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Varamo

by César Aira, Chris Andrews (Translator)

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 269 ratings · 62 reviews

Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previous...more

Paperback, 89 pages

Published February 2012 by New Directions (first published 1999)

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Mar 08, 2012 Lee added it

I read the first fifty pages and had no interest in the ploy or writing or character or derivative metafictional pale fire stuff. Aira has written about how the time period during which a book is written should be studied and he time stamps his books at the end -- I suppose there's some exploration of those ideas here, but I just couldn't hang with it, couldn't pay attention, couldn't care less. As Bolano said, I too find Aira mostly boring -- a lot of that is in the approach, the whimsicality,...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Jeremy added it

Shelves: latin-american-fiction

Aira's ability to create these surreal, domestic little fabulations seems to have no end. He blends melodrama, farce, technical data and latin American history together around a weirdly compelling protagonist whose greatest achievement in life the entire book basically serves as a run up to. The more metaphysical strain in Aira's writing comes out in full force in Varamo more than it does in some of his other books, his musings about causality, art, repetition and finitude are as deftly handled...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: argentina, fiction

Most traditional literature is somewhat like a series of nested matryoshka dolls: You come back out the way you go in. In the process, all unresolved issues are neatly resolved (one hopes), and one has experienced a real 19th century experience.

Well, that doesn't seem to be happening any more, except perhaps in some whodunits. It certainly isn't happening in the slim novels of César Aira, an Argentinean from Coronel Pringles who writes the way a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot cleans: He just moves...more Most traditional literature is somewhat like a series of nested matryoshka dolls: You come back out the way you go in. In the process, all unresolved issues are neatly resolved (one hopes), and one has experienced a real 19th century experience.

Well, that doesn't seem to be happening any more, except perhaps in some whodunits. It certainly isn't happening in the slim novels of César Aira, an Argentinean from Coronel Pringles who writes the way a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot cleans: He just moves in a straight line until he encounters a barrier that sends him off in another direction.

In Varamo, we are in the city of Colón in Panama some 20 years after the Panama Canal was built. Varamo is the name of a Chinese-Panamanian who works for one of the government ministries in Colón. The story begins when, as his pay, he is handed 200 counterfeit pesos which he at once recognizes and is afraid to cash. He walks to the cafe one evening and witnesses an accident in which one of the government ministers is severely injured. That makes him late to the cafe, where he runs into three pirate publishers who urge him to write a book, which Varamo gladly does. It turns out to become a Central American poetry classic: The Song of the Virgin Boy.

Along the way, he encounters other adventures, but this will do for now. In the last paragraph, Aira gives a kind of apologia for his own highly individualistic writing style:

The result was Varamo's famous poem, except that it was less a result in itself than a way of transforming what had preceded it into a result. It produced a kind of automatism or mutual fatality, by which cause and effect changed places and became the same story. Far from diminishing the poem's initial vigor, this circle intensifies it. Which is, in fact, what always happens. If a work is dazzlingly innovative and opens up unexplored paths, the merit is not to be found in the work itself, but in its transformative effect on the historical moment that engendered it. Novelty makes its causes new, giving birth to them retrospectively. If historical time makes us live in the new, a story that attempts to account for the origin of a work of art, that is, a work of innovation, ceases to be a story; it's a new reality, and yet a part of reality as it has always been for everyone. Those who don't believe me can go and see for themselves.

Now there's a manifesto! Aira's "new reality" has, with me, fallen on receptive ears. I have read every Aira book that I could get my hands on. They are all relatively short, but always succeed in defying any attempt at speed-reading. This Argentinean knows how to throw curve balls that bounce all over the place. Following their trajectory across space and time is not only great fun, but also profound, in a weird way.(less)

