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The Coded Letter and Dear Monster
The two novels included in this volume, the first by Javier Tomeo to appear in English, recall The Trial and The Castle by Kafka, but they are Iberian, wry and sunny despite their sinister undertones.
The Coded Letter was welcomed by Spanish critics as 'that rare a Spanish novel which has serious intent but is at the same time comic'. A messenger is sent with a letter to the Castle, a place of sinister mystery and of history. The history is closed to the people of the little town nearby, the dark power may no longer exist. Is the Count still alive? If you send a letter that is misunderstood, send it again, this time in code, disguise the writing. Communication may occur just when you least expect it. And if the addressee has gone away, no matter, the letter is there, written, for someone to decode.
Dear Monster , which has been successfully adapted for the stage, centers on a job interview for the post of night watchman at a bank. Inadequate Antonio and Krugger, the Personnel Manager, share a problem. Antonio has rebelled at last against a mother so possessive she has held him virtually a prisoner. Krugger, with his flat reflecting glasses and Teutonic formality, hints at a parallel confession. But Krugger hides a more macabre secret.
The Coded Letter was welcomed by Spanish critics as 'that rare a Spanish novel which has serious intent but is at the same time comic'. A messenger is sent with a letter to the Castle, a place of sinister mystery and of history. The history is closed to the people of the little town nearby, the dark power may no longer exist. Is the Count still alive? If you send a letter that is misunderstood, send it again, this time in code, disguise the writing. Communication may occur just when you least expect it. And if the addressee has gone away, no matter, the letter is there, written, for someone to decode.
Dear Monster , which has been successfully adapted for the stage, centers on a job interview for the post of night watchman at a bank. Inadequate Antonio and Krugger, the Personnel Manager, share a problem. Antonio has rebelled at last against a mother so possessive she has held him virtually a prisoner. Krugger, with his flat reflecting glasses and Teutonic formality, hints at a parallel confession. But Krugger hides a more macabre secret.
177 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
41 people want to read
About the author
Javier Tomeo
67 books18 followersJavier Tomeo estudió derecho y criminología en la Universidad de Barcelona. En los años cincuenta escribió literatura popular (novelas del oeste, de terror, etc..) bajo el pseudónimo «Frantz Keller» para la Editorial Bruguera.
En 1963 editó, junto a Juan María Estadella, La brujería y la superstición en Cataluña. Pero no fue hasta unos años después, en el 1967, cuando se publicó su primera novela "seria".
Su novela 'El Unicornio', aparecida en 1971, le hizo ganar el premio de novela corta Ciudad de Barbastro. En esa década aparecieron algunos de sus títulos más significativos como ahora "El castillo de la carta cifrada".
En la década de los ochenta se confirmó como uno de los mejores y más personales narradores españoles contemporáneos. En la producción de esos años destaca 'Diálogo en re mayor' y 'Amado monstruo', acaso sus obras más exitosas.
Su universo literario creció en los noventa con la publicación de numerosos libros: El gallitigre (1990), El crimen del cine Oriente (1995), Los misterios de la ópera (1997), Napoleón VII (1999) o Cuentos perversos (2002), entre otros.
En los últimos meses de su vida tuvo múltiples complicaciones de su diabetes y falleció a los 80 años por una grave infección en el Hospital Sagrado Corazón de Barcelona.
El 26 de junio de 2013 se celebró en Barcelona un funeral laico. El 27 de junio fue enterrado en el cementerio de Quicena.
En 1963 editó, junto a Juan María Estadella, La brujería y la superstición en Cataluña. Pero no fue hasta unos años después, en el 1967, cuando se publicó su primera novela "seria".
Su novela 'El Unicornio', aparecida en 1971, le hizo ganar el premio de novela corta Ciudad de Barbastro. En esa década aparecieron algunos de sus títulos más significativos como ahora "El castillo de la carta cifrada".
En la década de los ochenta se confirmó como uno de los mejores y más personales narradores españoles contemporáneos. En la producción de esos años destaca 'Diálogo en re mayor' y 'Amado monstruo', acaso sus obras más exitosas.
Su universo literario creció en los noventa con la publicación de numerosos libros: El gallitigre (1990), El crimen del cine Oriente (1995), Los misterios de la ópera (1997), Napoleón VII (1999) o Cuentos perversos (2002), entre otros.
En los últimos meses de su vida tuvo múltiples complicaciones de su diabetes y falleció a los 80 años por una grave infección en el Hospital Sagrado Corazón de Barcelona.
