Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra

There are times when the length of a review is a clear indicator of a reviewer’s feelings. I know from my own experience that my lengthiest reviews are the books I most adore or the books that inspire the most ire. This leaves me in an odd position for Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet, a novel about which I took precisely zero notes but which I nonetheless see as essentially perfect.

Despite being published a mere four years ago (!), Chilean Poet already feels timeless, eternal, classic. It inspires a feeling I haven’t had towards contemporary novels very often, though Zadie Smith’s White Teeth comes to mind. I’m trying to identify why Zambra’s work feels like a classic already and I think it comes down to the fundamentals of novel writing just being done extremely well. Chilean Poet has a flexible, lively style that adapts itself to the purpose of scenes. The characters are all fleshed out beautifully and they feel authentic and relatable, even and especially in their flaws—at the core, they are all likable. The plot and structure provide the right balance of forward momentum whilst not abandoning the reflective interiority of the characters. There’s also something about the omniscience of the narrator that speaks to the timelessness of the tale.

It could be argued that the novel has three main characters: Gonzalo, Carla, and Vicente. Gonzalo and Carla are teenage lovers sneakily touching each other under a pancho who inevitably break up—partly because of Gonzalo’s love of poetry and Carla’s complete disinterest. Roughly six years later, the two reconnect and Gonzalo quickly and correctly deduces that Carla has a son, Vicente. The following six years are the flourishing of the trio’s domestic life, which is replete with the beauty of small moments and the quiet tragedies that undercut our bliss.

Zambra’s capacity for selection, for focus, is stunning. Each scene, even the quotidian, is critical. For instance, there’s a scene in which Gonzalo and Vicente are caught off guard by a clerk to name their bond. Awkwardly, they describe themselves as “friends” and then have a discussion about the connotations of the word step-father in different languages (stepfather in Spanish holds a diminutive). There’s a tragic moment where Carla miscarries and it sets off a sequence of events that feels (narratively satisfyingly) inevitable in the way only carefully constructed novels achieve. There’s a whole sequence in which Gonzalo reads his poems to Carla, who is unimpressed, and then plagiarizes poems from other poets, who impress her. He gets caught in a lie about publishing a book and he commits to the falsehood, which also forces him to withhold the information that destroys his relationship with Carla: he has been accepted into a PhD program in New York and it is time to leave.

Each of the characters are so distinctive and beautiful and true in all of their weird little details. Vicente, for instance, needs to be weaned off of his addiction to cat food when he’s six years old. The interiority of the characters makes them so rich and likable. Seeing their inner tensions is insightful about how people are while also being compelling in terms of the conflict. In the final movement of the book, Zambra reunites Gonzalo and Vicente after years of separation. The two discover a great deal of experiential overlap, both being passionate about poetry. In the final sequence, there’s a tension of whether the two will ultimately reconcile. There are some truly excellent lines of dialogue where they offer barbs alongside praise, and sometimes the comments are both praise and disparagement at the same time. Their fates are left ambiguous, and it feels so beautiful to see their own uncertainties emerge. The last page of the book, without ruining anything, is mischievously evasive, which gives readers a kind of uneasy optimism about their futures.

Gonzalo, Vicente, and Carla are my favourite characters. There is, however, a fourth main character—Pru. She’s an American journalist in her thirties that finds herself in Chile for a story following a messy breakup with her girlfriend. Her section gives more insight into Vicente, of course, but also she ends up on a story where she interviews all kinds of Chilean poets. Zambra has a real knack for being able to describe literary culture. Again, it’s riddled with tensions of people who like each other’s work but whose jealousy prevents them from open admiration and they pretend to read each other’s work to seem enlightened but also are trying to eschew everything in the name of a new generation of poetry. The whole culture of poetry is depicted as a bit of a farce and, like his character, it feels completely real.

I think it’s really hard to be funny in literature. Zambra, though, has great timing and great turns of phrase. There’s a playfulness to the text that gives it a light touch. The fact that the tone isn’t overly serious makes some of the dramatic moments hit that much harder. Who would have imagined that the simple act of rearranging a fridge magnet would have such a heartbreaking quality? (Incidentally, Zambra explores some translingual meditations, one of which is about how adjectives in Spanish are gendered—except for triste (sadness), implying that sadness knows no gender or bounds). 

