The year's best

2012

Rise's favorite books »

This should be a fun exercise, selecting the standouts from the pile, the outstanding from the standouts. In cases where I couldn't decide whether to include or exclude a certain title, I ask myself some questions: Did I feel I totally get what the writer was trying to say? If yes, it's off the list. Any sense of humor, however miniscule? No? Then it's stricken off. Am I dying to reread it? Yes. Maybe. Include it.


1. The Aesthetics of Resistance, volume 1, by Peter Weiss, translated by Joachim Neugroschel

A group of students debating about art in the dialectical style of Plato. Squabbles and machinations between Social Democratic and Communist parties. The art and poetry of resistance, rebelling against the existing order, supplanting the prevailing thoughts with progressive notions, ideas. The first translated volume of a German trilogy, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, must already count among the high points of resistance art. It is difficult, stylish, philosophical, and Marxist. Novel is too limited a genre to describe its complex structures. One could identify it as a hybrid of philosophical categories: a manual on Marxist literary criticism, a guide to the appreciation of proletarian art, a manifesto of aesthetic revolution, a treatise on the history and philosophy of political art. These categories provide the key words but lack the corrosive power of the text. Whatever literary species and genera it belongs to, this work of Weiss is a construct of profound inventiveness. It contains probably one of the best readings there is of The Castle by Franz Kafka. Its aesthetics is ultimately a resistance against death, against mortality.

2. The Box Man by Abé Kobo, translated by E. Dale Saunders

A simple setup: a man in a box. From this the Japanese novelist explored relativism and subjectivity with a mind-bending mastery of shifting perspectives and moving frames of reference. Maddening and shattering, it shall exercise the mind, for good or bad.

3. The Gold in Makiling by Macario Pineda, translated by Soledad S. Reyes

A post-war (1947) Filipino classic novel, finally translated this year. It's a love story, with elements of folklores, myths, legends, and history. At its center: the "cream of the race", the pride of the nation. That they all lived together at the heart of mythical Mount Makiling was plausible. Where else but in magical novels can these people be assembled? But Pineda went beyond this fantastical idea by raising a more fantastical possibility. What if these people come back to us? What if they climb down the mountain at some future time and assist their people in their struggles? What if they are already with us right now? The novelist struck literary gold with his excavation of native materials and customs. He presented a unique magic realist narrative rooted in local lores and nationalist history. The novel hinted at the need to break free from the shackles of colonial mentality and to renew traditional moral imperatives. It must be squarely in the crème de la crème among postwar Filipino novels. (review)

4. Laughing Wolf by Tsushima Yūko, translated by Dennis Washburn

About a young man and a girl who took a train trip across the physical and mental ruins of Japan right after the second world war. They came face to face with a people plagued with poverty, disease, and crimes. A novel must somehow clear a path, demonstrate its mastery on the page, and Laughing Wolf did that by writing about aspects of Japanese postwar history in a manner that was not entirely beholden to the methods of conventional historical fiction. Tsushima was doing something interesting and innovative to the fictional form of the novel. Her postmodernist technique had unassuming intelligence behind it. Laughing Wolf was a jarring text, in a provocative and brilliant sense, because it unsettled the pace and expectations of reading. And yet it was heartwarming for its generous sympathy and understanding. (review)

5. Luha ng Buwaya (Tears of the Crocodile) by Amado V. Hernandez

From a Filipino master of Tagalog prose, the story of a teacher who led the people in his village in resisting the machinations of the rich and corrupt landowners. It prescribes social organization and unity as keys to toppling the hideous reptiles in our midst. The novel is full of revelations about character while sharing ways of overcoming the travails of Philippine postwar agrarian society.

6. Maganda pa ang Daigdig (The World Is Wondrous Still) by Lazaro Francisco

Like Hernandez's Luha ng Buwaya, Lazaro's novel is a postwar novel of agrarian concerns and a worthy successor to José Rizal's political novels. It lays bare the injustices of the tenancy system by dramatizing the conflict between the landlord and the landless. Power comes to those who stand up to fight for what is just and right: "Ang mga matang naidilat na ay hindi na maipipikit!" (The eyes that had been made to see shall no longer close!) As with Hernandez's novel, it is ostensibly a love triangle amidst conflicts and confrontations. It engages with its fast-paced scenes right up to its melodramatic conclusion.

7. Mandarins, stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, translated by Charles De Wolf

Fifteen stories by the Japanese grandmaster defined what 'rashomonesque' was all about. The translation was elegantly done and the selection revealed Akutagawa's preoccupations with themes centering on adultery, Christian legends, the passing of a generation, and suicide. The concentration of trenchant images in this collection allowed for the characters to inhabit shifting states of feelings: from anxiety to serenity, from lust to resignation, from paranoia to ferocity. The latter feeling, that of fierceness or ferocity, of vulgarity and passion, may fully describe the elevated state of 'having deeply lived and loved' – in contrast to a life of pure intellect and culture – that lingers in the horizon of Akutagawa's artistic vision. (review)

8. Sa Aking Panahon (In My Time) by Edgardo M. Reyes

Pinatutunayan ng aklat na si Reyes ay isang maestro sa larangan ng maikling kuwento. Hindi lamang sa aspetong teknikal masasalat ang kanyang galing. Masusi, madamdamin ang pagninilay ng kwento sa masalimuot na sitwasyong kinasangkutan ng mga tauhan. Ang kwento nila ay kwento ng pagtutuos sa kapalaran ng mga walang-wala o ng mga nawawala. Sila ang kadalasang mga agrabyado sa buhay, mga dukha, mga "maliliit na tao." Ang mga tema ng kuwento sa koleksyong ito, ang kanilang kabuuan at konektadong epekto, ay nagtatanghal sa estado ng pamilya at lipunang Pilipino sa panahon ni Reyes. Hanggang ngayon ay masasabing nananatili ang nobena at nobela ng nagbabagong panahon at tradisyon. Sa ganang kanya, naipahayag ni Reyes ang isang uri ng "kapangahasang manggiba ng balag ng tradisyon" nang hindi sinasantabi ang dignidad ng indibidwal, at pinagdidiwang pa ang kanilang katapatan. (review)

9. Style by F. L. Lucas

This cult manual, holy grail of creative writing, was finally reissued in a third edition. One discovers an altogether fine book of "literary criticism" posing as a manual on writing. The medium is the message. In evaluating prose, Lucas is a convincing authority on what constitutes the stylish and what is rubbish. His own irreproachable writing demonstrates the championing of the concise, the clear, and the impeccable. Highly recommended for the conscientious reader and writer.

10. Trilce by César Vallejo, translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi

Unique strokes of lines, phrases, words. Archaic formulations, neologisms, and visually suggestive puns are the order of the day. The poems possess the lambent quality of a poker face and an audible silence. The varied interpretations of each poem at the end are a fulsome treat. Through his translators, the Peruvian poet Vallejo destroys old words by creating new meanings.

Reading the second half of 2012

"I’m not one of those nationalist monsters who only reads what his native country produces", said one novelist who was fond of detectives for characters. By the second half of the year, I woke up to find the upper half of my body turned into a monster. I gobbled up a good share of writings by Filipino writers, in both Tagalog and English languages. I expect this nationalist fever to continue into the post-apocalyptic, post-doom new year and beyond. Yet the call of international and translated literature still persists. One's metamorphosis as a reader isn't ever complete.

The titles below were what I read from July to November. I decided to cut the year-end reading report to November. The last month was just too euphoric for me to post titles added to the reading list.

In this period I read a total of 36 books, bringing the year's total to 75 (or 6.8 books per month). As with my reading in the first half, graphic novels bloated the total. The stats are summarized below.

75 books read in 2012 -- 61 fiction (40 novels, 14 graphic, 7 short story collections), 7 poetry, 6 nonfiction, 1 mixed
62 books by male writers, 13 by female writers
40 translations -- 20 from Japanese, 11 from Spanish, 5 from German, 2 from Tagalog, 1 from French, 1 from Swedish
35 original language -- 18 Tagalog, 15 English, 1 mixed, 1 no language

Books read (July-November 2012)

