Eight Novellas

by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Herlinda Charpentier Saitz (Translator), Robert L. Saitz (Translator)

The eight novellas collected in this book display the humor, exuberant spirit, love of language, and insight of the Spanish writer Ramon Gomez de la Serna, a central figure in the European and Latin American avant-garde, and a key contributor of Anglo-American imagism to Spanish literature. Father of the prose and poetry of the « Generation of '27, Gomez de la Serna was admired by T.S. Eliot, Macedonio Fernandez, Oliverio Girondo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Alfonso Reyes, and was a source of inspiration for Borges, Garcia Marquez, Cortazar, and Pizarnik. These novellas, with their humorous and witty exaggerations of everyday human foibles, their simple story lines and often-surprising endings, are presented here in the original Spanish with a clear English translation on facing pages. This book will be useful in intermediate and advanced Spanish classes and in translation courses.

Genres: Short Stories

261 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Puig (July 3, 1888, Madrid - January 13, 1963, Buenos Aires) was a Spanish writer, dramatist and avant-garde agitator. He was especially known for "Greguerías" - a short form of poetry that roughly corresponds to the one-liner in comedy. The Gregueria is especially able to grant a new and often humorous perspective.He strongly influenced surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel.

He was a partner of Carmen de Burgos

Gómez de la Serna published over 90 works in all literary genres. In 1933, he was invited to Buenos Aires. He stayed there during the Spanish Civil War and the following Franco regime and died there.

Reviews

[Michael Joe Armijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I watched a show on Netflix and saw that the story was based on a writing by this author, so I sought him out and found this book. Ramon Gomez de la Serna is a writer born in Madrid, Spain in 1888 (died in 1963). Until about 2004-5 he was the least studied and understood writer of the 20th Century in spite of his precocious modernity. He’s often considered one of the true geniuses of his time in Spain, the other being Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Neruda called him a visionary of the universe, a mental monarch and a king of poetry. In the 1920s an 1930s his writings were circulated throughout Europe (especially France where he became a cult).

Relatively little of his work exists in English! I was lucky to find these EIGHT NOVELLAS which gave me a taste of his literary genius. I was greatly impressed. A book of short-stories can be so refreshing. My favorites in this book were:
KNOCK KNOCK, I’M YOUR LIVER
SHE SHE, HE HE
THE MASTER OF THE ATOM (a wild thriller that provided the book with a sort of Twilight Zone finale).
I did get some intrigue from each novella. He has actually written almost ‘200’ books! His complete works is nearing completion and will be published in 20 Volumes in Barcelona...but will there be an English version?

I’ll share one quote from the three novellas I enjoyed the most to give you an idea (without spoiling the novellas):

1. “Do you know that there is a moment in LIFE at which your liver presents itself? Almost nobody knows it and yet it is a culminating point of existence...”
2. Their curtains were filters and LIFE’s happiness stayed outside.
3. “Maybe the secret of LIFE lies in breathing, not because we breathe air but a multitude of electrons.”