Month: March 2026

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Ricardo Piglia “Money to Burn”

The “Money to Burn” by Ricardo Piglia was a very gloomy novel to read. At first, I was somewhat confused about who the main characters were (there were multiple characters appearing at once), but it became clear as the story proceeded. The fact that Mereles (The Crow) and Brignone (The Kid) were killed was not too saddening, as they were murderers who killed innocent people. However, their childhood stories were quite shockingly traumatic, and their psychological abnormalities made sense (just the fact that they were mentally unstable, not that their illegal behaviours made sense). Having an aversive childhood doesn’t justify their behaviours, as not everyone raised in such environments becomes a criminal, but it is unfortunate that they made such wrong choices.

Out of the trio, Mereles, Brignone, and Dorda, I found Brignone’s character to be the most interesting and memorable. He seemed to be the most intelligent and rational out of the three, and I guess I felt some empathy for the events that he suffered. Also, as he is referred to as “The Kid”, it makes me feel more unfortunate for his choices, ruining his life and others’ from such a young age (although I anticipate that the trio were all very young; early-mid twenties), and since he comes from a wealthy family it feels like he could have lived a much better life.

The relationship between Brignone and Dorda was also quite interesting. From the last part of the story, it seemed to me that the emotions Dorda felt for Brignone was not just a deep friendship or brotherhood, but lowkey love. They were called twins after all, and the way they treated each other was definitely different than how they treated anyone else, but in the end their relationship became clearer to me.

When thinking about the title of this novel, I’m not too sure if “money to burn” really captures what the story is about. They did burn the money, and this did reveal that their robbery and murdering was not all about the money (pure evils), but… was that the main point of the story…? I just feel like the title only focuses on a very specific part of this very complex story that has much more depth to it.

The first part of the epilogue revealed that this is based on a true story, and this explained why there were many side notes and “(according to…)/ (later revealed…)” along the story. Honestly, the fact that this is based on a true story makes the novel much more interesting to me. The emotions I felt while reading, and the thoughts that I had regarding these criminals feels more worthwhile for me.

Question: What do you think the quote “After all, what is robbing a bank compared to founding one?” means? This was the quote displayed on the very first page of the novel, and even after finishing the novel, I am not sure what this signifies.

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Norman Manea “The Trenchcoat”

“The Trenchcoat” by Norman Manea was another piece of literature that left me confused. From the very beginning, I felt overwhelmed by the number of characters appearing one after another, whilst also trying to understand what was going on. On top of the fact that there were multiple characters, there were also characters that appeared “nameless”. For instance, the Kid, the Guileless One, and the Learned One were all characters without proper names, adding to my confusion. If I had some background knowledge of the settings beforehand, this would have helped, but with this absent, I thought they were people in the middle of an apocalypse at first.

Also, Manea’s style of writing was not the easiest to follow. I doubt it was due to factors such as the level of vocabulary, but despite putting in the effort to slow down and focus, I kept on getting lost. I’m not too sure why, but I did notice the story sounding somewhat diary-like at times. It felt like a dialogue and gave me a sense that it employed a conversational style of language rather than written language (if this makes sense). I assume the continuous use of ellipses throughout the novel would have had an influence on this.

Despite all of this, I do believe it was unique for the author to use the trench coat as an item to symbolize important themes and navigate the storyline. In trying to find the owner of the randomly left behind trench coat, the underlying fear that these characters feel, as this was the time under Romania’s Communist rule and anyone could be a secret police monitoring them. This whole process uncovers the fear that these people had to live in, the fear of being monitored, the censorship during this time, and how it would have created a very tense atmosphere for everyone. These characters were more wealthy or better off people than the general public, so I wonder if their fear of being monitored by the government would have been more intense than the others.

Although I was confused throughout the whole novel, and I still feel like I did not fully understand the story, in a way, I think this could have been intended by the author. Since the time when the story took place was a period of censorship, communism, underlying fear, and confusion, the confusion that I felt as a reader may also have been intended by Manea.

A question I have for discussion is: Do you believe there could have been a different item/thing serving as the trench coat in this story? If so, what would it be?

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Italo Calvino “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler”

“If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino is definitely a unique novel that I have mixed feelings about. From the very first section of the novel, it was interesting that the story unfolded in a second-person point of view, addressing the reader as “you”. This initially made me more interested in continuing to read, and the content, which addressed how I found the book and how my reading environment should be, made me more immersed in the reading experience, as it was a unique start. However, this took a quick turn as I continued reading due to several reasons. First of all, his second-person point of view writing in the novel eventually made me feel a bit disconnected, unlike how it was before. He doesn’t just use the language of “you, your, your’s” but also mentions how I should be thinking or feeling. This gave me a sense of disconnection, as it differed from how I was actually thinking or feeling. Another major strength of the uniqueness of this novel, but also something that served as a barrier for me, was the fact that none of the stories had a distinct ending (except for with Ludmilla). Each of the chapters displayed a new story, which was all interesting in content, but as they did not end with a “typical” distinct end, I progressively lost interest in reading the novel. Once I felt like I was grasping something, it felt like there was a sudden end to it, which lowkey frustrated me at times.

I also acknowledged that the titles of each of the chapters together would actually work to form a short paragraph (I believe there were a hint in the first section of the novel to look at the titles). However, I’m not too sure what exactly this signifies…although I have a sense that this may be the ultimate meaning /message of the novel, which I, as the reader needs to grasp. Any hints? What are your thoughts on this?

As we are half way through the readings in this course (more like 2/3), and also since I happened to find “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” the most challenging so far, I wanted to reflect and compare this to some of the previous readings. Honestly, coming from a person who had little interest in literature, I found myself enjoying these readings more than I had expected. I believe this was true because I found each of the readings to be very unique and different from each other. It is true that they may have a reoccurring theme (ex. traumatic protagonist), but I noticed that many had different narrative styles. For instance, “The Shrouded Woman” was written from the perspective of a dead protagonist, “Combray” was written in first-person point of view, and “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” was done in a second-person point of view. These differences aid me in looking forward to the upcoming readings.

As I mentioned above, I found this literature piece by Calvino to be the most challenging. A part of this is because I happened to find last week’s reading, “The Time of the Doves” to be the easiest to read, unfortunately serving as the most prominent comparison piece of literature to this week’s.

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