Loquela

by Carlos Labbé, Will Vanderhyden (Translation)

"Begins to fuck with your head from its very first word."—Toby Litt

Loquela, Carlos Labbé's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities.

At a basic level, this is a distorted detective novel mixed with a love story and a radical statement about narrative art. Beyond the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, beyond the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from pleasant summer evenings, beyond the destiny of Neutria—a city that disappears with childhood—and beyond a Chilean literary movement that could be the last vanguard, while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel—the author or the reader.

Through an array of voices, overlapping storylines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious, precise prose, Labbé carves out a space for himself among such great form-defying Latin American writers as Juan Carlos Onetti and Jorge Luis Borges.

Carlos Labbé, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings, he is a musician, and has released three albums.

Will Vanderhyden received an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester.

Genres: Fiction, Latin American, Mystery, Spanish Literature

200 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2009

Reviews

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

yarın tüm kitabı tekrar gözden geçireceğim. belki o zaman 4 yıldız veririm çünkü şu an kafam allak bullak. yazar mektup (yazan ayrı, alan ayrı), günlük, roman taslakları, rüyalar ve en sonunda manifesto kullanarak içinden çıkılması bir hayli güç bir metin yazmış.
ya tüm günü ayırıp bir anda okumak lazım ki çok zor, devreler yanıyor :) ya da not ala ala okumak lazım çünkü bir süre sonra aynı isimler farklı karakterlerle karşımıza çıkınca iş iyice zorlaşıyor ama tüm zorluğa karşı albino bir kızın ve bir yazar adayının etrafında kurulan bu roman farklı bir deneyim. iç içe metinler, cümlelerle kurmacanın tüm sınırlarını zorlamış labbe. sevip sevmemek size kalmış.
latin amerika edebiyatı hakikaten çok acayip bir yere doğru gidiyor. en son bellatin'in çin daması'nda bu kadar zorlanmıştım. valeria luiselli'nin kalabalıkta yüzler daha anlaşılırdı mesela, tüm oyunlarına rağmen :)
*edit: kitabı tekrar okudum, notlar aldım ve yıldızını 4'e yükselttim. tek okumalık değil kesinlikle.
bu arada kitap hakkında agos'a yazdığım yazı: http://tembelveyazar.blogspot.com.tr/...

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

literature is a fight to the death but, since we are the creators and all the others just have fun at our expense, the balance is leaning in our favor from the beginning.

the second metafictional, heady tale to appear in english translation from chilean author carlos labbé (a musician and literary critic, too), loquela (locuela), like navidad & matanza before it, demands deserves a careful, close reading. there is nothing arduous (nor tedious) about labbé's writing — quite the contrary — but as an experimental novelist of great skill, his works beg for full immersion from the reader.

loquela, first published in 2009 (when labbé was in his early 30s), is a referential hybrid novel that is part detective tale and part exploration into literary creation and the dueling roles of author and character. albinos, an imaginary land, a new literary movement (these aren't your favorite chilean writer's infrarealsists, but something far more ambitious), and a triptychal narrative perspective combine to defy succinct summarization.

labbé, one of granta's best young spanish language novelists, has published five novels and a short story collection. the two already available in english translation make abundantly clear that labbé has some serious literary chops. loquela, while engaging and technically proficient upon first read, is likely to reveal an even greater vitality the second time through. for fans of fine literature in translation, labbé and loquela should be considered required reading.

like an act of honesty and a rupture of the vice of the lie, of obliqueness, that has allowed me to tolerate the great shame of living in this time and in this city of pure death, of beggars, of children coming to hospitals for beatings and violations of their parents, while we close our eyes so as not to disturb the clean and kind home we're creating on the page; to escape from this vice of creating fictions that aren't as disgustingly transitory as the streets of santiago, as the gaze of the residents of santiago, as my writing is filthy; to stop being the writer who doesn't let the clamor and stench enter his room—because you can't work like that—who doesn't let the senselessness of his protagonist touch him in any word, because his work is to write, transcendence be damned; for that i'll sacrifice the narrative perfection of my novel.

