Augusto Monterroso - There are three topics: love, death, and flies. Imagine Borges' fantastic bestiary taking tea with Alice: "When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there"

Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works and Other Stories, Trans. by Edith Grossman, University of Texas Press, 1995.

"Sophisticated wit and playful surrealist fantasy dominate these ingenious and gently mocking tales, by a Guatemalan-born soul mate to the late Jorge Luis Borges." - Kirkus Reviews

"Monterroso is certainly the leading living Guatemalan writer. . . . His microcuentos are finely honed, highly ironic, sophisticated pieces which are both very good literature and excellent pedagogical devices. I would liken his short stories to some of Borges' more accessible ones, with the added dimension of political commitment." - Cynthia Steele

"Augusto Monterroso is widely known for short stories characterized by brilliant satire and wit. Yet behind scathing allusions to the weaknesses and defects of the artistic and intellectual worlds, they show his generous and expansive sense of compassion.This book brings together for the first time in English the volumes Complete Works (and Other Stories) (Obras completas [y otros cuentos] 1959) and Perpetual Motion (Movimiento perpetuo 1972). Together, they reveal Monterroso as a foundational author of the new Latin American narrative."

„Occasionally one stumbles over a book, without expectations, and finds a small gem - and wonders how it can have gone unnoticed so long. Monterroso is, of course, not unnoticed. Anyone who reads Spanish literature will be familiar with this influential (to say the least) Guatemalan author. The problem is that his work has not been sufficiently translated. This 1995 collection (combining two of his collections, published in Spanish in 1959 and 1972 respectively !) is only the second collection to appear in English.
Monterroso is the real deal. It is difficult to categorize him on the basis of this small amount of work, but his beautifully crafted stories, some only a line or paragraph in length are a revelation. (We have since also read his collection The Black Sheep (see our review) - no longer in print - and feel safe in judging him one of the major Latin American authors.) His humor is on target and sharp, his inventions clever, his philosophy profound and generous. Comparisons to Borges and Calvino are not out of order. A master of detail, succinct and profound, and his work a simple, thought-provoking, multi-layered pleasure to read this author is one of the finer discoveries we have made in recent years.
An example, warily offered: the second half of the collection begins, in the story Flies, with the words: "There are three themes: love, death, and flies," a sentence more likely than it might sound at first reading - and each further story then is offered with an epigraph in some way relating to flies. No, no King Lear -- instead: Wittgenstein, Weininger, Richard Burton (the real one, not him of Cleopatric fame), Cicero, Yeats and others are quoted.
All in all: quite brilliant. He is highly recommended." – The Complete Review

"Monterroso’s Complete Works and Other Stories contain two volumes of stories in a single book. The stories are compressed, satirical and chiefly about bookish subjects. In some stories the style is frenetic and a series of jarring images and exclamations. Many of the stories seem essayistic; the second volume Perpetual Motion contains a series of short themes — some of which are not fictional at all. Most of the narratives are self-conscious; in the penultimate story Brevity the narrator says,
The truth is that the writer of short pieces wants nothing more in this world than to write long texts, interminably long texts in which the imagination does not have to work, in which facts, things, animals and men meet, seek each other out, exist, live together, love, or shed their blood freely without being subjected to the semicolon or the period." (From “Brevity”)
The final story "Errata and Final Notice" points out alleged errors earlier in the book, adding that the book ends on page 152, this "does not mean it could not also begin here in a backward motion as useless and irrational as the one undertaken by the reader to reach this point."
Clever stuff. My favorite story Leopoldo (His labors) describes a man who considers himself a writer and is regarded as one by friends and family, and yet does little of what may be called writing. Instead, he cogitates at great length about writing, goes through several drafts and spends months agonizing about whether a porcupine or dog should win in a fight in one of his stories. Other story themes include: the vagaries of literary reputation and publishing world, the vanities of the artist and the art appreciator, The title story Complete Works is about a timid critic who longingly hangs around other more distinguished critics until he discovers a narrow field of literary specialization which suffices to gain him entrance into the club.
Other stories cover general themes with characters to illustrate the points: the tallest man in the world, the wife of a ruler who likes to put on charity events involving poetry, a man who deals in shrunken heads, a jealous man. But most of the chapters are either simple little allegories or one paragraph observations about life and art. The book totals 150 pages, and yet it took a long time for me to read. Almost all the pieces were delightful: short and elegantly told (and rendered by Edith Grossman). Yet I wonder if nonartists would find these pieces as enjoyable as I did. One of the more successful pieces, Solemnity and Eccentricity, reads more like an essay than a story; a group of artists proclaim a war against solemnity, and Monterroso reflects on the futility of such a campaign:
those who were not solemn (I hastened to place myself among those) laughed more than ever, wherever they were, pointing the finger at things and people.Those who thought themselves solemn declared with a forced smile that they were not, or at least were only when there was no need to be.
The rest of the piece reflects on solemnity, false solemnity and ultimately eccentricity, cataloguing historical accounts of eccentrics over the the centuries.
Monterroso’s previous collection Black Sheep (which I have not read) tells simple fable-like tales about animals, and this book also displays the author’s talent in working within miniature forms. Complete Works has many elements found in shorter fiction: the fairy tale realism of Buzatti, the elegant impudence of Baudelaire, the promiscuous surrealism of Yourgrau, the absurdist obscurantism of Kafka and the otherworldly pedanticism of Borges. At the same time, Monterroso’s pieces have a friendly conversational tone; they are more down-to-earth, lush with symbolism but not allegorical, more designed to enthrall with wit than to engage the imagination, more geared to social commentary than suggesting an aesthetic. Most of the pieces seem borderline ridiculous – but never implausible.
Microfiction can be hard to read, even for a remarkable book like this. As much as I enjoy the book’s paradoxes and aphorisms, at the end, I found myself longing for longer pieces and a sustained perspective at characters. This is not an impossible feat. Kundera organized various essays and mini-episodes into sections to simulate the effect of a novel’s spaciousness. In Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald assembled a series of short imaginary incidents from the the life of a German writer poet and produced a coherent narrative direction — even though every chapter was 1-3 pages long. I know: Different author, different ambitions, different styles. Monterroso’s extraordinary fiction is what it is, but for me they never rise above being impish sketches. For the Perpetual Motion collection of stories (in the 2nd half of the book), "flies" are the unifying motif – but this association via literary quotes at the top of each story didn’t help me or even make much sense. Out of all the characters, only one – Leopoldo the writer – stood out in my memory. I can’t help wondering if such a memorable character could be enhanced with additional chapters. This brilliant story provided an initial condition without necessarily adding a complication or a potential for change. Let me ask: would Don Quixote be better if it were only one chapter?“ - Robert Nagle

