said. And he pulled out his 9 millimeter. You people can take me down, but I'll pick off a few of you first. Then the members of the posse noticed the gun barrels pointing at them from the ground floor and second floor of the police station. That's the way it happened, Dante said with precision. They must've gotten scared. They left, cursing Frugone under their breath." - p 60
Even more classic is that Dobroslav is the child molestor & he completely gets away w/ it.
"Exclusive interview with Anita López for El Vocero. Our middle school language teacher and a local militant of the Radical Party presented a project for stimulating our youth at the Forum for a Non-Violent Villa" - p 94
"A first step in this project is to promote music. And so today we're going to present a modern musical group made up of three students from our dear institution, this middle school. And we're committed to the development of these young artists: "The Skinheads." - p 95
Ha. ha.
"Joseph Pilates was a sickly child, which led him to study the human body and devise a method of strengthening it through exercise. Thus, in time he became a great athlete. It was in England where he would begin to develop his method, while being detained in a concentration camp during the First World War due to his German nationality. While working as a nurse, he developed a method to improve other detainees' health through exercise. For the weaker and sicker patients he developed a system of pulleys and cords over their beds in order to exercise muscles, the origin of some of the machinery he later invented, like the reformer, the trapeze, the chair, and the barrel." - p 100
Imagine that. I tried reforming society & they put me in a chair in a barrel & pushed me over Niagara Falls telling me there was a trapeze at the bottom. There wasn't. Was Pilates responsible?
"And Jackie starts telling her what she has to tell her, that she should stop screwing around and threatening to separate from Braulio and air family business matters, that if she makes a stink, if she opens her mouth, if she even thinks of ratting on the Kennedy business, it's the end of everything. If she needs to set up the Pilates studio to feel like a big shot, she should go right ahead, but stop being so cocky. Because anyone can have an accident on the highway. What if you're driving with the girls, imagine, and your brakes give out. It can happen to anyone.
"Adriana can't believe what is coming out of Jackie's mouth." - p 111
See what I mean?!
"Just what we needed. Now they're coming out with the story that El Muertito is a baby that the military swallowed up and dropped from one of those death flights. The tide brought in many dead in those days. And all of them got buried around here. Those that weren't destined to end up in the cemetery wound up buried in the dunes. No use stirring up those times again." - p 140
The reference is to Argentina's "Dirty War" era. That is so important to me as a low-point in human history that I quote a lengthy section from my review of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's The Buenos Aires Quintet ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... )
""The Argentine army's "Dirty War" disappeared 30,000 people, and the last thing Pepe Carvalho wants is to investigate one of the vanished, even if that missing person is his cousin, But blood proves thicker than a fine Mondoza Cabernet Sauvignon, even for a jaded gourmand like Pepe, and so at his family's request he leaves Barcelona for Buenos Aires."
"I subscribed to a magazine called "CounterSpy" in 1980 & to another magazine called "CovertAction Information Bulletin" from 1980 to 1982. Both magazines published exposés of CIA connections to oppressive regimes the world over. I remember seeing an/the editor of CounterSpy on a TV talk show defending himself for the magazine's disclosure of CIAgents info. Wikipedia states that "the 1975 murder of Richard S. Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Greece, by Revolutionary Organization 17 November was blamed by some on disclosures in magazines such as CounterSpy." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterS... ) CounterSpy's position was that the info they disclosed was already public knowledge & that, of course, such disclosures served positive political purposes by providing resistance to CIA covert operations.
"However, it was CovertAction that really impressed me. Around 1981, I was reading its investigations into the military junta's death & torture squads in Argentina. Datings vary substantially, but for simplicity's sake, the main era of state-sponsored terrorism took place from 1976 to 1983 w/ estimates of victims varying. For the purposes of this review, 30,000 leftists were disappeared by the military during this time. CovertAction Information Bulletin (later called CovertAction Quarterly from 1992 'til its unfortunate demise in 2005) gave extremely detailed info about the tortures & murders committed by the military during this time. I found the explicitness of the terror almost unbearable to even read about.
