Shantytown

The setting is Buenos Aires in the 1990's. The protagonist is Maxi, a large, muscular young man, who is good-natured but rather simple-minded. Maxi spends his mornings at the gym and in the afternoons and evenings he helps, more or less as a Good Samaritan, trash-pickers load their carts and haul them back to Shantytown, where the destitute of Buenos Aires live in shacks along narrow streets brightly lit with pirated electricity.That set-up is somewhat unusual. What César Aira does with it is more so, as the plot becomes increasingly surreal. Maxi's daily excursions into Shantytown with the trash-pickers attract the notice of a corrupt policeman, who begins to tail him. Others join the plot: Maxi's younger sister and her equally fatuous girlfriend, a Bolivian girl who works as a maid and lives in Shantytown, a mysterious Indian known as "the Pastor" who seemingly has connections to illegal drug trafficking and a fundamentalist evangelical sect, and a crusading celebrity judge with a cadre of elite police officers under her command and a gaggle of television camera crews and chatty news girls who follow in her wake. The novella culminates in an apocalyptic deluge in the midst of Shantytown.I am a little ambivalent about César Aira, yet I keep reading him. This is the fifth novella of his that I have read in translation. (He has written well over fifty, most of which have not been translated into English.) Every one that I have read is nominally set in Aira's native Argentina, but elements of the fantastic elbow aside most indicia of realism. I normally am not a fan of fantasy. But Aira handles it so well, in such wholly unexpected ways and with a rather droll delivery, that I keep coming back for more.Aira's narrative meanders, taking all sorts of twists and turns. The cumulative effect can be disorienting, as Aira playfully acknowledges near this tale's end, when one of the characters "turned her head with a look of shock and horror, as if to say 'This is too much! If there's one more twist in the plot . . .' And perhaps her dismay was justifiable. As a beekeeper may be killed by just one more sting because of all the toxins that have accumulated in his system * * * there may be a limit to the quandaries that a mind can accommodate."As with the other Aira works I have read, the question arose upon closing the book: What was that all about? With SHANTYTOWN, at least, I have a possible answer: it is an anti-drug morality tale. But that might be me exercising my preference for meaning in literary works and imposing it where the author was simply writing a story -- in this case, an occasionally violent but nonetheless intriguing one with a series of surprises. It is like a trip to the funhouse.

There were so many twists and turns. The characters all had stories that relate to one another and that made the story more interesting. It may be hard to follow at times because the story does jump from one character to another. You may find yourself making a character web just to understand the story a little better. It really lets you see how authority figures and the media play in role in what goes on in our world and how reality can be distorted to make things more interesting for an audience. Recommend for anyone who wants a great read!

Aira seemingly at his most powerful here. He builds the Shantytown into the main character of his mystery and at the end it feels so much more fulfilling than a weak Deus Ex Machina. The mystery is both deepened and revealed in the shadow of the shantytown and the force that a simple setting could have is set free here. Aira is an incredible gift from Argentina and his works should be required reading.

This book was fantastic, but too short. Would love to see more by this author. A little pricey as far as kindle books go, because I read it in about an hour.

Although it has taken a long time for this little gem to be translated into English, therefore the contents are somewhat dated, the story is riveting --- there is a sense of the giant Gulliver --- and the basic good at the heart of people. But, not to ignore: this is a very dark novella. People who are not what they seem, for good or ill, places switch significance confusingly at first but meaningfully later ...The surface read is fast-paced ... but the reader should not be fooled. There is a deep, important story here.

Argentine author Aira is known for his prolific work rate -- he cranks out several small novels a year, and I decided it was finally time to try one out. This one was originally published in 2001, in the midst of Argentina's great depression. It takes place in and near the titular Buenos Aires shantytown and follows a series of linked characters.It starts with the quiet fitness freak Maxi, who leaves his middle-class family's apartment each morning to help the trash-pickers who scavenge the streets for cardboard to sell to recycling centers. Meanwhile, Inspector Cabezas works out of the local precinct and wants to find out who's supplying drugs to the neighborhood. Maxi's sister and her schoolmate friend enter the story, as does a mysterious young homeless man, and the schoolmate's Bolivian maid. At the heart of it all is the strange shantytown, which has been built in a circle, with only diagonal streets, and an elaborate system of lighting, and may or may not be home to an evangelical movement.The writing is strangely compelling, but hard to get a handle on the extent to which any of it means anything. It climaxes in a massive rainstorm that floods the streets just as a camera-seeking law-and-order judge shows up with elite cops and TV news crews to crack down on the drug dealers. Is this satire? Social commentary? Allegory? Or none of the above? Unfortunately, I get the sense that there's some cultural context that is needed to unlock it all.

The plot in brief concerns a middle-class directionless young man who is addicted to training at the local gym and also spends his days helping the trash pickers of Buenos Aires' shantytown. He is physically ox-like and this enables to pull large carts for the trash pickers whose children often climb on board along with the day's pickings. He attracts the attention of a corrupt policemen who will stop at nothing, including using two teenage girls, to break a drug ring that he believes is operating within the shantytown.I found the story had a certain magical charm and what appealed to me in particular were the descriptions of the shantytown with its carousel-like layout and the complicated tangle of street lights which were kept blazing by pirated electricity. The tale builds up slowly at first and then from about half-way through gathers speed with ever-increasing momentum to the final scenes and especially the final scene of a deluge o biblical proportions. The characters are well-drawn and there is even some humour in this little gem of a novel.Definitely recommended.

Wie kann man am besten ein Buch zusammenfassen, dass sich jeglicher Konvention entzieht und auch im Anderssein anders ist als man es drei Seiten zuvor gedacht hat? Shantytown präsentiert Cesar Aira in Bestform. Für jemanden, der noch nie etwas von Aira gelesen hat, mag es vielleicht zuviel des Guten sein. Als Einstieg eignen sich vielleicht die Nächte von Flores oder der Literaturkongress besser. Für alle Fans von Aira jedoch ist Shantytown ein wahres Lesevergnügen. Fragen wie "wieso" und "wie" haben in Cesar Airas Universum keine Bedeutung, ebenso nimmt die vordergründige Handlung nur einen kleinen Teil dieses kleinen Büchleins ein. In bester Aira-Manier werden hier zig Einschübe verstreut und von weiteren Einschüben unterbrochen, die teilweise nichts mit der vordergründigen Handlung zu tun haben, in Wahrheit aber das eigentliche Buch darstellen. In etwa so, als würde ich hier von einem Stück Käsekuchen ausschweifend berichten, das ich vor Wochen mal gegessen habe, und die Geschichte der Bäckerei auf über zwei Seiten ausbreiten, in der ich den Kuchen gegessen habe, wenn es mir darum geht, den Genuss zu beschreiben, den ein Buch von Aira einem offenen Leser bereiten kann. Man sollte nur nicht glauben, hinterher ohne weniger Fragen als zuvor das Buch aus der Hand legen zu können.