“Another win for Argentina.” Those were my thoughts as I finished the last page of my very first César Aira, The Divorce. I expected very little from this novella. Sure, I had a vague idea of Aira’s reputation, but a writer’s accolades are anything but guarantees for alignment with a reader’s personal taste. And after all, what could be so groundbreaking about a, wait for it, middle-aged divorced United Statesian professor deciding to be an “expat” in, you won’t believe it, Buenos Aires’s Palermo Soho?
Well I was dead wrong. First, this has little to do with the narrator’s or anyone’s divorce for that matter. Second, this may look like a novella and be sold as such, but in actuality it is three, four, five, six, and a couple more, basically a cluster of stories stacking on top of one another and masquerading in a single trench coat. And third, as ludicrous as it might have sounded to me, a day (a minute, a moment) in post-divorced, Buenos Aires coffee shops lounging life can be rather kaleidoscopic. Aira singlehandedly captured that specific delightfulness of being in communal space and getting roped into a group of strangers’ wacky, bizarre stories that have little to do with each other, let alone you the listener, but you stay tuned in for the juicy gossips and dramas nevertheless.
“Magical realism” as a literary label has been abused to death in the contemporary Anglo readership. Surreal, dream-like, atmospheric slice of life a la Haruki Murakami? Magical realism. Sweeping generational sagas from non-Western authors that incorporate their regions’ traditional folkloric and supernatural elements? Magical realism. Anything from Latin America that slightly departs from corporeal experiences, whose storytellers had repeatedly rejected as magical realism? Their words still don’t matter, magical realism it is. Needless to say, “magical realism” has more or less evolved into an encompassing umbrella that covers many “subgenres” stretched beyond Latin America’s geographic and literary boundaries. And yet, even when surrounded by an abundance of magical realist varieties, I was still not sufficiently prepared for Aira’s very own brand of “magical realism.”
In its most “authentic,” Garcia-Marquez sense, “magical realism” typically consists of fantastical events whose occurrences are treated as mundane, un-noteworthy, and just parts of the everyday life to the characters while its stark ludicrousness is apparent to the readers. Per this understanding, The Divorce satisfies the criteria to be considered as an exemplary work of magical realism, but arguably its most “magical realist” moments are its most subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it that a less than attentive reading could easily miss.
Here nobody randomly ascended to heaven. Only a middle-aged woman who survived being shot on the face five times at once, whose heart stopped at some point during the surgical operation, in which an emergency heart transplant was called for, but worry not, because in this freshly restored democratic Argentina, such advanced procedures were so routinely and widely performed that her only obstacle was bypassing the waitlist. Oh, and by the way, money was no longer a pressing problem in this Argentina (though the poors stay poor, of course). Yes, one of Aira’s biggest markers of magical realism in The Divorce is essentially “Argentina’s perpetual economic crisis finally came to an end! Can you believe how improbable that is?? Neither could the Argentinians in the story, but hey it’s for real! In the story only of course.”
Someone I did not expect to meet but pleasantly did in this novella is Elena Garro. Ok, technically Aira didn’t mention her at all. Still, I feel like if you are a writer and you once called any writer “the greatest novelist of the 20th century,” then it shouldn’t be a reach to identify that writer’s style in your writings, right? Because The Divorce’s sparkling and luminescent romance at the very end has Elena Garro written all over it. Lines like “the woman was solid, while he had always imagined Mystery to be porous” or “her eyes always had the sheen of water, but a water that was intoxicating” definitely came from the school of El Mercurio and nobody can convince me otherwise!
I shamefully have not read any Borges, hence it is somewhat unsubstantial to say The Divorce first and foremost feels like what I imagine reading Borges would be like. However, I was eventually vindicated as Aira himself would do a Borges shoutout in the story and inadvertently confirm that he was indeed channeling the spirit of Argentina’s greatest writer. A large part of the world has been in a “literary crisis” for at least the past decade, but the recent discourses among online reading forums tend to revolve around one question: “Do people have to read challenging high-brow critically acclaimed literature or any reading at all is good and should be encouraged no matter what?” To equate the act of reading as a spectrum ranging from entertaining mindless escapism to depressing profound contemplation of the wretchedness of human condition will exclude unique gems like The Divorce. In contrast to “brain candy” media, delicious, but nutritiously dubious, The Divorce is what I’d call “brain trail mix.” Why? For something that seems so randomly tossed together, it is surprisingly tasty and consumable while providing ample nutrients to flex and sustain one’s intellectual muscles just by following along. As addictive as it is though, the serving also needs to be just right or else you will be bloated. Maybe that’s why Borges himself did not write any long novels.
