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The Nocilla Trilogy: Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience, Nocilla Lab

(Proyecto Nocilla #1-3)

Agustín Fernández Mallo,

Thomas Bunstead (Translator)

3.95 · Rating details · 155 ratings · 28 reviews

A landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy—Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Lab, and Nocilla Experience—presents multiple narratives of people and places that reflect America and the world in the digital age of the twenty-first century.

In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. ...more

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Paperback, 527 pages

Published February 19th 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published September 24th 2013)

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Aug 24, 2019 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

Long time ago Jorge Luis Borges has found a miraculous point in which the entire world could be seen and, walking in the master’s footsteps, in his Nocilla Trilogy Agustín Fernández Mallo decided to rediscover this magic locus and observe the whole wide world at once…

How much information is required to describe the entire universe? Could such a description be contained in the memory of a computer? Might we be able to, as per William Blake, see the world in a grain of sand (or as Borges said

...more

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Mar 16, 2019 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis added it

Shelves: too-big-to-knot, novella-tryptichs-etc, portospanish-latinamerican, 2019-gelassen

So, yeah, if you're curious, this is the kind of book I think should be getting more attention and those others maybe a hair less. It's something that takes the writing of fiction seriously. It's not as mind melting as, say, The Geography of Rebels Trilogy: The Book of Communities, The Remaining Life, and In the House of July & August and is smooth enough to read and its smart and it, well, I just like it. I think your life will be the better if you have a chance to read it. I wish you all well. ...more

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Oct 04, 2019 George rated it it was ok

"We move through a Present desert delimited by these two illusions, Past and Future."

This is a trilogy of diminishing returns written in a mostly flat, tone-deaf prose. Other readers have called this serious literature, and it is, but perhaps it is too serious and too restrained. Only once do we get a memorable instance of wordplay, in the mediocre (meaty ocher?) first novel, which employs the wonderful portmanteau “skeletowns.” But then never again for the rest of the triptych, and where are th "We move through a Present desert delimited by these two illusions, Past and Future."

This is a trilogy of diminishing returns written in a mostly flat, tone-deaf prose. Other readers have called this serious literature, and it is, but perhaps it is too serious and too restrained. Only once do we get a memorable instance of wordplay, in the mediocre (meaty ocher?) first novel, which employs the wonderful portmanteau “skeletowns.” But then never again for the rest of the triptych, and where are the tripping ticks? Not every novel needs humor or slapstick, but the expressionless voice throughout really needs an injection of life.

I will say that I wholeheartedly believe in the author’s ethos, that science and art are by no means separate entities and should be celebrated in their mixture, mixed even more with a stir-crazy force. But in this trilogy, the execution is a failure. The connections between stories, whether particle practical anatomical or logical, are not very interesting nor illuminating, they are just there. Any schizophrenic or other paranoiac can whack together connections but in order to enhance the art, they should have some epiphanic or moral value, or at least be entertaining. Not to mention irony and humor are often inextricable from coincidence and correlation, yet we do not see very much of that here at all (read Ngũgĩ’s Wizard of the Crow for a great example). Just from the excerpts of Women and Men by Joseph McElroy that I’ve read, I’m willing to bet that such a novel is a colossal success, the answer Mallo was looking for but failed to find in his own work. Additionally, McElroy’s Plus combined science and art in a much more effective, although different, way. And there are other books that boast their own successful concoctions of artful science/scientific art, such as Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, some stories in Paul West’s The Universe, and Other Fictions, etc.

There were some great and original ideas in at least the first two installments of the trilogy, bubbling with untapped potential, but they were never meaningfully explored or dissected, the first with tales orbiting a shoe-slung tree, the second orbiting a horizon or lack thereof, all ultimately unsatisfying. Aborted excerpts at best. And the third installment, which I was forced to skim, gives us two unoriginal concepts: the double and the author as protagonist. Nothing particularly interesting is done with these tired concepts and the prose itself reads as tired or at least uninspired. Soporific. Sure, the first sentence of the third novel is around 60 pages long, but it reads like anything else in the book, just without the white space. As it is written in the first novel: “...to be a writer means relating the world of the living from the world of the dead.” But Mallo seems to be relating the world of the dead from the world of the ostensible living. I almost want to jolt Mallo with a Taser so that he can wake up from the half-sleep at his desk.

