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Obstacles
One of the most remarkable books of contemporary Mexican literature, The Obstacles is the story of young writers coming of age in a world dominated entirely by their own fictions. It tells, in alternating chapters, the stories of two teenagers, Ricardo and Elias, who are characters in each others' novels.
Ricardo lives in Mexico City with his mother, who is mourning the recent death of her husband. Elias, an orphan, lives in Las Remoras, a town on the Baja Peninsula that has been invented and meticulously imagined by Ricardo.
Blurring our notions of reality and fiction, Eloy Urroz takes the reader into a world where characters invent characters and challenge their creators. And the book's conclusion—in which a surprising connection between Ricardo and Elias is revealed—shows that not even fiction can be controlled in a world of such incredible unpredictability.
Ricardo lives in Mexico City with his mother, who is mourning the recent death of her husband. Elias, an orphan, lives in Las Remoras, a town on the Baja Peninsula that has been invented and meticulously imagined by Ricardo.
Blurring our notions of reality and fiction, Eloy Urroz takes the reader into a world where characters invent characters and challenge their creators. And the book's conclusion—in which a surprising connection between Ricardo and Elias is revealed—shows that not even fiction can be controlled in a world of such incredible unpredictability.
- GenresFictionLiterature
350 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
2 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Eloy Urroz
29 books7 followersEloy Urroz is a Mexican writer and Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at The Citadel in South Carolina. Though born in New York, Urroz grew up in Mexico City and is of Mexican nationality. He is one of the founding members of the Crack Movement, along with such writers as Ignacio Padilla and Jorge Volpi. Urroz has written eight novels, four books on literary criticism, four books of poetry, three political reportages and dozens of essays, articles, and reviews on Latin American and Peninsular Culture and Literature. Some of his novels have been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German. In the United States, his novels are published by Dalkey Archive Press.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 14, 2018
There is brilliance here. Not instant, unremitting, and blinding, but scattered, wavering, and desperate. It's more than possible that my reading was "influenced" by existential contingencies, i.e., my life-accomplice of nigh fifteen years nearly dissolved into a confetti-montage of hallucinations, a threat that lingers, and during a recent combustible trip to Atlanta we returned to the bookstore where once before she took undue umbrage at my behavior towards another female, this time she finds the only goddamn Dalkey spine on the wall--knowing as she does how I hunt for those--and it just so happens to be about what it's all about (spoiler:
ah, l'amour
)and it has to be entitled with a word that is manifestly prepossessed of resonant Lacanian reverberations which I just so happened to be simultaneously hearkening thereunto in rapt diligence. And so I began reading it immediately. That's the overwrought stage setting and I beg your pardon for the diaristic intrusion. Nonetheless, there is a scene in the novel(s) that vehiculates a magisterial mobilization of narcissism, transvestism, the mirror-stage, the lamella, and the perverse unification of (self-)love, a febrile vision of such intensity it alone is sufficient to recommend the entire text. On the other hand, it remains unclear (which is fine) whether the passages dotted with a philosophical doggerel of wide-eyed relativism are a welcome reminder to never presume that ANY experience or emotion is reciprocal, or that the sophomoric inquiries are a parody of youthful credulity, or if they are the testimony of Mr. Urroz. I don't honestly care, because I'm willing to play along even when it irks. The imbrication of subjectivity, memory, writing, love, lust, and loss creates a textual depth that is touching and undaunted by deep recesses. I leave you with the author's own enfolded autocritique:
"Bodily Prayers is written in a frankly adolescent voice: hurried, careless, jumping from one vicissitude to another, and whose characters--all of them adolescents themselves--struggle between a pretentiously philosophical speech and a confused sexuality, one more imagined than real."
"Bodily Prayers is written in a frankly adolescent voice: hurried, careless, jumping from one vicissitude to another, and whose characters--all of them adolescents themselves--struggle between a pretentiously philosophical speech and a confused sexuality, one more imagined than real."
April 29, 2024
I pulled this book out of the box and found price tags on the cover. $13.95 from Green Apple Books in San Francisco marked down to 91 cents.