"According to Wikipedia, in 1985 "The government of Raúl Alfonsín began to develop cases against offenders. It organised a tribunal to conduct prosecution of offenders, and in 1985 the Trial of the Juntas was held. The top military officers of all the juntas were among the nearly 300 people prosecuted, and the top men were all convicted and sentenced for their crimes. This is the only Latin American example of the government conducting such trials. Threatening another coup, the military opposed subjecting more of its personnel to such trials and forced through passage of Ley de Punto Final in 1986, which "put a line" under previous actions and ended prosecutions for crimes under the dictatorship. Fearing military uprisings against them, Argentina’s first two presidents inflicted punishment only to top Dirty War ex-commanders, and even then, very conservatively. Despite President Raúl Alfonsín’s 1983 establishment of CONADEP, a commission to investigate the atrocities of the Dirty War, in 1986 the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) provided amnesty to Dirty War acts, stating that torturers were doing their “jobs"." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War )
"One of the torturers outed in CovertAction was nicknamed the "Blond Angel".
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Guillermo Saccomanno's Gesell Dome
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 26, 2021
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I started reading this so long ago I don't even remember when it was. I think there were dinosaurs around at the time & constant mist. I might've had a tail. Then again, it cd've been much later, say in 2018. More likely I started it in 2019. Since around the fall of 2018 I've been reading 8 bks that're important to me for 1 reason or another but I've been COLOSSALLY BORED by them. I'm sure that my general disatisfaction during the QUARANTYRANNY hasn't helped but it started before then. I might've finished 2 of those 8 bks during this time.
I don't mean to imply that this was a hard bk to read, I don't mean to imply that it's not well-written &/or well-translated. I might even say that it's exceptional.. but that doesn't mean that I even recommend it! Somehow, my mind has changed in a way in recent yrs that made this bk just. not. for. me.
It's explained in Andrea G. Labinger's Translator's Introduction:
"The Gesell Camera [more commonly known as Gesell Dome]... was conceived as a dome for observing children's behavior without their being disturbed by the presence of strangers. The Gesell Dome consists of two rooms with a dividing wall in between in which a large, one-way mirror allows an observer in one room to see what is happening in the other, but not vice-versa." - p viii
It was the author's intention to describe the activities in an Argentinian sea resort as if it were enclosed in a Gesell Dome - in other words: as if he were privy to all sorts of private lives. This was very ambitious & I think he did a wonderful job. The novel is all short sections about a wide variety of recurring characters.
"Similarly, the novel is peppered with examples of vesre, a feature of lunfardo that involves the reversal of syllables, e.g., Monra for Ramón or tordo for do[c]tor, creating a cryptolect comparable to Pig Latin, back slang, or—distant cousin, perhaps—Cockney English." - p x
The translator's dilemma. She decided against "reversing syllables in the translation" b/c "the effect in English would be too jarring". I kindof wished she'd done it anyway b/c that part of the original is lost.
In general this bk is grim, maybe that's why I didn't ultimately enjoy it. Here's a sample from the beginning:
"one of the gunmen from El Monte, is selling crack to a bunch of kids, and those boys and girls, dressed in hoodies, have just finished poisoning your Rottweiler and in a minute will be pointing a gun at you, forcing your wife to suck them off, fucking your daughter, and you'd better tell them where you keep your cash because you don't know what they're capable of with that iron you won with supermarket bonus points, the iron they've plugged in and is starting to heat up." - p 4
This violence isn't relentless but it is somewhat the norm.
"But we all wear skinny jeans. Stovepipe pants—in my day we called them stovepipes." - p 11
The above is a minor detail but it's the sort of thing I notice. "Stovepipes" are straight, "skinny jeans" taper. Is this a translator error? A deliberate error in the original text? Neither?
"Everyone, I'm saying, including the natives, call this town the Villa. And when they say "Villa," they feel like a superior, chosen race. The kids, on the other hand, those who were born here, almost all share the single goal of getting the hell out. The stoner snobs who want to keep on kicking back take their surfboards to Costa Rica. The blue-collar kids who are looking to earn some cash go to Spain to become dishwashers or to the States to scrub toilets. Wherever it is, they'll be better off. Anywhere but the Villa. This damn town, they call it." - p 12
The Villa does seem like a type of hell, even tho its natural environment is promising, it's all tainted, corpses washing ashore, constant crime, a history of secret nazism, public relations seem like a band-aid over a festering black plague bubo.
