#lisa fetchko

[loscheveresyaestantomados]

He may not have been an influence, but his interest in the complexity of experience and memory prefigures the density of late-twntieth-century writers like David Foster Wallace and W.G. Sebald. Think of Sebald´s long meandering sentences, steered by ghostly narrators who seemlessly move around in time, thought, and memory; and the obssesive attention Wallace pays to his characters´thoughts and experiences.

A Look2 Essay in Felisberto Hernández. Lisa Fetchko

[loscheveresyaestantomados]

...he had serious relationships with several women, all of whom had interesting careers, unusual for women in Uruguay at the time, although not unusual as it would have been for women in the United States.

A Look2 Essay in Felisberto Hernández. Lisa Fetchko

[loscheveresyaestantomados]

...although his themes and tropes are clearly Uruguayan: memory and nostalgia; cigarettes, hotels, and madness; boredom and inertia; shadow and light; cafés, public parks, stry horses and carts (a staple, to this day, of Uruguayan life). And he often sets his stories big dilapidated houses in overgrown gardens, a metaphor, perhaps, for the fate of the European past on this strange, new continent.

A Look2 Essay in Felisberto Hernández. Lisa Fetchko

[loscheveresyaestantomados]

It´s odd, at first, to enter these worlds, although many of their elements are deeply familiar, but once you acclimate yourself, it´s difficult to leave. As a friend of mine says, Hernández´s stories move like dreams.

A Look2 Essay in Felisberto Hernández. Lisa Fetchko

[loscheveresyaestantomados]

At the time, my Spanish was not good enough to  catch subtleties, but some things struck: the loose, introspective plots; the fresh, modern tone; the underlying fatalism, alleviated by a dark and human humor.

A Look2 Essay in Felisberto Hernández. Lisa Fetchko