3 stars for the first, 2 for the second, and 1 for the third, which equals 2 stars for the trilogy. In other words, it was okay. Other readers might find (and have found) some value in it.

As I understand it, Nocilla is the name of a knockoff brand of Nutella. Quite gimmicky, no?

P.S. Do not be fooled, like me, by the mention of Borges in the synopsis. That’s all it is, a mention.
...more

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Sep 03, 2019 Lee Klein rated it liked it

I read a beautifully packaged edition from FSG, three lovely paperbacks in a fragile slipcase. It's a network of short numbered pieces, some that interlink, paragraph-length attributed quotations, lines from interviews with musicians, the opening voice-over from Apocalypse Now presented several times, each time adding a line, a 50-page single paragraph, a numbered progression of paragraphs, ending with a comic. Inspiring use of random texts at first, inspired in part by the appearance and purcha I read a beautifully packaged edition from FSG, three lovely paperbacks in a fragile slipcase. It's a network of short numbered pieces, some that interlink, paragraph-length attributed quotations, lines from interviews with musicians, the opening voice-over from Apocalypse Now presented several times, each time adding a line, a 50-page single paragraph, a numbered progression of paragraphs, ending with a comic. Inspiring use of random texts at first, inspired in part by the appearance and purchase in Las Vegas of a Portuguese edition of a novel called The Music of Chance by an American writer "known as" Paul Auster, who the author hadn't heard of at the time. A tree in the desert covered in shoes. Che Guevara run over by a motorcycle (later we learn it was the author who was hit by a motorcycle in Thailand and spent weeks in the hospital beginning work on what would become this book). Artfully arranged randomness suggests a system, a network, an internet of associated tubes conveying theme, but its paths in the end just sort of forked for me. The last part of the third book (a comic book-type allegory told by Enrique Vila-Matas) ends it really well. Single lingering impression: intentionally superficial exploration of superficiality ultimately seems superficial. A playbook for a postmodern "experimental" novel, which isn't experimental at all since its moves aren't so novel? No plot or characterization, of course, other than the organizing intelligence, the author, so whenever it's "good" it seems to reflect on the author more than anything else. Not much humor, doesn't burn with a quiet laugh and point up and away from itself (Hrabal paraphrase about a good book). The mind hunts meaning but rewards weren't pleasurable for me. Not particularly interesting prose -- and when it's one paragraph in the first section of the third book, it maybe reads like a bad Javier Marias impersonation? Much of the third book I read at an accelerated pace, just this side of skimming (the first two I read note for note at my usual leisurely pace). Generally, a disappointment despite moments of interest and inspiration. ...more

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May 01, 2019 Christopher Robinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, read-2019, read-and-kept, very-favorite-novels

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the Nocilla Trilogy as a whole, but I DO know that I had a wonderful time reading it. It’s a little bit of everything all at once, which would be a total recipe for disaster in a less-assured writer’s hands. But Mallo masterfully juggles the countless narrative threads that comprise this trilogy, and the end results are nothing short of astonishing.

The Nocilla Trilogy will undoubtedly be one of my favorite reads of this year. Highly recommended.

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Mar 23, 2019 jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, translation

if there isn't any space there isn't any light. the world is unthinkable without light. [heraclitus said it, einstein said it, the a-team in episode 237 said it, and many others besides.] and yet, inside everyone's bodies all is darkness, zones in the universe never touched by light—or, if touched by light, only because of illness or decomposition. it's unsettling to think you exist because this death exists inside you, this zone of endless night. it's unsettling to consider that the inside o

if there isn't any space there isn't any light. the world is unthinkable without light. [heraclitus said it, einstein said it, the a-team in episode 237 said it, and many others besides.] and yet, inside everyone's bodies all is darkness, zones in the universe never touched by light—or, if touched by light, only because of illness or decomposition. it's unsettling to think you exist because this death exists inside you, this zone of endless night. it's unsettling to consider that the inside of a pc is more alive than you are, that in there everything's completely lit up.

