Alma

by Javier Moreno

Fiction. Translated from the Spanish by Peter Kahn. This is not a book. As the title suggests, this is a soul: an Alma. But a soul, make no mistake about it, is not something from another world. It is a conglomeration of images and words, reproductive data made available to anyone for the satisfaction of the democratic and mephistophelian instinct (who has never desired the soul of another?). This novel speaks to what we are--or are not--prepared to share. Maybe we don't know yet what intimacy is, maybe it is the negative of our own image. It is also possible that the only intimacy left to us is that of words.



"Kubrick, Malkovich, Einstein and everything else. A piece of quantum prose."--Don DeLillo



"The only possible points of comparison for Javier Moreno's ALMA, a book made of sentences, dealing with the materiality of the living, and obsessed with sorting, would be those texts that are most luminous and uncanny. ALMA, unlike anything else I have read, brings together certain amazing qualities of Craig Dworkin's Legion (which consists entirely of statements from a psychiatric diagnostic instrument), of the more radical of David Markson's novels, and of the quietly fevered voices from the writing of Roberto Bola�o. Is it a soul? A novel? Interesting questions--but in any case, ALMA is a configuration of words that demands to be sorted through, one that is compellingly unhinged, open and shut."--Nick Montfort



"A whole book of poems or an entire novel could be written out of every three sentences from this book, a sequence of sharp, strictly poetic and intelligent concatenations, neither pretentious nor forced."--Agust�n Fern�ndez Mallo



"Alma is an exploration, from a space of creation, of the limits imposed on the concept of identity by the new conditions of identity (and the experience of such identity), inaugurated by the turn of the century."--Jara Calles

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Oon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It hits quite a few sweet spots for me. A testament that fictions could thrive without plot, settings, or other conventional elements. A unique work characteristic of the Nocilla Generation

[Manel · Rating 3 out of 5]

no es una novela. No busquéis planteamiento, nudo y desenlace. Solo son pensamientos, ideas, extractos de la vida que no dan para desarrollar toda una exposición por si solos, pero que te dan una idea del personaje y del escritor. La estructura es muy parecida a la del anterior libro reseñado en este blog ("Momentos de inadvertida felicidad") aunque el contenido no tiene nada que ver. Aquí hay un propósito de literatura, de establecer un ejercicio de escritura. Al principio lo consigue (cuando empece a leer las primeras página pense:"éste se va a llevar las primeras 4* del blog") pero a medida que pasan las páginas Moreno va perdiendo fuelle. Y la historia de María y Eduardo no es que ayude. Lástima.

[stephanie roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meravigliosa. Pieno di sentimento.

[Simón González · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me gusta la propuesta del autor, esa sucesión desordenada de pinceladas sobre sus pensamientos, impresiones, sentimientos... para intentar crear una radiografía de su alma. Pero esa falta de un hilo conductor mas tangible sumado a que todo está escrito en una única línea (aunque entiendo que es para enfatizar precisamente en ese brainstorming de ideas que configuran el alma) hace del libro una lectura dura.