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The Magic Dog: And Other Stories
Benítez Rojo, Antonio. The Magic Dog and Other Stories. Selection, edition and introduction by Frank Janney. First edition. Hanover, N.H., Ediciones del Norte, 1990. 12.5 x 20cm. (13), 261 pages. Original softcover. Very good condition. Winner of Pushcart and Casa de las Américas prizes, these stories lead the reader down the paths of magical realism, the absurd, and the fantastic, to take us before the dense grain of Caribbean reality. Benítez Rojo addresses the problem of colonial heritage, neo-colonialism, and dependency. [From jacket notes]
261 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1990
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About the author
Antonio Benítez Rojo
17 books12 followersAntonio Benítez-Rojo fue un novelista, ensayista y escritor de historias cortas cubano. Generalmente es indicado como el más significativo autor cubano de su generación. Su obra ha sido traducida en nueve idiomas y recopilada en más de cincuenta antologías.
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August 22, 2011
This from Wikipedia on the author: Antonio Benítez-Rojo (March 14, 1931 – January 5, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as the most significant Cuban author of his generation.[1] His work has been translated into nine languages and collected in more than 50 anthologies.
Here is my review from the San Francisco Chronicle in June 1990:
Antonio Benitez Rojo, a Cuban writer who defected in 1980 and is now an Amherst College professor, writes with such an avid appreciation of the power of imagination that his stories often shimmer off the page. However, in ''The Magic Dog and Other Stories,'' that skill just isn't enough to leave a reader satisfied.
This collection, compiled and edited by Frank Janney, feels like a greatest-hits album pieced together from various concept albums. Benitez Rojo has range, but the dozen stories in this book pull us in a dizzying array of directions.
Midway through the book, for example, ''Skin Deep'' succeeds in evoking an uncommon emotional pitch. This 6 page story ably conjures the tormented narrator's remembrance of his lost lover, a beautiful black singer whom he drove away by his shame over their mixed-race relationship and his reticence about supporting the Cuban revolution. (''And I will walk pensively away, the memory of your skin burning slowly and evenly, like the finest Havana cigar.'')
After this haunting gem comes ''The Scissors,'' another good story, which sketches in rich detail an awful dream that propels a man back into colonial Havana. For anyone who knows the sensation of being trapped in a dream, the story has a disturbing grip. But it connects with the previous story only disjointedly and, moving onto the next story in the collection, ''Gentleman's Agreement,'' which is written in an almost historigraphical style, readers will feel a little mystified to find themselves being asked to switch gears yet again.
Still, Benitez Rojo's love of imagination keeps us turning these pages. In ''Gentleman's Agreement,'' which sets out to offer a fresh angle on the book's leitmotif -- the legacy of colonialism and the powerlessness and drift that are inescapably part of the Latin landscape -- what comes through is Benitez Rojo's joy in imagining himself into the cabin of Jesus of Lubeck, the ship that the Englishman John Hawkins uses to pick up and sell slaves.
Details abound. The curtains of the cabin are worn in spots. The yellow astrolabe, an instrument of navigation, has a ciphered rim that is white from fixing latitudes. The muzzle of the 18-pounder is shapely. The story unfolds with this kind of detail, but by the time the important character comes along, a black man whose name is only guessed at -- ''Diego? Pedro?'' -- few additional details are provided.
The cabin and the characters are sketched with such force of conviction that the aim, to make the reader identify with a smart, resourceful slave who bargains for his freedom, fizzles. Benitez Rojo has squandered his storyteller's nimbleness in an almost decadent embrace of the characters we are being asked to loathe.
An argument could be made that the story is about the banality of evil, but that's not what's going on here. Benitez Rojo is a writer who believes the imagination should do whatever it wants. This is an exciting and liberating view, one that deserves a fair hearing, but it does not always make for good art.
The title story, ''The Magic Dog,'' with the most unmistakable magical realism of the batch, has fun with free-flowing imagining. There's a magic dog who brings good luck, but only if the lucky couple who take care of him also do their proper share of good works. When they fail, everything falls apart. While predictable and undemanding, the story is sustained by fine writing.
