Christina MacSweeney, translator and collaborator. (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2015).<\/p>\n
An insouciant blend of Gogol, Calvino, and the metaphysical conundrums of linguistic sign-theory, this novel is one of the funniest books I\u2019ve read in ages\u2014in part because it\u2019s so deadpan and, in the end, as you might have guessed, so sad. Did you know that Mexico City has a street named Disneylandia? It does, and this tale takes us there. Most fiction labors too heavily to pass as Real. This fabrication convinces because it makes the Real utterly strange\u2014a sparkler entrancing us until it goes out and reveals we\u2019re in darkness. <\/p>\n
The tale\u2019s hero-victim and consummate con-man: Gustavo S\u00e1nchez S\u00e1nchez, known as Highway. Here below are two brief samples, the first in Highway\u2019s voice, the second in the voice of a young writer who ghost-writes Highway\u2019s \u201cautobiography\u201d after his death. Except that then I guess the \u201cvoice\u201d in the first is not only Highway\u2019s but the writer\u2019s too. It\u2019s a mystery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the story of my teeth, and my treatise on collectibles and the variable value of objects. As any other story, this one begins with the Beginning; and then comes the Middle, and then the End. The rest, as a friend of mine always says, is literature: hyperbolics, parabolics, circulars, allegorics, and elliptics. I don\u2019t know what comes after that. Possibly ignominy, death, and, finally, postmortem fame. \u2026Some have luck, some have charisma. I\u2019ve got a bit of both.\u201d (5)<\/p>\n
\u201cHighway died in the Buenos D\u00edas Motel, next door to the bar, in the company of three gorgeous ladies after conducting an allegoric auction that finished, as an encore, with an imitation of Janis Joplin singing \u201cMercedes Benz.\u201d I received a call from the concierge the morning of his death and immediately went over there with El Perro. We honored his last request and scattered his ashes at the feel of the fiberglass dinosaurs in the median strip of a street in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City [in Mexico]\u2026\u201d (158). <\/p>\n
Peter\u2019s note: yes, those dino statues exist; they\u2019re in El Dinoparque de Pachuca, Hidalgo. View it on YouTube here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christina MacSweeney, translator and collaborator. (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2015). An insouciant blend of Gogol, Calvino, and the metaphysical conundrums of linguistic sign-theory, this novel is one of the funniest books I\u2019ve read in ages\u2014in part because it\u2019s so deadpan … Continue reading