What an interesting read! Indiana’s imaginative prose is colourful and inimitable; I sailed through this novel. Something that really stood out to me is the grief palpable throughout the narrative; it is as if the young narrator is mourning her Papi’s death before she even learns of it, creating these elaborate scenarios of a life she, nor her father, even lead as a means of mitigating the feelings of abandonment she’s been grappling with since eight years old, and likely long before then.
I think the gradual build of these hypothetical tales before—boom—the reveal of Papi’s death in the last section of the novel is effective in eliciting readers’ empathy on a deeper level; up until this point, we’ve been planted in the young girl’s mind experiencing her emotions as if in real time, so the plunge into her anguished perplexity as she attempts to come to terms with her father’s loss is especially visceral. The most notable sections for me were page 111 (“The first car, crazy. It crashed into you, it crashed into you. A driverless car, a headless driver. Here it comes”)—especially after learning he wasn’t hit by a car but shot…or I think he was shot? Honestly, it’s hard to track truth from fiction in this book. Tactful on Indiana’s part I’m sure—and page 125 (“That is not my dad. You have to see, just look. You have to look at him”). This chaotic prose is easy to follow, yet difficult to process, which I believe should be a place to land in when sitting in on someone else’s mourning.
I appreciate what Jon had to say about the themes of sexuality and gender in this novel, particularly “the narrator’s desire to take on [Papi’s] attributes and ultimately to replace him entirely”; I hadn’t picked up on this in my reading, but in thinking of Papi and his associates’ chauvinistic view of women coupled with the narrator’s gender expression, it’s quite possible the narrator wants to stray away from being objectified in the manner her Papi objectifies women just as much as she wants to be more masc, or to more specifically be her father. This is exemplified when Papi takes the young narrator to a business dinner and the men “talk about their pals’ wives, about their pals’ wives’ daughters, and how much those daughters look like them” (60), harping not only on the sexualisation of women, but the sexualisation of girls, girls like her—…super disturbing. Moreover, the feminising of Papi (as Jon also pointed out in his lecture) in combination with the narrator’s androgyny could hint at the fluidity with which the narrator sees their own gender, and perhaps gender as a whole.
I notice this novel delves deep into the mind of a young female narrator, similar to the perspective Campobello employs in Cartucho; both novels engross readers in the language and emotions two distinct young voices lean on to convey the aftermath of death and how one navigates grief. Both narrators are compelling, but not super reliable. Did anyone else pick up on this? Can you draw any other parallels between Papi’s narrator and others explored in the course thus far?
“This chaotic prose is easy to follow, yet difficult to process”
That’s a really nice way of putting it–and I agree. Perhaps this strange cross between “easy” and “difficult” is also a result of the child narrator, which as you say we’ve already seen in Cartucho (and elsewhere, but Cartucho is a good comparison because it’s also a text dealing with trauma, as you also point out). I wonder if it’s also a result of the way in which Indiana is in some ways mimicking the style of the media (TV, advertising, not yet the Internet), full of brash and bold colours and quick transitions and the like, designed to draw you in, but more puzzling if you slow it down and think twice about what it’s saying.
Hello, i loved you post and enjoyed reading your reflections on the book! I also didn’t fully realize about the narrator’s desire to take over the roles and figure of his father until i watched the professor’s lecture. As you said, she probably didn’t want to grow up and become one more women who is objectified and used by men. Rather than taking Papi’s attitude negatively, she embraced it and admired it in a way, similar to how she admired Papi’s wealth and success. Answering you question about the similarities and paralellism between this novel and others we have read so far, I did notice some common themes. In this novel, as well as in “Pedro Paramo” and in “Mama Blanca’s Memoirs”, there is a main character who doesn’t have a present father figure in their lives, which affects them in different ways. However, what is especial about the character in “Papi” is that she is a child who tells her point of view from the perspective of an innocent young girl.