*translated from the spanish by will vanderhyden (navidad & matanza)

**for what it's worth, while studying latin american and spanish literature at university, labbé penned dissertations on onetti and bolaño.

[Meltem Sağlam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Her alandan çokça teknik terim, çokça edebiyatçı/filozof adı, bilemediğim bir çok şey.

Zor bir metin. Anlayamadım. Deneysel olduğunu düşünüyorum. Belki de çok katmanlı bir roman, bir kült eserdir. Bu kadar zor anlaşılan bir roman okumaktan hoşlanmıyorum.

Bilmece çözmeyi sevenler ve içerikte geçen isimler ve tekniklerle ilgili bilgi sahibi olanlar için güzel bir okuma olabilir.


“…Anımsamak ve bunu yazmak ölüme yakın bir şey, olayların başka türlü olabileceğini inkar etmek demek…”, sf; 71.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about a writer and his girlfriend whose lives become entangled with a novel he is writing or has written. After he has written it, he cannot change it. It is an interesting concept but way too frustrating for me to derive any enjoyment from. It is written from 3 points of view. First is the novel itself, second is a narrator called "the sender," and third is a narrator called "the recipient." The author of this book, the fictional author of the novel, and the main character of the novel (and perhaps others in the novel and in real life) are named Carlos. The women in the novel are treated abysmally - how many of them there are is hard to say. One (or all) of the women have created a fantasy world (perhaps to escape the abysmal treatment of the men in the novel) that seems to have made the writer of the novel or the main character of the novel or maybe both angry because he cannot find it, or at least that's how it seemed to me. I did find that as I kept plugging through it and tried to stop figuring out who was who and what was going on, it became clearer. But overall, it was just too much work for the enjoyment obtained. Now, if I were studying South American literature and knew more about the authors referenced in the novel, I might have enjoyed it more.

[Tubi(Sera McFly) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Kurmaca üzücü bir şey çünkü canlı değil, var olmak için benim sayfaları çevirmeme muhtaç."

Yazarın kendisini kurguya, kurgu karakterlere dönüştürüp kurmacanın içinde kaybolduğu bir metin, adı üstünde bir sayıklama. Cortazar ve Onetti gibi yazarların anlatılarının izinden giden bu roman günlük-mektup-manifesto-anı formatlarında ilerleyen, karakterlerin ve olayların birbirine karıştığı, bir süre sonra okuduklarımızı anlamaya çalışmaktan ya da olay örgüsünü kovalamaktan çok yazarın kurmacayla oyunlarına kapılıp gittiğimiz enteresan bir anlatı. Üslup okuru bu denli zorlayabilecek öğelere rağmen çok iyi, çeviri başarılı ve akıcı.

"Bir günlük, yeniden anlatmaktan başka, hiçbir düzeni olmayan hayata anlatı hissi verme çabasından başka nedir?"

"Bundan sonra roman dikte edecek bana günlerimi; günler bu sayfalarda vücut bulacak, bu sayfalar bende vücut bulacak, ben de bir başkasında, ta ki o başkası artık vücut bulmayıp da roman bitene kadar."

