Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames
2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2009.0307
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
Resumo^1 > I ^1 z I < I ^1 0 I ^1 o H transformative performance. Within the main narrative line, Aira also inserts historical notes about the growth of cities, suggestions for other books that readers may want towrite, and enough psychological references towrite a humorous trea tise about Chilean and Argentine idiosyncrasies. The plot turns on construction workers trying to fin ish a luxury condominium building on a swelteringDecember 31 inBue nos Aires. At the same time chatty and lascivious ghosts floatand walk through the site,while the family of the building's caretakers, immi grant Chilean squatters, celebrate the arrival of theNew Year by tell ing?what else??ghost stories after dinner. They and not the rich pro prietors are able to see the ghosts. The Chilean night watchman, who is fond of drinking, liveswith Elisa Vicuna, Patri (Elisa's daughter from a previous relationship), and their four children. Patri and hermother aremyopic, and their most common actions alternate with the ghostly apparitions, three naked men who appear in a group making iron ic comments. Elisa considers the ghosts "fags," but does not explain why, and insists that Patri has to find a "real man." Patri asks what that may be. The ghosts invitePatri to their party, with one condition: shemust be dead. As in other Aira novels, an inquisitive teenage girl takes center stage, and from then on Patri's curi osity becomes the triggerfor lessons that Aira wants togive us.When itis time for Patri to construct a yarn, she mentions "a storyby Oscar Wilde," and the winks are to "The Can tervilleGhost" and "The Birthday of the Infanta."However, Ghosts is not strictlymetafiction or an alle gory about upper-class behavior and materialism, like inWilde's stories. Aira knows thatwould have been too perfect or facile. He may be didactic, but not religious about his teaching, since this is a story about surviving the traumas of the ghosts or abysses of narrative art, Cesar Aira's favorite and usually brilliant obsession. Will H. Corral CaliforniaStateUniversity, Sacramento Greg Arnes. Buffalo Lockjaw. New York. Hyperion. 2009. 290 pages. $14.99. isbn978-1-4013-0980-0 Buffalo native Greg Ames's first novel is a stunning reminiscence of place?that big town at the eastern end of Lake Erie?and a poignant journey of thenarrator, James Fitz roy, toward possible self-realization. On a cold Thanksgiving week end, twenty-eight-year-old Fitzroy, now working in Brooklyn writing greeting cards, returns tohis home town to visit his fifty-six-year-old mother Ellen, who is in a nurs ing home suffering from advanc ingAlzheimer's. As he ministers to her needs, including flossing her food-clogged teeth, his inclination to euthanize her becomes obsessive. As he guardedly approaches this sub jectwith his successful and stoical father, Rodney, and his sister,Kate, also visiting Buffalo fromOregon with her loving lesbian partner, he realizes how seemingly distant they are fromhis vision of his idealized mother's plight. She is a hero to Fitzroy, once a vibrant and dynamic woman whose thirty-year nursing career included authoring a massive and celebrated nursing textand an empathetic concern forher suffering patients. Seeing her in her current condition, he thinks: "More than anything I want her to have her mind back, her memory and intel A N VE L BUFFALO L#CKJAW ligence." But when he observes the way she is treated,he thinks: "Her past wiped out, she is just another sack of flesh, dehumanized." The grave seriousness of his attending tohismother in thenurs ing home is lightened by an often comical series of reunions with his old friends and their humorously depicted antics in thehangouts that are so perfectly Buffalo that even strangers to the city will understand how delightfully true the portrait is. Readers will walk through the neighborhoods, the bars, and the dives that Ames remembers sowell. "Buffalonians felt an immense ten derness for this town. They dipped theirpizza crusts inpuddles of blue cheese and argued about where to find the best chicken wings in the city. They participated in bowling leagues and dart leagues. They cel ebrated happy hourmost nights and ate fishfryon Fridays." Another factor relieving the almost unrelenting gloom of this painfully accurate