Mark Schuhl review (pdf)

„The back cover of this small volume boasts a blurb, which proclaims, "Monterroso is certainly the leading living Guatemalan writer..." Not being quite an expert on Guatemalan literature myself, I cannot personally vouch for this statement. What I can swear to, however, is the fact that this compilation of writings by Augusto Monterroso is a collection of brilliant short fictions, which quickly call to mind the works of Swift, Sterne, Kafka, J.L. Borges, and Italo Calvino (among others). Reminiscent of Borges, Monterroso is a master of the self-referential (art about art/books about books); his fictions abound with tales of the weaknesses and general absurdities of writers (and other story-tellers), bibliophiles, reviewers, critics, researchers, musicians, artists and other intellectual and historical figures who may or may not be "real." Like his predecessors, Monterroso's fictions often challenge our assumptions about literature and its conventions. He freely plays with the forms of fiction; there are short stories "disguised" as letters, essays, and aphorisms. Several of his stories are far shorter in length than the literary quotes he uses to introduce them. One of these, "The Dinosaur," (perhaps his most well-known work) is a mere 8 words long ("When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."). In other instances, his fictions mirror the rambling nature of the spoken word itself, as they amble on and meander for some 3 or 4 pages without a single bit of punctuation prior to the concluding period.
Like his (above mentioned) literary forbearers, Monterroso is a master of satire, irony, and the absurd. Resembling Swift ("A Modest Proposal"), Kafka, and Borges before him, Monterroso uses a precise, crisp and almost dispassionate writing style to put forth the most absurd and outrageous of fictions. In "Finished Symphony," for example, he casually relates having overheard in passing, someone tell of the discovery, and then destruction of the two lost movements of Schubert's great "Unfinished Symphony." In other instances, his irony can be self-deprecating. "Leopoldo (His Labors)," for instance, is a short story about a reluctant short story writer, who is eternally frustrated in his decades-long attempt to write his first perfect(and never finished)short story. This entire piece of fiction is a virtuoso bit of satire upon the author, himself (and perhaps on all authors). And what could be more absurd, or more comically inspired than "Flies": "There are three themes; love, death, and flies... Let others deal with the first two. I concern myself with flies... In the beginning was the fly... It is easier for a fly to land on the nose of the Pope, than for the Pope to land on the nose of a fly... Oh, Melville, you had to sail the seas before you could finally set that great white whale on your desk in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, not realizing that Evil had long ago circled your strawberry ice cream..."
Monterroso is clearly one of the important figures in the development of modern and contemporary Latin-American fiction. Along with such writers as Bioy Casares, J.L. Borges, Gabriel Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortazar (as well as Italo Calvino, Tomasso Landolfi, John Barth, and Milan Kundera), Monterroso is a brilliant exponent of "Magic Realism". If you admire any of the aforementioned authors, I would urge you to look into this dazzling collection by an inspired writer.“ - stlukesguildcleveland at Amazon.com

Augusto Monterroso, Black Sheep and Other Fables, Airlift Book, 2005. [1969.]

