The Museum of Eterna's Novel

Начало книги

The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, written but never published by Macedonio Fernández, is a novel that is half made up of prologues.

These prologues can inspire contradictory conclusions. It is a novel which does not want to begin. Or, perhaps, it is really a novel which does not want to end. Then again, it is a novel which does not want to be a novel at all. It will not become its own future. And yet if a novel exists as its own museum, then the reader must in some way presume that it has once existed, in the past.

Here are some usual facts involving time. Macedonio Fernández was born in 1874; he died in 1952. He began this novel around 1925, and worked on it in five drafts until he died. And this novel was a machine to prove that none of these facts had any sense at all.

Yes: Macedonio Fernández’s novel would like to refute the ordinary ideas of time. And this is complicated. This is an invention whose conclusions have not yet all been noted.

Читать дальше →