I like the metafictional conceit that structures the book: two characters who are writers, each writing a work about a writer who, in a Twilight Zone-like arc, turns out to be the other writer. Ricardo is from Mexico City, and he has written a novel called "Las Rémoras," a fictional town in Baja California Sur, focused on the character Elias, who is a writer and lives in the town library. Conversely, Elias, from the fictional town of Las Rémoras in Baja California Sur, is writing about a character named Ricardo, who is from Mexico City and has written a novel "Las Rémoras." Initially, because the novel starts with Ricardo who lives in a real place, Mexico City, I assumed that he was the main focalizer occupying the primary, or the most verisimilar, level of fiction in the novel. Because the character Ricardo creates Elías and Las Rémoras–fictions within a fiction–I assumed that Elías was a secondary focalizer and creator with less agency, since he is the product of Ricardo’s imagination, living, acting, and writing as the product of the character Ricardo’s literary imagination. Elías’s writings are not his own, and he is thus less verisimilar than Ricardo, because he is twice removed from the realm of “real” authorship.
But part way through the novel, Ricardo feels the need to escape Mexico City, and he journeys by train and ferry to Baja California Sur to visit the fictional city of Las Rémoras. In La Paz, a real city in BCS he encounters one of his characters, Elías’s lover Roberta, who is escaping Las Rémoras. He knows her but not fully as she reveals aspects and experiences of which he was unaware. Even more surprising, she knows about his life, as if she had read about it, and has opinions about his actions and choices. Later, as Ricardo tries to buy a bus ticket to Las Rémoras but cannot because, as the ticket agent tells him, no such town exists, two more characters, Solón and Cecilio, find him at the bus station and drive him to Las Rémoras. Elías is writing Ricardo’s visit, and he uses Solón and Cecilio as Ricardo’s transportation. If at the beginning of the novel, there seems a clear division and hierarchy between creators (Urroz→Ricardo→Elías), as the novel progresses the divisions blur more and more, and everyone and everything are as real or fictional, creative or created, as everyone and everything, including the author, Eloy Urroz, who may or may not be a fictive amalgamation.
As much as I like the metafictional shenanigans of "The Obstacles," there is much that I don’t like about it, for it is a novel built on stories of male sexual obsession or, to put it more clearly, a man’s obsession with a woman (love? lust? self-discovery? fate?). The obsessions are those of the fictional writers, Ricardo and Elías, as well as those of many of their male characters. The novel reads like a network of obsession stories: Man obsesses over his mother; man obsesses over his aunt; man obsesses over a prostitute(2 examples); man obsesses over a maid; man obsesses over a neighbor woman; man obsesses over a gringa; man obsesses over a nun. None of these obsessions end well (disappointment, tragedy, death), but they are the primary motives for the action and all the writings in the novel. Writers must write out their obsessions or others’ obsessions, and to read stories of others’ obsessions is the best! This is a man’s book about what men do. Women are, of course, objectified. They hardly have any agency and hardly speak, and the few times Urroz has a few of his female characters speak and develop into characters rather than functioning as projections of male fantasy they don’t last very long in the novel. Too much of the time, male obsession here washes out and flattens the fictive world. Also, the obsessions strip the male character of most everything but what comes out of the obsession: longing, regret, loss, tragedy.
Having said all this, there are moments in the book when characters are forced out of their obsessing mind sets to actually deal with the world. When Ricardo flees Mexico City to Baja California Sur, Urroz includes lots of details of Ricardo negotiating the trip, from the minibus to the train station to the train to the ferry. In such passages, the novel lightens, and the perspective broadens beyond the confines of so many obsessions. These passages are a nice relief, but they only temporarily interrupt the flow of obsession stories. By the end, though, the stories have become melodramatic and overwrought, the stuff of telenovelas. In the final chapter, it is revealed that Elías and Ricardo are half brothers!!! Their father is the town priest in Las Rémoras, Agosto Roldán, who is also a writer. His story “A Conversion Chronicle,” is about how his obsession with an American girl, Jenny, led to God’s intervention, his conversion, and a son, Elías. This is followed by Roldán’s deathbed confession of a second obsession/indiscretion that resulted in a second son, Ricardo. The narrative lens zooms in and out quickly, mimicking the emotional shockwaves.
After the funeral of their father, Ricardo and Elías skip town in a stolen car, brainstorm blending their two works into a single novel called "The Obstacles" but attributed to a single author, whose nom de plume is Eloy Urroz. Afterwards, they stop the car and walk out into the desert and pee in the sand together before getting back in the car and heading into their future. Sealing the deal, I guess. Did I mention they have a woman with them? Her name is Pili, and she made it possible for them to steal the car, although she doesn’t drive it. She wants to escape Las Rémoras, because she does not want to marry the man her family has set her up with. She acts, she speaks a little, and she escapes, but she doesn’t join Elías and Ricardo in their pissing in the desert bonding ritual. Probably just as well.
I like the metafictional conceit that structures the book: two characters who are writers, each writing a work about a writer who, in a Twilight Zone-like arc, turns out to be the other writer. Ricardo is from Mexico City, and he has written a novel called "Las Rémoras," a fictional town in Baja California Sur, focused on the character Elias, who is a writer and lives in the town library. Conversely, Elias, from the fictional town of Las Rémoras in Baja California Sur, is writing about a character named Ricardo, who is from Mexico City and has written a novel "Las Rémoras." Initially, because the novel starts with Ricardo who lives in a real place, Mexico City, I assumed that he was the main focalizer occupying the primary, or the most verisimilar, level of fiction in the novel. Because the character Ricardo creates Elías and Las Rémoras–fictions within a fiction–I assumed that Elías was a secondary focalizer and creator with less agency, since he is the product of Ricardo’s imagination, living, acting, and writing as the product of the character Ricardo’s literary imagination. Elías’s writings are not his own, and he is thus less verisimilar than Ricardo, because he is twice removed from the realm of “real” authorship.
But part way through the novel, Ricardo feels the need to escape Mexico City, and he journeys by train and ferry to Baja California Sur to visit the fictional city of Las Rémoras. In La Paz, a real city in BCS he encounters one of his characters, Elías’s lover Roberta, who is escaping Las Rémoras. He knows her but not fully as she reveals aspects and experiences of which he was unaware. Even more surprising, she knows about his life, as if she had read about it, and has opinions about his actions and choices. Later, as Ricardo tries to buy a bus ticket to Las Rémoras but cannot because, as the ticket agent tells him, no such town exists, two more characters, Solón and Cecilio, find him at the bus station and drive him to Las Rémoras. Elías is writing Ricardo’s visit, and he uses Solón and Cecilio as Ricardo’s transportation. If at the beginning of the novel, there seems a clear division and hierarchy between creators (Urroz→Ricardo→Elías), as the novel progresses the divisions blur more and more, and everyone and everything are as real or fictional, creative or created, as everyone and everything, including the author, Eloy Urroz, who may or may not be a fictive amalgamation.
As much as I like the metafictional shenanigans of "The Obstacles," there is much that I don’t like about it, for it is a novel built on stories of male sexual obsession or, to put it more clearly, a man’s obsession with a woman (love? lust? self-discovery? fate?). The obsessions are those of the fictional writers, Ricardo and Elías, as well as those of many of their male characters. The novel reads like a network of obsession stories: Man obsesses over his mother; man obsesses over his aunt; man obsesses over a prostitute(2 examples); man obsesses over a maid; man obsesses over a neighbor woman; man obsesses over a gringa; man obsesses over a nun. None of these obsessions end well (disappointment, tragedy, death), but they are the primary motives for the action and all the writings in the novel. Writers must write out their obsessions or others’ obsessions, and to read stories of others’ obsessions is the best! This is a man’s book about what men do. Women are, of course, objectified. They hardly have any agency and hardly speak, and the few times Urroz has a few of his female characters speak and develop into characters rather than functioning as projections of male fantasy they don’t last very long in the novel. Too much of the time, male obsession here washes out and flattens the fictive world. Also, the obsessions strip the male character of most everything but what comes out of the obsession: longing, regret, loss, tragedy.
