#pacazo

[heycomrade]

I’ve certainly had the experience of sitting down to work and spending hours trying and failing to get a new piece off the ground, but I guess I wouldn’t refer to that as stuckness or lack of inspiration, exactly. Usually I was trying to figure out an answer without first being clear on the question, I think. And one of the nice things about having spent a few years in the racket is that I’m now usually quicker than in the past to recognize those days for what they are — days when for whatever reason my head is a box of mud — and to leave off trying.

Fictionaut Five: Roy Kesey - Fictionaut Blog

Fictionaut interviews Roy Kesey, author of Pacazo, which is one of my favorite books of 2011 so far.

[heycomrade]

The Collagist has an excerpt of Pacazo by Roy Kesey which I reviewed earlier. I've read a few books since then and I still consider Pacazo one of my favorite books of 2011 so far.

[heycomrade]

Pacazo by Roy Kesey - Review

Pacazo is a story about a man coming to terms with the murder of his wife and how to move on in the face of tragedy; the stories that we tell ourselves in order to survive.

I had a hard time getting into it at first. The story was written all over the place, mixing present and past in the same sentence:

The nearest building, sharp white. I close my eyes. There is the smell of decomposing leaves, of heat and wet grass. I have been this tired before but do not remember when and a ship drifts south along the coast toward the mouth of a river. A shout goes up. The men gather at the port gunwale. There is a Tallán mending a net on the bank. He is the first human they have seen in two days, perhaps of use. The men drop anchor, lower the skiff, go to get him.

This was horribly confusing in the first few pages and it wasn't until after the first 90 pages that I was able to fully separate the historical narrative from the personal narrative.

We're introduced to John after his wife's murder; we're thrown into the middle of John's chaos. He weaves his own story between his present, his past, and the past of the Incas in Peru. However weird this may seem at first, Kesey has written a beautiful story filled with some beautifully written paragraphs.

She is right and I love her for this. A light breeze rises, stirs her hair, and we begin to arrive. I wipe my face, put on my knapsack, lift Mariagnel to my shoulder. I do not remember ever asking Pilar about Amalia Puga, and Friar Valverde repents his role, protests the natives as best as he can, flees after the second Almagrist coup, is eaten by cannibals on Puna. - pg. 64

One of the things that I kept thinking about was the number of epigrams included in the beginning pages of Pacazo. Why so many?

There are seven total and, off the top of my head, I can't think of any other books that list as many as this or more. Anyone know other books that include so many?

This is probably the most important of the seven:

(I)t is often overlooked that the conviction that one can make sense of history stands on the same level of epistemic plausibility as the conviction that it makes no sense whatsoever. — Hayden White, The Content of the Form

Pacazo is an excellent example of how we deal with our own personal histories and our present. We weave our own stories and we do what we have to in order to survive, in order to make it to the next day and the next. Should we live in the past? No. It isn't until we let go of our past that we can truly move forward.

One of the highlights of the book is John's relationship with his daughter, Mariangel. While the rest of his life is almost in ruins, he still loves her and protects her from the outside world as much as possible. The little things about their relationship are beautiful to the point that you almost feel that John and Mariangel are real people instead of characters in a book.

See Also:

My first impressions of Pacazo

My review of Bel Canto - Pacazo makes reference to the Lima Crisis which is central to Bel Canto

Horn! Reviews: Pacazo

Review of Pacazo at The Monster's Flashlight

For the record, this is an amazing book and I've been recommending it to everyone I know.

[junk-pile]

Word of the Day

Churrigueresque (adj.) -- [from Wikipedia] Churrigueresque refers to a Spanish Baroque style of elaborate sculptural architectural ornament which emerged as a manner of stucco decoration in Spain in the late 17th century and was used up to about 1750, marked by extreme, expressive and florid decorative detailing, normally found above the entrance on the main facade of a building.

Image credit Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga Commons)(Lmbuga Galipedia)

From Pacazo, p. 529

[jjjjosh]

In any culture, he says, collective memory conveyed through rituals, ceremonies, and similar events reinforces a link with the past of a kind that involves no explicit reflection on the distance that separates us from it and the power goes out. The past, Ginzburg says, must be understood both on its own terms and as a link in the chain that in the last analysis leads up to ourselves.

Pacazo by Roy Kesey, pg. 287

[jjjjosh]

Pacazo by Roy Kesey, Part 1

Part 1 of Pacazo runs from the very first page to the end of page 180. We're introduced to John whose wife was murdered by a taxi driver and we're thrown into the middle of John's breakdown. It's interesting to come into the breakdown in the middle instead of the beginning. It sort of makes you feel lost, and the narrative the first several chapters makes it almost impossible to follow along as it weaves from John's story to John's past, to historical narrative. 

By the fourth paragraph we are forced into the historical narrative of the Peruvian people, specifically the Incas. 

The nearest building, sharp white. I close my eyes. There is the smell of decomposing leaves, of heat and wet grass. I have been this tired before but do not remember when and a ship drifts south along the coast toward the mouth of a river. A shout goes up. The men gather at the port gunwale. There is a Tallán mending a net on the bank. He is the first human they have seen in two days, perhaps of use. The men drop anchor, lower the skiff, go to get him.

The first 80 or so pages follow this pattern. It's hard to tell where John is narrating his story or the story of the Incas because it goes in and out. Of course, this historical narrative is important to him: it's the reason he came to Peru, his wife was Peruvian -- these are now his people. We're learning about the Incas from John, as he knows it to be true, but we're getting it as it is intertwined into his own story. You have to choose which narrative to follow -- either John's life or the Incan history -- or else you will be lost in the jumble.

It isn't easy to pick out though:

She is right and I love her for this. A light breeze rises, stirs her hair, and we begin to arrive. I wipe my face, put on my knapsack, lift Mariagnel to my shoulder. I do not remember ever asking Pilar about Amalia Puga, and Friar Valverde repents his role, protests the natives as best as he can, flees after the second Almagrist coup, is eaten by cannibals on Puna. - pg. 64

This makes it hard to follow for the first 80 pages, but it also makes it memorable. As John weaves his way through the present he is also jumping back in history a few centuries, within the same sentence.

And then there is this epigram (one of the many):

(I)t is often overlooked that the conviction that one can make sense of history stands on the same level of epistemic plausibility as the conviction that it makes no sense whatsoever. -- Hayden White, The Content of the Form

It's clear at this point that Pacazo isn't just about John, about his love. The language that Roy Kesey writes with is beautiful, sort of a mix of English and Spanish, as if John is losing his "Americanness" and is turning into an immigrant in Peru. Sort of like how, in America, immigrants have been here for awhile and are still creating sentences with a mix of their native language and American English.

It's also clear that this historical narrative, that of the Incas and of John's, isn't important in terms of John's present. I think maybe he forgets that, or wants to believe that it is important. He's trying to move forward in the only way he knows how; to relive his past and that of Peru. 

[jjjjosh]

And when she came to class the following Monday--her pronunciation as always indecipherable, her random use of the past and present and future, her insistence on the continuous forms as if there were no other options, her avoidance of modal verbs as if there were something to fear in could and would and should and might and will--now I could see her, because I had seen her dance, and this is unforgivable.

Pacazo by Roy Kesey, pg. 168

[jjjjosh]

We come to the Virgin, my street, my house. It is still very hot, and there is no wind, and mt sweater has become a ridiculous thing. For some reason the dogs are quiet and the streetlamp has not yet been repaired and these things are helpful but I think of tomorrow, of the following days, of what is waiting. Perhaps in Machala I should have taken a swim, and headed due west, and kept swimming.

Pacazo by Roy Kesey, pg. 160

I've been trying really hard to keep an open mind about this book. I knew within the first few pages that I was going to have a rough go at reading it. I think this is where I finally start to get it, where I'm used to the narrative sweeping from one subject to the next within the same sentence, where I can finally start keeping things straight.