This is the web version of Letras Americanas, the newsletter of EL PAÍS América that runs every 15 days the news from Rio Bravo to Tierra del Fuego. To receive it every Sunday you can subscribe in this link.
As we have seen in our previous installments, there are times when the intersection of books that form a new coordinate or that join a previous tradition are evident, as if they were there, just waiting for someone to place them on the map of our letters.
But there are other times when these intersections happen unexpectedly and suddenly, especially when it comes to works that cannot be placed so clearly in a tradition or that at first glance would not seem to have an unquestionable relationship, not only with our traditions but also not with the majority of books of his time, that is, with the work of the majority of his contemporaries.
The works that make up this type of intersections — fortuitous intersections that result, for example, from the chance of reading one after the other a terrible green Y Family beasts— they do not appear out of nowhere, of course, because in literature there is no such thing as spontaneous generation —even the counterculture and the avant-garde are born of antagonism and are thus determined through negation—, but rather books whose dialogue seems be with traditions from other latitudes, with texts that, although they belong to our language, inhabit its borders or with works that would seem to be beyond the realm of literature.
new coordinate
Of course books like a terrible greenby the Chilean Benjamín Labatut —through which hydrogen cyanide, a fertilizer that will end up becoming a weapon of war, parade, the trenches of the First World War, the mysteries surrounding the equation of relativity or the greatest omen of the holes blacks-, and family fairs, by the Mexican Andrés Cota Hiriart —where the Komodo dragons, the voyages of the HMS Beagle, an adolescent who evades airports with his pockets full of baby chameleons or a crocodile waiting in the shadows of a room, ready to attack— share pages. form a new coordinate on the map of our literature is not only the result of the fact that they share echoes from other latitudes: from the Eureka from Allan Poe to David Foster Wallace of short interviews with repulsive men either Tennis as a religious experience, going through Lovecraft, through the long Anglo-Saxon tradition of insular literature and by authors as specific as Oliver Sacks and WG Sebald.
But that Labatut and Cota Hiriart, who previously published books much easier to locate in our traditions or, in any case, much less radical, seem to have unleashed a new coordinate with a terrible green —where we witness the misfortune of Fritz Haber, the madness of Alexander Grothendieck, the race between two minds pursuing the same goal or the efforts of Einstein (in the tone of that other book that both authors must have read: Einstein’s dreams of Allan Lightman, because with that tradition that goes beyond popularization and that could be called scientific fabulation they also dialogue in an evident way)—and with Family beasts —in whose pages we watch the transformation of an obsession into a passion that will become a way of life, as we watch the sixth great extinction take place and fall in love suddenly with unlikely reptiles and arthropods that glow in the night—a new coordinate, it said, in which science and literature merge instead of only accompanying or being a vehicle for each other, nor can it be due solely to the fact that they dialogue with works that inhabit the edges of our tradition.
No, the new coordinate that Labatut —who by the way is still working there, as evidenced by The stone of madness that although it is far from the height of a terrible green makes it clear that its author is determined to continue along the path he has found—and Cota Hiriart—whose book the axolotl lets think that family beasts It will not be just a rare bird—have pointed to our tradition is not only due to the fact that they dialogue more or less evidently with books that inhabit their edges: here we must point out from María Gainza to Luis Chitarroni, through Mario Bellatín and Margo Glantz, but basically Juan Forn should be noted down, who died a few months ago and deserves a newsletter for him alone, since his books I will remember for you, The man who was Friday and the volumes of Fridays they are a coordinate in themselves, since they show, among other things, that the novel can be a miniature— nor that they do so with authors who would seem to be beyond the realm of literature, such as Francisco González Crussi —who would also deserve a newsletter for him alone.
science
Beyond the literary: once again, the names with which Labatut and Cota Hiriart mix their work to point out the gap are clear: from John von Neumann and Konrad Lorenz to Niels Bohr and Gerald Durrell, as it is also clear that what they mix to giving shape to this new coordinate that could be called science, in addition to names and works, are genres and borders between fields: they have managed to make science reach literature from a different place than popularization, which may not be new in other traditions, but it would appear to be in our coordinates.
The greatest virtue of Labatut and Cota Hiriart —beyond the literary ones, of course, which have to do with unique styles, writings as elegant as chemical formulas, languages that seem to be generated by spores, architectures as exact as animal dissections— is, therefore, Therefore, having taken a different path, with two great books, that of scientific literature and popular science, but also that of scientific fiction and that of literature imbued with science or even science fiction.
That, dear reader, and, of course, something else: to do that, in that new coordinate that will now surely get fatter, not only because the gap has opened but because, if the two of them arrived, there will be others who are about to do so as well ( That, by the way, is also about A terrible greenery), the reader finds himself absolutely interested, dazzled by something he didn’t know could matter so much and so vividly to him.
coordinates
a terrible green Y the stone of madness They were published by Anagrama. For its part, family beasts was published by Libros del Asteroides, after the I Prize for Non-Fiction from that publisher, and Axolotl. The work of Juan Forn, both I will remember for you What the man who was friday and the various volumes of Fridays, it is found in various editions, among which it is worth mentioning those of Laurel, Emecé and Tusquets.
#science