The Rachel Shihor Interview
Graphs, Maps, Trees
Chad Post, who published one of Zambra’s novels in English and raved about the other, is very harsh on Zambra’s third novel. Though, his rejection of said book actually makes me want to read it a little bit more than I already did. Certainly a number of the points Chad raises are valid, but none of them seem to me like fatal flaws (and what book is, or should be, flawless?).
Anyway. Ways of Going Home feels like a novelist trying to change his aesthetic, maturing from something simple and direct into something more complex and respectably “Literary.” Reading the representation of the author in this novel as Zambra himself, and the author’s relationship to the Claudia novel he’s writing as Zambra’s relationship to this book, it’s clear that there’s a lot of anxiety, an awareness that this book might not live up to heightened expectations. And one of the best tricks for evading that is to foreground it (it’s a book about an author who can’t write his next novel!) and then bury it in a false postmodern trick (the novel isn’t just a novel, but a novel about the difficulty of writing novels!). Everything about this rings false, and makes me feel sympathetic for Zambra—he doesn’t have to hide his talents. But then again, I have no idea what it’s like trying to create art after being anointed by just about everyone important in the world of letters.
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- Ways of Going Home A couple reviews of Alejandro Zambra’s latest novel, Ways of Going Home. Hoping to read this one soon. David Varno in Words Without Borders: Ways...
- Chad Post Audio Interview Nigel Beale has conducted an audio interview with Chad. As I've remarked before, you really musn't miss an opportunity to hear Chad in action. ...
- Chad Post Associate Director of Dalkey Archive Press is interviewed. Always interesting to hear what Chad has to say. ...
- Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra Interesting to see that Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell, has been awarded an English PEN translation award. This is...
- Chad Post on the Morality of Publishing Chad writes: There’s something that’s been nagging at me ever since I read this article . . . I’m not sure I can properly articulate...
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I had the same reaction you did. I probably would have gotten around to Ways of Going Home eventually, but after reading Chad’s commentary, I picked it up immediately.