Chilean Poet has some elements of the Künstlerroman tradition (novels that focus on the artistic development of its main character from their youth to adulthood). Think: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or perhaps The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov. Throughout the book, we are treated to poems that the characters have written. Particularly in the final movement, the poems once again elevate the conflict and the insight into the characters. The commentary that runs alongside the poems and offers to the audience moments of such wonderful tenderness.

Against John Keats, I’d argue that beauty and truth are sometimes mutually exclusive. Not so here. The book is beautiful and true and touching. It’s gorgeous and sad and funny and moving. It had everything I would want from a genuine classic and offered, on top of that, surprise. I adored it. I hope at some point I’ll read this one again and feel the same magic and the same heartbreaking beauty the next time around.

Happy reading!

Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games by Mike Drucker

  I continue to find myself compelled to read books about video games and people reflecting on their experiences. As such, I’ve most recently read Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games by Mike Drucker. The book is exactly as it professes: it’s a collection of Drucker’s memories and experiences of games.

The tone is mostly light and jokey—Drucker is a comedian, after all—as Drucker recounts anecdotes like showing up to his crush’s house in a homemade Super Mario 3 costume. There are some overtly comedic interludes, like a series of bad summaries of famous games or mock Steam reviews. There are also some moments of surprising tenderness, too. In one chapter, Drucker tells the story of his sister having a party at their house and his video games being stolen. His dad, at this point in the book, had been continually described as distant and uncomprehending to his son’s passion for games. When Drucker cried over his stolen copy of Street Fighter 2, his dad drove him around town and spoke to store employees, putting his pride on the line and asking or begging for a discount to replace his crying son’s game.

The most powerful chapter, in my view, is the one that got the most serious. Perhaps it’s because so much of the book is written in an overtly comedic tone that when Drucker describes the loss of his friend and their connection over the game Nier Automata, it hits hard. His friend was in a horrific car accident that killed her boyfriend and left her with serious challenges for the rest of her life. She developed other health complications and passed away. Drucker juxtaposes the story of their friendship and the loss of her alongside the existential themes of Nier Automata, a game that has 26 endings and, if you get the best of them, asks you to delete your save file. It’s a game about loss that serves as a tragic partner to Drucker’s memoir.

Granted, books like this are partially nostalgia bait. When I hear Megaman, my ears perk up, when someone references Silent Hill 2 I feel that special kind of magic that brings me back to my attic bedroom in Kingston, navigating the unsettling foggy streets. I recognize that my extant interest in games draws me to books like this and it’s okay to read a bit of fluff once in a while, right?

What was kind of cool is that Mike Drucker was unknown to me before I started the book, but has actually had a pretty prolific career. It was kind of cool to hear about how his writing career took off. He wrote for Saturday Night Live, he worked for Nintendo doing localization work (so cool!), he did reviews for IGN, did stand-up comedy, worked on a few other shows, including Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and others. A surprising side effect reading about video games was getting to hear a bit more about the process of developing a career in both comedy writing and video games.

I don’t really have a ton of commentary for this one. Good Game, No Rematch is a collection of accessible, generally humorous, stories. It felt like a light read and it was a nice trip down memory lane for myself while learning about Drucker, too.

Happy reading! Insert coins to continue.

Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

  This review is a hard one. I think Discontent by Beatriz Serrano captures a very specific experience and distinct voice. Specifically, the novel’s protagonist Marisa embodies the directionless ennui of modern corporate life. She’s a marketing creative crushed by the lifelessness of the workplace and is cynical about all of her coworkers and the whole “being employed” thing. She has Master’s students that look up to her, from whom she pilfers ideas and treats with disdain as they scramble for scraps of praise. She skips out for hours at lunch time to go to museums. She dreads the company retreat and greens out in order to avoid a team-building paintball game.

Serrano’s writing is competent. Other than some suspension of disbelief issues towards the end and a couple of structural issues, I don’t have any major issues with the writing itself. It’s descriptive and it’s tonally consistent. The dialogue rings as plausibly true. There’s a sarcasm to the narrator’s voice that delivers some engaging quips, my favourite of which being a reflection on a Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights: “Bosch is off somewhere fucking a hydrangea, and I’m checking my work e-mail” (26). The main character is irreverent and potentially likeable.