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Oct 13, 2012 Trevor rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think it’s worth relating an anecdote here. I began reading this book one night just before going to sleep. I was very tired and soon I was reading the same sentence over and over though my mind seemed to keep the story going forward. Eventually I woke myself up enough to put the book down. The next morning I couldn’t help but chuckle about where my mind had drifted the night before: some taxidermist executing his plan to pose a fish playing a piano, only quite a ways into the project realizin...more I think it’s worth relating an anecdote here. I began reading this book one night just before going to sleep. I was very tired and soon I was reading the same sentence over and over though my mind seemed to keep the story going forward. Eventually I woke myself up enough to put the book down. The next morning I couldn’t help but chuckle about where my mind had drifted the night before: some taxidermist executing his plan to pose a fish playing a piano, only quite a ways into the project realizing that fish anatomy doesn’t suit playing a piano. What a bizarre dream, I thought. Of course, the development felt just like a dream; here I had some strange idea that went on for a while before I realized that anatomical flaw and finally moved on. But at breakfast the next morning, a thought: this is Aira. I might not have been dreaming.

You already know, of course, that I wasn’t dreaming. Such is the joy (a part of the joy, that is) of the work of Aira.

So what is this book?

It begins at the end of a workday when Varamo stops to pick up his salary from the government.

"In the interval between that moment and the dawn of the following day, ten or twelve hours later, he completed the composition of a long poem, from the initial decision to write it up to the final period, after which there were no further additions or corrections."

The poem, The Song of the Virgin Child, is declared a masterpiece of modern Central American poetry. It’s the only thing fifty-year-old Varamo had ever written, and he never wrote again. There was just something about that night after picking up his paycheck: “The action contained the inspiration, and vice versa, each nourishing and consuming the other, so that nothing was left over.”

The book Varamo is, from one perspective, a venture through that night seeking what created the poem. Though, playfully, the way we find out what happened is by deducing, “in the most rigorous sense of that word,” from the poem. Aira is playing here, once again, with the creative act in the writing process.

Picking up his salary ushers in a frenzied night of creativity. There is a reason, and it’s one of the fun parts of the book. When Varamo picks up his money, he immediately realizes that it is counterfeit. He cannot, therefore, go out and use the money. On the other hand, he cannot charge the government with giving him counterfeit money. It’s not long after this that we enter a new episode (the one I thought I was dreaming) when we see Varamo engaged in his taxidermy. And the night goes on.

As with his other works (particularly How I Became a Nun and The Seamstress and the Wind), the story plays out in a series of episodes, and the thread holding them together is sometimes rather flimsy, even if that doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter that we get seemingly important (or completely insignificant) facts rather late in the book. For example, we get this at about the half-way point, causing us to rethink our mental image of Varamo:

"His mother was Chinese; he was Chinese; therefore he had to be her son; there could be no doubt about it. The conclusion was irresistible in Panama, for overwhelming demographic reasons."

Varamo is a strange book, and I do think it better for readers new to Aira to start with An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter or Ghosts (two that I think have a lot more substance to them than the rest, which are brilliant mediations on form and style, with excellent episodes, but which, for me, are not as fulfilling). One has to just let Aira go and trust that in the end it will be quite an experience, even if it’s hard to make sense of.

I also think it pays to know a bit about Aira’s creative process, which is a frequent theme in his books. For example, I think some may be disappointed that Varamo’s poem itself is hardly discussed in the book, though it is the whole reason we care about Varamo’s life at all (Aira is always brings something up and then drops it). We don’t read a line of The Song of the Virgin Child. Because we never really discuss the poem itself, it feels like a mere plot device, which can be frustrating. That said, the poem also the device that allows Aira to discuss some of his ideas about the creative act in the writing process, and, in particular, how to achieve “immediacy,” which, as Varamo is told, “is the key to good style.” (Immediacy is one thing Aira always achieves in his books.) Varamo is a great look at the mixture of form and substance and the life that creates each.(less)

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Oct 07, 2012 RJ Myato rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was the second Aira book I read after "The Literary Conference," and I think I enjoyed this one a bit more. There are certainly more ideas packed in here, with frequent free indirect discourse on economics, politics, literature, the publishing industry, the avant-garde, and anything else.

The chatty, improvisational style is here, but in the third person this time, and the digressions are more philosophical and less introverted or personal than in "The Literary Conference." The plot is more...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For full review click here: http://bit.ly/GPzqMF This latest little recently translated gem by Cesar Aira is only 89 pages long but packs in more fanciful ideas and crazy images than you would find in most 200+ page novels. This book took me about an hour to read (maybe a little less) and by the end I felt like I’d just woken up from a really trippy, weird food inspired dream.

