Not sure what to say about this one.
I didn’t like this book in most ways; the actual story, the writing style… but there was something in the subtext that I enjoyed. In my reading and writing I am ALLERGIC to plot, but I eat up characters and commentary on the human psyche.
More so than Calvino, I felt this story taught me something about how I read by showing me what interests me. For pages on end during the writing about the showdown in the building, I would zone out, and would only be brought back to active attention in moments of reflection.
I suppose another way of interpreting this is that I don’t like true, nonfiction, writing.
But what I found written in the subtext, or maybe what I created from the subtext through putting my own thoughts onto the book, was a story about the making of a criminal. Gauncho Dorda goes deep into his development as a criminal. He is frequently described as a psychopathic killer who killed animals as a child and whos mother always saw him as destined for evil. This is backed up by this description on page 52:
“The Gaucho acts as the body, solely responsible for executing the action, a psychotic killer; the Kid is the brains and does the thinking for him.”
However, the story also goes deep into his backstory, more so than any of the other characters. He talks at the end about sewing sacks for his dad at the plantation at 10 – 11 years old.
“He was semi-retarded, they said, but it wasn’t true, he just found it difficult to talk normally, because he was always kept busy arguing with those women muttering things inside his ear. Sewing the words, stitching them to his body, with greasy thread, a tattoo worn on the inside, the words of his dead mother engraved in him as if on a tree trunk.”
He also details his time in prison, being raped throughout his life, and the people talking to him in his head, more specifically, the WOMEN speaking to him in his head. This seems to be there as an attempt to get some sympathy for him, and it works. Although he is a deplorable horrible person I couldn’t help but feel sadness for him at his intense loneliness. Especially when The Kid dies and he loses not only the only person he ever felt as loving him but also half of this symbiotic relationship that they had. At this point he is left alone with the voices. They become the main focus of the narrative, and everything else seems to disappear. It is never said what actually leads Gauncho Dorda to crime, but it is hinted it is his constant need for drugs.
“His sole interest was in drugs,‘his obscure pathological mentality’ (according to the reportby Dr Bunge, the prison psychiatrist), he rarely thought of anything else apart from drugs and the voices to which he paid secret attention.”
It is also described that the drugs help quiet the voices. Perhaps with proper care, and an understanding of his mental health struggles he would not have turned to drugs and violence.
The fact that almost everything about Dorda’s backstory and internal dialogue is fabricated shows the human desire to empathize with and give even horrible people explanations. The horrific crime is just a horrific crime, but the fact that Piglia feels a need to write fictional sections to better understand the minds behind the horrific crime is what actually says something interesting in this book. It says something about the human urge to understand other humans.
My question is, did you enjoy the fictional or the true parts more? Did you feel they blended together well or did they contrast each other in their message?