"I wanted time to write a novel, a novel which I still have no idea. That's why I spend my time writing a few lines that mean nothing, in hopes of finding a canvas as possible, or at least take the rhythm of daily writing, alleged clerical discipline. ; '
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Train Tula, destination immediately designated hope of a linear narrative, with some stops perhaps we could imagine a trip without a hitch, the judgments announced in a routine punctuated by jolting regular sleepers on the track ... the novel by David Toscana risk confuse the reader placed on the wrong track with a title of an apparent simplicity. Tula, in fact, is the place where one starts and where it comes in a soft roundness and struck at once, the journey of the protagonist (one of them, rather) borrowing paths cross, sometimes straying the circumference of this circle which should bring it back to port. Yet the work of Mexican novelist, born in 1961 in Monterrey, readily distinguished by the subtlety of a structure that intertwines the plots, taking a subtly complex temporality, and sets nodes between the characters and different periods.
From the beginning itself enters into a relationship between two characters belonging to different generations. This meeting is surprisingly ambiguous, based on an original lie. Juan Capistrano, an old recluse in a retirement home run by religious, and who is admired for his companions ... his ability to draw a line in her hair perfect, seems to put his life in a hopeless immobility. His only horizon opens onto the street in which, by the window, desperately trying to recognize Carmen, the woman he loved, in each pass. But if his body is numb, his mind is constantly traveling, haunted by the memory alive of a tormented existence. The past that holds this to be fixed on the blank page of a book. Thus he uses the other hero of the novel, Froylán Gomez a writer without a draft, has resigned from his employment to engage in the task of storytelling in the world without knowing what or where to start. The first lines of the novel the reader has learned the death of Froylan: it is a voice 'beyond the grave that rises timidly, taking over part of the narrative related to the era's most recent novel.
The meeting was orchestrated by the old man, to meet one who unknowingly about to fix this memory of wandering, had used subterfuge. This time, the convening Capistrano through a grand-son fantasy, tipping the story of a reflection on the links in the novel but also in our lives, unite the fiction and reality. By accepting this invitation, Froylan tacitly submits to what may be ahead as a game but the stakes are high: to make sense of this existence which, without this romantic setting abyss, could remain nebulous . The figure of the novelist splits: Capistrano, the original narrator, runs the risk of having transformed his story (or magnified) by Froylan, the unemployed engineer turned writer. Identities are blurred, masks overlap. Thus, a disaster born of intimate, her mother having been raped by an American vendor of mescal, Juan is entrusted to the care of Buenaventura others call the "Black". Mestizo by birth, it is transplanted into a family of heart he has no characteristics. Research - or rather the building - its identity is inevitable. It thus creates, to win the love of a girl his age, Carmen, a new character: it becomes Domenico, a man-child soldier without a battle (or almost), whose role in Mexican army is to carry bags of flour he imagines filled with ammunition. History of Domenico is a picaresque novel. Like Don Quixote, trying to win away his Dulcinea, Domenico tries unsuccessfully to multiply acts of bravery beyond his reach. The reunion, eleven years later, he is a failure that is not resolved. Carmen would have loved Juanito, she refuses to Domenico it does not agree to recognize. Thus, this wandering, these dangers, these adventures are meaningless.
The story of Capistrano, isolated by quotation marks, alternating in the novel with the narrative in first person supported by Froylan. In these short chapters integrate the passages in the third person, borne by an omniscient narrator giving us more objective elements related to the context: the expansion of the city of Tula, Domenico has abandoned the development of proposed railway that will link to Tampico Tula. The construction of the work and intersects the ages, levels of narrative, yet an astonishing rigor, it structures the reader's consideration. The intersection epochs allows us to witness the birth of fiction from what is presented as reality. Froylan, is the novelist, tried in fact to make sense of these disparate elements even in their chronology, enriching the disappointing reality of the contributions of fiction. However, the original story takes him to the point that he alters his daily fantasy born of the old man's words. The pages devoted to the early literary process is very enlightening in this regard.
"I still know very little about Juan Capistrano. Even if his story is still when his mother dies, I feel I have enough evidence to put me to write.
I decided to start with the rape of Fernanda. I locked myself in my office and, after two hours, I pieced together the facts from the time the girl continues to read poems to her uncle to the time she returns home, to except the moment when she is raped by an American. Thereupon I lost two or three hours, immersed in drafts and launched more or less specific to the wastebasket. "
However, the reader has already read this story, his focus is now on its genesis, guided by the views of the writer who is witness to his choices and hesitations. The story of Juan / Domenico doubles then a sort of "Diary of a writer" - to borrow a phrase from Dostoevsky. The development of fiction very different from the original story, and requires the reader to carry with him a critical eye. What the narrator retains elements it? Who does he choose to conceal? The selection is made by a concern to a particular value in this existence, however little trite, but that seems meaningless. However, in a subtle interweaving, this fiction is imbued as the imaginary Froylan combining his own life items not related by Capistrano, but added to his story which, inevitably, has some shortcomings (indeed, the it can not by itself describe the assault on his mother that he did unknown). The work then supposedly biographical feeds fantasies of the writer:
"Right in the chapter, my imagination has drowned in a lagoon white.
Very often, I fantasized about Patricia: I violated so wild, or I turn into a tough wrestler who tortures me until the unspeakable. I dream every detail: I hear her cries or mine, I see the blood, the bruises, links. But then, I do realize the bed is one thing, the blank page is another. "
David Toscana multiplies the points of intersection between the two levels of narration, with a rare understanding of the story: Capistrano also offers he to his biographer, the key figure in its history, Carmen, plunging it into a quest similar to his. If the old man finds his beloved in passing that none of the watches from his window, Froylan him, discovered her.
"Today I saw Carmen.
Carmen.
Carmen.
Carmen.
Carmen. "
The quest for love is replaced by a time the story of Capistrano. The novelist becomes the hero of a story not parallel but adjacent, which leads to different paths and yet close. The bond that develops between the unknown and it is fragile, hazardous, subject to difficulties beyond its control. Now he is able to organize the narrative, to subdue his will. And established the essential difference between fiction and reality. The writer-demiurge has little control over its own existence, indeed.
The first page of the novel has warned us: a life may hang. At the end, only remain the tapes recorded by Capistrano and drafts written by Froylan. Tampico Tula-line is finally opened, a metaphor for this story that combines the vagaries of these characters who, like us, unaware of their destiny. For us readers, the novel has a purpose and meaning, but those who have experienced these things paper, none had no conscience. This beautiful novel does not end, making life its omnipotence, thus setting the limits of literature predictable, the real him, could not be submitted ...
"I can go to Carmen's apartment knocking on his door until it opens me up to demolish it. "Carmen! Carmen, "I repeated. I take him by the waist to pull her body to all that is not me. I could also tell him that we expect Tula an unfinished life, a beautiful house overlooking the main square, a grand piano dusty certainly needs to be granted, a railway track to be completed and which still missing meters, meters and "
The author of this magnificent novel, David Toscana, is in France for a few more days. Here is the schedule scheduled meetings (until October 21, 2010)
And here a link to the chronic Edwood that m ' gave want to discover this beautiful book emergency.
And here a link to the chronic Edwood that m ' gave want to discover this beautiful book emergency.
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