Reading Arlt’s “Mad Toy” left me with a heavy heart. As I read through the chapters, I feel that Arlt’s narration of his life only gets more depressing. It seems to me that Arlt has never had a genuine connection with anyone before he met Rengo, yet he loses him in the end. From joining […]
Posted in Arlt, Blogs | Tagged with betrayal, class, life, reality, trauma, violence
Using the Spanish Civil War as a narrative foundation, Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis illustrates the complexities of humanity vividly and touchingly. The novel takes a rather unusual narrative methodology through the point of view of a fictional author and journalist who also happens to be named Javier Cercas. He became interested in investigating a legendary story […]
Posted in Blogs, Cercas | Tagged with life, power, trauma, violence
For this week, we were given the task of reading Amulet by Robert Bolaño. I found this to be one of the best books we’ve read in this course so far. This book, like many of the other ones, have the consistent theme of memory, and I think repetition. The story is one long monologue, […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with Chile, history, history of the future, literature, memory, Mexico, narrative, poet, Poetry, poverty, recollection, sad, sadness, trauma, Weekly Book Blog
Amulet was such an interesting read, with the novel at times dipping into fantastical and sporadic narratives and at other times detailing straightforward and raw accounts of Auxilio’s life in Mexico. I found the book to be very fun to read, with the protagonist detailing the accounts of the people in and out of her […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with history, memory, trauma
This week’s reading was on Amulet by Roberto Bolaño. I was intrigued by the very first words in this book, “[i]n our misery we wanted to scream for help, but there was no one there to come to our aid” (Pertonius). This seemed like a very dark start compared to the previous book’s we’ve analyzed. …
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with female, memory, trauma, true events
Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet is indeed a story of a terrible crime, as the introductory paragraph of the novel indicates. The story is associated with painful memories that are difficult to talk about. In the narrative point of view of an Uruguayan woman named Auxilio Lacouture, a tale of poetry, trauma, and political resistance is told. […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with idealism, politics, trauma, violence
This was the first book I read entirely in one sitting. I was surprised, but how could you not keep on reading when the first line is “This is going to be a horror story”(pg.1) … The theme of memory is quite present throughout Auxilio’s broken narrative. Her recollections seem very “…fragmentary, as if mauled … Continue reading “Thoughts on Bolaño’s Amulet”
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño | Tagged with Hallucination, memory, Mexico, Poetry, trauma
This novel had me spiralling fro numerous reasons; however, for the purpose of this blog post, I shall focus on the contrasting chapters alone. It is rare that I come across a reading that I relate to so closely and envy the author for their ability to encapsulate a rare feeling so vividly. The feeling […]
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with authorial intent, dystopian, georges, hyperrealism, Imagination, pain, Surrealism, the real, trauma, war