Here’s my issue, though: it’s hard to elevate corporate ennui into an edifying artistic experience. Marisa is relatable, but her experiences aren’t particularly distinct. She goes home and watches YouTube videos while she eats dinner; she tweets and retweets causes she supports and overthinks her online presence; she has friends with whom she falls out of touch and then creeps on social medial; she has a neighbour with whom she has sex and has an unspoken intimacy; she does as little as possible for work and has that kind of existential ennui over major life decisions. The trouble with writing something so true-to-life is that it leaves the question: is this kind of existence worthy of being art? Serrano describes YouTube videos that I’ve seen; do I need to watch a fictional character watch a YouTube video? Does that just replicate my own boredom and doomscrolling? A similar issue that plagues the works of Douglas Coupland: it is so referential, so allusive, so intense in its pursuit of realism that it keeps me rooted in the banality of the world and runs the risk of getting dated quickly.

The novel is more or less a series of vignettes, loosely tied together with the looming work conference. One chapter is devoted to Marisa’s trip to the Bosch exhibit. One chapter outlines her relationship with her neighbour and their intimate routines. One chapter sees Marisa encounter an old friend with whom she’d fallen out of touch; the two immediately reconnect and have a drunken night on the town that actually establishes one of the book’s few tender moments. Marisa’s friend Elena serves as an interesting contrast to her. Elena has constructed a new self, while Marisa feels trapped. Elena has the freedom to pursue art, essentially by getting a boob job and playing up her sexuality to get men to pay for her life, while Marisa is floundering creatively. 

Marisa’s encounter with Elena compels her to finally open a box of artifacts left behind following the likely suicide of her coworker Rita. That’s another thread that runs throughout the book: this spectre of Rita. Marisa describes a connection with this other cynical employee, who looms as what Marisa might become. When Marisa opens the box, it’s revealed that Rita had a notebook on which she made artistic renderings of her coworkers, including one that doesn’t seem particularly flattering of Marisa. I’m not sure the payoff really happens for that—but also, I suppose that’s like life; sometimes we’re adrift and there isn’t really much of a narrative payoff.

That being said, the book does have a narrative culmination at the work retreat. Serrano really takes Marisa in a dark direction at the climax. At the best of times, Marisa isn’t particularly likable and this is where the book really took a turn for me. Marisa has a quick hookup with a paintball employee. Okay, whatever, I guess her and her boyfriend aren’t official. Then, she’s put on the spot to deliver a presentation about creativity. In a panic, Marisa decides that her plan is to drug all of her coworkers. She mixes MDMA into all of their lemonade and not only did it make her irredeemably insufferable to me, but it also stretched the limits of the plausibility. Would a generally normal but disaffected employee go that far?

That takes us through the first section of the book, which struck me as a surprise because we only had 20 pages left to go. This is where the structural problem emerges for me a little bit. Section two is about 15 pages. Section 3 is about 7 pages. This might come back to the ‘true-to-life’ aspect of the book; we have loose threads, tacked on vignettes, little experiments.

Even so, the second section of the book is actually kind of fun, if implausible. It’s a series of e-mails sent by the company to its different teams. As it turns out, someone who got drugged had to be hospitalized, and now there’s an investigation. The e-mails discussing the specifics keeps popping up and Marisa’s out of office autoresponse keeps popping up. It’s kind of funny because the conversation then also brings up the discussion of taking Marisa off the e-mail so that her out of office e-mail stops coming through.

The final section is an epilogue of sorts. It’s a description of what happened to Marisa when she returned from her vacation. I won’t spoil the specifics, but something pretty horrific happens. There was a set-up for it, so it feels like a reasonable payoff, but it comes across maybe more comedic or lighthearted than I was prepared for it to be. It rings a little false; the closing lines, in particular, offer a saccharine and overly clean reflection that makes all of our boredom and existential doubt seem trivial. Marisa narrates. “I’ve figured it out. In the end, all we need in life is someone who loves us, a bed with nice big pillows, a  few cans of cold beer, and tomatoes that still taste like something” (177). It seems like Marisa reverts to conventionality—a response to the horror of banal routines that itself lacks imagination. The ending just doesn’t quite hit.

Overall, I didn’t mind Discontent. It’s worth a quick read, but I’m not sure it really elevates our boring everyday lives into something more worthwhile. I’ve read some conflicting views on this one; some people praise the humour and relatability of the book and how perfect it is for describing corporate life. Others have a much more negative view of Marisa and the tone of the text. Let’s just say it’s messy.

Happy reading!