The basic plot of the book concerns the titular character, Varamo, a 1920′s government employee in Panama. In the opening...more For full review click here: http://bit.ly/GPzqMF This latest little recently translated gem by Cesar Aira is only 89 pages long but packs in more fanciful ideas and crazy images than you would find in most 200+ page novels. This book took me about an hour to read (maybe a little less) and by the end I felt like I’d just woken up from a really trippy, weird food inspired dream.

The basic plot of the book concerns the titular character, Varamo, a 1920′s government employee in Panama. In the opening scenes of the novel, he is handed his paycheck, which unfortunately turns out to be counterfeit money. In the last pages of the book, he sits down and writes “the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy,” despite having never previously written or read a single line of poetry or any form of literature.

The way that Varamo gets from Point A (counterfeit money) to Point B (literary infamy) is the the book’s main subject. Aira has a lot of fun with this idea of sequences–in a way it’s the perfect subject for him, because a lot of his fiction plays with how one thing can lead to the next. Aira is famous for his writing style, in which nothing is discarded but instead he just keeps the pen moving and goes on to the next page. It’s like all his books are one giant freewrite. This occasionally gives his books a slightly improvisatory feel–in the middle of reading a page you sometimes you feel like you’re “reading” the act of him coming up with his ideas.

A great example of this “one thing leads to another” method is the sequence in which we learn about Varamo’s side hobby: embalming dead mutant animals. First of all, the idea of embalming as a hobby is just plain hilarious. I also liked how Aira uses the description of embalming as way to mention all the pollution and toxic metals that are getting thrown into the water by the foreign companies digging the canal (it’s a great way to make an important point without hitting us over the head with a long political rant). I loved his description of how he tries to embalm a fish to look like it’s playing a miniature piano, before he realizes (what a mistake!) that fish have no arms, so then he’s stuck with trying to make it look like it’s playing a wind instrument instead.

The other aspect I enjoyed most about this book was the way that things that appear in earlier pages reappear later on in the book in unexpected and delightful (or sometimes just plain weird) ways. A candy that Varamo throws away in a bush in the main square, for example, reappears on the next to last page as the inspiration for Varamo’s last epiphany before he heads home to start work on his masterpiece.

There were a lot of ideas I loved in this book, and I don’t have enough time to cite or fully describe them all. I do need to namecheck regularity racing, a concept that is just plain delightful. Regularity racing is a form of auto racing that Varamo witnesses, in which the winner is the person who drives the most punctually at the most average speed on the race course and reaches the top-secret checkpoints at pre-determined times. “In fact,” Aira writes, “competing in a regularity rally was so nerve-wracking that it could turn a normal and previously law-abiding citizen into an anarchist.”

I could go on and on about things I liked about this book; Aira is always like a rich little treasure trove for me. (less)

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Feb 06, 2012 jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: translation, fiction

of the dozens of books césar aira has published in his native spanish (sometimes a few in a single year), varamo is only the seventh to be translated into english. though comprised of his trademark improvisational style and seemingly unrelated thematic elements, varamo did not seem to coalesce as well as some of his previous works. it is indeed a good book, but perhaps one not as reflective of his obvious capacity for storytelling proficiency. part of the charm of reading aira is never knowing w...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, novella

The back cover of this short novella compares it to Borges, which seems to be a common comparison among Argentine authors, at least the ones more available in English translation. Although if you had asked me, I would have said the book was 80 percent Chesterton (of The Man Who Was Thursday), 15 percent Nabokov (of Pale Fire), and at most 5 percent Borges. And a reasonably well executed version of that.

It describes less than twenty-four hours in the life of a Panamanian civil servant in the 1930...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Tom Lichtenberg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-american-literature

"The idea was to simulate naturalness, in other words, to make it up as he went along. That might have seemed the easiest thing in the world, the paragon of easiness, but in fact there was nothing more difficult."