depiction of the horrors of Alzheimer's for both patient and family are a series of vignettes?brief oral histories that Fitzroy had collected before he left town. Throughout the story, Fitz roy attempts to reconnect with his retired office-manager father, a well heeled, country-club type, but uncommunicative enough to make it a frustrating endeavor. The dynam icsof a familysufferingfrom watch ing helplessly the deterioration of an accomplished, fifty-six-year-old woman with Alzheimer's is an almost unbearable agony. The title refers to walking in Buffalo through what the city is best known for: the cold and wind and snow ofwinter. "Three bundled pedestrians venture into the road, inches fromthegrille ofmy car.Stiff necked and scowling, teethgritted, they split the twinbars of thehead lights,one rightafter another. They trudge past with identical Buffalo lockjaw faces." This brilliant firstnovel sug gests that Greg Ames isawriterwho will be heard from formany years to come. Marvin ]. LaHood Amherst, New York Abbas Beydoun. Blood Test. Max Weiss, tr. Syracuse, New York. Syra cuse University Press.2008. 121 pages. $16.95. isbn978-0-8156-0912-4 Editor of the cultural supplement of theBeirutnewspaper As-Safir,Abbas Beydoun isalsowidely known in the Arab world as a leading poet with eleven collections of poetry. This is his firstnovel and the 2007 winner of theKing Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation ofArabic LiteratureAward. It isan amazing piece ofwriting for a firstnovel. It retains a poetic language inmany instances and a poet's innate love for interiority and search for meaning. Its narrator is Abbas Beydoun a young Lebanese man who, at the sudden death of his father in a dis tant land in West Africa, isprompt ed to investigate all the traceshe left behind, and to collectmemories of him from relatives and friends who knew him in Lebanon and in such West African locales as Dakar, Casa blanca, and others where he had become wealthy. Although repeat edly discouraged in his pursuit by family members, the young man perseveres inan efforttoexplore his own history and identity. The result is thisnovel, which, without a traditional plot,manages to be a page-turner because of the vivid portrayal of a number ofmale and female Arab characters, whose lives intersectinrelationships of love and hatred, friendshipand jealousy, intrigueand insouciance as they try to build fortunes for themselves in Africa, some in theirsearch fordia monds, others in their extravagant riving, others in their quest for a happiness thatkeeps eluding them, and others in theirpursuit of sex. The novel is not divided into chapters, although there are irregu lar small space breaks between sec- E tions of it,and there is a big space = break between pages 62 and 63 in E themiddle of thenovel, as ifdivid- E ing itinto two parts. In the first part, E the young man narrating the nov- E el's events gets sexually involved E with Safia, thewoman with whom E his dead uncle had been likewise E involved inAfrica and who came E to Lebanon and was introduced as E his ostensible fiancee. In the second E part of the novel, the young man E continues the narration?his uncle, E Safia, and the circle of their friends E and relatives in Africa becoming E themselves the greater part of his E investigation. In the end, howev- E er, his investigation raises as many E questions as it answers. E Issa J.Boullata E Montreal E Horacio Castellanos Moya. Tirana = memoria. Barcelona. Tusquets. 2008. E 358 pages. 19. isbn 978-84-8383-089-5 1 It isno accident thatTiranamemoria 's E protagonist, Pericles, shares the E scrupulously honest Greek orator's E name. Horacio Castellanos Moya, E by far theunmatched master of the E "political/dictator/exile" novels of E his generation, has single-handedly E recovered that subgenre, given it E oxygen by divesting itof itshabitual E ideological correctness, and provid- E ed its moribund practice thehumor E and complexity it has needed, at least E since 1959 and afterVargas Llosa. E Like the masterful shorter novels E of Bolano and Aira, Tirana memoria E shows that to denounce sociopo- E litical injustices, a writer need not E belong to the "Stalinist left." With 1 Senselessness and The She-Devil in E the Mirror, his 2000 novel thatNew E Directions ispublishing thisyear, he E isnow indispensable forevaluating E July-August 2009 i63 H ...
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