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Savage Theories

Pola Oloixarac,

Roy Kesey (Goodreads Author) (Translation)

2.86 · Rating details · 721 ratings · 133 reviews

Rosa Ostreech, a pseudonym for the novel's beautiful but self-conscious narrator, carries around a trilingual edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, struggles with her thesis on violence and culture, sleeps with a bourgeois former guerrilla, and pursues her elderly professor with a highly charged blend of eroticism and desperation. Elsewhere on campus, Pabst and Kamtchowsky t ...more

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Paperback, 304 pages

Published December 12th 2017 by Soho Press (first published 2008)

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Lists with This Book

2018 Tournament of Books

19 books — 80 voters

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 by Emil Ferris

The 2018 Tournament of Books Long List

56 books — 41 voters

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· 721 ratings · 133 reviews

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Jun 11, 2019 Katia N rated it it was amazing

"The Spanish word for mirror, espejo, shares a root with the word species; the mirror shows each species for what it is, and lays bare the shoddy reasoning that has led each to think itself unique.”

I enjoyed this book enormously. But it might be not everyone’s cup of tea. Broadly speaking, the book is an intellectual satire, devoted to the ideas and the lifestyle of “the generation of lead”. These are the children of contemporaries and survivors of the Dirty War in Argentina in mid 70s of the la ...more

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Nov 01, 2016 switterbug (Betsey) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I’ve read numerous novels that took place during or subsequent to the Dirty War in Argentina--the tragedy of the Disappeared, and the drama of state-sponsored terrorism that affected human values and morale, not to mention the physical danger inherent to anyone who didn’t capitulate. So I wasn’t expecting this sui generis author that wrote of the sons and daughters of the survivors, mostly in Buenos Aires, using satire, but with poignancy. Oloixarac’s unconventional and picaresque novel centers I’ve read numerous novels that took place during or subsequent to the Dirty War in Argentina--the tragedy of the Disappeared, and the drama of state-sponsored terrorism that affected human values and morale, not to mention the physical danger inherent to anyone who didn’t capitulate. So I wasn’t expecting this sui generis author that wrote of the sons and daughters of the survivors, mostly in Buenos Aires, using satire, but with poignancy. Oloixarac’s unconventional and picaresque novel centers on these adult children, as well as former members of the resistance, academics, former guerillas, anthropologists, philosophers and others whom are psychically lost, confused, and concerned with issues of predator and prey.

The two main characters, Pabst (Pablo) and Kamtchowsky (female) are a wild but celebrated intellectual couple, self-described as unattractive, even jealous of their finer looking peers. They are exhibitionists, and Pabst is obsessed with onanism, public and private. Kamtchowsky is the daughter of a Polish engineer, and inherited his gift for abstract thought. Together, this odd couple did their own fieldwork, so to speak, openly studying the mating rituals and sexual proclivities of their peers and captivating them by flaunting their sexual performance art at parties, museum openings, and academic soirees.

The author almost surreally juxtaposes factual historical figures and social theories with fictional ones, creating a wholly original, exuberantly playful and yet tender story—a love story, primarily. That is what keeps this book engaging. On a lesser author, the text would be pornographic, vulgar, reprehensible. But Oloixarac does it with a larger-than-life heart, and, through jaunts of madness and juxtapositions of reality and fallacy, she pierces the jugular of human behaviors.

The narrator is Rosa Ostreech, who is writing a thesis on violence in culture, zeroing in on how we as humans evolved from prey to predator. Ancient cultures from all over the world are included to illuminate the effect of our upbringing on the human condition. Included are also the most pedigreed philosophies of those like Wittgenstein, Althusser, and Rousseau, and novelists whose minds search the erudite beyond, such as Nabokov and Bolaño, but in contexts like you've never heard before!

The author is exceptionally talented in not taking an authorial stance, on not judging the nature of her characters, which, to me, speaks highly of her skills. She demonstrates, without arbitration, how aggression, human herding and alienation has culturally evolved from antiquity to contemporary times, and allows her modern characters to show the cruelest and most private actions/behaviors/feelings/beliefs. And yet it underscores their vulnerabilities. The story penetrates how we evolved emotionally, politically, and socially. At times, I admit to being appalled by what I read, and yet, and yet…there is a poignant gentleness and tenderness searing through the frequently lurid, tawdry text.