agustín fernández mallo's the nocilla trilogy (nocilla dream, nocilla experience, nocilla lab) amply reflects the modern age: discontinuous, sprawling, amalgamated, simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting, frustrating yet fecund. originally published as three separate works in its native spanish (in 2006, 2008, and 2009), the spanish writer (and former experimental physicist)'s trilogy defies both easy classification and tidy summary. the nocilla trilogy is so many things at once, but perhaps what it is most of all is an indelible timestamp of early 21st century distraction, disruption, and dislocation.

melding fiction and non-fiction (as well as content original and on loan), these three works synthesize into what may well be the literary equivalent of randomly browsing the internet, watching television, overhearing a conversation, responding to a barrage of messages, and half-assedly reading the daily news—all at once. the first two volumes of fernández mallo's trilogy follow, more or less, a similar format, while the third volume all but upends what came before. call it avant-garde, experimental, or symbolic of our confused and often incoherent epoch, whatever it is, the nocilla trilogy is a singular effort and while it may not have a precise analog, its influences and literary progenitors aren't difficult to discern.

there's much to love about the nocilla trilogy, but like so many modern creations, we're left wondering afterwards whether we've witnessed something altogether transcendent... or are overcompensating for a sneaking suspicion that we may have been mildly bamboozled (was it a dream or an actual experience?). fernández mallo masterfully connects the disparate, collaging and curating and constructing something not easily reverse-engineered (for its constituent parts have already assimilated into an unrecognizable new). in all, the nocilla trilogy is quite the wild ride and although i'm not entirely sure, just yet, what really happened across these 500+ pages, i do know that the trip, however bewildering at times, was worth every second.

it isn't that there's any certainty about the event, or that it cleaves to any universal law, and as an occurrence it won't feature in any history books, it's just the sensation, probably correct, that at this moment nothing in the world changed, and that this is the very stuff of human sterility.

*translated from the spanish by thomas bunstead (herrera, vila-matas, villoro, halfon, et al.) ...more

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Dec 04, 2018 R.K. Cowles rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-won-on-goodreads-giveaways, mixed-literature

Book won on Goodreads giveaway.
I don't like to read monotonous, cliched, stereotypical, predictable, biased, etc. stories, ideas, etc. So it is hard to find a book that is unique. Stories/ideas of fiction/non-fiction that have been written in 200 years 1,000 of them written, which nowadays it is difficult to find unique books.
This book is unique. Although some have just recently the past couple of decades have taken the experimental approach in writing something abstract contemporary, some ha ...more

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Feb 22, 2019 Jared Levine rated it it was ok

This was literary muzak to me. I was excited by it’s form that boasted a new contemporary feeling, but reading through this became placid very fast. I’m not opposed, for example, to getting lost in internet holes vis a vis wikipedia, but this was the literary equivalent of watching someone who shares no common interests with me, clicking around on link after arduous link. It became quite boring, really.

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May 10, 2020 Atomman rated it it was ok

Two and a half stars.
Interesting parts that, disappointingly, failed to add up to anything.
More about the journey than the destination, but at the end it's not clear that it was worth the effort. ...more

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Apr 11, 2019 Jacob Wren rated it it was amazing

Agustín Fernández Mallo writes:

"I think ruins become ruins due to their great symbolic potential before they become ruins, while still inhabited, still standing, their symbolic potential, I mean, is so intense that it forces their abandonment lest the people inhabiting be destroyed by excess, by an excess of life, and this abandonment precedes the shift into dreams" ...more

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Mar 06, 2019 David Rice rated it really liked it

Thought-provoking and engaging, though sometimes frustratingly overcool and, in an odd way, dated in its supposed ultra-modernity .. still, worth looking at, and unlike most other books I've seen. This is an author who's thinking about the current world in a serious way. ...more

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Nov 24, 2018 Shelli marked it as to-read

Recommended to Shelli by: Goodreads Giveaways

Shelves: fiction, goodreads-giveaways, series, translated

I just received my advance copy in the mail today, and, given the description, I am feeling an odd and quivery excitement about reading this brick of a volume (which is, after all, three whole books).