"Imagine Borges' fantastic bestiary taking tea with Alice." - Carlos Fuentes

"Augusto Monterroso, who has died aged 81, wrote the shortest story in the history of literature; entitled The Dinosaur, it ran: "When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there."

Monterroso, who won the Spanish Prince of Asturias prize for literature in 2000, was regarded as one of the most intelligent and original writers in the language. Heavily influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, his speciality was the precise little "microcuento", a finely honed, highly ironic surrealistic fantasy which distilled the short story form to its inner essence, laying bare the complexity of the underlying message.
A story in his collection The Black Sheep and Other Fables (1969), for example, presented, in a succinct three sentences, Zeno's paradox of The Tortoise and Achilles:
"Finally, according to the cable, last week the Tortoise arrived at the finish line. At the press conference, he declared modestly that all along he had feared he was going to lose, since his competitor was right on his heels. As it happened, one ten-thousand-trillionth of a second later, like an arrow, and cursing Zeno of Elea, Achilles crossed the line."
Monterroso opposed Guatemalan dictatorships and many of his stories had a political message.
The Black Sheep told how: "In a distant land many years ago, there lived a black sheep. It was executed by firing squad. A century later, the grieving flock erected an equestrian statue in honour of the slain sheep that looked very nice in the park. In the years that followed, every time a black sheep appeared, it was executed so that ordinary sheep could practise sculpture." – The Telegraph

"If a fable is a “succinct fictional story,” then the fables of the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso are easily the most succinct examples to be found. Monterroso is said to have written the world’s shortest short story: “And when he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.” In his fables, he stretches out a bit more–but not much. Here, for instance, is the complete text of “The Imperfect Paradise”:
“It’s true,” the man said with a melancholy air, his gaze fixed on the flames dancing in the fireplace that winter night; “in Paradise there are friends, music, some books. The only bad thing about going to Heaven is that from there you can’t look up.”
Monterroso switches back and forth from man to animals in his stories. It’s fitting that he takes as the epigraph to this collection a quote from one K’nyo Mobutu: “So much are animals like man that at times it is impossible to distinguish between them.” And it’s fitting that when you look into the index, the entry for Mobutu contains the parenthetical note, “Anthropophagite.” Cannibal. So the joke is on us–he’s not referring to how we behave: he’s referring to how we taste.
Monterroso’s love of jest seems all the more remarkable when you learn that he was jailed as a member of the opposition and spent most of his adult life in exile. While his tales are often satirical, there is never any bitterness in his tone. Indeed, his response to oppression is to note the same flaws it shares with every other human endeavor. It’s hard for me to believe that the following wasn’t meant as a reflection on the CIA’s interference in Guatemalan politics:
Once upon a time there was a Lightning Bolt which struck twice in the same place; but it discovered that it had done enough damage the first time, and that it was no longer needed, and it became very depressed.“ – The Neglected Books Page
„This small volume of extremely short fables - many only a page or a few paragraphs in length -- is a virtuoso display of writing. These precise little pieces are not traditional fables. Monterroso cuts the form down to its barest essence, revealing the complexity of the underlying morals that are usually foisted on a reader. These are not edifying tales as we are used to, but they are beautiful, clever, and honest little works.
In one of the most stunning examples, Monterroso manages in three paragraphs -- a mere eight lines (seven here) -- to present a succinct version of the well-known race in "The Tortoise and Achilles", reducing one of Borges' favourite paradoxes to such a simple and yet equally resonant form:
Finally, according to the cable, last week the Tortoise arrived at the finish line.
At the press conference he declared modestly that all along he had feared that he was going to lose, since his competitor was right on his heels.
As it happened, one ten thousand trillionth of a second later, like an arrow and cursing Zeno of Elea, Achilles crossed the line.
It is the perfect complement to Borges' meditations on the subject, and a perfect fable in its own right.
Many of the other fables also impress. Of particular note is "Faith and the Mountains", a beautiful story on the power of faith - and the dangers it poses. Here as elsewhere Monterroso neatly turns expectations and conventional takes on a subject and turns them on their head, daring to suggest, for example, that Faith is not benign and that it can bring with it great and grave consequences.
Similarly, he offers an entirely new explanation of Ulysses' journeys in "The Cloth of Penelope -- or Who deceives Whom ?" Other stories of note include the marvelous title piece, "The Fly who dreamed he was an Eagle", and "The Monkey who wanted to be a Satirical Writer" -- though, really, the whole slim collection is impressive.
Clever, amusing, and thoughtful, with nary a wasted word, Monterroso's small pieces are weightier than many a full-sized novel. Neatly presented in this long out of print volume, with woodcuts facing the text to pad the book, The Black Sheep is an excellent collection. Because of the precision of the texts quite a bit gets lost in translation. Nevertheless, even in English it is a marvelous read. Highly recommended. (Seek it out at your local used bookstore, or the library !)“ – The Complete Review

