The Famous Magician
Published September 27th 2022 by New Directions (first published 2013), Hardcover 60 pages
A certain writer (“past sixty, enjoying ‘a certain renown’”) strolls through the old book market in a Buenos Aires park: “My Sunday walk through the market, repeated over so many years, was part of my general fantasizing about books.” It helps him “know what my as-yet unwritten books would be about.” Unfortunately, he is currently suffering writer’s block. Soon, however, that proves to be the least of our hero’s problems. There in the market, he tries and fails to avoid the insufferable boor Ovando—“a complete loser,” but a “man supremely full of himself”: “Conceit was never less justified.” And yet, is Ovando a master magician? Can he turn sugar cubes into pure gold? And can our protagonist decline the offer Ovando proposes: absolute power if the writer never in his life reads another book? And, is his publisher also a great magician? And the writer’s wife?
Only César Aira could have cooked up this witch’s potion (and only he would plop phantom Mont Blanc pens into his cauldron, as well as jackals and fearsome crocodiles from the banks of the Nile)—a brew bubbling over with the question: where does literature end and magic begin?
User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Another classic Aira from the publisher New Directions - short (
very short), genre-defying, semi-autofictional (well, you never know …), playful, meditative, surreal, real, with moments of the delirious that loop back into reality or the imagination of reality (again, you never know…). While not the most accessible introduction to Aira, despite its brevity, it’s a pure reading joy for his admirers and I am happy to count myself among them.
This time, through a magical plotless tale, Aira ruminates on the meaning of literature in the life of a writer as well as any avid reader. It’s also about the limitations of the conventional literary forms as vehicles for expressing both the thoughts and imagination.
It starts with a Mephistophelian offer from a character Ovando whom the aging narrator-writer occasionally meets in the neighborhood and local bookstores: to give up writing and reading in return for the all-encompassing power over everything. The offer is credible as Ovando immediately demonstrates his magical powers. To tell more than that would give away a spoiler, paradoxically so as the “story” is plotless (in its standard meaning) and, like some of his other writings, written as a fictional essay (or reverse). This quote strikes me to cogently distill several dilemmas that the narrator-writer (Aira?) faces in response to this bargain, which are magically interpolated into the flow of the story:
Everything was interrelated; or rather, everything was coming together, converging on a precipitous vertex, like an imperialist perspective. The sham magic that my novels had staged, and the real magic opening up before me. But also my possible conversion from novelist to essayist, and thirdly, and most importantly, my going on or giving up as a writer.
Though he is decidedly averse to novelistic plots, there is actually an ending to the story as a resolution to these dilemmas, but, characteristically for Aira, it’s unexpected and, moreover, open to different interpretations... :-)
My thanks to New Directions and Edelweiss for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
This is from a new series from New Directions, Storybook, which claim to be, according to their website, slim hardback fiction that, ‘deliver the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon.’
I’ve some quibble with that, but first to the book..
I’m a huge Aira fan, more so of his horror and humour, but I admire everything I’ve read from him.
This fits more into his postmodern work, it’s playful, and although he never refers to himself, self-reflective. He offers up that he doesn’t write about himself as there are too many ‘painful scars’ he wants to forget. But he obviously does, as with this, and things like the wonderful The Literary Conference.
Here, after a bout of writer’s block, he wanders to the market and unsuccessfully avoids a meeting with the insufferable boor, Ovando, ‘a complete loser’.
They take coffee, and the writer’s opinion of Ovando is soon altered when he pulls off some impressive feats of magic, including turning a sugar cube into gold.
Offered the chance to learn the skills involved, the writer is told that he must give up literature. He has a choice to make.
Typical Aira in many ways; deranged, outrageous, quietly amusing and unputdownable.
Back to New Directions though.. their series of hardback fiction is only available in ebook at the moment. 48 pages for £6.50.. too much.
Put two of his short works together perhaps? Or lower the price.
I suspect at the moment the only people who will buy are fans of his like me.
It’s a pity, because there are several others in the series I would really like to read… in time, I guess, they will be reduced.
Rating: really liked it
"-¿Me dijiste que te iba a prohibir leer?
- Dijo que es una actividad nociva.
-¡Vaya si lo es! Por eso es que la apreciamos tanto. "
Compré este mini libro en la Feria del Libro, en el stand de la Biblioteca Nacional. Había una máquina (antes expendedora de cigarillos) ahora acondicionada como expendedora de libros. Ponías tu monedita, elegías tu autor, y salía el pequeño libro en una cajita. Así y todo, a pesar de su tamaño es completamente legible a lo largo de sus 166 páginas.
Es la primera vez que leo a Aira, y como ya había leído sobre su obra, sabía en parte qué esperar y de verdad no me decepcionó.
Por momentos real, por momentos disparatado, no supe hasta último momento cuál iba a ser la respuesta del protagonista al ofrecimiento del Mago.
Puse mi frase favorita de este libro al comienzo de esta reseña. Leer, además de nocivo, podría ser adictivo también verdad? Qué peligro, y nosotros seguimos leyendo!
Seguramente leeré pronto otra obra de Aira.
Rating: really liked it
Simpático, pero poco más.
Rating: really liked it
Me costó muchísimo agarrarle la onda...me parece que lo voy a releer jajaj
Rating: really liked it
Aira works the theme of the writer and his capacity to create something new in the world in many novels. In this novel, he works on an old trope that many others have ventured, including Borges and Dario. What makes Aira so great at it is that he makes the fantastic real, not just believable but real, the same way Kafka creates nightmares that we experience. Aria’s aesthetics is weave and unweave the same way Penelope does in The Odyssey who teases to move on from her husband but never does. He tries to stop writing but continues in the process of stopping.
Rating: really liked it
Hermoso y pequeño rato con César Aira en su típico estilo de "fantasticidios" literarios.
Rating: really liked it
Los lectores buscamos lectores tanto como buscamos libros,los primeros, ay, más raros que los segundos
Rating: really liked it
Beautiful struggle and I am grateful for the magic paper and print can do in skilfull hands.
Rating: really liked it
Aira's latest story to be translated into English is also one of Aira's shorter stories to fill a single volume, which works to Aira's advantage in this case. This yarn of 43 pages just unspools, unplotted (as usual), as Aira, beginning with a premise and a character, sees where such a premise can take such a character, and improvises his way from one thing to another, sometimes arriving back at the subject of his tale, sometimes leaving the starting point far behind. As far as I can tell, people who seem unable to enjoy un-plotted novels are frustrated by the stories not going or ending in directions that satisfy their expectations. I find it frustrating to already know where the dialogue and story are going, and am disappointed every time my stereotyping is confirmed.
I’ll avoid summing up The Famous Magician because (a) spoiler alerts and (b) the point is to get lost in the story wherever the narrator’s thoughts take it, (c) which are usually silly places, and (d) you either enjoy the unusual, improbable, and silly—all told with a straight face—or not.
