Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel - Hardcover

Rios, Julian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 091658366X ISBN 13: 9780916583668

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1990

Synopsis

First published in Spain in 1983 and proclaimed “an instant postmodern classic, without a doubt the most disturbingly original Spanish prose of the century” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1985 Book of the Year), Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) though a linguistic fun house of polylingual puns and wordplay recalling Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revelers, while Ríos’s punning and allusive language shows that words, too, wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications. Larva‘s tale, a reassessment of the Don Juan myth in our time, is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. It revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the Madhatter English tradition of puns, palindromes, and acrostics, by creating Joycean echoes and pushing language to its maximum connotative capacity. Larva has been praised by such leading Spanish-language writers as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, and Severo Sarduy, and establishes Ríos as the most accomplished successor to Joyce.

About this title

About the Authors

Julia?n Ri?os is Spain's foremost post- modernist writer. After co-authoring two books with Octavio Paz, Ri?os went on to write numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including "Larva, Poundemonium, Loves That Bind", and "Monstruary", all of which have been published in English translation. He lives in Paris.

Having translated Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and other notable authors, Suzanne Jill Levine is one of the most highly regarded translators of contemporary Latin American literature. She is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.

Reviews

As a subtitle, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy would have done just as well. Ostensibly about the shenanigans of Don Juan with fairy tale figures and boot-wearing fetishists, Rios's tale is actually about words--using puns and palindromes, portmanteau and nonce words--in a flow that ignores the boundaries of language and, at times, taste, at which points it turns sophomoric. A masturbating friar is a "semenarist;" a search in the night is "seekwalking" as Rios, prolific Spanish novelist and essayist, blends and mashes words in an synergic mix of sound and meaning. Facing each page of text are notes--a scholarly device subverted in order to continue the word play. Some notes refer readers to the final section of the book, the 71 Pillow Notes which, taken together, form the tale of the misadventures of two young women (Babelle and Milalias) in London. Kudos to the translators and caveats to readers: this is fare for serious readers (with serious time) who do not take themselves too seriously.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 091658366X
• ISBN 13: 9780916583668
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 585