This quote from Varamo, by Cesar Aira, suggests the author's own methodology. Aira is said to begin with an idea or two and then just go with it, writing full steam ahead and never looking back, never making revisions or altering what has come before no matter how the story develops. Hi...more "The idea was to simulate naturalness, in other words, to make it up as he went along. That might have seemed the easiest thing in the world, the paragon of easiness, but in fact there was nothing more difficult."

This quote from Varamo, by Cesar Aira, suggests the author's own methodology. Aira is said to begin with an idea or two and then just go with it, writing full steam ahead and never looking back, never making revisions or altering what has come before no matter how the story develops. His books are short novels, generally around the same length, full of unpredictability and invention, occasionally interrupted with philosophical or literary musings before bounding off again in any direction whatever. So far, six of his several dozen books have been translated into English and published by New Directions. I've now read all of those.

Varamo is typical Aira in many ways. There seems to be no possible way to get from his point A to his point B, yet you know full well from the start that he will definitely negotiate a path. Varamo begins when a minor civil servant is paid in counterfeit currency, and ends with his creation of a landmark masterpiece of Latin American poetry, though he is no poet and never wrote anything before or afterward. Along the way there are any number of remarkable and wholly unforeseeable twists and turns. Rather than whodunnits, Aira writes "whadeydos". They did what? They what? Then what? Really? Are you kidding me?

It's impossible to describe the innards of an Aira book without revealing the spoilers which constitute the great pleasure of reading them. On the other hand, you can safely highlight some passages which reveal why you would want to:

"He had developed a superstitious fear of the instant, that tiny hole through which all the time available to human beings must pass."

"Varamo had always wondered how people managed to go on living. Now he thought he knew the answer: they could do it because they didn't have to wonder how they would change their counterfeit bills."

"Noise itself made a noise of its own: subtle, doubled over."

"Life simply had too many qualities, not to mention the impossibility of knowing for certain what they were."(less)

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May 16, 2013 Luis Silva rated it 5 of 5 stars

César Aira’s Varamo is a reconstruction of the events that lead a lowly civil servant to the creation of a cultural masterpiece. It is an exploration on the source of inspiration, reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’ penchant for turning the abstract discussion of art into the mechanics of a plot. A sort of adventure that is played out on a Pynchonian stage.

Aira presents this story as an essay written in the style of a fictional narrative. The narration even muses on its own use of the free indire...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Alex V. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a thing for South American poets that write novels about poets that are chasing poetry like a runaway kite. Especially in their short books. This has that charged kind of prose found on Bolaño's By Night In Chile or Aira's own weirdly cool How I Became a Nun, without being quite as good as either of those. I read this cover to cover sitting by the pool in 98° heat and it flew by without either the reader or the protagonist quite knowing what was going on or why we were following the trail...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Michael Jantz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another brilliant-but-brief piece of philosophical fiction from Aira. This was the last English-translation of his that I read (hopefully there are many more to come), and like the others that ND has produced, it has a nice mixture of realism, fantasy, and philosophy. Aira tells us the premise of the story early, within the first couple pages, and then produces a detailed unfolding of the story. He crafts the story so carefully, foreshadowing events within the first few pages, and then waiting u...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Julie H. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Varamo is a quirky little novella that successfully juggles many themes. On the one hand, it's a 12-hour window into the life of a government worker in 1920s Panama who is jolted out of his well-trodden and issue-laden rut when he is paid late one afternoon in counterfeit bills. On the other hand, it's a supremely self-aware little consideration of such themes as identity, family, nation, power, public opinion, literary production, criticism and creativity.

