The Conversations (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Aira, César

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811221105 ISBN 13: 9780811221108

Publisher: New Directions, 2014

Synopsis

A cerebral and wildly funny story revolving around the incongruity of a gold Rolex watch spotted on a lowly goatherd’s wrist

Daily conversations in outdoor cafés with cultured friends can help make reality a little more real. Unfortunately, however, during one such conversation, one man spots a gold Rolex watch on a TV soap opera’s goatherd. This seemingly small absurdity sets off alarms: strange sensations of deception, distress, and incipient madness. The two men’s uneasiness soon becomes a nightmare as the TV adventure advances with a real-life plot ― involving a mutant strain of killer algae ― to take over the world! The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.

About this title

About the Author:

Nominated for a Neustadt award and the Man Booker International Prize, César Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, in 1949. He has published at least one hundred books and recently created a limited edition, “Valise,” for the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. 

KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning liter- ary translator and the codirector of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC). Her translations include works by Ce´sar Aira, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Jose´ Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Jorge Franco, and Marti´n Ada´n, among others.

From Booklist:

In the habit of meeting a friend at a café each day for long talks that he replays later in his mind, the narrator of Argentine writer Aira’s hybrid title, which melds fiction and reality, has developed a deep and sharp appreciation for conversations and memory. Later, at his leisure, recalling the meandering rhythms of the talks, the narrator reconsiders the circularity of their conversations. He ponders how conversations and memories of conversations overlap with other memories to form a stream of consciousness that erases the boundaries between the individual’s thoughts and those of others, a kind of echoing of talk and thoughts, so that, ultimately, it’s not clear who said what, whose position has subtly shifted over time, and how sensibilities have blended. The narrator and his friend ponder the incongruities in movies and in life. “The impetus to speak and to remember what was spoken, though the same, were charged with distinct and incompatible energies,” he observes in this at times hilarious social commentary on the inanities of modern life and the significance of conversation. --Vanessa Bush

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0811221105
• ISBN 13: 9780811221108
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96