Tag Archives: morality

03/26/24

Death With Interruptions – A Permanent Curse Suspended in Limbo

“As in a game of chess, death advanced her queen. A few more moves should open the way to a checkmate, and the game will end.” (186)

Is the wish for immortality a blessing or a curse? That answer seems simple.

What begins as a celebration devolves into the unknown. Humanity’s fear of death is nothing compared to its fear of life.

In this new world, religion stands without purpose, the government is at a halt, and the ‘maphia’ (emphasis on ‘ph’ so as not to be confused with mafia with ‘fi’) starts to infect the community. Eternal life breeds new challenges that humanity hadn’t dared to consider, and one must “not foster false hopes” (8) of immortality.

Death may be gone, but pain is not. Those on the brink of death are suspended in a listless, forever undying state: a permanent state of limbo. The removal of death is not a blessing. It stirs doubt within the population because what is there to live for if you cannot die?

Amongst my brief summary (and subtle existential ramblings), this book is truly a hypnotic mind-fuck. The suspension of death is not typically something one thinks about–but these ‘what ifs?’ are genuinely the point with works of speculative fiction.

 

Narratives At Play

The beginning presents itself as the philosophical pondering of death’s vacation and, underneath it, the satirical nature of death’s vacation. It is a commentary on humanity’s futile existence. It is an absurdist case study.

“for it is not the same thing to bury a human being and to carry it to its final resting place a cat or a canary, or indeed a circus elephant or a bathtub crocodile…” (18).

The funeral directors, once having a market of corpses, now find the coffins empty. They complain over their new jobs of burying animals in elaborate ways–a strange complaint in this time of uncertainty. This is just one of the many absurdist themes in the novel. There is no longer any point. Death is gone, and people will start to wish to be dead. Immortality is a curse, which we will soon see.

 

Around more than halfway, death herself becomes a character. The tone switches into a melancholic existence.

This is where I started to connect emotionally with the novel. I am truly interested in the personification of death. I am intrigued by the paradoxical nature of death: being alive yet not feeling ‘alive’ in the way humanity does.

A cellist’s pre-death warning keeps bouncing back to death, something that has never happened before. Curious (and a bit worried), death takes it upon herself to investigate.

Death can find herself in the human world, sitting amongst the audience at the orchestra. What began as the journey to condemn the cellist to death reveals itself into death learning to live. It is such a beautiful narrative that focuses on the futility of life. As death watches the cellist, the readers find themselves entranced by the simple man. The way “a man and a dog asleep, perhaps […] dreaming about each other, the man about the dog, the dog about the man…” (170) is something so mundane it truly captivates death.

My stomach was in knots as I watched the impending countdown of the man’s life, the dog one day searching for his owner to no avail. It is genuinely the inevitability of death and its effects on others that is so heartbreaking. This man, unmarried, a simple cellist, accompanied only by man’s best friend, will leave his buddy. I don’t know why, but this broke something in me.

But all is not tragic as Death finds herself alive, setting a blaze to the cellist’s death letter and falling asleep (something death never could do). And with death alive, “no one died” (238).

If I reread this book, I think I will die from sadness. (Ps. I was on the verge of losing it if the dog died)

 

“For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt to have a dog on her lap” (172)

 

Discussion Question

In this land with no death, some cross the border to let the dying die. The morality of killing is blurry in a land without death, yet the limbo state of the dying is permanent. Reflecting on a world in which you have to decide whether to let someone you love live in pain or die, which would you choose? What are the moral implications of either choice?