"In those days, as the Allies were winning the war, the three or four measly cabins started to multiply. Soon there were a dozen; the settlement grew, taking the shape of a Villa that was recommended by one friend to another among the Buenos Aires German community. During that period the Hotel Wagner was built, with a movie theater, which, according to the old timers, showed The Triumph of the Will. It had a radio and a transmitter, which, they say, communicated with submarines along the Huns' route. Here, at night, a twinkling of light could sometimes be seen where the sea met the sky. Nazi bigwigs disembarked, bringing with them the Führer's gold; they carried passports, like I said, allowing them to return to Hamburg and come back again with more fugitives. Odessa, let's call it. Everyone knows. No one tells." - p 28
Now, an aside here is that once upon a time many or most readers wd understand the reference to The Triumph of the Will as a reference to the (in)famous film of the 1934 nazi Nuremburg rally by Leni Riefenstahl. Many wd've seen the film & had the chance to decide for themselves whether it's a great film or a horrible one or whatever. I've seen the film, I'm very much against its message & I'm not that impressed by it otherwise. I even used excerpts from it in a movie of mine called "P@rty Prop@g@nd@", a movie meant to expose & subvert 20th century propaganda. These days, the film is banned from YouTube & probably not shown much, if at all, in academia. Will an understanding of how propaganda works be lost w/ this censorship? Will people be just as easily duped again?
"Even though she would drag Alba to church, my sister was more of a bookworm. From Little Women to Das Kapital, she read everything that fell into her hands. And whatever didn't fall into her hands, she searched for." - p 41
I'm reminded of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her son had this to say about her in his foreword to her mystery novel Mother Finds a Body:
"She read any book she could buy or shoplift, which resulted in an eccentric range of topics and authors: Decameron, The Blind Bow Boy, Das Capital, and Droll Stories to name a few." - p 6 [ https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
The Gesell Dome has no secrets.
"And so you find out. In the end you find out. And in the end everyone finds out. Even if you don't want to. I'll give you an example: you have a nieghbor that you never said hello to in your whole life, and without wanting to, you find out: something he's hiding, because we're all hiding something, a humiliation, a vice, a sorrow, and that something comes to light when you least expect it, and the ones you least expected to find out will find out, and after a while the whole town knows, because there are no secrets to be kept here." - p 49
Then there's the classic Western movie stand-off:
"As soon as the posse discovered that the Commissioner had captured one of the suspects, they gathered in front of the police station. It was still nighttime when the 4X4s braked to a halt at the station. Commissioner Frugone came out to meet them. Dobroslav was the one to speak for the group. He demanded that the Commissioner hand over Ramiro. They'd get a confession out of him. Insecurity had its limits, they said. And that you don't screw around with kids. They were prepared to enter the police station by force. Over my dead body, Frugone said. And he pulled out his 9 millimeter. You people can take me down, but I'll pick off a few of you first. Then the members of the posse noticed the gun barrels pointing at them from the ground floor and second floor of the police station. That's the way it happened, Dante said with precision. They must've gotten scared. They left, cursing Frugone under their breath." - p 60
Even more classic is that Dobroslav is the child molestor & he completely gets away w/ it.
"Exclusive interview with Anita López for El Vocero. Our middle school language teacher and a local militant of the Radical Party presented a project for stimulating our youth at the Forum for a Non-Violent Villa" - p 94
"A first step in this project is to promote music. And so today we're going to present a modern musical group made up of three students from our dear institution, this middle school. And we're committed to the development of these young artists: "The Skinheads." - p 95
Ha. ha.