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Mar 25, 2020 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, translation, experimental, fragmentary

A collage of essays, interviews, quotations and fiction featuring wide cast of characters, people navigating in-between states. A tree along a lonely stretch of Navada highway, that everyone throws shoes on, in between two small towns, each with a brothel. Residents of a micronation that claim all the borders between countries. An artist-chef that cooks inedible food. Young brothers walking out of Russia through a maze of abandoned pipelines.

Organized, as Mallo has said, in a network structure, ...more

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Feb 18, 2020 Leandra rated it really liked it

This is an incredibly beautiful trilogy that blurs the line between poetry and prose - Bunstead's translation is just gorgeous. It was carried by its experimental style and sprawling prose, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for a strong narrative or characters.
I enjoyed the structure of the first two books, following multiple narratives that were sliced up and scrambled together, it was an interesting read. I found the third to be harder to get through (specifically part 1, I only read ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Rees Malwin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-like-house-of-leaves

Overall a beautiful trilogy to add to any list of Argentinian/South-American literature—though this series holds no bounds. From epitaphs halfway through to sentence long chapters or sections dedicated to quotes, livening the Project through its metaphysical narration, this is one of the best series published in 2019 for the English language (even though it was originally written and released between 2005-2009 in Spanish).

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Sep 16, 2019 Dan rated it really liked it

If you love postmodern literature, this pulls out all the stops. I'm not entirely sure if it's truly original or the pinnacle of a cut and paste job on a lot of great influences, but ultimately it doesn't matter much, it's a pretty cool reading experience if you like this sort of thing, which I certainly do. ...more

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Apr 15, 2019 Oon rated it really liked it

Sprawling, thought-provoking, mildly frustrating, but more importantly: original. A modern contrivance that mass-produces interpretations. Reading this reminds me of the first time I read The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. Recommended for people who consider plot or characters are not necessary for a novel.

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Mar 23, 2019 Danela rated it it was amazing

an exhilarating and thought provoking read

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Nov 24, 2018 KarnagesMistress marked it as to-read

Shelves: giveaways

I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways on Saturday, November 24, 2018. It is an uncorrected proof.

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Mar 31, 2019 Moved to Library Thing adaorhell rated it liked it

Shelves: art-papers

The first two books are the most interesting. Book three was a bit slower. Read for a review.

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Apr 30, 2019 Kristy rated it it was ok

Shelves: international-authors-not-usa-or-uk, received-from-goodreads-giveaway

I received this book from a Goodreads giveaway.

I struggled with this one. I'm all for experimentation in art, but I think this was a little too experimental even for me. ...more

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Nov 26, 2018 LUIS Heras rated it really liked it · review of another edition

El valor de lo atrevido, de caminar muy cerca del borde, el despeñarse en ocasiones

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Mar 23, 2019 Susannah rated it liked it

Minus 1 star for not counting as 3 books.

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Feb 28, 2019 Mary Tharp rated it liked it

Interesting

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Sep 20, 2019 Shawn rated it really liked it

FIrst two books were 5 stars; I couldn't finish the third. I could appreciate it, but it wasn't for me. ...more

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Aug 03, 2020 Joey rated it it was amazing

6/5

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Dec 27, 2020 Whtvrs rated it liked it

Better than the contemporary postmodern American novels at least

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Feb 16, 2014 Imanol Epelde rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Ez nau ba harrapatu. Ez orain. Nocilla Dream irakurri dut. Hiru ataletatik lehena. Bigarrena hurrengo baterako utziko dut. Brillantea iruditu zait tarteka baina ez nau ba harrapatu une honetan...

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Leum rated it it was amazing
May 24, 2020

Dasha rated it it was amazing
Nov 21, 2020

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About Agustín Fernández Mallo

Agustín Fernández Mallo

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Agustín Fernández Mallo (A Coruña, 1967) es un físico y escritor español afincado en Palma de Mallorca. Es uno de los miembros más destacados de la llamada Generación Nocilla, Generación Mutante o Afterpop, cuya denominación más popular procede del título de una serie de sus novelas.