The Magician of Vienna

Trilogía de la memoria #3

by Sergio Pitol, George Henson (Translator)

The heartbreaking final volume in Sergio Pitol's groundbreaking memoir-essay-fiction-hybrid "Trilogy of Memory" finds Pitol boldly and passionately weaving fiction and autobiography together to tell of his life lived through literature as a way to stave off the advancement of a degenerative neurological condition causing him to lose the use of language. Fiction invades autobiography—and vice versa—as Pitol writes to forestall the advancement of degenerative memory loss.

Sergio Pitol, the greatest living Mexican writer, winner of the Juan Rulfo and Cervantes prizes, is profoundly influential to the current generation of Mexican writers, including Valeria Luiselli and Yuri Herrera.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Spanish Literature, Latin American, Latin American Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Sergio Pitol Demeneghi was a prominent Mexican writer and diplomat. In 2005 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world.

Pitol studied law and literature and served in the Mexican foreign service at Rome, Belgrade, Warsaw, Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Budapest and Barcelona. He started publishing novels in the late 1960s.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since the ancient times we’re surrounded with books…

The book accomplishes a multitude of tasks, some superb, others deplorable; it dispenses knowledge and misery, illuminates and deceives, liberates and manipulates, exalts and humbles, creates or cancels the options of life. Without it, needless to say, no culture would be possible. History would disappear, and our future would be cloaked in dark, sinister clouds. Those who hate books also hate life. No matter how impressive the writings of hatred may be, the printed word for the most part tips the balance toward light and generosity. Don Quixote will always triumph over Mein Kampf. As for the humanities and the sciences, books will continue to be their ideal space, their pillars of support.

The Magician of Vienna is a book about books… A book about literature… A book about reading books… But first of all it is a book of memory… Countries and continents… Friends and acquaintances… Events and encounters…
Memory is discrete and fragmentary…

When I look back I detect rather poor results. The years I have lived lose shape; the past to me looks like a handful of tattered photographs, yellowed and abandoned inside a piece of furniture that no one goes near. As for the present, I find myself seventy years old, and I reside in a city where I never thought I would live, but where I fit perfectly, entirely oblivious to the cosmopolitan setting that framed a good part of my past. That has disappeared. I see my past like a set of fragments of dreams not entirely understood.

We grow old and our life becomes a sum of our memories of the past.

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant last instalment of this trilogy. It makes sort of a circle with starting and ending while Pitol recovers in a medical institution. At the beginning he got caught in a shooting between the mafia gangs in Naples cafe in 1973. At the end, he is in Cuba. It is the early stages of his final neurological condition. He does not know it yet. He just noticed that he started to forget the words suddenly. The Cuban doctors seemed to help a lot. And he even remembers something he has totally forgotten - he has started to write for the first time many years ago while being in Cuba on his first independent trip in his late teens. The circle is closed.

The stuff in between is in line with the previous volumes. In this one he talks about Henry James, Walter Benjamin, Conrad and a few others. After spending close to 1000 pages with him in three books of this series, I would miss his voice and wisdom.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through intuition and discipline, I have sought and sometimes found the Form that language required. In a nutshell, that is my literature.

At times this was amazing and then at others it was near a drudge to continue. I am glad I have completed the trilogy and following Pitol's wonderful sketches I am happy to return to Conrad as well as to explore further into Henry James. Pitol can be a focused reader but he also leaves the dross on his travel accounts. I am very glad that I won't be reading any more extracts from Pitol's diaries.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Pitol saved me when Europe failed me. I had just dnf'd a Sebald and a Gombrowicz and been non=overwhelmed by my first Bernhard. The English language bookshop had this and the de Assis novel. [Bless Deep Vellum].

Readers should read other readers. Which is what this volume is (third of a tril btw). It's largely a 'memoir' of and by Pitol as reader. It's all fiction of course, but what the hell.

[ReemK10 (Paper Pills) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading, and I'm stunned.

Let me just say, this trilogy was written by a voracious reader and is meant for the voracious reader.

When I first started reading Pitol, I didn't understand where he was going with this. Now, I see it, I get it, I so sympathize.

[José Miguel Tomasena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble prosa. Cortés, diáfana, muy inteligente. Hacía mucho que no leía a Pitol y lo encontré por azar. En este libro, mezcla memoria, diario, ensayo, narración como muy pocos autores pueden hacer.

[Liliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leo (tardíamente, para variar) El mago de Viena de Sergio Pitol. Es, quizá, una de las grandes revelaciones que he tenido en los últimos años: mezcla de varios géneros –ensayo, narración, autobiografía–, el libro da cuenta de un lector, Pitol, incapaz de concebir su vida sin la literatura: vive para leer y, sobre todo, lee para vivir. Cada periodo de su existencia está enmarcado en una lectura: de Flann O' Brien a Joseph Conrad, de Evelyn Waugh a Antón Chéjov, su escritura es, a su vez, una prolongación natural del acto de leer. Transcribo dos fragmentos:


"Me parece recordar que en los días peores, cuando ni siquiera podía fijar los ojos en los libros, me complacía pensar en el lenguaje, ese don prodigioso que nos fue otorgado desde el inicio. El escritor sabe que su vida está en el lenguaje, que su felicidad o su desdicha dependen de él. He sido un amante de la palabra, he sido su siervo, un explorador sobre su cuerpo, un topo que vaga en su subsuelo; soy también su inquisidor, su abogado, su verdugo. Soy el ángel de la guarda y la aviesa serpiente, la manzana, el árbol y el demonio. Babel: todo se vuelve confusión [...]".


"Aquello que da unidad a mi existencia es la literatura; todo lo vivido, pensado, añorado, imaginado está contenido en ella. Más que un espejo es una radiografía: es el sueño de lo real" (p. 42).

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third and final volume of Sergio Pitol's Trilogy of Memory, which is a strange admixture of fiction, autobiography, and literary essay. The sections on Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Conrad and Evelyn Waugh are particularly memorable, along with the encounters of other writers around the world. (Pitol is extremely well traveled, particularly in out of the way places like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

As Pitol says in The Magician of Vienna:

I am the son of everything I have seen and dreamt, of what I love and abhor, but more broadly of what I have read, from the most august to the most atrocious. What I am to language and what language is to me is conveyed by some rather indiscernible communicating vessels. Through intuition and discipline, I have sought and sometimes found the Form that language required. In a nutshell, that is my literature.

Pitol is true to his intent and is a pleasure to read.

[Emilio Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

De lo mejor que he leído este año.

[Víctor Sampayo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy buenos textos, aunque varios de ellos (como suele hacer Pitol) se reciclan de otros libros previos...

[Riet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moeilijk te beschrijven wat voor boek dit is. Ik weet niet meer waarom ik het besteld heb, maar heb er geen spijt van. Het blijkt het derde deel van een trilogie te zijn, en die vormen dan de memoires, autobiografie en nog veel meer van de Mexicaanse schrijver Sergio Pitol. Het gaat vooral over het belang van literatuur voor zijn leven en hij beschrijft het werk van een aantal schrijvers, die hi belnagrijk vond (Conrad, Tsjechow etc.) Pitol was een flink aantal jaren cultureel attaché voor Mexico in verschillende landen. en ook daarover schirjft hij interessant. Ik moet dus de eerste twee delen nog te pakken zien te krijgen.

[Javier Ponce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para mi, el mejor de la trilogía de la memoria. Aquí, Pitol tiene de todo: "aventuras" que parecen ficción como la vez que recibió balazos de la mafia italiana, insights de lo que fue la escritura de sus primeros libros (y el cringe que le dio releer su poesía "dadaísta") y un poco de su bromance con Carlos Monsiváis, o del respeto que tiene por Vila-Matas. Entretenido, sin duda.

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Largely pleasant, though somewhat sleepy. Pitol reminisces about places he’s been and books he’s read — it’s like chatting with a friend over coffee, except that it’s not a dialogue (which is slightly to its detriment).

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent book by Pitol. Really excited for the upcoming story and novel translations Deep Vellum is putting out.

[Mario Amaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una sólida demonstración (otra más) de lo brillante y original que era Pitol. Hacen falta muchas estrellas para hacerle justicia a este pedazo de libro.

[Mateu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro todavía más caótico que los dos anteriores, en el que ya no hay ningún hilo conductor, pasando de notas autobiográficas a comentarios sobre sus escritores preferidos (me quedo con los textos dedicados a Conrad, Waugh y Vila-Matas). Mezcla retazos sublimes con otros más anodinos.

[World Literature Today]

This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the Sept/Oct 2017 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...