This was the first of Aira's books tha...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Funny, poetic, sly, and joyful: not a plot summary but a description of how this novella made me feel. I could see how Aira and Bolaño were good friends: both share a sense of the mischievous, an appreciation for serendipity, and political plots. An outline of the action? The hero, Varama, a Panamanian civil servant, is accidentally paid his monthly salary in counterfeit bills, has difficulty in buying a piece of candy on the way home, attempts to taxidermy a fish once home, has dinner with his...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a pretty quick read, in spite of the distancing (and decelerating) use of free indirect discourse, which Aira himself comments on, how it makes the subject (the titular Varamo) an object. The unlikelihood of the first plot action-- accepting, instead of refusing, the counterfeit bills-- sort of nagged me throughout, the way I used to shake my head watching old TV shows thinking they complicated things for the sake of having a plot. But there's a lot in here that's very funny, including...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Donovan Richards rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One Day

A lot can happen in a day. While some submit to the 9-to-5 workload, others live on varied schedules. Some spend their free time whittling their talents through hobbies and side jobs; others need nothing more than a couch and a compelling television series. Have you ever considered the days in advance of the world’s greatest art? How did Michelangelo prepare for the Sistine Chapel? What did Melville do in the weeks ahead of his Moby Dick draft? What are you doing with your life right now?...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Arlo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I definitely enjoyed the prose, (big fan of Aira in general) and the book over all. My only complaint is the book took me below the surface on philosophical tangents several times that essentially just dangled there. For instance very early on in the book Varamo can not find change for his bills. There being a shortage in money the common man is paid in(coins), as coins are to expensive to manufacture. Those in power are paid in paper money(higher denominations) that are cheaper to make thus no...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Ariadna73 rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

To read my review in spanish; click on this link: http://lunairereadings.blogspot.com/2...
This book is another example of the magic realism. This short story describes what happened to mr. Varamo; a gray public servant; in the ten hours he took to write a masterpiece of poetry. He was not a poet or any kind of writer for that matter; but nevertheless; he created this wonderful work that was ever since referenced as the work of a super genious. Aira describes every little aspect of what happened...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Patty rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Based on the reviews I've read, and I even did my best to read a few in spanish, I'm going to say that this little expirement was a failure. I will also say that even fans of Aira's books, who read it because they really like his other books, may think that this is a subpar novel for him. Readers who haven't read any of his books should start elsewhere.

Even so, I'm giving it 5 stars, because I think it's that good. This is a very complicated, very slim, novel about abstraction and critism. Many...more Based on the reviews I've read, and I even did my best to read a few in spanish, I'm going to say that this little expirement was a failure. I will also say that even fans of Aira's books, who read it because they really like his other books, may think that this is a subpar novel for him. Readers who haven't read any of his books should start elsewhere.

Even so, I'm giving it 5 stars, because I think it's that good. This is a very complicated, very slim, novel about abstraction and critism. Many of the reviews (if not all) have described this as a book about a bureaucrat turned poet, and the circumstances under which he wrote his masterwork. That's a mistake. This is a novel about a literary critic, who also happens to the narrator of our story about the bureaucrat, and whom many readers have mistaken for Aira. (It's a common occurance, readers mistaking the narrator's voice for the author's voice, so it's no surprise that it's happened here.) By the way, this review contains spoilers, so you may want to stop reading here. (view spoiler)

The novel is very small, only 89 pages in my edition, but it took me a whole week to finish. It was so mentally stimulating that every three paragraphs or so, I had to stop and mull, and then I'd usually go back three paragraphs to get my bearings and then maybe have to stop and mull again. It might be the most challenging book I've read this year, and I loved it for that. (less)

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Jun 29, 2012 Kevin Elliott rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some say that everyone has a story in them. In the case of César Aira's Varamo, the story in question happens to be a masterpiece. How the masterpiece came to be is another story and the primary focus of Aira's novel. Within the first paragraph of the book, the reader is made aware of the plot. Aira sets up his philosophical meditation on the nature of creativity -- and more specifically, writing -- by laying bare the ending.

Varamo (the eponymous protagonist) is an unimpressive bureaucrat from...more Some say that everyone has a story in them. In the case of César Aira's Varamo, the story in question happens to be a masterpiece. How the masterpiece came to be is another story and the primary focus of Aira's novel. Within the first paragraph of the book, the reader is made aware of the plot. Aira sets up his philosophical meditation on the nature of creativity -- and more specifically, writing -- by laying bare the ending.

