Oh man, I did not like this book. Considering that I've been on board for every book so far, I guess statistically speaking there was bound to be at least one I didn't like and this one was it. I found the writing difficult to follow, I didn't feel myself caring much about the characters, and the plot was drawn out. The lack of dialogue between the characters just made me feel like I was reading this massive chunk of text and I could not concentrate or focus on what was going on. The writing was all over the place and it just frustrated me. I agree with everyone that it was nice to read a novel that wasn't coming of age, but at the same time, it had a lot of exploitation against women. Many of the books I've chosen to read in this course have been driving home the theme of female sexualization and exploitation, so this one just pushed me over the edge a bit on this topic. I think this novel wrote the female characters (or lack thereof which is a whole other point) in a way that was completely unnecessary and made me happy that this book is out of print.
To continue my rant, this book was misogynistic in obvious ways (you know the sex with the barely-of-age women and obvious objectifying of their bodies), but also in ways that were "subtle". For example, saying things like "he smiled like a girl" (71) or just the normalized tone that women can be obtained or purchased for personal benefit or amusement. I get that this book was written in the 1990s, but honestly, it read to me as if it was written much earlier due to this constant objectification. I'm also a little confused about the author's relation to Blanca. As pointed out in the lecture and the epilogue, Piglia mentions that he actually met her which really took me by surprise. This also brings in the question of ethics as I thought it was based on a true story, not literally keeping the same names (again still confused as there were a lot of nicknames). I also found it really interesting how she later sued him...and to have that lawsuit be lost! Again this book was written in the 90s! Did I miss the part where he said that there was consent to write about these people, especially in this way? Or is this just another form of exploitation? I understand the benefits of the genre of the testimonio, as it is important to have the story of minority voices told. However, my issue with this is the ethics behind having someone with the privilege of not living these experiences tell these stories. In this instance, Piglia's writings on Blanca's story didn't seem to benefit her in any way nor was it even consensual (again another grey area...I guess?).
This grey area of real elements within fiction just leaves me wondering what is real and what is not in a way that I just can't get invested in. This makes me think why Piglia was so insistent on keeping these real elements in the novel in the way that he did. He could have easily written a work of fiction without the need to attach these assumptions to the lives of real people.
Before I read this book, I was expecting to write about the themes of consumption and the moral position of theft and greed. However, I just found it difficult to think about it from a sociological perspective beyond the clear gender differences. Yes, the burning of the money was super interesting, but at that point, the lack of female characters and how women were written made me kind of disassociate from this novel in a way that stopped me from analyzing the general meaning of Piglia's fascination with the robbery.
However, despite my negative bias against this book, for the sake of the course, I will give it the benefit of the doubt in the sense that I only read it in a week when in reality it probably needed more of my time. The dense text made it hard to read through and maybe I would be able to appreciate it more if I didn't have to read it in a rush. However, at the end of the day, I did not like this novel. I wanted to title this post "burn this book instead, it's cheaper"...but that may be a little harsh. ;)
Question for the class: Was there anything that infuriated you about this book? Or am I alone in this rage of hatred? What do you think about the ethics behind writing this story the way Piglia did?
It is true that it is a very dense reading and not easy to follow in some passages. I would just like to invite reflection that perhaps the misogynistic elements have less to do with the fact that the novel was written in the 90s but rather with the situation in general, starting with the fact that the events take place in the 60s. It is also true that nothing depicted here is pleasant, but it represents very particular sectors of the lumpen. Would genre matters also have to do with it, in addition to gender matters?
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