„The epigraph to this slim volume of fables reads, ‘So much are animals like man that at times it is impossible to distinguish between them.’ It is attributed to K’nyo Mobutu. In the index K’yno is described as an anthropophagite. Anthropophagite, one discovers – if one is curious enough to open a dictionary, is a synonym for cannibal.
Jose Saramago once said that beautiful women and children are immune to irony. I am not quite sure what he meant by this (he was, of course, being ironic) but I do not hold this against him. In fact, I want to praise him for it. Irony is defined as saying that which one does not mean. This bears repeating. Irony is saying one thing yet meaning another. It does not necessarily indicate that you mean the opposite of what you say. Nor is it the negation of what you say. It is simply meaning something different from what you say. It is not not meaning what you say. Your words can have two meanings (in fact, as I will argue, for irony to work, they must)
Oft times because of a lisp and stutter that I inherited from my childhood, I will mumble, confuse, jumble and mispronounce words. This habit has led me to the belief that words cannot be mispronounced if the listener understands what the speaker is saying.
Another way to look at irony is to say that irony is being intentionally obscure. By its very definition irony gives rise to confusion.
This is why it is my belief that there is no such thing as obvious irony. For if you are obviously not meaning what you say then you are not saying what you are saying but something else. That is, irony must contain an element of truth. You must, at least, in part mean what you say. At least enough so that a beautiful woman or a child may believe you.
This, of course, is not easy to do, which is why it is so rarely done well.
Augusto Monterroso is a master of the form. He is the writer of the world’s shortest story (‘And when he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.’) and in this volume (unfortunately, shamefully, only one of two volumes of his work that has been translated into English, and both those long ago and long out of print) Monterroso displays his trademark humor.
One of my favorite vignettes from this volume is called Samson and the Philistines:
Once there was a fool who chose to fight Samson. What happened to him is simply beyond telling. But one does know what happened later to Samson with Delilah allied with the Philistines.

If you want to lick Samson, join the Philistines. If you want to lick Delilah, join the Philistines.

Always join the Philistines.
Even as I type that out it brings tears to my eyes. This is a perfect example of what I mean by all irony needing to contain an soupcon of truth. You cannot simply just not mean what you say, that it too easy (Again if you are obviously not meaning what you say, are you saying what you are saying or are you already saying what you mean – irony requires subtly for this very reason (a further explanation of this would require me to go into semiotics and signifiers and all that jazz – not a thing I am particularly fond of or good at))
The Black Sheep and Other Fables is full of small episodes like this. I am not sure if there is a more difficult task than writing small fables like these. Because of their brevity, they require a greater knowledge of literature than the writing of a novel or a short story does (to deliver the information succinctly the reader and the writer must already be aware of the tropes he is using) And because of the limitations of some languages (what I mean here is the lack of certain tenses in English that make fairy tales harder to write) the writer must figure out a way to suspend time with the rhythm of his words (Monterosso is Guatemalan but helped with the translation)And finally short pieces like these must have morals. They must take stands, which is harder to do than one would think (or maybe not, maybe you are aware of how hard it is to take a moral stand)
This is one of the favorite books I own, if not my favorite. It is this beautiful little yellow hard-back with a lion on the front cover. There are illustrations throughout and it is short enough so that I can read it a few times a year. I use it as my anti-dote when I run into something that is too clever for its own good, that is clever for cleverness’ sake. For no one is as clever as Monterroso when he is at his best, but like Saramago, he is never smarmy about it, never pretentious, which is a wonderful thing. This book is a reminder that subtly is not a lost art. It is just hard to find.“ - Through A BookShelf

„In an essay in Perpetual Motion (the second piece down on the linked page), Monterroso talks about first reading Borges and about becoming slowly immersed in his thinking and his puzzles. It is a very nice introduction to Borges; I was surprised to see that the work which opened Monterroso's eyes was Borges' foreword to his translation (1938) of The Metamorphosis:
When I first found Borges, in 1945, I didn't understand him; he was frankly puzzling for me. Delving into Kafka, I found Borges' foreword to The Metamorphosis; and for the first time I saw before me his world of metaphysical labyrinths, of infinities, of eternities, of tragic trivialities, of quotidian relationships comparable to the worst hell imaginable. A new universe, gleaming, ferociously attractive. Crossing from that foreword to all the rest of Borges' work has been for me (and for many others) an activity as important as breathing, and at the same time as dangerous as walking too close to the edge of a chasm. Following him has meant discovering and descending into new circles: Chesterton, Melville, Bloy, Swedenborg, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf; taking up old friendships: Cervantes, Quevedo, Hernández; and at last returning to his illusory Paradise of the everyday: the barrio, the movie-house, the detective story.

I'm surprised because that foreword does not strike me as among Borges' finest work; it's principally just a capsule biography/chronology of Kafka and his work, and a cursory discussion of some themes in his work. (Obviously discovering Kafka in 1945 would be different from my experience of discovering Kafka in 1985 or thereabouts; but it would still be "discovering Kafka", not "discovering Borges".) There is one paragraph that seems to me to move to a different level:
Critics complain that in Kafka's three novels, there is a lack of linking material; but they recognize that this material is not essential. Myself, I maintain that this criticism indicates a fundamental unfamiliarity with the work of Kafka. The pathos of these "inconclusive" novels arises precisely from the infinite number of obstacles which block, again and again, the paths of his identical protagonists. Franz Kafka did not finish them: their basic property is that they are interminable. Do you remember the first, the most clear of Zeno's paradoxes? Motion is impossible, because before arriving at B we have to cross the intermediate point C, but before we arrive at C, we have to cross the intermediate point D, but before arriving at D... The Greek did not enumerate all of the points; Franz Kafka need not enumerate all the vicissitudes. It is enough for us to understand that they are infinite, like Hell.
(I hope I am understanding correctly how Borges is taking issue with critics of Kafka -- I don't really know whom or what arguments he is referring to.)
As he closes his piece, Monterroso talks about what your encounter with Borges can do to you:
The great problem of reading Borges: the temptation to imitate him is almost irresistable; to imitate him, impossible. Some writers you can get away with imitating -- Conrad, Greene, Durrel -- not Joyce; not Borges. It will sound facile and obvious. The meeting with Borges never takes place without consequences. I've listed here a few of the things that can happen, for better and for the worse:
Pass him by without noticing (for the worse).

Pass him by; retrace one's steps and follow him for a little while to see what he's doing (for the better).

Pass him by; retrace one's steps and follow him forever (for the worse).

Find out that one is a simpleton, that until this moment one has never had an idea worth one's while (for the better).

Find out that one is intelligent, because one enjoys reading Borges (for the better).
Dazzle oneself with the fable of Achilles and the Tortoise; believe that one has figured it all out (for the worse).
Discover the infinite and the eternal (for the better).

Mull over the infinite and the eternal (for the better).

Believe in the infinite and the eternal (for the worse).
Leave off writing (for the better).
(Note on the translation: "for the better" is benéfica, "for the worse" is maléfica - I think these are about right; it is too bad that the English phrases don't match up nicely to the title, as the Spanish words do - the title is Beneficios y maleficios de Jorge Luis Borges, "Jorge Luis Borges: Blessings and Curses" - I guess it could be translated as "Jorge Luis Borges for better or worse", but that would sound pretty hokey.)


So Monterroso's essay on flies references José Milla y Vidaurre's essay on flies (this piece turns out to be completely beyond my limited abilities as a translator -- the final two paragraphs depend on the double meaning of mosca, which can be "fly" or "cash"), which references a piece by Lucian In Appreciation of the Fly. (Have I mentioned how happy Google Books, in all its imperfection, makes me?)
...Both Milla and Lucian reference Iliad XVII:487-92, in which Athena blesses Menelaos: in Chapman's translation, "For which grace she kindly did bestow/ Strength on his shoulders, and did fill his knees as liberally/ With swiftness, breathing in his breast the courage of a fly,/ Which loves to bite so, and doth bear man's blood so much good will,/ That still though beaten from a man she flies upon him still;/ With such a courage Pallas filled the black parts near his heart."
Monterroso writes, "There are three topics: love, death, and flies."
Since humanity has existed, this sentiment, this fear, these presences have accompanied him everywhere. Let others deal with the first two; I will occupy myself with flies, which are greater than men (if not than women). For years I've had in mind the idea of putting together a universal anthology of the fly. I still mean to do it -- but, I soon came to realize the task was practically infinite. The fly pervades literature; anywhere you cast your eye, you are sure to find the fly. There is no true author who has not taken the opportunity to dedicate a poem, a page, a paragraph, a line to him; if you are an author and have not done this, I advise you to follow my example, to hurry up and do it. Flies are the Eumenides, the Erinyes; they are chastisers. They are avengers, for what we don't know - but you know that they have persecuted you; as far as you know, they will go on persecuting you forever. They are vigilant. They are the avatars of something unnameable, something benevolent or malign. They pursue you. They follow you. They watch you. When at last you die, it's likely (and it's too bad) that one fly will suffice to carry your poor, distracted soul who knows where. Flies convey - and they come over the course of the ages to own their cargo - the souls of our dead, of our forebears, who thus remain close to us, accompanying us, determined to protect us. They are a means for our small souls' transmigrations; they accumulate wisdom - they come to know everything that we do not dare to know. Perhaps the ultimate propagator of our tired western culture will be the body of this fly, who has come down through the course of the centuries, furthering his line without enriching himself....
You can read the original at valdeperrillos.com, where they have the beginnings of the anthology Monterroso dreams of - I am surprised not to see Denevi's God of the flies in there as well.

...And think about what I believe Milla said (an author whom of course you will not know but whom thanks to having occupied yourself with the fly, you are hearing mentioned for the first time today), that the fly is not as ugly as it appears at first sight. But this is because, at first sight it does not appear ugly -- precisely because nobody has ever seen a fly for the first time. Nobody ever thinks to wonder, were there flies before me? will there be flies after me? In the beginning was the fly. (It's practically impossible that such a phrase would not appear here -- in the beginning was the fly or some such thing. We live out these phrases. Phrases which --fly--, like sorrow --fly--, mean nothing. Grievous phrases which fill up our books.) Forget it. It's easier for a fly to land on the Pope's nose than for the Pope to land on the nose of a fly. The Pope, or the king or the president (the president of the country of course -- the president of a financial company or a corporation or a maker of product X is in general foolish enough to be considered better than that) is not able to call out his Swiss Guard or his Royal Guard or his Presidential Guard to kill a fly. On the contrary, he is tolerant; perhaps he will just scratch his nose. You know. And you know that the fly knows too, and watches out; you know that what we actually have is a guard of flies, who take care at every hour lest we fall into mortal sin -- which would require a guard of angels, who would soon slack off and turn into accomplices, like the angel in Hitler's guard or the one in Johnson's. But it doesn't have to be that way. Let's return to noses. The fly who lands on yours is a direct descendant of the one who dropped in on Cleopatra's. And once again you fall into these prefabricated rhetorical allusions which everyone has used already. And still you want to create literature. The fly wants you to wrap it in this atmosphere of kings, popes and emperors -- and it wins out. It is your master. You cannot speak of it without an inclination towards grandeur. Oh Melville, you had to sail the seas in order finally to make up this great white whale on your desk in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, without realizing that all the while, since the hot evenings of your childhood when Evil would flutter around your strawberry ice cream and, as the years passed by, over you yourself in the dusk as you pulled out one by one the brown hairs of your beard, reading Cervantes and polishing your style; and not necessarily in that enormous mass of bones and sperm incapable of doing any evil, but rather in him who interrupts your nap, like the crazy Ahab, and Poe and his raven? Ridiculous. Take a look at the fly. Observe. Think.

...Well, much of this is pretty rough. That last sentence in particular, about Melville, is a monstrosity that is going to take a while to figure out. The author Milla whom Monterroso refers to at the top of this piece is José Milla y Vidaurre, who has an essay about flies in his Book Without a Name. Not sure why Monterroso doesn't think his audience would have heard of Milla -- the Wikipædia entry makes it sound like he was an important author in Guatemala. Come to think of it I don't know if Monterroso was writing for a specifically Guatemalan audience, or if he was even living in Guatemala when he wrote this book. Lots to find out... The next book Milla wrote was called Book With a Name.

...another story I really enjoy from The Black Sheep and other fables:
At first, faith moved mountains only as a last resort, when it was absolutely necessary, and so the landscape remained the same over the millennia.
But once faith started propagating itself among people, some found it amusing to think about moving mountains, and soon the mountains did nothing else but change places, each time making it a little more difficult to find one in the same place you had left it last night; obviously this created more problems than it solved.

The good people decided then to abandon faith; so nowadays the mountains remain (by and large) in the same spot.

When the roadway falls in and drivers die in the collapse, it means someone, far away or quite close by, felt a light glimmer of faith.

This is the second story in The black sheep and other fables - the story of which Isaac Asimov says (and I'm dying to know now whether this book has been published in translation, or if Asimov reads Spanish...)* that after reading it, "you will never be the same again."
In the jungle there once lived a monkey who wanted to write satire.
He studied hard, but soon realized that he did not know people well enough to write satire, and he started a program of visiting everyone, going to cocktails and observing, watching for the glint of an eye while his host was distracted, a cup in his hand.

As he was most clever and his agile pirhouettes were entertaining for all the other animals, he was received well almost everywhere; and he strove to make it even more so.

There was no-one who did not find his conversation charming; when he arrived he was fêted and jubilated among the monkeys, by the ladies as much as by their husbands, and by the rest of the inhabitants of the jungle too, even by those who were into politics, whether international, domestic or local, he invariably showed himself to be understanding -- and always, to be clear, with the aim of  seeing the base components of human nature and of being able to render them in his satires.
And so there came a time when among the animals, he was the most advanced student of human nature; nothing got by him.
Then one day, he said: I'm going to write against thievery, and he went to see the magpies; and at first he went at it with enthusiasm, enjoying himself and laughing, looking up with pleasure at the trees as he thought about what things happen among the magpies -- but then on second thought, he considered the magpies who were among the animals who had received him so pleasantly -- especially one magpie, and that they would see their portrait in his satire, however gently he wrote it.. and he left off doing it.
Then he wanted to write about opportunists, and he cast his eye on the serpent, who by whatever means (auxiliary to his talent for flattery) managed always to conserve, to trade, to increase his posessions... But then some serpents were friends of his, and especially one serpent; they would see the reference. So he left off doing it.
Then he thought of satirizing compulsive work habits, and he turned to the bee, the bee who works dumbly and without knowing why or for whom; but for fear of offending some of his friends of this genus, and especially one of them, he ended up comparing them favorably to the cicada, that egotist who will do nothing more than sing, sing, who thinks himself a poet... and he left off doing it.
Then it occurred to him, he could write against sexual promiscuity, and he directed his satire against the adulterous hens who strut around all day restlessly looking for roosters; but then some of them had received him well, he feared hurting them, and he left off doing it.
In the end he came up with a complete list of human failings and weaknesses, and he could not find a target for his guns - they were all failings of his friends who had shared their table with him, and of himself.
At that moment he renounced his writing of satire, and began to teach mysticism and love, this type of thing; but this made people talk (you know how it is with people), they said he had gone crazy, they no longer received him as gladly or with such pleasure.“ - READIN: Jeremy's journal

"The Fox is Wiser"
One day when the Fox was bored, and somewhat melancholy and money-less, he decided to become a writer, and applied himself immediately to that end, as he loathed the kinds of people who say I am doing to do this or that and then never do it.
His first book did very well a real hit; everyone applauded it, and before long it had been translated (sometimes not very well) into practically every language.
The second was even better than the first, and several North American professors counted among the most illustrious of the academic world of those remote times enthusiastically praised it and even wrote books on the books about the Fox's books.
Thenceforth the Fox justifiably deemed himself satisfied, and the years went by and he published nothing more.
But the others began to murmur, and kept asking, "What's wrong with the Fox?"; and when they met him at cocktail parties they would promptly go up to him and tell him he simply had to bring out something.
"But I've already published two books," he responded wearily.
"And very good they were," they answered, "and that's exactly why you must do another."
The Fox said nothing, but he though: "Actually what they want me to do is to publish a bad book; but I'm too Foxy: I'm not going to."
And he didn't.
A collection of Modernist fables in the same vein as some of Borges' very short stories or Kafka's parables. I love both of those writers when they are writing in this vein, and I really like these stories, too. A few of the fables could have been lifted right out of Borges or Kafka.
I'd never heard of Augusto Monterroso before encountering him in Bartleby & Co., a novel about writing about authors who were part of the Literature of the No. Literature of refusal to engage in the act of creating literature. One day I should write a review for that novel, I loved it. A lot.
The above fable I think is a good example of both this book and the sort of literature Bartleby & Co. is about.
I'll let it stand pretty much on it's own without my words mucking everything up.“ – Greg at goodreads

„Augusto Monterroso (1921 – 2003) was a Guatemalan writer known for short stories. Indeed, he is credited with writing the shortest story ever: “When she awoke, the dinosaur was still there.” Monterroso is considered a central figure in the Latin American “Boom” generation, recognized alongside such canonical authors as Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez. Monterroso often used the weird and grotesque to create incisive contemporary fables, as in his most famous story, “Mister Taylor” (1952). The story’s mixture of weird imagery with social commentary on U.S. imperialism has made it one of the most popular Latin American short stories of the mid-20th century.“ - Adam Mills

„At first glance, Augusto Monterroso’s “Mister Taylor” would not appear to be a suitable addition to The Weird. Set in South America, the setting contains nothing eerie or supernatural about it and the narrator is perhaps a bit detached in comparison to other tales. Yet if one digs further into the narrative, “Mister Taylor” begins to reveal weirdness shrouded in fable that makes some rather uncomfortable observations about imperialism and human avarice.
Monterroso is unjustly overlooked in conversations about the great Latin American writers of the Boom Generation. Whereas Julio Cortázar (also featured in The Weird) or Gabriel García Márquez were equally at home writing short fiction or novels, Monterroso contented himself with writing short fictions in a variety of modes. This is not to say that Monterroso was not a technical or storytelling genius (a quick review of his oeuvre would indicate otherwise), but that unlike his peers, he was not known for writing in a particular style. However, an analysis of “Mister Taylor,” shows a master who was adept at subverting story conventions to tell tales that are rich in irony, fabulism, and imagery.
“Mister Taylor” is a tricky narrative, in that it requires a closer examination of its structure to reveal Monterroso’s use of the weird to drive his story of a headhunting exporting business and its effects on producers and consumers alike. Monterroso’s narrative is replete with asides and striking images, constructed in such a fashion as to seem almost effortless. When I worked on translating “Mister Taylor” in the spring of 2010, it took several drafts to get the phrasing just so, as the power of the story is derived from the subtle juxtaposition of native and foreign perspective to generate a sort of social étrangeté where the weirdness comes not from external sources but from human behavior.
Early on, Monterroso establishes the terms of this social weirdness with the character of Mr. Percy Taylor:
‘It is known that in 1937 he left Boston, Massachusetts, where he had refined his spirit to the point of becoming penniless. In 1944 he appears for the first time in South America, in the region of the Amazon, living with the natives of a tribe whose name there is no need to remember.’
Here we see an ironic allusion to the “refinement” that imperialists frequently used to justify their exploitation of non-Western societies. This is contrasted by the purposeful elimination of the native tribe that Mr. Taylor visits. In several of his fictions, including “The Eclipse,” Monterroso often would subvert the association of the European with knowledge and wisdom and the natives with superstition and primitiveness. Here in “Mister Taylor” we see the titular character being so blissfully unaware of his initial stance within the community, as he thinks to himself, while the schoolchildren throw stones at him and call him “the poor gringo,” that:
“…this did not distress the humble character of Mr. Taylor, because he had read in the first volume of The Complete Works of William G. Knight that if he did not feel envious of the rich, poverty would not dishonor him.”
With this passage, Monterroso has shifted the perspective away from that of a white man’s burden – wherein the hero enters alone into a primitive place and quickly modernizes the joint while becoming its beneficent leader – toward a more nuanced look at the fools who seek to “improve” others without realizing that it is they themselves who need to be looked after better. In this manner “Mister Taylor” satirizes the attitudes of many Latin American officials toward American businessmen in the wake of “Dollar Diplomacy.” In scenes such as the one where the President and Minister of Foreign Relations treat the penniless Mr. Taylor with respect solely due to his “blue eyes and a vague foreign accent,” the reader quickly realizes that Monterroso is utilizing the form of a demented fable to make some striking points about the nefarious effects of American imperialism on the peoples and governments of Latin America during the mid-20th century.
The true weird elements emerge after Mr. Taylor has been offered a shrunken human head:
“It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Taylor was in no position to buy it; but as apparently he didn’t understand this, the Indian felt terribly embarrassed due to not speaking English well, and he gave Mr. Taylor the head as a gift, seeking pardon.”
Here the confusion of cultures is directly revealed. The stammering pidgin of the native who went from jumping out from behind a bush with the head, going “Buy head? Money, money” to Mr. Taylor’s being “somewhat indisposed” creates a moment of awkward confusion: why should one be offering and why can’t the other demur? What value is there in this head? Is it a religious or social trophy, or is it something else?
It is from this point that the story veers into a killing/selling frenzy, as Mr. Taylor and his uncle Mr. Rolston realize that there is a market in shrinking of heads and marketing them as a novelty. The grotesqueness of the latter part of “Mister Taylor” relies upon the dissonance created by vivid imageries of hipsters who limit the “cool factor” of the heads to arbitrary, almost incomprehensible numbers and shapes; the bicycles and trimmed pathways that the leaders of the natives utilize in the wake of the business generated by the slaughtering of their own people; and the frenzy that comes with the increased demands for more heads. This strange, over-the-top caricature of imperialist exploitation and marketing leads up to a surprising and chilling conclusion.
The end of “Mister Taylor” resembles several other of Monterroso’s fictions. Often, as is the case with “Mister Taylor” and “The Eclipse,” the conclusion references the beginning and recasts it, and with this, reader interpretations change. The vivid images conjured by Monterroso’s adroit placing of metaphor and simile often lead readers to question their previously-held assumptions about the types of fiction Monterroso is subverting or parodying. The weird here inhabits those gaps between reader expectations and the narratives in which Monterroso explores the depravities and fallacies of our belief and social systems, creating stories that surprise readers with their combination of ironic placement, fable, motifs such as the self-made man, and devastating conclusions.“ - Larry Nolen

THE TWO TAILS or THE ECLECTIC PHILOSOPHER by Augusto Monterroso


As the story goes, an eclectic philosopher strolled each morning the crowded market of an ancient city. Celebrated as a keen observer of Nature, the philosopher was frequently approached by the populace to settle the most complex conflicts and doubts.
It happened one day that a Dog was seen going rapidly around in circles trying to catch its own tail. This evoked laughter in a group of children who surrounded him and consternation in the adults. A number of the preoccupied merchants asked the philosopher what could be the cause of such a thing, and whether it could be an ominous omen.
The philosopher explained that in biting its own tail, the Dog was simply trying to dislodge his Fleas.
With this, the general curiosity was satisfied, and everyone returned to their work.
On another occasion, a Snake charmer exhibited his Snakes in a basket. Among them, one was seen to be biting its own tail, which provoked consternation in the children and laughter in the adults.
When the preoccupied children asked the philosopher what could be the cause of such a thing, he responded that a Snake biting its tail represented the Infinite and the Eternal Return of people, events, and things, and that this was the meaning of a Snake biting its own tail.
Again everyone returned to their tasks satisfied and tranquil.