The omniscient narrator is periodically subsumed or even forgotten as other characters emerge and take center stage. But she comes back, the stunning Rose describing her irresistible self, and the paradox of her attraction to a hideously ugly former guerrilla, who yet has an exquisite aesthetic within his obscenity.

“His mouth was still pressed tight against my hand. Then something fluttered beneath his preputial eyelid: it was passion, rumpled and lethal, capable of blowing the human heart to pieces…Collazo was (is) a horrible man, but that doesn’t make him any less attractive to my eyes. The little beast of hatred I carry inside quivers every time it hears his name.”

I read this book (almost) twice. Going back over large parts of the text made it more coherent for me. Hordes of names and works of art, philosophy, or science, in English and Spanish, streamed from the book and often broke my concentration, as I tried to make sense of it all while turning the pages. But, as I re-read much of the novel, I realized that the best way to appreciate it is just to slide in and let it boil over on your tongue, your head, and your heart.

Oloixarac covers everything from the customs of ancient tribes to the sweeping changes marked by the digital age, with post-modern prose and inserts of poems, songs, letters, photos and sketches. Of supreme importance is syntax, lexicon--the structure of words themselves. It is highly entertaining and irreverent, too. I loved the small but significant segment on the tide of sexual dominance being usurped by the rise of nerds—the oppressed classes--via technology, who commandeered and triumphed over the dominant factions of the swaggering, lucky few. So insouciant and yet so biting.

At the end, the superb translator, Roy Kesey, addresses the readers with pearls of insight regarding the book and author. He also informs that reading it in Spanish allows the many meanings to expand. Some of the included poems and prose IS in un-translated Spanish, which makes sense in light of what Kesey says about the limiting English translation. However, he hits on the ongoing displacement that readers may feel due to the abrupt shifts in voice, time, events, characters, and even point of view. Yet, the displacement I experienced when reading also signals the internal displacement of the characters. Read it for the sensory thrill. This is a novel of transgressions and hilarious, mighty, weighty, and trivial ideas. Highbrow and lowbrow, visceral and cerebral, absurd and wise. ...more

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Jan 14, 2018 Michelle rated it liked it

Shelves: diaspora, 2018, tob, 2018-tob, satire, in-translation

“A man with a theory is someone who has something to shout.”

Savage Theories is a complex novel with storylines intersecting around themes involving human evolution, the rise of culture through war and violence and the utility of sex. Anthropological studies, philosophical discourse and cameos by past literary and political world figures are woven into the mix of this deep thought-provoking satire.

There are two central storylines: one of a young academic and her infatuation with her prof ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Eric rated it really liked it

I don't really know how many stars to give this. (Okay, let's say four. It's unique, that's for sure.) Sometimes I laughed out loud. Sometimes I was left scratching my head. Sometimes I was just bowled over by the depth and breadth of culture, both high and low, that Oloixarac has at her fingertips.

There are two stories here. One is about Kamtchowsky and Pabst, a couple of overeducated, slovenly nerds, who hook up in an erotic, drug fueled quartet with a physically beautiful couple, Mara and And ...more

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Jun 29, 2020 Jonfaith rated it really liked it

Of course there is an inside! he shouted, kicking at a pebble.

We arrive at Dr. Johnson by way of Derrida. That would be exceptional, except it isn't in Savage Theories, every line contains these multitudes, the reworkings, sinuous parsings and wayward similes. Fundamentally this is a novel about academia, though one closer to Binet's Seventh Function than say, of David Lodge. There are also eerie parallels with Cronenburg's 2014 novel Consumed, though larded not just with technology but Houelleb ...more

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Nov 16, 2020 Jim Elkins added it

Shelves: argentine

When You Feel You're Too Old for a Book

"Savage Theories" is inventive and sharp, but as I read I felt a certain distance from its interests. About halfway through the book I began to realize my reservation was a matter of my age.

