The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s El congreso de literatura (The Literary Conference). This is another totally original story from Aira, using Hollywood B movie tropes (mad scientist, unworldly creatures, advanced technology). The hero/narrator César, a literary translator who has not had much work recently because of the financial crisis, manages to find the key to pirate treasure, which has baffled many great brians, and then goes off to the literary conference of the title, in Mérida, Venezuela. There he uses a wasp to get a cell from Carlos Fuentes, so he can clone him as part of his plan to rule the world, all the while enjoying the swimming pool, watching the staging in the airport of a post-modern story of Adam and Eve, which he wrote some time ago, and hoping to bump into a former lover. It is both great fun and also has a serious intent, even if that serious intent is merely to tell a good and unusual story. Fortunately, it is readily available in English, thanks to New Directions.
I can understand why Cesar wanted to clone Carlos Fuentes as part of his plan to rule the world. Thirty-some years ago, after I had read a few of Fuentes’s books (Terra Nostra, Where the Air is Clear, The Death of Artemio Cruz), I attended a lecture he gave in Amherst, Massachusetts. Because the prose in the English translations of these novels is wonderfully poetic yet lucid, I was particularly interested in hearing how Fuentes spoke English. His English was stunning, beautiful and very much like the translations from the Spanish I had read, even in his extemporaneous answers to questions from the audience.
I have always heard that one or two of the earlier translations into English of Fuentes’ work were not too good, which was why his reputation took so long to grow in the English-speaking world. No idea if this is true. I can say that he writes beautiful Spanish as, indeed, does Aira. I would have loved to hear him speak in English or Spanish. Lucky you!