Not until the final story does Benitez Rojo share his full approach to imagining. The man of ''The Man in the Armchair'' mostly sits there as Benitez Rojo has a great time making up details that might or might not connect with him, and with the woman in the next room, and the girl wheezily sleeping in the bedroom. Eventually Benitez Rojo spins it all out into a story, then immediately asks us to scrap the whole thing and start over.
Ediciones del Norte plans to publish one of Benitez Rojo's novels later this year, which should offer a clearer look at his work, but for now the curious reader of Latin American fiction will find this uneven collection a worthy experiment.
Here is my review from the San Francisco Chronicle in June 1990:
Antonio Benitez Rojo, a Cuban writer who defected in 1980 and is now an Amherst College professor, writes with such an avid appreciation of the power of imagination that his stories often shimmer off the page. However, in ''The Magic Dog and Other Stories,'' that skill just isn't enough to leave a reader satisfied.
This collection, compiled and edited by Frank Janney, feels like a greatest-hits album pieced together from various concept albums. Benitez Rojo has range, but the dozen stories in this book pull us in a dizzying array of directions.
Midway through the book, for example, ''Skin Deep'' succeeds in evoking an uncommon emotional pitch. This 6 page story ably conjures the tormented narrator's remembrance of his lost lover, a beautiful black singer whom he drove away by his shame over their mixed-race relationship and his reticence about supporting the Cuban revolution. (''And I will walk pensively away, the memory of your skin burning slowly and evenly, like the finest Havana cigar.'')
After this haunting gem comes ''The Scissors,'' another good story, which sketches in rich detail an awful dream that propels a man back into colonial Havana. For anyone who knows the sensation of being trapped in a dream, the story has a disturbing grip. But it connects with the previous story only disjointedly and, moving onto the next story in the collection, ''Gentleman's Agreement,'' which is written in an almost historigraphical style, readers will feel a little mystified to find themselves being asked to switch gears yet again.
Still, Benitez Rojo's love of imagination keeps us turning these pages. In ''Gentleman's Agreement,'' which sets out to offer a fresh angle on the book's leitmotif -- the legacy of colonialism and the powerlessness and drift that are inescapably part of the Latin landscape -- what comes through is Benitez Rojo's joy in imagining himself into the cabin of Jesus of Lubeck, the ship that the Englishman John Hawkins uses to pick up and sell slaves.
Details abound. The curtains of the cabin are worn in spots. The yellow astrolabe, an instrument of navigation, has a ciphered rim that is white from fixing latitudes. The muzzle of the 18-pounder is shapely. The story unfolds with this kind of detail, but by the time the important character comes along, a black man whose name is only guessed at -- ''Diego? Pedro?'' -- few additional details are provided.
The cabin and the characters are sketched with such force of conviction that the aim, to make the reader identify with a smart, resourceful slave who bargains for his freedom, fizzles. Benitez Rojo has squandered his storyteller's nimbleness in an almost decadent embrace of the characters we are being asked to loathe.
An argument could be made that the story is about the banality of evil, but that's not what's going on here. Benitez Rojo is a writer who believes the imagination should do whatever it wants. This is an exciting and liberating view, one that deserves a fair hearing, but it does not always make for good art.
The title story, ''The Magic Dog,'' with the most unmistakable magical realism of the batch, has fun with free-flowing imagining. There's a magic dog who brings good luck, but only if the lucky couple who take care of him also do their proper share of good works. When they fail, everything falls apart. While predictable and undemanding, the story is sustained by fine writing.
Not until the final story does Benitez Rojo share his full approach to imagining. The man of ''The Man in the Armchair'' mostly sits there as Benitez Rojo has a great time making up details that might or might not connect with him, and with the woman in the next room, and the girl wheezily sleeping in the bedroom. Eventually Benitez Rojo spins it all out into a story, then immediately asks us to scrap the whole thing and start over.
Ediciones del Norte plans to publish one of Benitez Rojo's novels later this year, which should offer a clearer look at his work, but for now the curious reader of Latin American fiction will find this uneven collection a worthy experiment.
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