The Beggar's Knife

by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Paul Bowles (Translator)

From one of Guatemala’s finest young writers, these twenty-six stories—at once brutal and intensely lyrical—are peopled with sorcerers, ghosts, and assassins. Springing from myth and beliefs indigenous to Central America and North America, where their action occurs, Rey Rosa’s tales give the sense of being dreamed. At the same time they can be read as metaphors for the terror and oppression of years of warfare. Rodrigo Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. A number of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into English, including; The Path Doubles Back (by Paul Bowles), Dust on her Tongue , "The Pelcari Project", The Beggar's Knife , The African Shore , and Severina . Along with his longer writings, he has also written a number of short stories that have been printed in college-level text books, such as "Worlds of Fiction, Second Edition" by Roberta Rubenstein and Charles R. Larson. A few of these short stories include The Proof , and The Good Cripple . Many of Rey Rosa's works have been translated into seven languages. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later translated several of Rey Rosa's works into English. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literary estate.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Rodrigo Rey Rosa is perhaps the most prominent writer on the Guatemalan literary scene. Along with the work of writers like Roberto Bolaño, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Fernando Vallejo, Rey Rosa’s fiction has been widely translated and internationally acclaimed. His books include Dust on Her Tongue, The Beggar’s Knife, and The Pelcari Project, all of which were translated into English by the late Paul Bowles. In addition to his many novels and story collections, Rey Rosa has translated books by Bowles, Norman Lewis, François Augiéras, and Paul Léautaud.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book is like eating air. You know how Coelho hits you over the head with his spiritual symbolism? Well, here it's the opposite - the meaning hidden behind these ultra-short stories is so elusive that I suspect there isn't any. I learned more about this book from the blurb here on Goodreads than from my actual reading experience. Perhaps that's my own failure, but...

The Beggar's Knife is an early work of Rodrigo Rey Rosa's and does not seem to be representative of his talent as a writer. I can confirm that it is not the place to start.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This man fascinates me, this Rosa. I found him after talking to a girl from Guatemala. I asked her what the best authors were, because I hadn't read any from there. She didn't know any.

There's not much enthusiasm for this writer on goodreads, it seems. His writing is not the kind that inspires affection, but it does produce a very unusual feeling in me, much like the characters in his stories are always passing from sickness to trance states to delirium to madness and ultimate clarity to dream to sickness again. Violence occurs again and again without fear or panic. It's as if this writer wants to evoke only that feeling when one is under the influence of illness and dreaming. This produces a very unusual sensation while reading that I am attracted to.

Since a lot of the stories are based on myths and religious customs of Central America and elsewhere, it is similar to rifling through 'The Golden Bough', except the writing is at the same time more personal and more direct than 'The Golden Bough', because the writing is as dry as a sun-bleached bone, but narrated as if told by a friend or experienced in your own thoughts.

A diamond-hard, chilling story of murder opens the collection, and then a small dedication follows "For my parents" This made me laugh.

Paul Bowles translated two volumes of Rosa's stories for City Lights. If the writing is as spare in the original Spanish as it is here, it had to be some of the simplest translating possible in fiction. This was published in 1985. I was recently in the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and found a copy covered in dust. I paid the 1985 price of $5.95. I appreciate that they don't update prices, or maybe even they have forgotten about Rosa. I love discovering the various City Lights translated works, they are usually from places I know almost nothing about - like Guatemala City or 1970s Egypt or Morocco - and are strange and fragmentary and dream-like.

Here is a sample from 'The Beggar's Knife':

"A man was looking for us. He wanted to learn about our customs. He came to see us at the house.
It is dangerous to speak of 'custom'; possibly he did not understand what we told him.
We took him to the mountain and showed him the little cross and the candlesticks, and the neck of a dead rooster. The man seemed to understand, but he was not afraid, and this did not please the god.
We came back to the house and drank and ate.
In the morning the man fell sick, and he remained lying on a mat. I went to the mountain, asked permission, and pulled up some roots from the edge of the stream. I was thinking of my wife. I went to sell the roots and waited for it to get dark. Then it began to rain. I went back to my house and looked in through the window. The two of them were there, naked, sitting on the mat. I felt heavy, as if I couldn't breathe: it was the mu touching me. The man stood up and said to my wife: "I've got to piss. I'm going outside." "Do it here," she said. "There's a knothole there in the wall." The man put his sex into the hole and began to urinate. Then I saw the hand of the mu grab the organ and cut it off with a red machete. The man fell and died urinating. The mu gave me his sex and told me to grill it and give it to my wife to eat.
I have it here in my game-bag. I'm going to give it to her. If she eats it, it will make her very thirsty. She'll go to the river to drink, and she'll swallow so much water that her stomach will burst."

So if you enjoy tender tales such as the one above, you'll love 'The Beggar's Knife'.

[Dan Plonsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unnamed men of unknown age live lives which one can hardly differentiate from their dreams. Their houses are nearly devoid of objects: a bed, a table, a pen and notebook, a knife, maybe a stove, and nothing else. They encounter other solitary, unknown (to them) nameless men on the streets, in forests, and in their homes. Occasionally one or another utters a statement, but there is little conversation; sometimes a feeling is felt, but kept inside. There is violence, but calm and unreal. Mostly, it is night.

I enjoyed these short, moody pieces, which might as well be poetry as prose. At 95 pages, it isn't more than a little too much.

[Brent · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost felt compelled to label this in the poetry category despite it being a collection of (very) short stories. Rosa's writing has a staccato-like, dreamy quality, oozing poetry with it's disconnected lines, not entirely unlike Hemingway. it certainly has a charm to it, but also unlike Hemingway, I unfortunately struggled to find the hidden meanings of the burst-fire prose stories. I was intrigued by the synopsis that promised ghosts, assassins and folkloric creatures but I struggled to discern much more than unfinished stream of consciousness in the tales.

[Bob Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. Curious collection of stories and fables. Most of them felt like dreams and were possessed of dream-logic--in large part hard to get into, even the better ones because they'd be finished in one or two pages.

[Lucie · Rating 3 out of 5]

often brief, often tragic

[Professor Weasel · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me like five months to read this 90-something page book. I didn't really get it. I don't think I'm smart enough too, maybe. They are very brief, lyrical and fairytale-like. They're the kind of stories where basically any random, disconnected thing can happen. Some of them worked better than others, but I can already tell that none are going to stand out for very long in my memory (but maybe I will be proven wrong). The back of the book says the stories are "metaphors for the terror and oppression of the contemporary scene in Latin America." Rey Rosa is still my #1 man but I'm going to be lame and say I like his more traditional, recent writing better. I'd be curious to know what he thinks of these stories now, almost 30 years after they were first published.

[John Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling...Beautifully written, poetic shorts. I found a first edition at Spoonbill Sugartown Brooklyn, not knowing anything about the author except that Paul Bowles had translated his work. It's been two years since I've read it, but the strange, mystical worlds Rosa created still haunt me (in the good way you want to be haunted by a book.) Great stories which simultaneously ponder Central American mysticism, as well as the region's legacy of brutal violence. Anyone know if this book's still in print?

[Alika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really cool and inspiring book. Hints at myths and rituals that may or may not exist. I tried looking him up online but couldn't find much. I'm curious as to his own personal spirituality but have no idea. Not a lot of character names, lots of "he"s mixed up w/ each other, dreamlike places, doubling, simple action-driven language, symbols that seem to mean something but perhaps don't.

[destanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like reading someone's dream journal - wonderful.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very deep written prose. The stories told are an imaginary treat. Some a little on the stronger dark side. Depending on your liking of reading.

[James M · Rating 4 out of 5]

GUATEMALA