#47: Shantytown, by Cesar Aira

Cesar Aira is an Argentinian writer know for writing short, strange novels. And writing lots of them. He has his fans, including Patti Smith in the New York Times and Geoffrey O’Brien in the New York Review of Books. (Both links are to reviews of Aira’s short story collection, The Musical Brain and Other Stories.)

I picked up Shantytown, which was the longest Aira novel I could find at 160 pages.

Surprise! It’s a short, strange novel. It’s set in Buenos Aires—I found some of the streets on a map—but it doesn’t really feel like it takes place anywhere on this planet. Aira’s main character, a large rather diffident man named Maxi, roams the city streets in the afternoons, helping various homeless families move their overloaded shopping carts along. Maxi never feels quite real, we perceive him the way we might perceive the main character in a superhero movie. He’s unassuming, disconnected, unreflective—a physical presence with minimal affect.

Other characters come along. A web of mystery and intrigue is established. The plot is precise, intricate. The characters are all just a tad outlandish, exaggerated, unreal. They all seem to be from the Uncanny Valley. Again, the effect is like a superhero movie. The book is garish, yet flat. That’s not meant to be disparaging—I’m pretty sure it’s an intended effect.

As I was reading Shantytown the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico came to mind—those flat yet fantastic city landscapes. It was startling, then, to find the painter’s name in O’Brien’s review of Aira’s story collection: “He has been likened to a remarkably wide range of writers—Sebald, Kafka, Bolaño, Calvino, Nabokov, Murakami. Duchamp and De Chirico have likewise been invoked, and Aira himself has mentioned Roussel and Borges…”. Quite the name-check.

I think it would be best to read Aira in bulk—maybe two or three novels over the course of a week. Or maybe that story collection would be the thing. I remember how much I enjoyed reading Alvaro Mutis’s seven short novels about Maqroll the Gaviero in a single volume. What would it have been like to read just one of those works on its own? I don't know whether it's me, or certain writers, but sometimes a small dose just isn't sufficient.