Having said all this, there are moments in the book when characters are forced out of their obsessing mind sets to actually deal with the world. When Ricardo flees Mexico City to Baja California Sur, Urroz includes lots of details of Ricardo negotiating the trip, from the minibus to the train station to the train to the ferry. In such passages, the novel lightens, and the perspective broadens beyond the confines of so many obsessions. These passages are a nice relief, but they only temporarily interrupt the flow of obsession stories. By the end, though, the stories have become melodramatic and overwrought, the stuff of telenovelas. In the final chapter, it is revealed that Elías and Ricardo are half brothers!!! Their father is the town priest in Las Rémoras, Agosto Roldán, who is also a writer. His story “A Conversion Chronicle,” is about how his obsession with an American girl, Jenny, led to God’s intervention, his conversion, and a son, Elías. This is followed by Roldán’s deathbed confession of a second obsession/indiscretion that resulted in a second son, Ricardo. The narrative lens zooms in and out quickly, mimicking the emotional shockwaves.
After the funeral of their father, Ricardo and Elías skip town in a stolen car, brainstorm blending their two works into a single novel called "The Obstacles" but attributed to a single author, whose nom de plume is Eloy Urroz. Afterwards, they stop the car and walk out into the desert and pee in the sand together before getting back in the car and heading into their future. Sealing the deal, I guess. Did I mention they have a woman with them? Her name is Pili, and she made it possible for them to steal the car, although she doesn’t drive it. She wants to escape Las Rémoras, because she does not want to marry the man her family has set her up with. She acts, she speaks a little, and she escapes, but she doesn’t join Elías and Ricardo in their pissing in the desert bonding ritual. Probably just as well.
sampled
January 27, 2013A premise with promise, unappealing to me beyond the 30pp mark due to my current disinterest in lovestruck heterosexual Mexicans, one of whom is besotted with a prostitute, waxing lyrical at length about their ardours. Intrigued by the notion of two characters writing novels about one another—a surround-sound metafictive device—but not pleased by the knotty, torturous lack of clarity in the prose or the aforesaid love clichés that don’t need a 3,000,000th airing albeit in an edgy youthful Mexican stylee.
September 4, 2010
The first third of this book is nearly flawless, with its complex and impassioned ruminations on love and its believably love-struck protagonists, but then somewhere along the way this engaging story gets derailed by the author's attempts to turn this tale into a meta-fiction mess, where the meta-material seems to serve no purpose other than to draw attention to itself and its false ingenuity. I desperately wanted this book to tear away from it's cleverer-than-thou attitude and get back to the story at hand, but alas, it was not to be. The initially well-developed characters actually seem to regress to at best one dimension and the complex by-way-of too simple plot threads converge so neatly as to be unbelievable in its mundanity.
But still, even with all its fault, there is some true magic and wonder hidden in the many folds of this book; I just wish the author wanted them to be found.
But still, even with all its fault, there is some true magic and wonder hidden in the many folds of this book; I just wish the author wanted them to be found.
June 22, 2015
Writers Ricardo and Elias are both love struck and agonized. Unbeknownst to them, they're also writing a novel with the other as the main character. The beginning of the book is full of complex, touching laments on the pain and difficulty of love, reminiscent in some ways of the brooding in Shakespeare's sonnets. Somewhere in the middle of the novel, Eloy Urroz delves into meta-fiction. The prose is less moving here and often bulky and confusing, making the first chunk of the novel much more compelling and interesting.
March 27, 2013
A little over a year it took, but I finished! (I started this novel while traveling in Tulum. I broke my foot there and this read was shelved. I returned to it about a month ago and finished just about a year after I originally began!) I didn't remember much of the entwined narratives or overlapping characters in this crosshatch of fiction and reality, but I don't think it mattered. I was drawn to Urroz's prose even though I felt exhausted or confused at times. Definitely made me long for Baja terrain.
September 13, 2007
I never read a book that upset me as much as this book did. It was self-indulgent, and I found his writing style ingratiating, and this is as someone who is into metafiction.
March 25, 2010
started to read this in Nicaragua, but couldn't stomach it, i talk about it more here:
http://5cense.com/10/NIC1.htm
http://5cense.com/10/NIC1.htm
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews