Price - Andrés Neuman

8/13/2019 Price - Andrs Neuman

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Andrs Neuman (Argentina, 1977)

By Brian L. Price, Wake Forest University

Born in Buenos Aires in 1977 to a family of musicians, Andrs Neuman lived in Argentina until

1991 when he and his family relocated to Granada, Spain. This transatlantic move has made

pigeonholing Neuman difficult according to traditional divisions between Spanish and SpanishAmerican fiction. In a recent interview he claims that A estas alturas de mi vida, ya no s si soyargentino o espaol, las dos cosas o ninguna. Regardless, Neuman remains an important voice

in contemporary Hispanic literature. Two of his first three novels have been selected as finalists

for the prestigious Premio Herralde. In 2007 he was included inBogot39list of top LatinAmerican authors. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Alfaguara for his novelEl viajero del

siglo. The translation of this novel into ten languages including English brought his work to the

attention of a worldwide audience, and in 2010 the British literary magazine Grantanamed him

one of the most important young Spanish-language authors.

His first novel,Bariloche(1999), published when he was 22, was a finalist for the prestigiousPremio Herralde. Though Neuman did not win the competition, he obtained something of even

greater worth: a sterling endorsement from Roberto Bolao. I happened to be on the prizecommittee, the Chilean author wrote, and Neumans novel at once enthralled me to use an

early twentieth-century termand hypnotized me. In it, good readers will find something thatcan be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to

venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what. He concluded

that the future of Latin American literature belongs to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers.The novel follows Demetrio Rota, a trash collector living in Buenos Aires, through his humdrum

routine of collecting the refuse of metropolitan life. Asphyxiated by the stifling atmosphere of

the postmodern city, Demetrio seeks epiphanies in garbage bags and transcendence in the

occasional tryst with his work partners wife. Finding neither he attempts to assuage themonotony of his existence by assembling puzzles in the evening. Each puzzle depicts a bucolic

landscape from the mountainous region surrounding the town where he grew up.

Bariloche is a recuperative novel that attempts to reconcile the present with the past. Just as

Demetrio remembers the alpine contours of Bariloche in an effort to reconnect with the past andfind meaning in the present, Neumans prose elegantly conjures the metropolis of his

adolescence with an attention to detail similar to the Dublin that Joyce evokes from Trieste and

Paris. This portrait is constructed from 65 brief chapters which, like the pieces of Demetrios

puzzles, offer fragmentary glimpses of both cityscape and countryside. It is only after assemblingthe entire puzzle that readers can clearly understand the causes of Demetrios malaise. What

those final puzzle pieces reveal is a family tragedy. The abrupt arrival of Demetrios estranged

older brother, Martn, brings the novel to a painful close. Unlike Demetrio, who spends his

evenings reminiscing about his time in Bariloche, Martn rejects the past, preferring instead tolook to the future. In this conflict we find then two key components of Neumans writing: a

concern for the weight of the past on the present and the preeminence of family narratives.

Nunca nadie hizo jams buena literatura con historias familiares, Marcelo Maggi tells his

nephew Emilio Renzi in the opening pages of Ricardo PigliasRespiracin artificial. But thisdictum cuts across the grain of Argentine historical fiction. Indeed, oftentimes family and

national histories are synecdochally entwined, with branches of the genealogical tree coming to


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represent whole swaths of the nation, if not the nation itself. Andrs Neuman employs this

genealogical approach to narrating the nation in Una vez Argentina. The novel tells the story of

how branches of Neumans family arrived in Argentina and how, as a result of military

dictatorships and political instability, the family eventually leaves the country.

Equal parts autobiographical, genealogical, and political history, Una vez Argentina(2003),draws upon vignettes from personal memories and interviews with family members to retell the

story of twentieth-century Argentinas political upheavals from an intimate perspective.

Beginning with thefin de sicleimmigration of a Russian immigrant fleeing obligatory militaryservice and concluding with Neumans own travels to Spain in 1991, this is a novel about exiles

written by an exile. By recounting the experiences of predecessors from both paternal and

maternal lines, Neuman turns the history of his family into a tale that embraces the wide swath ofnational experience. His family members occupy all of the political, social, and religious spheres

of national life. Day laborers mingle with ostentatious dandies, musicians and artists reside

alongside politicians and intellectuals, Catholics and Jews pray over the same meal, and every

stripe political persuasion from anarcho-syndicalist to conservative nationalist cohabitate in thesepages.Neumans family, comprised primarily of western European exiles, likewise embodies the

nations nineteenth-century preoccupation with immigration as a step towards creative aprogressive state. The novel carries readers through pogroms and disappearances, soccer games

and concertos, massacres and exiles. At each of these moments the personal or the familialintersects with the historical, as in the case of his fathers participation in the 1968 noches de los

bastones largos, his mothers presence at the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, or his own memory of Ral

Alfonsns successful bid for the presidency in 1983. A common thread uniting these vignettes is

the presence of authoritarian rule.

The common currency of dictatorship narratives has been violence, repression, disappearances,and Orwellian state control of society. To whit novels like Manuel PuigsBeso de la mujer

araa(1976), Pablo de Santiss Teatro de la memoria (2000), and others have highlighted the

kidnapping, torture, and murder that characterized the military dictatorships of the 1970s and1980s. In Una vez Argentina, when Neuman discusses the torture of family members, he does so

from an oblique perspective. When his aunt and uncle are kidnapped by government agents, he

does not fictionalize their time in secret prisons but instead focuses on the fear of familymembers who did not know what had happened to them, leaving readers with only a silhouette of

the violence espoused by the military dictatorships. This, however, should not be misconstrued

as an evasion of political or moral responsibility in the face of repression. Rather not narrating

the suffering of his relatives makes a strong statement in favor of protecting the dignity of thosewho were involuntarily stripped of it. Neuman safeguards his family from further embarrassment

by stepping aside and allowing our imaginationsalready fed by the narratives and testimonies

of other desaparecidosandsecuestradosto construct the events.

Neuman alters his modus operandi for his fourth novel,El viajero del siglo, but retains hiscommitment to high-quality poetic writing. No longer anchored in the lost paradise of a bygone

adolescent homeland, here Neuman undertakes an ambitious novel about Europe. Set in

nineteenth-century Germany in the fictional town of Wandernburg, the novel tells the story of an

enigmatic traveler and translator, Hans, who arrives and finds it difficult to leave. Wandernburg,as its name suggests, is a town with no fixed position on the map, where the streets and

alleyways are constantly rearranging themselves, reminiscent of CalvinosInvisible Cities.


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Nevertheless the novel continues to exemplify Neumans concerns for history. Though not a

historical novel per se, the novels explicit temporal settingEl viajero del siglomoves nimbly

through intellectual traditions as Hans becomes involved with a local literary salon wheremembers discuss European history, politics, literature, art, architecture, and religion. Moreover

the novel tinkers with elements of the historical, political, philosophical, and epistolary genres.

Most recently Neuman has publishedHablar solos(2012), a novel about death, love, and writing

set in Argentina told through the voices of three family members. Mario, the father, has recently

been diagnosed with terminal illness and decides to take his son, Lito, on road trip while his wife,Elena, stays at home writing journal entries about feelings regarding her husbands immanent

death and her explorations of sexuality during an affair. The novel has received favorable

reviews and was chosen as one of the top books of 2012 by the Barcelona newspaperLa

Vanguardia.

In addition to these longer narrative works, Neuman has also published short stories (El queespera, 2000;Alumbramiento, 2006;El ltimo minuto, 2007;Hacerse el muerto, 2011), poetry

(Mtodos de la noche, 1998;El jugador de billar, 2000;El tobogn, 2002;La cancin del

antlope, 2003; Sonetos del extrao, 2007; Gotas negras, 2003;Mstica abajo, 2008;Patio delocos, 2011;No s por qu, 2011), and essays (El equilibrista, 2005; Cmo viajar sin ver

(Latinoamrica en trnsito), 2010).

Works Cited:

Andrs Neuman regresa a la novela conHablar solos.El Universal. 4 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Feb.

2012.

Puig, Manuel.El beso de la mujer araa. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1976. Print.

Neuman, Andrs.Bariloche. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1999. Print.

---.La vida en las ventanas. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2002. Print.

---. Una vez Argentina. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2003. Print.

---.El viajero del siglo. Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2009. Print.

---.Hablar solos. Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2012. Print.

---.El que espera. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1999. Print.

---.Alumbramiento. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma, 2006. Print.

---.El ltimo minuto. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma. 2007. Print.

---.Hacerse el muerto. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma, 2011. Print.

---.Mtodos de la noche. Madrid: Hiperin, 1998. Print.


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Price - Andrés Neuman