I'd like to say that certain novels seem to be directed to people younger than I am. But I'm not at all sure how to argue that, and there isn't even a proper description of the particular degree of youth I have in mind. If someone says they read contemporary fiction, tha ...more

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Apr 23, 2017 jeremy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: translation, fiction

i draw your attention to these delightful domestic vignettes, the intimate nucleus of my abstract bestial affections, in order to make more tangible the drastic transformation that the following pages hold. as preface to the horror, suffice it to say that the waters of this tranquil pond rose up in fraught crests as if driven by sirocco winds; that the most profound spirituality was transformed into a hurricane. kind reader: this is not a tale of obsession. my private tragedy, which shouldn't

i draw your attention to these delightful domestic vignettes, the intimate nucleus of my abstract bestial affections, in order to make more tangible the drastic transformation that the following pages hold. as preface to the horror, suffice it to say that the waters of this tranquil pond rose up in fraught crests as if driven by sirocco winds; that the most profound spirituality was transformed into a hurricane. kind reader: this is not a tale of obsession. my private tragedy, which shouldn't be of particular interest to anyone else—anyone except you, augustus, you who look at me now—is that i was forced to abandon my natural habitat, the velvet-lined home of my solitary, lettered existence, and plunge deep into the brutal swamplands of a monster.

wow! pola oloixarac's debut novel, savage theories (las teorías salvajes), is something to behold. the argentine author (counted as one of granta's best young spanish-language novelists) has crafted a work that is ambitious in scope, delicious in its storytelling, and singular in its composition. fans of borges, bolaño, and even álvaro enrigue's sudden death will find much to prize and ponder over.

with three distinct narrative threads encircling the tale, savage theories is a smart (and how!), lascivious, and irrepressibly assured novel—delighting with equal parts passion, politics, and philosophy. oloixarac's ambition cannot be overstated and savage theories reads with an energy most accomplished novelists could only yearn for. part metafictional, part anthropological, part existential, and wholly entertaining, this fictional firebrand aspires to so much... and does so so naturally. oloixarac must have had as much fun writing this as any reader must surely have in inhabiting it. savage theories sprawls in the way the best latin american fiction often does, with rewards aplenty to be had for the boldness with which it's written. no doubt, one of the year's best.

–the whole concept of the urban tribe is both fallacious and stupid, she said. all of these people want exactly the same thing: a simple straightforward fuck. or else a lucid fuck, one they won't feel the need to try to forget tomorrow morning. and it's easier to fuck someone who dresses the same way you do, albeit not so much because of some alleged empathy based on textile preferences—the fact is, you'd fuck anyone willing to fuck you. the key, then, is to maintain a strict policy of defrauding your own conscience, which has no way of knowing that you'd be perfectly happy fucking anyone at all. deciding with whom to associate on the basis of fabric color and texture allows your conscience to verify empirically that in fact you are not fucking absolutely everyone, but only a select few. that is, it's not so much that the modern self has broken down and now finds itself at the mercy of much stronger unconscious forces, but that it perpetually designs ever more sophisticated strategies for maintaining control. and in this case, the chosen means of control requires that one mimic a tactical strategy of unknowing.

*translated from the spanish (with an afterword "on translating pola oloixarac") by roy kesey (himself an author)

**additional reading: it seems oloixarac has drawn the sexist – and pathetically predictable – ire (also pronounced jel-uh-see) of male counterparts and critics. these laughably banal, stunted, over-inflated also-rans must have really been threatened by the literary prowess oloixarac possesses in spades, knowing full well that her debut(!) far eclipses anything their antiquated and obsolete minds could compose if granted even an eternity in which to do so. fuck them, viva (po)la oloixarac!! ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 Alison Hardtmann rated it it was ok

Shelves: library-book

Writing a brief description of the plot of Savage Theories is to miss most of what goes on in this odd book that spends most of its time going off on tangents and assuming the reader is a lot more knowledgeable than this particular reader is. Basically, there are two stories; a young woman stalks her professor while justifying it in all sorts of philosophical ways, which hides the creepiness somewhat and; two teenage friends, who believe themselves to be physically repulsive, negotiate their soc ...more

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May 18, 2020 Curtainthief rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-anima

Bolano, Borges, Cortazar, Maso, Perec in foul mood after gorging on Celine...

