Customer Reviews

Ghosts (New Directions Paperbook)

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All fiction is allegorical--which might explain why I don't read much fiction anymore. One tires, after a certain age, of lessons.

Most contemporary novelists try to disguise their allegories in the centuries-old conventions of realism. They pretend to be wholly--not selectively--reporting the world. But César Aira can't be bothered. So my principle reaction to Ghosts was relief: at least this guy isn't pretending. He's an unapologetic child of Kafka--or, more to the point, he shows us that we all are, fancy literary embellishments aside.

But I didn't only feel relief; I also felt like I'd been returned to fiction as it sounded when I was a child. We're trained early to look for the lessons--the moral--in stories. The history of my life as a reader can be summarized as a slow transition from explicit to implicit allegory. And now back. In this case, it's a happy return.

Aira's topics in Ghosts (which are really one topic) are the birth of desire, the end of innocence, the death in life that goes by the name eros. The book evokes that death with levity and precision. Like Kafka, Aria is never clever. He is compassionate, lucid, and funny. A girl in her mid-teens lives among ghosts, all of them men, naked phantasms covered in dust. She's lived among them for months, seen them floating about--but one day she actually sees them. And that's the difference, right? To really see a body. That's the moment when everything changes. This little book evokes that moment--when, to put it conventionally, a girl becomes a woman--exquisitely.

I read the book at a leisurely pace, in part because I was re-learning how to read like a kid. Sometimes I felt a kind of aching impatience to know what was going to happen, what the lesson would be. It might take me a while to once again experience that impatient ache as pleasure.

But among the book's many indisputable pleasures: a fantastic essay, dead in the middle of the book, on architecture; and the cast of characters, a family of immigrant Chileans living in Buenos Aires. Wonderful: people I love, a city I love, both evoked with generosity and intelligence.

Chris Andrews' translation is, as always, superb. Heartily recommended.

César Aira's 'Ghosts' is a book that, by design or no, is constructed from elements that reflect the in-between moments; the middle stages that make up the difference between departing and arriving, beginning and completion, life and death. It describes the afternoon and evening of the last day of the year, culminating at midnight - a moment that is part of neither the old or the new. Primarily, it follows the Viñas family - Chilean, but who are living in Argentina - temporarily living on top of a partially constructed building for which the father acts as the night watchman. Of this family, it is Patri, the oldest daughter, on whom the focus comes to rest. As the stepdaughter of the watchman - part of the family, yet also apart - and a teenager - neither child nor adult - Patri glides through the day until she receives a one time opportunity to attend a party like none other.

During it all, ghosts - neither a part of this world nor the next - drift in and out of the family's daily routine. I had not read any books prior to this one that adhered to the conventions of Magical Realism in literature (and as far as I'm able to determine, Aira does this quite competently), and honestly, I haven't yet formed an opinion about the technique. I do think it's a very peculiar way of telling a story, but one that, in certain instances, may allow the author the flexibility to express his ideas that typical methods might prevent. If I'd been looking for an example of this literary style, I probably would have started somewhere else, with one of its accepted classics, but I wasn't really aware that this was the medium in which Aira was working. For those who are already familiar with Magical Realism, you may wish to let your feelings about this manner of writing be your guide with 'Ghosts', as it seems fully entrenched in it.

Ultimately, I found Aira's work interesting but also frustrating. If his goal was to paint an image in my mind of the shape and texture of being 'in-between', then I think he succeeded, but if he was attempting something more than this limited objective, then I have to honestly admit that I was baffled. One section specifically, beginning with the description of Patri's dream and discussing the concept of the 'un-built' in architecture and literature, frankly had me holding on by my mental fingernails. Since the majority of the rest of the book is straightforward and focused on the daily routine of this family, I felt as though this expository section held all the necessary clues to Aira's thrust - and since I never made a solid connection, I feel as though I lost any deeper meanings the book contained.

I usually assign the blame to myself when I have this kind of difficulty, as long as the writer has proved his ability in other areas, which I think Aira does. And it's quite possible that there are some concepts that just do not translate well, despite the competence of the translator. In the end, César Aira is an author whose work I'll probably revisit - both to reread 'Ghosts', and, eventually, by picking up An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (New Directions Paperbook) - and try to reestablish that connection after my initial response has worn away.

Lastly, although I know that cover blurbs are only a marketing device designed to sell books, I do get fed up with their misrepresentations, and try to point them out when I see them. In this case, a quote from Mark Doty on the back cover claims that "Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald". I don't know exactly what the context is for 'in the tradition of', but the implication is that if you like one, then you'll like the other. From the little I know about Borges, that half of the claim may be apt, but I find almost nothing similar between 'Ghost' and in the work I've read of Sebald. My snap impression is that the author of the quote randomly selected a name (Sebald) that is known but not yet widely read (popularly obscure?) - either to impress with his ranging knowledge, or to steer readers of one author to another at the request of the publishers. Perhaps I'm being unfair - but hearing the justification for such a comparison would be fascinating.

"Ghosts" by César Aira is undeniably a classic piece of Latin American literature. It follows the story of a family who lives on top of an apartment building still under construction. Taking place over the course of only one day, the narration wanders from following various people on the construction site, eventually focusing on Patri, the oldest daughter of the family. The narration follows their lives, and wanders, often bringing attention to a series of overweight and dust covered ghosts that seem to inhabit the construction site and who are visible to those who live and work there. The meaning of time, life and philosophy are covered casually, often with the narrator seeming to make observations that don't make sense or are plain wrong. Overall, a fantastic little book, perfect to be read in one day