I finished reading The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia recently. What an interesting and strange novel, most accurately described as surreal. The basic plot concerns an Argentine journalist investigating something – he is chasing a story, following anonymous and strange leads that lead to multiplying questions. Eventually, the journalist’s story becomes the story of Macedonio and his wife/automaton Elena. We come to discover that Macedonio was able to instill the soul (maybe?) and/or the memories and/or the dreams (or all three?) of Elena in an eternal machine. This Machine is housed in the Museum and tends to predict the dreams/actions of those living. It is explained much more convincingly and lovingly in the novel.
The novel switches perspectives often and detours into vivid recollections of Elena’s (or the Machine’s) dreams or stories or predictions (I’m not certain what to call them – are they describing factual events, whether past, present, or future? I think so, but am unsure). There is a detailed accounting of one dream/story/prediction that describes an island society where Finnegan’s Wake is considered the religious text of the civilization, causing language constructs to change on a whim.
There are other dreams/stories/predictions that describe historic Argentine political events and attitudes. The author also uses the book to discuss how humans’ inventions (whether actual tangible objects like machines, or intangible things such as political theories and justifications, and language) can sometimes become uncontrollable; how well-meaning intentions cannot be excuses for creations that spiral out of control. Here is an extended excerpt that is related directly to Argentinian history, but also has relevance in any culture:
The State knows all the stories of all the citizens, and retranslates them into new stories that are then told by the president of the republic and his ministers. Torture is the culmination of that desire to know, the maximum degree of institutional intelligence. That is how the State thinks, and why the police mainly torture the poor, only the poor or the workers or the dispossessed . . . only in very exceptional cases have they tortured people belonging to other social classes, and these cases have become major scandals . . . and at the end they had to retreat before international pressure, which accepts as a given that the humble from the fields, the wretched and feverish from the ghettos and the poorest neighborhoods of the city will be massacred and tortured, but reacts when intellectuals and politicians and the children of well-to-do families are treated this way. Because, in general, the latter already collaborate of their own accord and serve as an example and adapt their lives to the criteria of reality established by the State, without there being any need to torture them. The others would do the same, but they cannot because they have been leveled and cornered, and even if they wanted to and took great pains to that end, they can no longer act like the model Japanese citizen who works fifteen hours per day and always greets the general manager of his company with the slighest of nods. They control everything, they have founded the mental State . . . which is a new stage in the history of institutions. The mental State, the imagined reality, we all think like they do and imagine what they want us to imagine.
As you can tell by my brief description and the quote above, language and how it describes and creates reality is an important theme throughout the book. Piglia makes references to real and fictional characters, mixing things up so much that you are uncertain if you are reading a real or fictional account (the protagonist, Macedonio, is a real figure, an Argentinian author). I think the book would have been significantly more satisfying had I been Argentinian or fluent in Argentinian history and culture.
[As an aside: in another of Piglia's books called Assumed Name, the author is a character in the novel and is trying to solve the mystery of an unpublished manuscript allegedly written by another real Argentine author, Roberto Arlt. The end of the novella reproduces the mysterious manuscript. Piglia was so convincing in his book that Arlt's daughter called him and told him that he should not have published the manuscript without her permission. Also, the U.S. Library of Congress catalogued the manuscript as authored by Arlt. It remains wrongly catalogued to this day (I learned all this when I read the introduction to the edition I have, hoping to glean greater meaning from what I had read).]
The Absent City was confusing at times, and had moments that felt “stream of consciousness-y” (see above excerpt as an example), a style that I don’t always like. However, there were also moments of exceptional writing:
Elena thought the man was a magnet that attracted and drew the iron shavings of the soul to itself. She was already thinking like a madwoman. She felt her skin release a metal dust. That is why her body was completely covered, including gloves and a long-sleeved blouse. The only part exposed was her face, the rusted skin of her external gears.
I like that passage: Elena as both human and machine; all of us a combination of human and machine, that which is natural and that which is human-made. I recommend the book by giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars, but give warning that it is often difficult to follow if you are anticipating a linear plot.
