Nobody Nothing Never (Masks) - Softcover

Saer, Juan José

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852422734 ISBN 13: 9781852422738

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 1994

Synopsis

During a stifling Argentinian summer, a horse-killer is on the loose. Cat Garay, heir to a once-prosperous, now dilapidated family, and his lover Elisa protect a horse from certain mutilation and death. An intense sexual affair and a desultory hunt for the killer are played out on the banks of the Parana river in an atmosphere of political anxiety and disintegration.
The haunting prose of Nobody Nothing Never confirms Juan Jose Saer's reputation as the most innovative Latin American writer of his generation.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Santa Fé, Argentina in 1937, Juan José Saer is the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. In 1968, he moved to Paris and taught literature at the university in Rennes, Brittany. In 1998, Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize. His work is translated into all major languages. He died in 2005.

Reviews

Never has a title better summed up a book. This tedious novel about a couple of monotonous days in the lives of some very colorless characters is the second book by the Argentine-born Saer to be translated into English. Elisa and Cat are lovers who spend a weekend together at Cat's dilapidated beachfront house. Although their relationship is never explored, every insignificant event is related in painstaking detail. Pages are given over to descriptions of the white wine they drink, the sweat on their bodies, the wrinkles in Elisa's dress. Cat has been asked to take care of an acquaintance's horse because there's an equine killer on the loose. The chief of police (a famed torturer also named Horse) searches for the culprit; the reader retains hope--ultimately dashed--that something will actually happen. Instead, one is obliged to slog through the endless minutiae again and again, as every nonevent is retold from several points of view. (It takes a man nearly four pages to carry two bales of hay from the river to the house, and then this same, less-than-intriguing, episode is recounted twice more.) Still, Saer is not ungifted; the shifting points of view, the oppressive atmosphere he evokes and the sudden bursts of sensuality make one wish he had written a less ponderous book.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

More challenging fiction from the gifted author of The Witness (not reviewed). The plot is simple: A horse killer is afoot in Argentina; Cat cares for a beige horse in order to protect it; Cat and Elisa have an affair. But the book is not simple. Saer's habitually dense prose seems almost clotted: Many scenes are described more than once, sometimes from different points of view, sometimes merely rephrased slightly--often in excruciating detail, as if more truth could be found by repeatedly examining one brief moment than by stringing events together into a narrative. This surfeit of detail slows the story down until the present is ``as wide as the whole of time is long,'' and an overdose of realism creates a surreal atmosphere. Cat and Elisa are graphically described making love, but we learn little about how they feel toward each other. When Saer writes about the horses' deaths he shifts gears and the narrative moves briskly enough. A few side characters, such as a ruthless chief of police, seem to operate in real time, but the story always returns to the beige horse and a molasses pace. It's hard work digesting these moments, even when the author dangles the suggestion of an epiphany to come. One minor character, a beach attendant, has an experience that closely mimics what readers are likely to feel. While floating in the river to set an endurance record for remaining in the water (three days or so), he notices that the light on the river is fragmented, made up of many separate points rather than one ray. This throws him into an existential funk from which he never recovers. A negative epiphany, then, in which meaning is lost. Saer seems to be struggling to illuminate metaphysical themes through physical description, as he did so superbly in The Witness. Here, alas, he conveys only murk. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Saer's debut translation in English, the existential mood suggested by the title results from the languorous love affair between Cat and Elisa, who are also trying to protect a prize horse from probable death by a serial horsekiller. The killings start a variety of rumors-that it's an excuse for the police to jail anybody in disagreement with the government, that the horses are being decimated because they are transmitting a plague, that the mania for killing horses has itself become a sort of plague. But it is not the psychology of the killings that interests Saer. Instead, he is concerned with their contribution to his vaster vision of a void and sun-parched world (in this case, the Rio Parana region of Argentina) where nothing significant can take place. Written in 1980, this novel will appeal most to readers who enjoy meditative fiction; an introduction to Saer's life and reputation would have helped most readers.
Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852422734
• ISBN 13: 9781852422738
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224