Varamo (the eponymous protagonist) is an unimpressive bureaucrat from Panama who is paid his monthly wages with counterfeit currency and writes a masterpiece of modern Central American poetry entitled The Song of the Virgin Child twenty-four hours later. His life has not produced any previous inclination to write and will not produce any further urge beyond the one masterful poem. Instead of focusing on the content of Varamo's masterpiece, Aira's short novel takes us from the protagonist's bashful complicity and anxiety over his counterfeit wages through the night until the moment writerly inspiration strikes.

Aira is known for his "flight forward" style of writing, which can be described as a mindful stream of consciousness that adheres to the author's higher awareness of structure. The writing in Varamo is brisk and improvisational, taking us through dreams of embalmed fish playing a piano, a golf club smuggling ring and analysis of the bureaucrat's gambling-addict mother at such breakneck speed and careful clarity, that the reader almost forgets about the masterpiece which is being discussed until the last page.

While this book is both an exploration of the craft of writing and a celebration of the ordinary lives being lived by the majority of people in the world, I also get the sense that it is a peek at the author's own writing methods. Careful readers might sense that the anxiety that Varamo feels at the beginning of the novel is more than just symbolism for the uneasiness that propels a writer's thoughts onto the page. It is as if Aira has played with structure and style to inject himself as an omnipresent character that is never mentioned.

The easy comparisons for any Argentine writer are Borges and Cortazar. Aira's work displays his influences proudly, but also carves out a place in South American literature all its own. Varamo is a book that can be casually enjoyed for its meandering and quirky plot, but the reader who puts forth the effort to connect the pieces of the story will be pleasantly satisfied with the way Aira delivers and surprises in the end.(less)

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Mar 06, 2012 Mike Puma rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fewer than the few

Shelves: argentine-author, new-directions-publishing, 2012

Tough call on this one—a very tough call.

It’s become commonplace for me to begin or end these meager reviews with the caution: Not for everyone. Or, a recommendation to “the few.” The same caveat applies to Varamo; this is not fiction for the casual reader. I know, I know, arrogant, but there it is. For those who are story-dependent, this would not be my first suggestion…or third…or one hundredth. Better, perhaps, is to recommend this one to those who like books about books or writing—FICTION a

...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Palma rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

la novela mas airana de aira q lei

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May 15, 2013 Art rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A rewarding chance find, this one -- a 95 page novel set in 1920's Panama, elegantly translated from Spanish, about the sequence of strange events between a man being paid his monthly salary in counterfeit bills and, having never written poetry before, writing and completing a classic epic poem the same night. With a unique, Calvino-esque tone, the themes here are the act of converging and maintaining a steady speed, the ebb and flow of human relations, and the art of taxidermy... Varamo is a st...more

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Jun 28, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think I had an easier time following this than any other Aira I've read. It was still fun in how it is supposed to be about how this writer gets inspired to write an extremely important avant-garde poem when he's never written before, but most of what happens seems to be unconnected events that end up leading to the moment of inspiration. That seems to go hand in hand with the repeated theme about things being reduced to steps and then they can be done with a minimum of effort but somehow that...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Jessica added it · review of another edition

In just 88 pages, César Aira’s Varamo (New Directions) contains more quirkiness than a Wes Anderson movie.

The book is named for the book’s protagonist, Varamo, a bureaucrat in Colon, Panama, who lives an ordinary life. But one afternoon, he receives counterfeit money for his salary. Varamo is a decent man and feels confused about what to do with the money.

He tries to go on with his life – such as embalming small animals to create wacky scenes; dealing with his temperamental mother; and going to...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Jim Elkins rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: argentine

This completes my reading of all Aira's books in English translation, as of February 2012. I am disappointed to see how, when the books are read in quantity, the strangeness of any one or two of them diminishes. This is partly the effect of magic realism, which decreases in magic as the magic proliferates. (Soon everything is indulgent and secular.)[return][return]It's also the effect of the lack of rules he imposes on himself: that lessens my engagement. In the end, I'd prefer he be stricter on...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-in-translation, hispanic

Aira spends a few pages in the middle of this novel telling the reader that it is not a novel at all but literary criticism. He claims that the circumstances of any piece of literature's creation can be deduced from the work itself, and in fact the entire novel is 'about' the circumstances that lead up to creation of a seminal [fictional] poem that he insists we accept on faith as the beginning of a remarkable avant garde movement. Surreal, interesting, but it didn't really change my view of lit...more

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May 25, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-or-novella, spain, argentina, review-copy

Varamo is such an interesting little work! It’s only 95 pages long (one of the series of Giramondo Shorts) so I packed it in my suitcase to read on the plane to Moscow, but I found that it took longer to read than I’d expected because I lingered over it.