"Joseph Pilates was a sickly child, which led him to study the human body and devise a method of strengthening it through exercise. Thus, in time he became a great athlete. It was in England where he would begin to develop his method, while being detained in a concentration camp during the First World War due to his German nationality. While working as a nurse, he developed a method to improve other detainees' health through exercise. For the weaker and sicker patients he developed a system of pulleys and cords over their beds in order to exercise muscles, the origin of some of the machinery he later invented, like the reformer, the trapeze, the chair, and the barrel." - p 100
Imagine that. I tried reforming society & they put me in a chair in a barrel & pushed me over Niagara Falls telling me there was a trapeze at the bottom. There wasn't. Was Pilates responsible?
"And Jackie starts telling her what she has to tell her, that she should stop screwing around and threatening to separate from Braulio and air family business matters, that if she makes a stink, if she opens her mouth, if she even thinks of ratting on the Kennedy business, it's the end of everything. If she needs to set up the Pilates studio to feel like a big shot, she should go right ahead, but stop being so cocky. Because anyone can have an accident on the highway. What if you're driving with the girls, imagine, and your brakes give out. It can happen to anyone.
"Adriana can't believe what is coming out of Jackie's mouth." - p 111
See what I mean?!
"Just what we needed. Now they're coming out with the story that El Muertito is a baby that the military swallowed up and dropped from one of those death flights. The tide brought in many dead in those days. And all of them got buried around here. Those that weren't destined to end up in the cemetery wound up buried in the dunes. No use stirring up those times again." - p 140
The reference is to Argentina's "Dirty War" era. That is so important to me as a low-point in human history that I quote a lengthy section from my review of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's The Buenos Aires Quintet ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... )
""The Argentine army's "Dirty War" disappeared 30,000 people, and the last thing Pepe Carvalho wants is to investigate one of the vanished, even if that missing person is his cousin, But blood proves thicker than a fine Mondoza Cabernet Sauvignon, even for a jaded gourmand like Pepe, and so at his family's request he leaves Barcelona for Buenos Aires."
"I subscribed to a magazine called "CounterSpy" in 1980 & to another magazine called "CovertAction Information Bulletin" from 1980 to 1982. Both magazines published exposés of CIA connections to oppressive regimes the world over. I remember seeing an/the editor of CounterSpy on a TV talk show defending himself for the magazine's disclosure of CIAgents info. Wikipedia states that "the 1975 murder of Richard S. Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Greece, by Revolutionary Organization 17 November was blamed by some on disclosures in magazines such as CounterSpy." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CounterS... ) CounterSpy's position was that the info they disclosed was already public knowledge & that, of course, such disclosures served positive political purposes by providing resistance to CIA covert operations.
"However, it was CovertAction that really impressed me. Around 1981, I was reading its investigations into the military junta's death & torture squads in Argentina. Datings vary substantially, but for simplicity's sake, the main era of state-sponsored terrorism took place from 1976 to 1983 w/ estimates of victims varying. For the purposes of this review, 30,000 leftists were disappeared by the military during this time. CovertAction Information Bulletin (later called CovertAction Quarterly from 1992 'til its unfortunate demise in 2005) gave extremely detailed info about the tortures & murders committed by the military during this time. I found the explicitness of the terror almost unbearable to even read about.
"According to Wikipedia, in 1985 "The government of Raúl Alfonsín began to develop cases against offenders. It organised a tribunal to conduct prosecution of offenders, and in 1985 the Trial of the Juntas was held. The top military officers of all the juntas were among the nearly 300 people prosecuted, and the top men were all convicted and sentenced for their crimes. This is the only Latin American example of the government conducting such trials. Threatening another coup, the military opposed subjecting more of its personnel to such trials and forced through passage of Ley de Punto Final in 1986, which "put a line" under previous actions and ended prosecutions for crimes under the dictatorship. Fearing military uprisings against them, Argentina’s first two presidents inflicted punishment only to top Dirty War ex-commanders, and even then, very conservatively. Despite President Raúl Alfonsín’s 1983 establishment of CONADEP, a commission to investigate the atrocities of the Dirty War, in 1986 the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) provided amnesty to Dirty War acts, stating that torturers were doing their “jobs"." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War )
"One of the torturers outed in CovertAction was nicknamed the "Blond Angel".
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
November 23, 2019
A ver... por dónde empiezo?
Xenófogos, racistas, ladrones, asesinos, nazis, violadores, putas, maricones, políticos corruptos, mafiosos, padres abusadores de sus hijos, cornudos y cornudas, estafadores, pedófilos, amigos hipócritas y cagadores, cizañeros, hipocresía pura y dura.
De verdad? ni uno buena gente? qué es esto?
No me creo que en toda una ciudad de 50.000 habitantes no haya una sola persona honesta, dónde están? por qué no aparecen? y por qué las pocas veces que aparecen quedan como idiotas? Como si fuera vergonzoso ser buena gente. Además, en todos los comentarios, ya que es un relato coral, reluce una postura horriblemente machista. No, no, no. Este libro, además de parecerme un culebrón entre miles de personajes horribles que en lo único que piensan es en coger y cagar al otro, las mujeres todas huecas, putas o pobres minas, los hombres todos abusadores, horribles, las pocas y únicas personas buenas siempre terminan mal.
Me abrumó, me deprimió, tuve que intercalarlo con otras historias cada tanto para quitarme el mal sabor. Y ni siquiera sé a qué género puede pertenecer este libro: drama? fantasía? realista? ficción? comedia negra?... terror?
Por qué tanta saña por parte del escritor con esta gente? Personas horribles hay en todo el planeta, pero parece que se hubieran puesto de acuerdo para ir a parar todos juntos a esta villa.
Una prosa bastante rara: ni signos de interrogación, ni guiones de diálogo, etc. pero llevadera, uno se acostumbra. Aunque el vocablo que utiliza es muy argentino, muy bonaerense, lo que hace un texto difícil de comprender en otros países, supongo.
Aún así, le puse 3 estrellas porque me entretuvo y reconozco que en algunos puntos me hizo reír, sobre todo durante el festival del 12 de octubre, imperdible.
Y por fin llegué hasta el final, a pesar de ser un tocho de 552 páginas bien llenitas.
Ahora quiero buscar, y espero encontrar en youtube, entrevistas al autor, para que me explique... no sé exactamente qué, pero después de todo este despliegue de situaciones, que a mi entender el autor considera cotidianas, necesito escucharlo a él. A ver qué onda con este señor.
Xenófogos, racistas, ladrones, asesinos, nazis, violadores, putas, maricones, políticos corruptos, mafiosos, padres abusadores de sus hijos, cornudos y cornudas, estafadores, pedófilos, amigos hipócritas y cagadores, cizañeros, hipocresía pura y dura.
De verdad? ni uno buena gente? qué es esto?
No me creo que en toda una ciudad de 50.000 habitantes no haya una sola persona honesta, dónde están? por qué no aparecen? y por qué las pocas veces que aparecen quedan como idiotas? Como si fuera vergonzoso ser buena gente. Además, en todos los comentarios, ya que es un relato coral, reluce una postura horriblemente machista. No, no, no. Este libro, además de parecerme un culebrón entre miles de personajes horribles que en lo único que piensan es en coger y cagar al otro, las mujeres todas huecas, putas o pobres minas, los hombres todos abusadores, horribles, las pocas y únicas personas buenas siempre terminan mal.
Me abrumó, me deprimió, tuve que intercalarlo con otras historias cada tanto para quitarme el mal sabor. Y ni siquiera sé a qué género puede pertenecer este libro: drama? fantasía? realista? ficción? comedia negra?... terror?
Por qué tanta saña por parte del escritor con esta gente? Personas horribles hay en todo el planeta, pero parece que se hubieran puesto de acuerdo para ir a parar todos juntos a esta villa.
Una prosa bastante rara: ni signos de interrogación, ni guiones de diálogo, etc. pero llevadera, uno se acostumbra. Aunque el vocablo que utiliza es muy argentino, muy bonaerense, lo que hace un texto difícil de comprender en otros países, supongo.
Aún así, le puse 3 estrellas porque me entretuvo y reconozco que en algunos puntos me hizo reír, sobre todo durante el festival del 12 de octubre, imperdible.
Y por fin llegué hasta el final, a pesar de ser un tocho de 552 páginas bien llenitas.
Ahora quiero buscar, y espero encontrar en youtube, entrevistas al autor, para que me explique... no sé exactamente qué, pero después de todo este despliegue de situaciones, que a mi entender el autor considera cotidianas, necesito escucharlo a él. A ver qué onda con este señor.
March 4, 2017
Empezamos por el hecho de que Guillermo Saccomanno escribe bien. Tiene fuerza, ritmo y sabe usar la jerga y el lunfardo para impulsar una dinámica interesante en la narrativa. Por otro lado esta la novela. Un collage de tipos y personas de varios extractos sociales en un microcosmo (Villa Gesell) que, por supuesto, representa la Argentina en este momento histórico y social. El punto que me molesta en este libro es, por un lado su moralismo, o sea, todos somos pervertidos y, en la sociedad actual no existen valores que se sobrepongan a la salvajería que controla el mundo. Por otro lado está un igualitarismo que establece que "todos somos culpables" que, en términos prácticos significa que nadie lo es. Una visión social muy limitada que parte de que la desigualdad es el origen del mal. En este aspecto es un libro de escándalo, bien escrito y que no apunta direcciones. Muy emblemático de la Argentina actual, perdida en sí misma, sin tener claros cuales son los parámetros clave para seguir adelante. Frustrante. Porque si en la Villa "la temporada nos va a salvar", en la vida real "la salvación" depende de todos y de un sentido de colectividad que no está. Y que hace mucha falta en Argentina. Esta la mudanza que se necesita buscar.
January 9, 2014
http://www.juanjoconti.com.ar/2013/07...
Durante las vacaciones terminé de leer Cámara Gesell, de Guillermo Saccomanno. Si bien es un policial atrapante, lo que más me llamó la atención no fue el contenido sino la forma. Esta novela, en lugar de ser una sucesión de pocos capítulos largos, se forma con una multiplicidad de textos cortos, uno a continuación del otro, una multitud de voces que van ingresando al texto para formarlo.
Durante las vacaciones terminé de leer Cámara Gesell, de Guillermo Saccomanno. Si bien es un policial atrapante, lo que más me llamó la atención no fue el contenido sino la forma. Esta novela, en lugar de ser una sucesión de pocos capítulos largos, se forma con una multiplicidad de textos cortos, uno a continuación del otro, una multitud de voces que van ingresando al texto para formarlo.
November 28, 2012
Gran libro. Bien escrito. Duro. Muy argentino.
Me parece que le faltó una pasada más por el corrector.
Muchos errores.
Me parece que le faltó una pasada más por el corrector.
Muchos errores.
never-finished
November 7, 2016You had me at 'mosaic of misery'....hoping to crack this one open later this week.
January 24, 2020
Tenía muchas expectativas con este libro pero no logró atraparme. Es una sucesión de cosas y personas oscuras que se desarrollan en Villa Gesell durante el crudo invierno. No pude terminarlo
May 10, 2020
Si te gusta el morbo, leelo. Me parecio horrible.
January 16, 2025
Gesell Dome enthralled me from first page to last. Now I haven't read a ton of noir fiction, nor many books from South America, so I'm rather short on easy comparisons to make.
The format of the novel stands out from many I've read. Gesell Dome reads as if Saccomanno wrote a hundred short stories on index cards, about 3-5 cards per story; then put the ordered deck through a card shuffler, but only once... so that parts of the individual stories are never separated by too many other segments. The result is like a continually shifting variety show of vice, struggle and depravity. While characters from each "story" do appear throughout the novel in other people's segments, their own dedicated narrative is usually contained and wrapped up—generally in tragedy—within a few sections across a 20-30 page spread.
While such an exercise could be grueling or dour in less capable hands, it's important to clarify that Gesell Dome is not a depressing book. Although there is a lot of hopelessness and destruction in these tales, there is also a healthy dose of human spirit, solidarity and some love(s) strong enough to see it through to the final page. Also, and most surprisingly, there is abundant humour here: from the darkest of satire to occasional madcap snippets.
