March 2022 – RMST 202

Thoughts on Bolaño’s Amulet

This was the first book I read entirely in one sitting. I was surprised, but how could you not keep on reading when the first line is “This is going to be a horror story”(pg.1) …

The theme of memory is quite present throughout Auxilio’s broken narrative. Her recollections seem very “…fragmentary, as if mauled by an enormous animal”(p101). The way that Auxilio tries to piece together the dates and events of the story reminded me a lot of Perec’s W. “And I had nothing either, except my memories” (pg.44) Perec and Auxilio both seem to be running, from their past life, with not much to their name (just their books of writing). But they both hold tightly onto their memories. I think they are both affected by the trauma they endured and it is evident in both texts. “Memory plays malicious tricks on me when the light of the waning moon creeps into the women’s bathroom like a spider” (p107). Auxilio’s trauma is repeated with the vision of the fourth floor bathroom of the faculty of Philosophy and Literature during the armed takeover of the UNAM, throughout the book which almost felt like an anchor and re centred me as a reader. Whenever she feels heightened emotion such as when she was being followed in the night (pg.66) or was about to follow Arturito and Ernesto into the Clover hotel (pg.91) she reminds herself of her strength by reliving that powerful memory.

I found the way that Bolaño touches on the social/political climate of Mexico in 1968 very accesible and I think even if you don’t have background on the context it’s still very powerful. “…as if they weren’t creatures of flesh and blood but a generation sprung from the open wound of Tlatelolco…”(P.g 77). Here Auxilio is describing the young “children of the sewer” poets that Arturito hangs out with when he comes back from serving in Chile. This touches on the generational trauma of the children of Mexico that have to live with this bloody betrayal by the government. “They were all growing up exposed to the storms of Mexico and the storms of Latin America, which are worse, if anything, because they are more divided and more desperate” (p.g44 )They were raised in this time of chaos and tragedy which provokes Auxilio’s mother instinct to look out for them.

This book has really stuck with me unlike any one we’ve read so far. The beautiful writing created a dreamlike almost hallucinatory quality that was really enticing. Overall I was completely mesmerized with Bolaños work. My question for the class is how did you feel about Auxilio’s “mental trips”? (such as to Remedios Varo’s house) What is the significance of this imaginary narrative? How did it add to the story?

Some quotes that will really stick with me that I just have to include:

“…now there’s another reoccurring and terribly Latin American nightmare: being unable to find your weapon; you know where you put it, but it’s not there” (pg. 67)

“History is like a horror story” (pg.66)

“El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (pg.75)

“And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure. And that song is our amulet.” (pg.184)

Thoughts on Fuentes’ The Old Gringo

I was way too excited to read The Old Gringo because I love anything set during the Mexican Revolution. It’s such an interesting struggle of democracy, land, and freedom strongly rooted in colonialism and foreign intervention. (If any of you want more context and liked the book, I highly recommend taking SPAN280: Revolution! It’s mostly literature from the Mexican Revolution but also parts of Latin America and it fills the literature requirement 🙂)

I think we talked about this concept in a previous class, but I found the beginning starting with the end (which was the burial of the old man) very powerful. I liked being introduced to him through the eyes of the other characters. There is also a lot of weight and significance in a burial scene because we find out that this was the ultimate goal of the old man. This style of opening the story got me hooked and created a lot of suspense to find out how the story got to this place.

An aspect of the book I really enjoyed, and was not expecting, was the role of the Mexican landscape. Mexico itself almost presented itself as a character intertwined with the war. The descriptions of the plants, cacti, and scorpions as “advance guards” (pg16) created super vivid imagery that complemented the mood of the story so well. The mountains and deserts even spoke to the characters almost as guides which added to the personification of the landscape:

“But Arroyo knew that the mountains were shouting it, from chasm to peak, from cave to canyon, across barrancas and bone-dry creeks; A brave man has come here, a brave man is among us, a brave man has set foot on our stones.” (pg.56-57)

And because the Mexican revolution was heavily based on the rights and freedoms of the farmers living in the hacienda system, the feelings of the land itself holds a lot of importance.

Throughout the book, Don Quixote is referenced a few times. The old man brings a copy of the book with him to Mexico but, importantly, has yet to read it (pg10). In addition, the strange way the people reacted to the old man first entering the encampment reminded Colonel García of how the girls had looked at a Quixote figure (21). In extremely basic terms, Don Quixote is on a quest of chivalry, but his delusions and unrealistic approach often finds him in impractical situations. What is the significance of this and how does it connect to the story of the old gringo?

Thoughts on Perec’s W or The Memory of Childhood

This week while reading “W or The Memory of Childhood” by Georges Perec, I felt as if I was reading someone’s personal diary mixed with some odd dark version of the Olympics. I found it a bit difficult to follow the two narratives (especially with the copious amount of footnotes) but as the book went on, I found myself quite immersed in the two worlds.

Despite the title, the narrator expresses “I have no childhood memories” (pg.6), however the autobiographical part of the book reads as a desperate attempt to salvage and revive them. The memories he has seem to be the only thing left of his identity because he is constantly on the run for safety., “…living another illegal existence, with another fragile alibi, with another fabricated past and another identity?” (pg.11). He doesn’t seem to have much to live for, with all his loved one’s dead, and is more surviving day to day as a ghost. Other than his memories of the past, as readers we don’t know many objective facts about our protagonist.

Unlike in Proust’s “Combray” or Laforet’s “Nada” where objects or places trigger certain memories, Perec seems to go out of his way to explain that physical spaces or objects do not. When reflecting on photographs, he simply describes what is pictured and nothing more. From one of the photos explaining that “of all my missing memories, that is perhaps one I most dearly wish I had” (pg.49). When visiting Rue Vilin where he lived in Paris, he explains that he doesn’t remember which part he lived in, and he hasn’t attempted to go inside any of the dwellings “since I am in any case convinced that it would do nothing to revive my memories” (pg. 48). When I read this, I was doubting the narrator’s intentions of not revisiting the place in which he grew up. Does he really think it would not revive his memories or is he too traumatized to face them? I think trauma is an important aspect of our protagonist’s narrative due to the historical context he’s grown up in and being a low-class Jewish child. I’m not a psychology major but I think that a main trauma response is to just black out those memories. It made me wonder is this what the narrator is experiencing with his so called “lost memories”? Do we trust the accuracy of our narrator despite the trauma that may affect the story? Does it even matter?