If any of the above appeal to you, check out Oloixarac.

For me, Savage Theories was unfortunately more frustrating than it was fascinating (though it truly was fascinating in parts). This was apparently a hell of a translation to pull off. The bummer is, I think a lot of the humor that the book supposedly possesses was lost in the process. To this reader the thing felt damn dark. Anywho, my eye is on Oloixarac, because ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: made-an-impression, read-in-2010

I really liked this. It's totally original, funny, witty and sharp. It actually depicts, in a very accurate way, society (Buenos Aires may well be Madrid) and the interactions between human individuals. How it's all connected to seduction, but in fact it's only narcisism, the need to feel loved and to love in that selfish way, all the theory about being attracted to the beast, about the duality from being hunted to become the hunted, or maybe both at the same time (which is what we really are wh ...more

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Jul 20, 2013 Roy Kesey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A superb and strange short novel by perhaps the best of Argentina's rising stars. Oloixarac invents an entire anthropology to explain us to ourselves, from the first humanoid to decline to be defined as prey to the coolest of Google Maps hacks. I will have a great deal more to be saying about this book in the months to come. For now, my translation of the better part of the first three chapters can be read, along with Maxine Swann's introduction to the novel, in Issue 15 (Winter/Spring 2013) of ...more

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Mar 14, 2018 Saya rated it did not like it

DNF.

One word review - obnoxious.

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Feb 04, 2018 Bob Lopez added it · review of another edition

I’m giving up approximately 50 pages from the end. No rating.

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Mar 13, 2018 Elaine rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2018

Are some books untranslatable? Perhaps, and if so, this is one of them. It may be a powerful book about the aftermath of the Dirty Wars in Argentinian Spanish but it is so much overly pretentious claptrap in English. The glimpses of humor saved this from being a one, but reading it was an endurance test even though it was only a couple of hundred pages long. There are no characters, no plot, and no point. It's like reading someone's bad senior thesis, if senior theses had slightly nauseating sex ...more

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Feb 09, 2018 Ruthiella rated it it was ok

The blurb from Hari Kunzru on the front of the paperback edition I read called this book “maximalist” , I totally agree with that label . There are layer and layers of detail to be discovered and unearthed Savage Theories. In that respect, it reminded me of David Foster Wallace, though I have only read Infinite Jest as a comparison. What I understood of Savage Theories was in parts funny, in parts erudite, in parts absurd and in parts downright disturbing.

I think I “got” maybe only a 10th of th ...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Nick rated it really liked it

Oloixarac crafted a novel so steeped in structuralism it reads as almost parody. If it werent for her melding of impressive erudition with subtle hilarity, this would have been so much a chore. I'm undecided if she's skewering academia or that which it tries to explain, but she does so with comedian's touch all the while abutting said jokes against Argentina's 'Disappeared'...Even when the prose is bogged down with psychology and philosophy jargon Oloixarac's sharp wit and comedy offers redempti ...more

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Jun 01, 2019 Marie-Therese rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-literature, argentinian-literature

3.5 stars

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Jan 14, 2018 becka rated it did not like it

probably the worst book i've ever listened to. ...more

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Jan 14, 2018 Gwendolyn rated it it was ok

I read this one because it is a finalist in this year‘s Tournament of Books. I can’t say I enjoyed any part of this novel. In fact, it was a fairly miserable reading experience from start to finish for me. Clearly, I am out of line with all of the critics, who universally love and admire this book. I can say that I respect the book… It’s density, it’s unique voice, and it’s willingness to challenge conventions. I’m glad the book exists, and it probably did me some good to read it, but I wouldn’t ...more

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Aug 21, 2020 Francisca rated it did not like it

Shelves: dnf

DNF-ed at %16

I know, bear with me.

so far this year, if I've felt like DNF-ing a book, I would just remove it from my shelves and pretend nothing ever happened - mostly, out of preservation for my reading challenge. it has always felt disingenuous to include within your reading pile books you didn't finish. but with oloixarac's novel, dnf-ing is not so much a bother but a disappointment.