Crucially, the quality of the writing — both in the stark storytelling and the lyrical ruminations — is uniformly wonderful. Saccomanno is equally adept taking us through a nerve-wracking shootout, or the melancholic reflections of the Villa's lifer residents.
If there's a valid criticism of Gesell Dome, it might be on its length. Across literally dozens and dozens of stories, there is a palpable saminess which, to its credit, establishes a real vibe and rhythm to life in the Villa. One has to wonder if that vibe would have been compromised much by making some cuts. Would a 300-page Gesell Dome have lacked the impact of the 600-page Gesell Dome we got?
In the end I can only compare it to a salty snack: two or three chips might be a delicious treat, but there's a whole bag there so you may as well savor the whole thing, over multiple sessions if necessary. In a sense, like those chips, after 100 pages of this book you've tasted what it has to offer. The next 500 pages just extend that vibe, deepening your understanding of the connections between its massive cast. To a degree, there is a ramping tension throughout the book, which is probably aided by its length.
OK this is officially off the rails. I fucking loved Gesell Dome in its entirety. It's all that and a bag of chips.
The format of the novel stands out from many I've read. Gesell Dome reads as if Saccomanno wrote a hundred short stories on index cards, about 3-5 cards per story; then put the ordered deck through a card shuffler, but only once... so that parts of the individual stories are never separated by too many other segments. The result is like a continually shifting variety show of vice, struggle and depravity. While characters from each "story" do appear throughout the novel in other people's segments, their own dedicated narrative is usually contained and wrapped up—generally in tragedy—within a few sections across a 20-30 page spread.
While such an exercise could be grueling or dour in less capable hands, it's important to clarify that Gesell Dome is not a depressing book. Although there is a lot of hopelessness and destruction in these tales, there is also a healthy dose of human spirit, solidarity and some love(s) strong enough to see it through to the final page. Also, and most surprisingly, there is abundant humour here: from the darkest of satire to occasional madcap snippets.
Crucially, the quality of the writing — both in the stark storytelling and the lyrical ruminations — is uniformly wonderful. Saccomanno is equally adept taking us through a nerve-wracking shootout, or the melancholic reflections of the Villa's lifer residents.
If there's a valid criticism of Gesell Dome, it might be on its length. Across literally dozens and dozens of stories, there is a palpable saminess which, to its credit, establishes a real vibe and rhythm to life in the Villa. One has to wonder if that vibe would have been compromised much by making some cuts. Would a 300-page Gesell Dome have lacked the impact of the 600-page Gesell Dome we got?
In the end I can only compare it to a salty snack: two or three chips might be a delicious treat, but there's a whole bag there so you may as well savor the whole thing, over multiple sessions if necessary. In a sense, like those chips, after 100 pages of this book you've tasted what it has to offer. The next 500 pages just extend that vibe, deepening your understanding of the connections between its massive cast. To a degree, there is a ramping tension throughout the book, which is probably aided by its length.
OK this is officially off the rails. I fucking loved Gesell Dome in its entirety. It's all that and a bag of chips.
May 26, 2018
Gesell Dome is bleak. Not gumshoe detective, Chandler, Hammett bleak (as the blurb wrongly leads you to believe) but Sin City bleak. Inferno bleak. Celine bleak. Thieves and bums and harlots. Sinners all around. Sodom and Gomorrah bleak.
Saccomanno sprinkles enough hope here and there to see you through. It's not the kind of hope we want these days though, it's the hope that tells you if you tighten your belt, and stay smart you might just get through. If you give yourself over to something larger than you, well you might just make it to the other side. Hold on. Hold your breath a little longer. Keep your head above water, the season's going to change any time now.
It's Saccomanno's vignettes that shine here. Short and punchy. Detached from narrative but with a flow that carries you hopelessly to the end.
Another excellent translation from the folks at Open Letter.
Saccomanno sprinkles enough hope here and there to see you through. It's not the kind of hope we want these days though, it's the hope that tells you if you tighten your belt, and stay smart you might just get through. If you give yourself over to something larger than you, well you might just make it to the other side. Hold on. Hold your breath a little longer. Keep your head above water, the season's going to change any time now.
