Argentine writer Maria Sonia Cristoff at Penguin Random House headquarters in Madrid. Jaime Villanueva
Just a few days ago, dear reader, I was looking at a page that I don’t remember if it was printed or digital, with a photo of the writer María Sonia Cristoff on the left end.
I’m sure this photo wouldn’t have caught my attention at any other time, but coincidence – that thing that makes you search without knowing what you’re looking for – brought me to it just a few hours after the book was finished to come across The photo. Read the Argentinian author’s latest novel, in which her talent once again oozes intelligence, a sense of humor, and aesthetic accuracy, among other things.
Intelligence, sense of humor and aesthetic accuracy: as soon as I write down these qualities, my gaze moves a little away from the image now trapped in my memory, allowing me to see it in its entirety: Cynthia Rimsky appears alongside Cristoff – I don’t think it’s necessary to insist that these words set standards for her as well. I remember that the photo is a snapshot taken after the presentation of “El color favorite”, the beautiful essay by Valeria Tentoni that folds in on itself to make the appearance of its pages – what is an interview – into a to become a small animal – what is admiration that becomes obsession – an origami animal that displays its movement – which is obsession that becomes learning that becomes literature -.
The covers of the books “Splurge”, “The revolution by finger” and “The favorite color”. Penguin / Penguin Random House / Storm Gray
But back to Cristoff
I’m almost certain I’ve never used the word “overflow” in our newsletter. So if I use it now, I’ll do so conscientiously and not for nothing. It’s not just because you’re reading Cristoff either – it doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with Falsa calma, Incluyeme afuera and Mal de epoch or if you’re dealing with Pasaje a oriente, Patagonia and Acento extranjero, that is, it it doesn’t matter whether you read his short stories, his chronicles or his essays – be it to experience, in the truest sense of the word, that what you have before you will flood the pages you have before you, or that what one suddenly finds oneself at will show the reader the thousand exuberances of which a language is capable. No, if I use the word “overflow” it’s because I plan to use the word “breakout” in a few more lines and because the word “waste” is the other word I like as well as “breakout” could have chosen to define the writer’s literature in Argentina – Cristoff She herself used it as the title of her latest novel, in addition to everything. The novel I just finished reading a few hours before I came across the photo I was talking about at the beginning of this episode.
– The coincidences, when unleashed, do not come by themselves, perhaps because the thing with death in threes should be better used with talents: suddenly, as soon as I wrote about the photo here again, on the retina off my memory ( yes, memory has its own retina and vitreous humor) I again see Rimsky’s smile like an explosion, who is sitting on the right Cristoff, who is certainly sitting in front of Tentoni, which is why he does not appear in the picture. And I think that in this area I’ve wanted to write about the work of the Chilean author for a long time, about the extremely intelligent and caustic work The Future Is A Strange Place, or about the disturbingly funny and paradoxically luminous Yomuri ( (a very close relative of Las tempestálidas, Gospodinov’s book that caused such a stir) or the sober and precise book “The Revolution” by Finger, in which the author reviews her trip to Nicaragua in the 1980s and whose depth and intellectual clarity are just as compelling are as well as her temporary arc, dialogues, sometimes in the same direction, sometimes in the opposite direction, with Cristoff’s latest novel.
Well, let’s go back to Cristoff
Waste is the title of Cristoff’s latest novel, in which an old woman inherits a letter from her niece that not only tells her about her life and the mystery that has carried her and given her meaning, but also tries to explore the possibility of a … Transformation: that of this niece’s own life, whose everyday life, futile ambition and above all work and her contemporary ethic – self-exploitation, Byung-Chul Han said – have eaten up her existence. The fundamental from which emerges the waste of Cristoff’s story is this secret that I will not divulge but that I will admire: thanks to him, the Argentine novel explodes in several directions: those of intimacy, those of the most twisted desires of the species , which after politics and ideology as traps, which after modern slavery …
– period, in this novel that squanders points and along the way takes great snapshots that I don’t want to finish enumerating here, not so much because space prevents me, but because they don’t fit so much into my memory, are the three resp. Four pages where a miner trapped underground after a terrible accident when they try to rescue him and a few other comrades decides on second glance that he doesn’t want to get out there: “We’re not out of that Irony. Neither we nor anyone. The world is not for ironies. So let’s assume that I prefer to die buried alive. And here there is not an epic, but a replica. you go up I will stay”-.
However, the squandering of squandering goes beyond the story as it is also formal in nature. I mean: the outburst is also the outburst of Cristoff’s narrative virtues, shown in possession of an incredible talent: in addition to the letter, the novel is threaded through scenes from the theater, portraits, a voice from the afterlife, telegrams, WhatsApp groups, Emails, songs and even a chronicle written by a wild boar – “Work is the best police force / It curbs appetite for autonomy / It distracts us with everything / It steals our nerves / From dawn to dusk / They ban us from littering “-.
However, every explosion, every waste, to be literature, to be the best literature, must also be able to be channeled, every big bang, well, requires its owner to know how to pour it into a river, into the river, the he can transform will or will not allow the reader to enter his channel and be part of his journey.
This is the last great virtue of Cristoff’s book, for it is the author’s last great virtue: she knows how to channel her outbursts and waste.
Cristoff knows very well how to write the best literature.
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Splurge was published by Random House, as was La revolución a dedo. Favorite Color was published by GrisTormenta.
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