 

The only certainty we have is life and eventually death: https://www.arthistoryproject.com/subjects/death/

“Self-portrait with Fiddling Death”– Arnold Böcklin

 

03/15/24

Be Gay, Do Crime – Money To Burn

“What has to be most feared, the worst thing in life, always happens out of the blue, without anyone being ready for it, which makes it all the worse, because one is both waiting but has no time to get used to the idea and is caught out, paralysed, yet obliged to act and take decisions” (121-22)

 

Money to Burn (or perhaps Burnt Money) is a thrilling retelling of a true criminal tale. Being that Piglia was sued for his work, it’s evident he took a few creative liberties. However, this is a work of fiction and, therefore, can be (to be frank) fictional. To begin, we are introduced to a plethora of characters, many of which are given an extensive backstory. First, have Fontán Reyes (real name: Atir Omar Nocito) do the handoff. He used to be a tango singer until he started doing drugs. The reason why he joined the robbery was so he could make enough to escape to New York and open an Argentinian restaurant.

We are given extensive character backgrounds of people briefly in the heist. At the book’s midway point, we only have four key members. Yet, Piglia has such a captivating way of writing that he assures us that every character on the team deserves their backstory shared.

 

Who is on our Mafia Team?

I had to chart the characters as I went on and occasionally mark them as dead

  • Malito (Mad Mala): Our puppet master, the operation’s boss. He is a traitor.
  • Twisty Bazán: Does drugs…is a narc
  • ‘Crow’ Merles: The gang’s driver. Lowkey thought his being named Crow was cool, but he was boring
  • Blanco Galano: Crow’s sugar baby. She does cocaine. How old is she? Concerning.
  • Fontán Reyes: Was a tango singer until drugs. Justice for him.
  • Hernando ‘Nando’ Heguilein: The big boss. Named after the chicken restaurant?
  • Dorda “The Blond Gaucho”: Suffers from hearing voices, he’s just trying his best
  • Brignone “The Kid”: he is a wildcard, protector of Dorda.

 

Dorda and Brignone. Yes, I found myself rooting for them. Honestly, both sides are dicey (I’m talking about you, Commissioner Silva). Described as “twinned brothers, identical twins, belonging to the mafia fraternity” (51-52), these two are connected in such a profound way that “they understood each other without words” (52). All people want is gay people who commit crimes.

The two exist in a liminal space, both struggling with this internalized homophobia. When Brignone dies, we truly see their love come to fruition. They are the sole focus in the book’s last half, partially because they and Crow are stuck in this apartment surrounded by police. But in Chapter Nine, Dorda finally begins to make sense (if one can ever truly ‘make sense), and we can understand the pain boiling inside him.

“And the Gaucho could feel him there, dead at his feet, the only man who had ever loved him, and who’d treated him as a person, better than a brother, that Kid Brignone had treated him like a woman, understanding whatever it was he couldn’t bring himself to say and so always saying, he the Kid himself, whatever it was the Gaucho felt without being able to express it, as if reading his thoughts (188-89)

It is within Dorda’s narrative that I genuinely found myself sad. He grew up with a mother insisting he would “come to a bad end” (183). His mind is fragmented, as he is pestered “with those voices reverberating inside him” (187). When recounting the murder of the peasant girl, he explains that she was “begging him to kill her and the Gaucho paid attention to that voice issuing such softly-spoken orders, telling him what to do” (198). These voices drive him mad, to kill, to rage, and the drugs are what quiets them down. I could not stop leaving the room while reading Chapter 9 to scream. #Justice for Dorda and Brignone

“My mother always knew that I was destined to be misunderstood and nobody has

ever understood me, but occasionally I’ve succeeded in getting someone to love me” (203)

“I listened to her as if face to face with the Argentine version of a Greek tragedy. The heroes were determined to confront and resist the insurmountable, and chose death as their destiny” (208)

It’s important to note that I, or other readers, am not justifying horror but trying to understand it.

Pause for a moment of silence for Brignone.

 

Discussion Question

  1. Where the hell is Malito? Is he a Traitor?
  2. Why is burning money so taboo? Why have we, as a society, deemed paper more valuable than human lives? Why is it then that the crowd is furious?

 

Enjoy the collection of memes I made to deal with Brignone dying.