An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

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If there is one contemporary writer who defies classification, it is César Aira, an Argentinean from a town in the province of Buenos Aires called Coronel Pringles, which must, I suppose, be a real place, although it could well have been imagined by its most eminent son, who has given us superlatively lucid portraits of the Mother (a verbal mystery) and the Father (a geometrical certitude), and whose position in contemporary Hispanic literature is equal in complexity to that of Macedonio Fernandez at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Let me start by saying that Aira has written one of the five best stories I can remember. The story, included in Juan Forns anthology Buenos Aires, is entitled "Cecil Taylor." He is also the author of four memorable novels: How I Became a Nun, in which he recounts his childhood; Ema, The Captive, in which he recounts the opulence of the pampas Indians; The Literature Conference, in which he recounts an attempt to clone Carlos Fuentes; and The Crying, in which he recounts a sort of epiphany or bout of insomnia.

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