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Aira, César

Entry updated 20 May 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1949-    ) Argentine academic, translator and author, extremely prolific from the early 1980s, who began to publish work of genre interest with his first story, "Drácula en su dracumóvil, Frankenstein a pie" ["Dracula in his Dracumobile, Frankenstein on Foot"] in El Cielo for September-October 1968, a journal edited by Aira and Arturo H Carrera (1948-    ). Beginning with a nonfantastic novel, Moreira ["The White Mulberry Tree"] (1975), he has published prolifically in various genres, his work transacting (and duly mutating) many of the suggestive generic models of modern "realistic", which is to say nonmimetic, literature: from the finished hermetic intensities of Jorge Luis Borges to the more openly haunted tales of Silvina Ocampo to the inherently interminable world-facing excavations of Robert Bolaño. A list of on-Latin-American writers who seem to convey a recognition of similarly defamiliarized but revelatory universes might plausibly include Paul Auster, Witold Gombrowicz, Edgar allan Poe, Raymond Roussel, W G Sebald (1944-2001), and others. He is at the same time distinguished from these models by the labile mutability of his tales. Thematic and narrative counterpoints overlap throughout individual works – as far as a limited comprehension of the mosaic of the whole is able to determine – in what might seem an unstoppable "fuga hacia adelante" or "flight-forward": a term used in the nonfiction Cumpleaños (2001 chap: trans Chris Andrews as Birthday 2019 chap) to describe the unmappable unfolding flood of his own work: a term which may also be used to convey the increasingly unplumbable incessancy of recent Fantastika as a whole.

The twenty or so tales translated into English [the Checklist below is almost certainly incomplete] provide a series of peepholes into an oeuvre easily exceeding 100 individual titles, some published obscurely even in Argentina. La liebre (1991; trans Nick Caistor as The Hare 1997), the first Aira title to be translated, subjects a nineteenth-century British naturalist to a Fantastic Voyage into a Borgesian pampas in search of the eponymous specimen; a closely cognate tale, Un episidio en la vida del pinta Viajero (2000 chap; trans Chris Andrews as An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter 2006), conveys the historical painter Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858) into the epiphany-saturated south, which he can only appreciate after being struck by lightning.

There is a sense that Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) may be reflected in Cómo me hice monja (1993; trans Chris Andrews as How I Became a Nun 2007) through the commandeering heuristic regime imposed on the world by the tale's apophenia-cursed child protagonist. In Los Fantasmas (1990; trans Chris Andrews as Ghosts 2008), prospective occupants of an unfinished high-rise co-op find themselves transfixed in a surreal Zone haunted by ghosts. Obsessed parents create a convoy chasing down their abducted child in La costurera y el viento (1994; trans Rosalie Knecht as The Seamstress and the Wind 2011) until they all find at the End of the World a Monster child, perhaps a slapstick Doppelganger.

The conference at the heart of El congreso de literature (2000; trans Katherine Silver as The Literary Conference 2010) focuses on a "Mad Scientist"'s attempt to create an army of Clones of Carlos Fuentes in order to rule the world, which backfires when Fuentes's silk tie is cloned by accident, creating a devouring army of thousand-foot-long silkworms. In a tale that might be read as a paradigm iteration of Magic Realism, the eponymous narrator of Varamo (2002; trans Christ Andrews 2012) translates, over the course of a single night, the stash of counterfeit coin he's been given into an inexplicably masterful narrative poem: an aleph-like manifestation of the human creature. In El Pequeño Monje Budista (2005; trans Nick Caistor as The Little Buddhist Monk 2017), two French tourists in South Korea, anxious to capture the land through photography or the kind of cartoon used in designing tapestries, are taken by the surreally minuscule eponym on a Fantastic Voyage by foot and train, a hegira whose oneiric shifts of venue and scale evoke similar deadpan transfigurations in the work of Hayao Miyazaki. Again aleph-like – in this case Borges's "The Aleph" (September 1945 Sur) is specifically instanced – El Divorcio (2010; trans Chris Andrews as The Divorce 2021) focuses its mercurial traversal of various genres upon a single instant of recognition, to which time returns. The contrasts between Great and Small, and compressions of elaborate actions into the course of a single day (or stasis), frequently mark routes through and Zones within the overall geographical interweb of Aira's universe; perhaps most vivid geography of travel itself is unpacked in La invención del tren fantasma ["The Invention of the Ghost Train"] (2015 chap), not yet translated.