El 26 de junio de 2013 se celebró en Barcelona un funeral laico. El 27 de junio fue enterrado en el cementerio de Quicena.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 21, 2019
The Coded Letter (4/5)
The Marquis of W or O, or perhaps Q, is instructing his servant Bautista on the appropriate delivery of an illegible letter he has written to his fellow nobleman, the Count Don Demetrio. That is the entire plot. Not much else is required, though, when you employ a character such as the Marquis. He is an endearing unreliable narrator akin to Nikonor in Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze's novel The Beauty of the Death Cap. In comparison to Nikonor, the Marquis is similarly reclusive, cultured, bitingly humorous, and more interested in minute denizens of the natural world than in the goings-on of human society, of which both narrators have a generally low opinion. In its not-so-subtle mockery of the noble class, this brief novel also reminded me of some of the stories in Ghislain de Diesbach's collection The Toys of Princes.
Dear Monster (2/5)
A 30-year-old man living under his mother's thumb arrives at an interview for the position of nightwatchman at a bank. He's never held a job but he's tired of sitting bored at home, so against his mother's wishes he applied for the job. The novel consists solely of the long digressive interview with the bank's personnel director—a man more interested in the applicant's relationship with his mother than with his qualifications for the position. The applicant ends up providing an hour-by-hour recounting of his interactions with his mother from the time he tells her about the interview until the interview itself. Given the setting is post-Franco Spain it's not surprising that issues surrounding work and social class are prominent themes. For me, this one just didn't measure up to The Coded Letter. While on a situational level the book is absurd, it's not particularly funny in its specifics.
There is one unique section of repetitious matter found in both books, which were originally published five years apart. It involves an observation made by both narrators on their perception of the classist nature of rainfall. It's an odd point to make once, never mind twice, and I'm still mulling over why Tomeo chose to include it.
Note: the descriptions in the GR record are somewhat misleading, particularly for The Coded Letter, which is not sinister in the least. And comparisons to Kafka beyond the superficial are not particularly relevant for either of these novels.
The Marquis of W or O, or perhaps Q, is instructing his servant Bautista on the appropriate delivery of an illegible letter he has written to his fellow nobleman, the Count Don Demetrio. That is the entire plot. Not much else is required, though, when you employ a character such as the Marquis. He is an endearing unreliable narrator akin to Nikonor in Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze's novel The Beauty of the Death Cap. In comparison to Nikonor, the Marquis is similarly reclusive, cultured, bitingly humorous, and more interested in minute denizens of the natural world than in the goings-on of human society, of which both narrators have a generally low opinion. In its not-so-subtle mockery of the noble class, this brief novel also reminded me of some of the stories in Ghislain de Diesbach's collection The Toys of Princes.
Dear Monster (2/5)
A 30-year-old man living under his mother's thumb arrives at an interview for the position of nightwatchman at a bank. He's never held a job but he's tired of sitting bored at home, so against his mother's wishes he applied for the job. The novel consists solely of the long digressive interview with the bank's personnel director—a man more interested in the applicant's relationship with his mother than with his qualifications for the position. The applicant ends up providing an hour-by-hour recounting of his interactions with his mother from the time he tells her about the interview until the interview itself. Given the setting is post-Franco Spain it's not surprising that issues surrounding work and social class are prominent themes. For me, this one just didn't measure up to The Coded Letter. While on a situational level the book is absurd, it's not particularly funny in its specifics.
There is one unique section of repetitious matter found in both books, which were originally published five years apart. It involves an observation made by both narrators on their perception of the classist nature of rainfall. It's an odd point to make once, never mind twice, and I'm still mulling over why Tomeo chose to include it.
Note: the descriptions in the GR record are somewhat misleading, particularly for The Coded Letter, which is not sinister in the least. And comparisons to Kafka beyond the superficial are not particularly relevant for either of these novels.
June 5, 2014
Tomeo's style is methodical, redundant, obsessive, and just a whisker below drone -- in other words, nearly perfect. Imagine a lighter, less brooding Thomas Bernhard -- a Bernhard who got tired of his own voice after 80 or 90 pages -- and you'd have an inkling of what Tomeo was all about. The Coded Letter is one, long, beautifully insane paragraph. It is a masterpiece of postponement, rumination, and re-examination and if Gordon Lish hasn't read Tomeo yet, he should. He would find in him a kindred spirit.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews