On Sunday August 24, we’ll be meeting to discuss Senselessness (2004, 2008 English trans.), a dynamite novella from Central American author Horacio Castellanos Moya.
It takes the form of a monologue, so everything we get comes from the mouth of, as the book jacket text describes, “an alcoholic, atheist, sex-obsessed writer [who] finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to edit the testimonies of the survivors of slaughtered Indian villages.”
Senselessness is agonizing/ly funny, profane & political, entertainingly written yet dealing with huge issues surrounding language and authority, grieving and historical memory — it’s no surprise that Castellanos Moya’s early novels earned him death threats, leading him to take up residence in exile…in Pittsburgh.
This interview with Castellanos Moya is worth a read, as is his take on the heavy-handed marketing of Roberto Bolaño to American audiences.
& here’s the Mudd Up Book Clubb reading list in reverse chronological order – we have burned so many books!:
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness
Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose
Marlen Haushofer, The Wall
Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos, The Uncomfortable Dead
Iris Murdoch, Under The Net
Thomas Bernhard, The Loser & Gay Talese, “The Loser”
Sergio De La Pava, A Naked Singularity
Shelley Jackson, “A Report on Certain Curious Objects, Believed to Be Words in an Unknown Language of the Deadâ€
Rita Indiana Hernandez, Papi
G. Willow Wilson, Alif, The Unseen
Michal Ajvaz, The Other City
Carmen Laforet, Nada
Patrik OuÅ™ednÃk, Europeana
Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber
Michael Taussig, My Cocaine Museum
Tatyana Tolystaya, The Slynx
Augusto Moterroso, “Mister Taylor”
Vladimir Sorokin, Ice Trilogy
Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Juan Goytisolo, Exiled from Everywhere
Cesar Aira, How I Became a Nun
Maureen F. McHugh, Nekropolis