I had really high hopes for this. its premise reminded me of ciaran carson's hybrid "novels" - Shamrock Tea an ...more

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Nov 02, 2020 David Browne rated it it was ok

I loved the idea of Savage Theories and couldn't wait to get started. From what I'd read it was the story of two people who believe that they're physically repulsive who theorise that they're intellectually superior because their looks mean they have to work for the things they have. Their theory is challenged when a beautiful young couple befriend them and then invite them to take part in group sex. Perhaps they aren't as ugly, or as brilliant as they assume.

That's part of it, about a third ma ...more

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Jan 30, 2020 Tim Butzen-Cahill rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I am so grateful to have read this book as it confirms some suspicions I've had about my reading tastes. That said, this book was NOT for me. The reading experience was less than enjoyable (though I'm sure there are some out there who would enjoy this one). The atypical, non-linear progression of the narrative mixed with the nearly inaccessible psychological jargon and leftist philosophies made for an intellectual hot mess. I often felt I was reading someone's PhD dissertation as minimal action ...more

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Jan 03, 2018 Meghan rated it did not like it

Shelves: translation, literary-fiction, 2018-tob

I gave it 50 pages but I couldn't do it. ...more

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Jun 29, 2019 Paul Lemcke rated it did not like it

I carefully read the first 1/3, and scan/read the remaining 2/3 because I tired of the nonsense within. I felt like the book was an irrational mix of sex romp, academic dissertation, and author's desire to show off her expansive vocabulary to obscure meaning and create boredom in the reader. Success! I was bored. ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 Dara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

What a wild read. I'm almost not sure what to rate it. Savage Theories is barely anchored to the ground, fleeing at a moment's notice from the tactile surround of its characters, catapulting itself into the blue oblivion of its narrator's interiority and theory-gazing. It is brilliant, and it is alienating. Its juxtaposition of millennial libidinal ennui with Argentina's history of dictatorial violence is beguiling and discomforting, but I think this may be what makes it essential. It is interes ...more

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Jun 03, 2017 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

I suspect that the author is quite brilliant. The book is so dry and intellectual, and I'm sure much of the humor went over my head. Academic life, philosophy, Argentinian history and politics. And sex. All ripe for satire. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. It did not activate me. I did appreciate the translator's note, basically telling me it's not his fault that I didn't get it. This is so beyond you even if you could read it in the original Spanish. ...more

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Aug 27, 2017 Bill Brydon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, queer

Latinx spec fiction dredging the horrors

"How to assign a date to the birth of fear? How to explain humanity’s obsession with fighting both the beast within, and the enemy within the beast?" ...more

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Feb 07, 2019 Maureen T Hart rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a blast

Savage theories has the same madcap, dizzying energy as bolano Savage Detectives. What a ride! Every paragraph takes you someplace you've never been before.
Read this book.

...more

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Jul 29, 2017 Ben Bush added it

Shelves: read-in-2017

You'd be hard pressed to read something else like this. Ideas are described with a physical force. Remorseless, funny. Strong sentences that collide bodies with critical theory. ...more

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Jul 24, 2019 Rachel C. rated it did not like it

Shelves: book-clubs, foreign-lang-transl, lit-fic, geo-latin-am-caribbn

This sort of post-modern lit always reads like gibberish to me. @Amanda @Alex - I feel like this is right up your alley.

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About Pola Oloixarac

Pola Oloixarac

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Pola Oloixarac (Buenos Aires, 13 de septiembre de 1977) es una escritora y traductora argentina. Estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de Buenos Aires y ha publicado artículos sobre arte y tecnología en medios como The Telegraph, The New York Times International, Folha de Sao Paulo, Página 12, Revista Quimera, Etiqueta Negra, Qué Leer, Revista Alfa, América Economía y Brando.
Su primera novela es Las ...more

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Quotes from Savage Theories

“All war is based in deception (cfr. Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”).

Definition of deception: “The practice of deliberately making somebody believe things that are not true. An act, a trick or device entended to deceive somebody”.

Thus, all war is based in metaphor.

All war necessarily perfects itself in poetry.

Poetry (since indefinable) is the sense of seduction.

Therefore, all war is the storytelling of seduction, and seduction is the nature of war.” — 25 likes

“Pues tu teoría se queda incompleta sin mí.” — 10 likes

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