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Mishima Yukio, trans. John Nathan
12 by Manix Abrera
Trese: Midnight Tribunal by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo
Confessions of a Mask by Mishima Yukio, trans. Meredith Weatherby
Dust Devils by Rio Alma, ed. and trans. Marne Kilates
Desert by J. M. G. Le Clézio, trans. C. Dickson
Luha ng Buwaya by Amado V. Hernandez
3 Strange Tales by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, trans. Glenn Anderson
Kikomachine Komix Blg. 4 by Manix Abrera
Maganda pa ang Daigdig by Lazaro Francisco
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties by John J. L. Mood
It's a Mens World by Bebang Siy
El Filibusterismo by José Rizal, trans. Ma. Soledad Lacson-Locsin
Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles by Erik Matti and Ronald Stephen Y. Monteverde
Kapitan Sino by Bob Ong
Kikomachine Komix Blg. 3 by Manix Abrera
The Devil's Causeway by Matthew Westfall
Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag by Edgardo M. Reyes
The Aesthetics of Resistance, volume 1, by Peter Weiss, trans. Joachim Neugroschel
Zsazsa Zaturnnah sa Kalakhang Maynila #1 by Carlo Vergara
Sa Aking Panahon by Edgardo M. Reyes
My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard, trans. Carol Brown Janeway
Sugar and Salt by Ninotchka Rosca, illus. Christina Quisumbing Ramilo
The Gold in Makiling by Macario Pineda, trans. Soledad S. Reyes
A Contract With God by Will Eisner
Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Vol. 10, by Megumi Osuga and Kotaro Isaka, trans. Stephen Paul
Soledad's Sister by Jose Dalisay
Dekada '70 by Lualhati Bautista
This Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges
Mondo Marcos: Writings on Martial Law and the Marcos Babies, eds. Frank Cimatu and Rolando B. Tolentino
Fair Play by Tove Jansson, trans. Thomas Teal
Ang Huling Dalagang Bukid at ang Authobiography na Mali by Jun Cruz Reyes
Style: The Art of Writing Well by F. L. Lucas
Lumayo Ka Nga sa Akin by Bob Ong
Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan by Bob Ong
Masterworks of Latin American Short Fiction, ed. Cass Canfield Jr.

Also reviewed: "The Golden Hare" by Silvina Ocampo, trans. Andrea Rosenberg


Readalong co-hosted:

- The Savage Detectives Group Read

Reading events followed:

- German Literature Month II (November) by Caroline and Lizzy
- Literature and War Readalong by Caroline (July: Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji; November: The Stalin Front by Gert Ledig)
- José Saramago Month by Miguel
- Argentinean Literature of Doom
- Spanish Lit Month (July) by Stu and Richard
-  Japanese Literature Challenge 6 by Bellezza

Anticipated event: January in Japan by Tony

3 Strange Tales (Akutagawa Ryūnosuke)

3 Strange Tales by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, translated by Glenn Anderson (One Peace Books, 2012)

I met the couple yesterday, a little past noon. The breeze blew through and pulled back the silk scarf draped over the woman and I saw her face for just a moment. It was just a second, because then I couldn't see it anymore. Maybe that was the reason, I'm not sure, but she looked like she'd fallen from heaven and I made up my mind then and there to steal her away, even if it meant killing the man.

 
The speaker, the notorious bandit Tajomaru, was confessing to the crime. All he needed was just a second to decide that he will commit a crime. He wasn't sure what compelled him to do it. He thought it was the breeze momentarily revealing the face of a woman. Maybe that was the reason, I'm not sure. But he made up his mind there and then. Later, he explained:

But you didn't see her face. You didn't see the way her eyes burned when she said it. When I saw her face, let God strike me dead, I had to have her for my wife. I had to have her—that was the only thought in my head.

The actions of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's characters are strange. They are rash, impulsive. They are strange because they went unexplained. Or the explanation was insufficient—You didn't see her face. The characters decide things rather quickly, without regard for the consequences of their acts. They—in a word—snap.

The moment I stood the man kicked me to the ground, and it was just then that I saw the glint—it's hard to describe it, but there was a glint in my husband's eyes. I don't know how to describe it, but just the memory of it sends shivers down my spine.

The woman's testimony, contradicting the bandit's, was equally strange. She knew what she had seen—a glint—and was terrified of it. There was uncertainty on her part (it's hard to describe it ...
I don't know how to describe it) but she nonetheless left an indelible image—a glint—that will be very hard to forget.

These passages were taken from the popular story of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke called "In a Grove". The last story from the recent translation 3 Strange Tales. It was in fact the fourth story, a "bonus story" after the first three. The inexact number of stories in the title may be fitting, given the set of unreliable narrators in "In a Grove" whose testimonies regarding what happened on the day a man was killed were (oddly) at odds with each other.

All four stories were unified by the passionate intensity of the characters. Their prevailing mood shifted from a brooding atmosphere to acts of extreme violence. The characters were impulsive, highly sensitive, slaves to their feelings. Their violent deeds were executed with no fuss. They had a short fuse.

In moments of desperation, they were, moreover, not quite themselves. They seemed to be possessed by somebody else. Here was the murdered victim of "In a Grove", his testimony spoken through a medium, no less.

The grove was silent, or I thought it was. Straining my ears in the quiet, I could just make out the sound of someone crying. Soon I discovered that it was only my own quiet sobs that filled the clearing.

Yet another kind of possession was at work in the third story, "Agni", which appeared here in translation for the very first time. The story was about an Indian woman, a witch, who kidnapped a young girl which she forcefully used as the medium for Agni, a powerful Indian god who could tell the future. The witch was notorious as a fortune teller; she was selling Agni's prophecies to rich buyers. At the start of the tale, a man called on the witch to ask when Japan and America will go to war. A possession was scheduled at midnight so the woman could give the answer in the morning.

With the help of a man who was searching for the girl, the girl hatched a plan to escape the witch. She would pretend a false possession by Agni right before she went to sleep. As Agni, she would then command the witch to immediately return her to her father or else she'll be killed. Will the girl be able to pull it off? Will she be able to pretend being possessed before she went to sleep and became actually possessed by Agni? And, in that case, will she be able to convince the witch?

This "possession", a kind of wholesale transformation of a character's attitude or being, was an essential device for Akutagawa. The transformation may be brought about by an actual possession, or it may be compelled by extreme events and circumstances, but the result was the same. A character was changed into someone else.

The other two stories in the slim collection—"Rashomon" and "A Christian Death"—were widely anthologized. They also closely followed the framework of unpredictability brought about by the characters' sudden emotional outbursts and violent actions. They captured the strange territory of the rashomonesque, the relativity of good and evil. But this time, the stories unfolded within apocalyptic settings.

"Rashomon" was set in the declining city of Kyoto in the aftermath of disasters: earthquakes, typhoons, fires, and famines. A servant, newly dismissed by his master, was contemplating the surrounding wasteland below the gate of Rashomon. It was raining and he was trapped. The moral decay around him was essential to understanding the moral choice he made at the end of the story, while confronting an old woman in a tower. The choice—his conviction—suddenly came to him, as if it possessed him.

As he listened he was gripped by a new conviction, one that worked on him in precisely the opposite way than his earlier ruminations on evil had when he leapt into the tower and grappled with the woman. It was the very conviction that he had lacked when he sat under the gate.

The servant had been profoundly troubled when confronted with a choice between death and a life of crime. But now—now, the very concept of starvation had left him entirely.

"A Christian Death", a fictional account of an event in Nagasaki sometime in the late 16th century, was also concerned about moral choices. With the same economy of detail in the other stories, Akutagawa sketched a story of Christian missionaries faced with a moral crisis. A young boy they adopted and grew very fond of was accused of impregnating a girl in the neighborhood. He was expelled from the church. The tale culminated with an apocalyptic fire, an event that became a testing ground for the faith of all involved characters and the veritable stage for Akutagawa's successive unfolding of revelations, as unpredictable as they were incredible. (And here I would like to make a conjecture that the Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa had read and was inspired by this particular Akutagawa story in the writing of his grand novel Grande Sertão: Veredas. But that is perhaps for another post.)

The translations, by Glenn Anderson, sounded simple and conversational. Here are comparisons of passages from the one story that overlapped with Mandarins (2007), translated by Charles De Wolf.

"The Death of a Disciple", De Wolf (2007)	"A Christian Death", Anderson (2012)
Moreover, in the stillness of the night he would stealthily leave his outcast's hut and tread the light of the moon to the beloved church and there pray that the Lord Jesus might watch over him.	Every night, after the town had gone to sleep, he snuck out from his hovel and, under the light of the moon, approached the familiar grounds of the Santa Lucia and prayed fervently for the blessings of Jesus the Christ.
No border guardsman, as the proverb tells us, can halt the passage of time. One should imagine how within a twinkling of an eye, a year had come and gone. Then there was in Nagasaki a conflagration that in one night destroyed half of the city. So terrifying was the spectacle that the hair of those who witnessed it stood on end, for they might well have believed that they had heard the trumpet of the Last Judgment thundering across the fiery sky.	Time waits for no man. A year had passed when the unexpected occurred. An enormous fire overtook Nagasaki, threatening to burn half of the town to the ground. The sky was dyed the color of flame, and the shrieking of the hissing wood shot over the town like the crack of a trumpet, signalling the end times.
But what of it? That which is most precious in a human life is indeed found in such an irreplaceable moment of ecstasy. To hurl a single wave into a void of depravity, as dark as a nocturnal sea, and capture in the foam the light of a not-yet-risen moon ... It is such a life that is worth living.	But that is no matter, for the magnificence of a person's life is condensed into the singular moment when their spirit reaches its pinnacle of expression. A man will make his life worth living when he tosses a wave into the darkest night, breaking through the firmament of human desire that stretches over the sea, and captures in its foam the light of the moon yet to rise.

De Wolf's diction I find circumspect and measured, Anderson's straightforward and simplified. A case can be made for any of the two versions. In any case, the three (plus one) intense stories in 3 Strange Tales are a perfect sampler of Akutagawa, the acknowledged "father of the Japanese short story".




I received a review copy of the book from the publisher. 

My Prizes (Thomas Bernhard)

"My Prizes", translated by Carol Brown Janeway, in Gathering Evidence and My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard (Vintage International, 2011)



"Now is the time to stand firm, I thought, demonstrate my intransigence, courage, single-mindedness. I'm not going to go and meet them, I thought, just as (in the deepest sense of the word) they didn't meet me." The attitude--pure Thomas Bernhard--was unmistakable. There was pride, hardheadedness, combativeness. The novelist was about to receive the Grillparzer Prize from the podium but he went unrecognized by the prize administrators. No one at the front door received him and his aunt. So they just went in. The guests of honor had arrived. The musicians were in place. Everyone was seated. But he didn't budge from his seat. "Of course the ceremony didn't begin", Bernhard wrote. The ceremony couldn't begin. Bernhard had stood his ground. He had made up his mind. He would only come in front if the President of the Academy of Sciences would personally fetch him from his seat.

That offending and offensive spirit was what characterized the novelist's recounting of the prize ceremonies he attended in My Prizes: An Accounting (2009), a short volume which also appeared alongside his childhood memoirs (Gathering Evidence). If one deigned to give Bernhard a prize, one must give it on Bernhard's own terms. If one would believe him, he was participating in those nonsense ceremonies only for the prize money. But it was obvious that he also felt pride in receiving them, particularly for prizes honoring his early works (like the ones for his early novels Frost and The Lime Works). In these essays he was, as in his works of fiction, honest and frank, if a bit tactless. He was in his usual fighting form.

Herr Bernhard was receiving the prize for his play A Feast for Boris, said Hunger (the play that had been appallingly badly acted a year before by the Burgtheater company in the Academy Theater), and then, as if to embrace me, he opened his arms wide.... He shook my hand and gave me a so-called award certificate of a tastelessness, like every other award certificate I have ever received, that was beyond comparison.

The usual cantankerous Bernhard was also one who deplored the least sight of his country. It would not be the same Bernhard if the reader was not treated to his anti-nationalist rant.

I didn't like the town. It's cold and repulsive and if I hadn't had [Elisabeth] Borchers and my thoughts of the eight thousand marks [the prize money], I would probably have left again after the first hour. How I hate these medium-sized towns with their famous historical buildings by which their inhabitants allow themselves to be perverted their whole lives long. Churches and narrow alleys in which people vegetate, their minds turning more mindless all the time. Salzburg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Würzburg, I hate them all, because mindlessness has been kept warming over in them for hundreds of years.

Interestingly, the handful of short essays and speeches here would make for a good entry point to the novelist. There were incidents told here that would be exploited further in his fiction. The incident of his buying a decrepit house, for example, was also recounted in Yes. The infamous awarding ceremony in Wittgenstein's Nephew was also told in compact form here.

When Bernhard sat in a jury to award the Bremen Literature Prize (having won the previous one), he had made up his mind to vote for Canetti, only to be overruled by the other jurors.

I wanted to give Canetti the prize for Auto-da-Fé, the brilliant work of his youth which had been reissued a year before this jury met. Several times I said the word Canetti and each time the faces around the long table grimaced in a self-pitying sort of way. Many of the people at the table didn't even know who Canetti was, but among the few who did know about Canetti was one who suddenly said, after I had said Canetti again, but he's also a Jew. Then there was some murmuring, and Canetti landed under the table. I can still hear this phrase but he's also a Jew although I can't remember who at the table said it. But even today I often hear the phrase, it came from some really sinister quarter.

This display of anti-Semitism was unacceptable to Bernhard. What further inflamed him was the manner of the selection of the eventual winner (Hildesheimer). It was just as thoughtless and crude. Hildesheimer was chosen as the compromise winner if only because time was running out and "the smell of evening roast was already seeping through the double doors".

Who Hildesheimer really was, not one of them seemed to know.... The gentlemen stood up and went out into the dining room. The Jew Hildesheimer had won the prize. For me that was the point of the prize. I've never been able to keep quiet about it.

Bernhard couldn't take seriously any prize that was showered on him because the same standard that selected Hildesheimer for a winner could have been used to select him as a winner in the past and could at any time be used to select future winners. That was the pointless point of the prize for him.

But no prizes are an honor, I then said, the honor is perverse, there is no honor in the world. People talk about honor and it's all a dirty trick, just like all talk about any honor, I said. The state showers its working citizens with honors and showers them in reality with perversities and dirty tricks, I said.

But the height of Bernhard's adventure with prizes was his conferment of the Austrian State Prize for Literature, where the Minister walked out on him while he was still in the middle of his acceptance speech, not before hurling some curses his way. Reading the text of the winner's speech one would have an idea why the Minister walked out, and all his people after him:

Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need. The state is a construct eternally on the verge of foundering, the people one that is endlessly condemned to infamy and feeblemindedness, life a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness.

Thomas Bernhard won the prestigious state prize and while delivering his speech he was shunned. Those statesmen must have lacked for a sense of humor.



A bibliography of Bernhard's writings can be found here.

The German Literature Month II is hosted by Caroline and Lizzy.

"The Golden Hare" (Silvina Ocampo)

SILVINA OCAMPO

Two years ago the online translation magazine Words Without Borders (WWB) published an issue devoted to contemporary Argentinean fiction. "Beyond Borges", the title of the issue, was proof of César Aira's assertion that every writer from Argentina finds herself writing against the master.

A year ago The Argentina Independent also launched a series called "Beyond Borges". It profiled writers like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Leopoldo Lugones, Silvina Ocampo, Ernesto Sabato, Alejandra Pizarnik, Rodolfo Walsh, and many more.

"The Golden Hare", a story by Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993), was included in the WWB issue. Ocampo, who was part of a literary set with Borges and Bioy Casares, wrote poetry and story collections. She was younger sister to Victoria Ocampo, the founder of the influential literary journal Sur. She edited with husband Bioy and friend Borges the anthology The Book of Fantasy (1940) which contains 80-plus stories from an international set of writers. Her own writing style was considered as belonging to the surrealist-fantastic mold. Only two other books of hers appeared in English: the collection Leopoldina's Dream (1988) and the novella The Topless Tower (2010).

"The Golden Hare" is a fable for children and adults. It first appeared in the collection La furia in 1959. The story was about an immortal hare who had undergone a series of metamorphoses ("innumerable transmigrations" of soul) and then was pursued by a pack of dogs. Its meaning was not readily transparent. At some point, the narrator warned, "This is not a children's story, Jacinto", but then acknowledged that the conversation between the animals could enchant a curious seven-year old boy.

The opening was rather ornate: "In the bosom of the afternoon the sun illuminated her like a conflagration in the engravings of an ornate Bible." The overall tone hovered between menace ("The dogs were not evil, but they had sworn to catch the hare just to kill her.") and whimsicality ("The black Dane had time to snatch up an alfajor or some other pastry, which he kept in his mouth until the end of the race.").

Meanings can surely be attached like prostethic antlers to the head, although that's another animal. There was something about the tale that resembled the slipperiness of a hare, or a deer. Andrea Rosenberg, the story's translator, wrote a brief note about gender and word choice. She pointed out that "it is impossible to read Ocampo’s original without noticing how the contrast between dogs and hare is underscored by their opposing grammatical gender." The story was not limited, however, by the assumed gender of its participants.

If not for any earth-shattering insights, read it for the sake of reading. It was a short playful race too.


A Halloween-ish post for the Argentinean Literature of Doom. More translated works by Argentinean writers – Saer, Piglia, etc. – appearing in WWB can be accessed here.