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🦋 The Wrong Movie
...Until she had gotten over what had happened with Humberto she wouldn't be capable of being with anyone else, she insisted, even though she liked me and she felt good with me, she just couldn't. And then all the listlessness in the world fell upon my shoulders -- I had gone to the wrong theater, which was showing a boring old movie I could follow with my eyes closed because I'd seen it a thousand times -- a listlessness so overwhelming and paralyzing that I didn't even have the wherewithal to stand up and get myself a taxi...
I'm kind of circling around the text in Senselessness, I find -- the imagery is vivid and the rhythm, as I said, pulls me in, and it seems like Castellanos Moya is encouraging me to identify with his narrator; but there's a feeling of being manipulated, that Castellanos Moya is setting up his narrator as obviously flawed and disordered, to make room for his redemption by the work he is doing. I'll be the first to admit this reading is facile and superficial; I'm having a hard time getting past the surface of the narration. I see a distinction between third-person narration of flawed characters (which I've seen recently with Saramago and with García Márquez), and this first-person narration -- with the former I had a much easier time putting myself into the story. Of course I may be projecting this reading, this difficulty, onto the text; I don't know if anybody else would have this reaction.
posted afternoon of Saturday, January 31st, 2009
➳ More posts about Senselessness
➳ More posts about Horacio Castellanos Moya
➳ More posts about Readings
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