[Larsen Puch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carlos Labbé (1977) es uno de los escritores nacionales que disfruto leer. Locuela es el tercer libro que leo de este escritor. Es una historia que se teje con varios relatos superpuestos o vinculados. Es una narración metaliteraria, sin duda. Hay personajes que estudian literatura, que sueñan, que imaginan, que escriben, que leen. O tal vez podría decir personajes que se escriben y se leen. Hay una novela en proceso, una ciudad imaginaria que toma forma y cobra vida siguiendo de alguna forma la génesis de la Santa María onettiana. Onetti es mencionado explícitamente. Y eso me agrada siempre. Cada novela o cuento donde se menciona, se vincula o se hace cualquier tipo de referencia a Onetti me parece un texto cercano, una especie de amigo. Onetti es uno de los escritores que más admiro. No sé si esto sea importante escribirlo aquí, pero Carlos Labbé hizo su tesis de licenciatura sobre el escritor uruguayo. Y su tesis de magister sobre la obra de Bolaño. Dos referentes claves en la producción de Labbé, sin duda. Locuela es el título de la obra y en uno de los epígrafes aparece su definición, según Roland Barthes, que en su parte final señala: "forma enfática del discursear amoroso". En este relato prolijo, exigente, de llamativa estructura se tematiza el amor, la relación amorosa en ese marco de personajes que se escriben, se leen, se hablan y se callan. Personajes que se acercan y se distancian. Se sueñan, se imaginan, se recuerdan. Locuela es una novela que me hizo disfrutar de su escritura, de la forma de organizar el o los relatos de los personajes. Se me hizo cercana y empática: vivo en Santiago, estudié letras, amo leer y escribir y he gozado y sufrido el amor. No sé si esta sea una reseña o una crítica. Lo más importante que quiero decir es que Carlos Labbé es uno de los escritores más interesantes de nuestra literatura contemporánea. Volveré a leer su libro de relatos, Caracteres blancos, porque fue mi primera lectura de Labbé y ya han pasado varios años de eso. Un placer haber leído Locuela.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best review/essay I've read so far about this book:
"Choose, in the imperative (Carlos Labbé's Loquela)"

[Natalie]

DNF.

[Justin Paszul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disorienting and dissociative - The looming dread of Bolaño and the unsettling repetition of Last Year at Marienbad but infinitely more abstract and hallucinatory. A novel within a story alongside another story (and/or the other way around), a group of characters doomed from the start and aware of it, and of their presence in the story; and who might all just be different facets of the writer (of one of the stories, or of both), existing in and repeating the same interactions endlessly, simultaneously, at different angles, creating the illusion of momentum in a universe which will cease to exist if stops describing its own creation.

"... your words will be cups, but not cups full of water for the thirsty -your time is running out and the night is long -but cups that slip from your hands and begin their fateful fall; this notebook transcribes the precise instant that the cup is suspended in the air before turning to dust in the ground."

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dreamlike text about which it's difficult to describe what if anything actually occurs. At points beautifully written, albeit in translation, this is an interesting text and I kept reading it but early gave up trying to follow or decipher if anything was objectively able to be decoded or deciphered or legitimately interpreted. It's like a funhouse mirror with author, lovers, readers, turned in on themselves endlessly reflecting and refracting personalities. There may be an albino girl. There may be a murder. There may be a novel. It's also like someone's fractured dream journal. It also reminded me of an episode of Love, Death & Robots ("The Witness") where perspectives are bent mobius-like between a murderer and the murdered in a surreal city that may or may not exist. This would be a good book for grad students to read for a lit class. Folks could endlessly dissect it. It's absorbing but also forgettable. Like a vivid dream that slips from your memory once the pages are closed.

[Vincent Perrone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel, a dream, a manifesto, a detective story, a love-letter. Loquela is many things and seems to impress upon the reader that these things are interchangeable. Like bodies or cities, they exist in a physicality that when rendered on the page delineates them with vague signifiers. Labbé forces the reader to experience the novel as opposed to simply reading it. Your understanding is limited to how deeply you allow the prose to envelop you.

Labbé's inventive style falls squarely on the reader; more than just the collaborator, the reader is the perpetrator, the figure who creates the motions of the story. The book often feels like a carnival ride, spinning you around while simultaneously moving up and down. The resulting effect is delirium, joy, confusion, and sometimes nausea. All the while, there's no denying the thrill.