It's Saccomanno's vignettes that shine here. Short and punchy. Detached from narrative but with a flow that carries you hopelessly to the end.
Another excellent translation from the folks at Open Letter.
May 31, 2020
Un interesante collage de voces, testimonios, artículos (aunque a medida que pasamos las doscientas páginas el esquema se hace algo repetitivo) que cumple la función de cuestionar el relato de "una villa con buena gente". Muy buen manejo del estilo, de la potencia del relato, sobre todo en la comienzo, con pinceladas de autotematismo y juguemos a encontrar a Saccomano en la novela. Frente al problema de toda novela que hace del fragmento su recurso principal (la dificultad de construir un núcleo de acción principal) creo que Cámara Gesell muere en su ley, combatiendo.
¿Editado por Planeta? Entonces páguenle a un editor, no sean ratas.
¿Editado por Planeta? Entonces páguenle a un editor, no sean ratas.
October 11, 2023
Excelente. Posiblemente una de las mejores novelas que haya leído. Se me hizo infinitamente larga la lectura por su densidad infernal. Es todo lo que esperé del infierno de Dante y no encontré por la distancia de tiempo, espacio y lengua. No conforme con esta referencia el personaje principal se llama Dante. Es una obra espectacular por su horror, un horror social, no de payasos asesinos sino se políticos asesinos, merca, corrupción, infidelidad, parricidio y la muerte toda.
Read
November 28, 2023Big and ultra-polyphonic. No chapter breaks, but it’s made up of what must be 1,000 fragments that are a page and a half long at max but somehow feel like completely realized short stories. I’m not sure how Saccomanno makes this feel like a cohesive novel, but he does and it’s wild. Reminded me of Bolano’s 2666 and Randall Keenan’s Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.
June 5, 2025
Me gustó mucho al principio y después los mismos elementos que me aferraron se me empezó a poner cuesta arriba, está muy bien escrito pero por momentos llegó a cansarme, doler y asquear el maremoto de violencia, podredumbre y corrupción económica, política y social.
Así y todo se hizo imposible no terminarla.
Así y todo se hizo imposible no terminarla.
April 30, 2020
Crónicas duras, con un comienzo que es una piña en la jeta. Una pintura de la ciudad balnearia, o de lo peor de ella, que funciona como una metonimia de la sociedad humana entera. Te puede matar si no estás firme psicológicamente.
June 15, 2020
unrelenting, bleak, it is noir but nothing is solved. Instead of a detective the town ebbs and flows bringing life and death and everything in between. A solid novel and a little long for my taste, but very good.
June 12, 2023
"To see the mayor's son's head roll was something we had all desired, who wouldn't have. Though, let us agree, it would have been even more desirable to have the heads of the powerful roll first, and then their children's."
January 14, 2024
Y se vino el primero del año!
1) Cámara Gesell - Guillermo Saccomano
una historia coral con varios (o un) narradores, que despedaza las intimidades de los locales, del norte y del sur, de los chalets y los asentamientos, los Kennedy y los cabeza
1) Cámara Gesell - Guillermo Saccomano
una historia coral con varios (o un) narradores, que despedaza las intimidades de los locales, del norte y del sur, de los chalets y los asentamientos, los Kennedy y los cabeza
April 10, 2024
Una novela atravesada por estereotipos, moralismo, morbosidad y vulgaridades. Me intriga por qué tiene tanto renombre, realmente no está siquiera bien escrita, tiene hasta errores, y es muy repetitiva.
May 25, 2025
De a momentos me pareció eterno pero sin prisa y sin pausa lo terminé. Me queda, al mismo tiempo, una sensación de tantas historias de las cuales quisiera saber más y por otro lado la misma sensación que al leer una sección de policiales: basta.
April 7, 2021
i'm free worst experience of my fucking life
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September 2, 2024Creo que voy a dejarlo temprano. Es que la historia fue demasiado oscura y repetitiva para mí. Además, tuvo demasiadas voces anónimas. Leer esta novela fue una tarea tediosa
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