The Sixty-Five Years of Washington - Softcover

Saer, Juan José

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934824208 ISBN 13: 9781934824207

Publisher: Open Letter Books, 2010

Synopsis

"With meticulous prose, rendered by Dolph's translation into propulsive English, Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wilderness of human experience in all its variety."—New York Times

It's October 1960, say, or 1961, in a seaside Argentinian city named Santa Fe, and The Mathematician—wealthy, elegant, educated, dressed from head to toe in white—is just back from a grand tour of Europe. He's on his way to drop off a press release about the trip to the papers when he runs into Ángel Leto, a relative newcomer to Santa Fe who does some accounting, but who this morning has decided to wander the town rather than go to work.

One day soon, The Mathematician will disappear into exile after his wife's assassination, and Leto will vanish into the guerrilla underground, clutching his suicide pill like a talisman. But for now, they settle into a long conversation about the events of Washington Noriega's sixty-fifth birthday—a party neither of them attended.

Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is simultaneously a brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse.

Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.

Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan José Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.

About this title

About the Author

Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.

Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan José Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.

Reviews

Argentinian Saer (1937–2005) sets his novel during a walk through the streets of a seaside Argentinian city in the early '60s with a conversation comprising memories, images, and digressions in the mode of Proust and Laurence Sterne. Two characters meet in the street and walk together while discussing Washington Noriega's 65th birthday party, which neither of them attended. The elegant aristocratic Mathematician missed the soiree because he was in Europe; the plebeian Angel Leto wasn't invited. The two men veer off topic to consider the behavior of mosquitoes and whether a horse can stumble, frivolous subjects that contrast with visions of Argentina's harsh political turmoil that would occur in the near future when the mathematician's wife will be killed and Leto will disappear, suicide pill in hand. Saer reaches deep into the psychology of his characters, yet for all his skill, the streams of consciousness become arduous as does identifying with the characters on an emotional level. Think Berman film, difficult but worth the effort. (Nov.) (c)
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In Dolph’s confident translation of Saer’s The Sixty-Five Years of Washington, the reader will find a world distinct from the worlds commonly offered by contemporary American literary fiction. It is not the South American setting that is distinct, however, so much as the style. The characters—some with simple names like Leto, others with grand titles such as the Mathematician—could be talking and walking anywhere, and talking and walking are mostly what they do. What feels foreign is the late Argentine author’s leisurely syntax and villanella-like repetition. This is an abstract novel, and often the abstraction feels more elliptical than profound, though Saer sometimes offers an idea so compelling and immediately recognizable, one cannot help but feel—or perhaps wish—one has had the very same thought: In the half-empty cabin his sudden and at the same time slow gesture contrasted with the illusory stillness of the airplane, which floated in a bank of the gray clouds like a fragile object wrapped in cotton packaging. --Kevin Clouther

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Letter Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934824208
• ISBN 13: 9781934824207
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 203