[Pınar Bacı · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yazıyla neler yapılabilir? Bu kitap bu soruya verilmiş cevaplardan biri bence. İç içe geçmiş ama birbirinden bağımsız da okunabilecek üç ayrı anlatı, bir günlük, bir mektup, bir roman ve tamamı bir sayıklama, adının hakkını veren bir sayıklama. Kurmaca içinde kurmaca. Kolay bir okuma olmadı benim için ama kesinlikle değişik bir deneyimdi. Olay örgüsünü takip etmekte çok zorlandım, zaman zaman kafam epey karıştı ama buna rağmen dil o kadar lezzetliydi ki kitabı elimden bırakamadım, gerçekten Saliha Nilüfer nefis bir çeviri yapmış.
Deneysel kulağa çok hoş gelen bir kelime değil, o yüzden bu kitap için "değişik bir deneyim" demek daha iyi geliyor bana. Carlos Labbe'nin kalemini çok sevdim, başka kitaplarını da okumak isterim.

[Ferris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, the best I can figure is that this is a piece of experimental fiction which should go back to the drawing board. Clearly, it was an effort to explore the writing process and the fusion/confusion of writer, character, and reader. Somehow, it went beyond edgy to over the cliff, sucking the pleasure out of reading. Oh well.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nowhere near as good as Navidad y Matanza, unfortunately.

[Juan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I'm not exactly sure what I just read. The first couple pages seemed promising, like the book would explore some of the depths authors go for the sake of storytelling. I was also hoping to get maybe a 2 in 1 story, with the story of an author writing and then the story he writes.

Instead I was left confused with the different perspectives, with "The Novel" and "The Receiver" portions making the most sense, but "The Sender" taking up the remaining 3rd of the story with no coherent thought. While I know this is intentional, the use of initials makes the first few times reading it hard to determine who is who and what the motivations are for the characters. I ended up skipping many pages of "The Sender."

I think the ending has an art imitates life or vice versa kind of feel, but with nothing else in the story making sense or helping me to care about the characters the ending just falls flat.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a weird book. The main idea is the fluidity of the boundaries between the written and real worlds. Tangential to this is the commodification of art. Definitely a book with an agenda and a post-modern style, but it's interesting how the author, by means of the translator, puts a hazy story around those bones. Definitely the kind of book that only makes sense from a zoomed-out perspective. There is this constant feeling of incestuousness from the characters, perhaps another way that the author is trying to show that authors put their own perspective and experiences into characters regardless of the given physical attributes of the character. There is also this idea that the written world (Neutria) doesn't exist without the act of writing, but that this act of writing can never really capture the real world. I wish I knew more about the literary scene, places and writers, that this book alludes to, I think, again from a wider perspective this book would make more sense. Rated R.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This weird Lynchian novel makes literal Barthes call for the death of the author. Characters exist in multiple spaces (fictive and meta-fictive, and perhaps (?) meta-meta-fictive), events are repeated, retold, and rehashed until the space in which they exist can no longer be sure. Names and places wander, nothing stays put. There is a death - imagined/real/whoknows - described and foreshadowed throughout, and a novel that gives birth to another etc. But there is sense to be made here: Labbé's experiment exists to completely undermine the foundational rules of narrative.

[Theodore McCombs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished the book frustrated, because Labbé's obvious talent for observation and intriguing, slippery prose seemed wasted on a conceit so dense, obscure, and difficult to decipher. I cannot say with any confidence that it was worth attempting to untangle it all; there may just be no there there.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 1 out of 5]

Un magnífico juego de espejos, de narradores entrelazados, de historias supuestamente contadas desde diferentes puntos de vista que, en mi modesta opinión, al final se queda en nada.
Perfectamente prescindible.

[Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levels upon levels. There were whole pages in this book that I wanted to write down and think about and carry with me.

[kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seemed to be in my wheelhouse but didn't fall completely there.

[World Literature Today]

This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the May/Aug 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Gary Homewood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Metafictional mystery haunted by the ghost of Paul Auster, ambitious and worthwhile but never quite coherent enough to hold your attention, at least for me.

[Kurt Kemmerer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questioningly ponderous, and yet each chapter moves. There is so much in this tiny tome, and your head will probably spin a bit. At least mine did. I look forward to rereading it, though. And how.