Cesar Aira is a rising star in Latin American literature, heir perhaps to the late Roberto Bolano in that he writes about bizarre, unpredictable events that have a kind of crazy logic to them. But Bolano writes very long books: I’ve only read The...more

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May 13, 2012 Susie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, good-read, insatiable-booksluts-reviewed, indie-press

I rated this book 5/5 stars on InsatiableBooksluts.com.

Review excerpt (from a Death Match post against Bad Nature or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías):

"I enjoyed this book–indeed, reading Varamo got me out of my post-holiday reading slump. (Yay!) The book started off a humorous read, but the hilarity of it didn’t click for me until halfway through, when I found myself cackling as the narrator described how, exactly, he had come by his information about Varamo to write the book. (I won’t spo...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: galley-review-copy, personal-library, translation, paperback, favorites

No one writes like César Aira. His small novellas – usually under a hundred pages – contain line-after-line of sublime prose. Each is a tiny, carefully articulated, universe. Like a miniature diorama you can lose yourself in for hours. The plots, on the other hand, appear relatively straight-forward. Deceptively so, in my opinion.

Varamo is “a third-class clerk” working for the Panamanian government. In the year 1923, during the ten- to twelve-hours described in this novel, he will be inspired an...more

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About César Aira

César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of...more César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication –two to four novella-length books each year.[1]

Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a “flight forward” (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the “continuum” (el continuo) of a constant movement forward in the fictional narrative. As a result his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and “subliterary” genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas; on the other hand, he frequently deliberately refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended.

While his subject matter ranges from Surrealist or Dadaist quasi-nonsense to fantastic tales set in his Buenos Aires neighborhood in Flores, Aira also returns frequently to Argentina’s nineteenth century (the two books translated into English, The Hare and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, are examples of this; so is the best-known novel of his early years, "Ema la cautiva" (Emma, the Captive)). He also returns regularly to play with stereotypes of an exotic East ("Una novela china", A Chinese Novel); "El volante" (The Flyer), and "El pequeño monje budista" (The Little Buddhist Monk)). Aira also enjoys mocking himself and his childhood home town Coronel Pringles in fictions such as "Cómo me hice monja" (How I Became a Nun), "Cómo me reí" (How I Laughed), “El cerebro musical” (The Musical Brain) and "Las curas milagrosas del doctor Aira" (The Miraculous Cures of Dr. Aira). His novella La prueba (1992) served as the basis --or point of departure; only the first half-hour follows the novella-- of Diego Lerman's film Tan de repente (Suddenly) (2002). His novel "Cómo me hice monja" (How I Became a Nun) was selected as one of the best 10 publications in Spain in the year 1998.

Besides his fiction, and the translation work he does for a living, Aira also writes literary criticism, including monographic studies of Copi, the poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and the nineteenth-century British limerick and nonsense writer Edward Lear. He wrote a short book, Las tres fechas [The Three Dates], arguing for the central importance, when approaching some minor eccentric writers, of examining the moment of their lives about which they are writing , the date of completion of the work, and the date of publication of the work. Aira also was the literary executor of the complete works of his friend the scabrous poet-novelist Osvaldo Lamborghini (1940–1985).

The American publisher, New Directions, has put out four of his works in English translation (An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, How I Became A Nun, Ghosts, The Literary Conference). New Directions plans to publish more works of Aira's in the near future.

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An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

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Quotes from Varamo

“He couldn’t believe that sleep had robbed him of this spectacle night after night. Such are the writer’s privileges, he thought, nostalgic already for the present.” — 4 people liked it

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