'THE ABANDONED' MEY LUIS
Factotum Editions, 2008
While just
reading your book, I say out loud that Luis Mey (Buenos Aires, 1979) is a good writer. A prominent writer to be taken into account. His first novel, "The Abandoned", edited by Factotum, gives ample proof of that. It's fun to exhaustion, is agile, light and well built. The dialogues are pure and fresh and the plot, if somewhat hackneyed, keeps the reader alive to the last page. It is, in short, a very lucky debut. And Mey, who moves with commendable ease, a promise of a great writer breaking the shell at gunpoint.
In this first installment of the adventures of Maxi, a natural heir, we think, of the classic old-school anti-heroes of California, along the lines of a young Hank Chinaski himself or Arturo Bandini, featuring all the recurring clichés gender. There are good doses of badness, social maladjustment, of failure, sleaze existential tragedy known, gratuitous violence, explicit sex, underground philosophy of pessimism appellant and black humor, and corrosive acid. Cruel, sharp yellow which is by far the most revalued dressing prose of Mey: a comic wink that transports us to other readings.
However, if something lacks the novel is precisely the abuse of that style so familiar to many. Fante's ghost hovers over her like one of those annoying tiny model airplane planes, flying low with the same deafening. Luis Mey one reads and has the constant feeling of reading a translation of the U.S. Argentina, with the consequent risk of being unjustly converters in poor substitute version of the City.
And this is a pity, of course, because guess, after that exercise, perhaps unconsciously, the author of mimesis, a solid base, an extensive literary background and very interesting and well-intentioned attempt to continue on the right path of other Recent offenders, as Palahniuk or Houellebecq, an effort that the reader knows good thanks and decide to reward ignoring the natural ups and downs.
Personally, I think it would be even more grateful that Luis Mey is now striving to find their own voice. Not rely on the good old totems Literature. -That will always be present, invoke or not to end up becoming, over time, one of them. Because, fortunately for him and for us, all indications presage a promising and bright future.
* * *
In this first installment of the adventures of Maxi, a natural heir, we think, of the classic old-school anti-heroes of California, along the lines of a young Hank Chinaski himself or Arturo Bandini, featuring all the recurring clichés gender. There are good doses of badness, social maladjustment, of failure, sleaze existential tragedy known, gratuitous violence, explicit sex, underground philosophy of pessimism appellant and black humor, and corrosive acid. Cruel, sharp yellow which is by far the most revalued dressing prose of Mey: a comic wink that transports us to other readings.
However, if something lacks the novel is precisely the abuse of that style so familiar to many. Fante's ghost hovers over her like one of those annoying tiny model airplane planes, flying low with the same deafening. Luis Mey one reads and has the constant feeling of reading a translation of the U.S. Argentina, with the consequent risk of being unjustly converters in poor substitute version of the City.
And this is a pity, of course, because guess, after that exercise, perhaps unconsciously, the author of mimesis, a solid base, an extensive literary background and very interesting and well-intentioned attempt to continue on the right path of other Recent offenders, as Palahniuk or Houellebecq, an effort that the reader knows good thanks and decide to reward ignoring the natural ups and downs.
Personally, I think it would be even more grateful that Luis Mey is now striving to find their own voice. Not rely on the good old totems Literature. -That will always be present, invoke or not to end up becoming, over time, one of them. Because, fortunately for him and for us, all indications presage a promising and bright future.
* * *
0 comments:
Post a Comment