Locos: A Comedy of Gestures (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [Paperback]

Felipe Alfau (Author), Mary McCarthy (Afterword)

Book Description

Series: American Literature (Dalkey Archive) | Publication Date: September 1997

The interconnected stones that form Felipe Alfau's novel LOCOS take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young 'author' "For them", he complains, "reality is what fiction is to real people; they simply love it and make for it against ray almost heroic opposition" Alfau's "comedy of gestures" -- a mercurial dreamscape of the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy -- was written in English and first published in 1936, favorably reviewed for The Nation by Mary McCarthy, as she recounts here in her Afterword, then long neglected.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Out of print for half a century, this wildly surreal fable mirrors Spain in moral decay, in the years before a fascist takeover. Among the bizarre characters we meet are Garcia, a prematurely white-haired poet who becomes a fingerprint analyst; Dona Valverde, a pious, necrophiliac widow who enjoys touching corpses at funerals; and Sister Carmela, a nun who seemingly elopes with her own brother. Strangest of all is Senor Olozagaolive-skinned giant, ex-butterfly charmer in a circus, who was reared by Spanish monks in China and now runs an agency for selling dead people's clothes. The sundry misfits gather at the Cafe of the Crazy in Toledo, where hard-up writers, among them the author, hang out in search of exploitable characters; mistaken identities, outlandish situations, interchangeable roles abound. Is this Pirandello? Actually, it's closer to the somnambulistic tales of the French surrealists; you keep reading this hypnotic novel the way a sleeping person wants to keep on dreaming. In an afterword, McCarthy compares Locos to the modernist detective novels of Nabokov, Calvino and Eco. Maybe, but surely most of the sleuthing consists of figuring out the characters' interconnections in the Byzantine plot. Alfau neatly skewers Spain's fatalism, its obsessions with death and sin.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

First published in 1936 and unjustly ignored for the next half century, this novel anticipates the magic realism of modern Latin American fiction. Neatly divided into segments that read like short stories, it juggles a congeries of absurdist types such as pimps, beggars, and priests in what can be taken as a metaphor for Spain today. Early on, the author warns us about the uncontrollability of his characters, who are introduced en masse at the Cafe of the Crazies in the mad, fantastic city of Toledo (even though they all live in Madrid). The account of each character is a joy to read--from Dona Micaela Valverde's passion for going to as many funerals as she can find to Lunarito's money-making ruse of charging a fee to display her beauty mark. Readers careful enough to search out and accumulate the author's clues will be rewarded.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781712
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781710
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #564,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He echoes Gogol whilst anticipating Borges & co., January 16, 2000

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Locos: A Comedy of Gestures (Hardcover)

I can't understand why this is not regarded as one of the greatest works of modern fiction. It anticipates many of the great writers of the latter half of the century, while being every bit as good as those who came later. The first two chapters are a bit hard and left this reader thinking Very clever, but.....

However the next three stories are excellent and I was quickly drawn into the surreal world of Alfau. Each chapter works well as a short story, but the further the reader digs, the more the stories link into a single novel rich in characters and ideas. Borges, Calvino, Kundera and the Boom-time Latin Americans were great writers, but after reading Alfau I realise they were not as original as I'd long thought. A book waiting to be rediscovered (again!).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars work of a genius, September 25, 2002

By 

Libri Mundi "Libri Mundi" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Locos: A Comedy of Gestures (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

This may sound absurd - but "Locos-...." is truly the work of a genius. Some books surpass the boundaries of time and this is one such book. To summarize the book in one sentence will be like this "non-characters are characters, fiction is reality and solutions are problems".
Felipe Alfau was a strange character and so are his books - very very different, they remind us of the writings of Vargas Llosa with a taste of Cortazar. This is not a translation rather Alfau has written the book in English so all the spices of the Spanish culture are visible. This is extremely rare even with the best of the translators. You get a taste of Spain and a vivid picture of the vibrant society which was so different from the rest of Europe. The people are full of life and passion. Love and passion are the means for making life flow and may be we all need to follow that some day.
You can look at this book either as a short story book or a novel - since it has nine short stories which can either be individually read but they are also connected to each other.
I am long time fan of Marquez and I can promise that this book is equally impressive as any book from Marquez. It is a must buy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Comedy Tragically Ignored, June 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Locos: A Comedy of Gestures (Hardcover)

I share the puzzlement of the reviewer below over why this isn't considered one of the 20th Century's great works of fiction. I'd go further and say this is probably the most underrated novel of the last 100 years. The most important literature not only blazes a trail, but does so in a way that compares favorably to the books it inspires. This is true for Locos. The book should have had a stronger edit, but what Alfau achieves here - stories that rewrite each other, characters who morph into each other - unleashed new powers from the fictional narrative that have yet to be fully tapped. There's a moment at the end of a story called "A Character" that is one of the very few mindblowing experiences I've had reading fiction. Alfau was probably the first novelist since Laurence Sterne to understand this potential in narration. There's a character in Locos named Fulano who, desperate to get others to notice him, breaks a storefront window. The owner comes out, ignores Fulano and wonders how such a thing could have happened. In a sad way, Locos is like Fulano. Everyone marvels at the glass it shattered, but nobody can see Locos.