A recently translated title with specific sf interest, "Game of the Worlds" in Festival & Game of the Worlds (coll trans Katherine Silver 2024), is set in a distant Near-Future world where a war game has begun to decimate the populated worlds of the Space Opera universe; the protagonist, raddled by an interfering AI, finds it difficult to cope. Much work, including sf, remains untranslated into English. [JC]

César Aira

born Coronel Pringles, Argentina: 23 February 1949

works (selected; untranslated titles are mostly unlisted)

  • Ema, la cautiva (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial de Belgrano, 1979) [binding unknown/]
    • Ema the Captive (New York: New Directions, 2016) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]
  • Los Fantasmas (Argentina: no publisher given, 1990) [binding unknown/]
    • Ghosts (New York: New Directions, 2008) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]
  • La liebre (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Emecé, 1991) [binding unknown/]
    • The Hare (London: Serpent's Tail, 1997) [trans by Nick Caistor of the above: pb/Oscar Zarate]
  • La Prueba (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1992) [binding unknown/]
    • The Proof (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2017) [trans by Nick Caistor of the above: pb/Edward Bettison]
  • Cómo me hice monja (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1993) [binding unknown/]
    • How I Became a Nun (New York: New Directions, 2007) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/Rodrigo Corral and Gus Powell]
  • La costurera y el viento (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1994) [binding unknown/]
  • La Curas Milagrosas Del (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Simurg, 1998) [chap: binding unknown/]
  • Un episidio en la vida del pinta Viajero (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2000) [chap: binding unknown/]
  • El congreso de literature (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones ERA, 2000) [binding unknown/]
    • The Literary Conference (New York: New Directions, 2010) [trans by Katherine Silver of the above: pb/]
    • Three Novels (London: Penguin Books, 2015) [omni of the above two plus Los Fantasmas above: introduction by Roberto Bolaño: hb/]
  • La Villa (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Emecé, 2001) [binding unknown/]
    • Shantytown (New York: New Directions, 2013) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]
  • Varamo (Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Anagrama 2002) [binding unknown/]
    • Varamo (New York: New Directions, 2012) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]
  • El Tilo (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2003) [binding unknown]
    • The Linden Tree (New York: New Directions, 2013) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]
      • The Lime Tree (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2017) [vt: trans by Chris Andrews of above: pb/Edward Bettison]
  • El Pequeño Monje Budista (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Mansalva, 2005) [binding unknown/]
    • The Little Buddhist Monk (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2017) [trans Nick Caistor of the above: pb/Edward Bettison]
  • El Congreso de literatura (Mérida, Venezuela: Fundación Casa de las Letras Mariano Picón Salas Universidad de los Andes, 1997) [chap: in the publisher's Coleción Ferdydurke series: binding unknown/]
  • Las conversaciones (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007) [binding unknown/]
    • Conversations (New York: New Directions, 2014) [chap: trans by Katherine Silver of the above: pb/]
  • La Cena (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2007) [chap: binding unknown/]
    • Dinner (New York: New Directions, 2015) [chap: trans by Katherine Silver of the above: pb/]
  • El Divorcio (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Mansalva, 2010) [binding unknown/]
    • The Divorce (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2021) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: introduction by Patti Smith: pb/Edward Bettison]
  • Festival (Buenos Aires, Argentina: BAFICI, 2011) [binding unknown/]
  • El ilustre mago (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Biblioteca Nacional , 2013) [binding unknown/]
    • The Famous Magician (New York: New Directions, 2022) [chap: trans by Chris Andrews of the above: hb/]
  • Artforum (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Blatt and Rios, 2014) [binding unknown/]
    • Artforum (New York: W W Norton, 2020) [chap: pb/]
  • La invención del tren fantasma ["The Invention of the Ghost Train"] (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Mansalva, 2015) [chap: binding unknown/]
  • Fulgentius (Barcelona, Spain: Literatura Random House, 2020) [binding unknown/]
    • Fulgentius (New York: New Directions, 2023) [trans by Chris Andrews of the above: pb/]

collections and stories

  • The Musical Brain and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 2015) [coll: trans by Chris Andrews from various sources: hb/]
  • The Proof (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2017) [trans by Nick Caistor from various sources: pb/]

nonfiction

  • Cumpleaños (Barcelona, Spain: Mondadori, 2001) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
    • Birthday (Sheffield, South Yorkshire: And Other Stories, 2019) [nonfiction: trans Chris Andrews of the above: pb/Edward Bettison]
  • Edward Lear (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2004) [nonfiction: Spanish only: binding unknown/]
  • On Contemporary Art (David Zwirner Books, 2018) [nonfiction: chap: trans by Katherine Silver of a 2010 address: pb/nonpictorial]

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