Senselessness

by Horacio Castellanos Moya, Katherine Silver (Translator)

A boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger—after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Latin American, Horror, Novels, Literary Fiction, Literature

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA is a writer and a journalist from El Salvador. For two decades he worked as editor of news agencies, magazines and newspapers in Mexico, Guatemala and his own country. As a fiction writer, he was granted residencies in a program supported by the Frankfurt International Book Fair (2004-2006) and in the City of Asylum program in Pittsburgh (2006-2008). He has also taught in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2009, he was guest researcher at the University of Tokyo with a fellowship granted by the Japan Foundation. He has published eleven novels, five short story collections, two essay books, and a diary. His novels have been translated into twelve languages; five of them (Senselessness, The She-Devil in the mirror, Dance with Snakes, Revulsion, and Tyrant memory) are available in English. He was awarded the Manuel Rojas Iberoamerican Prize for Fiction 2014, by the Government of Chile.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a horrible, horrible story; it destroyed its narrator and bid fair to make me a whispering zombie; man's inexpressible vileness and irreducible cruelty are a weight too heavy for me to bear. His task is to copyedit a human-rights report commissioned by the Archbishop to ascertain the guilt and/or innocence of the parties to a genocide. Every step of the narrator's descent into mental illness's loudest darkest corners is punctuated by italicized phrases he's culled from this report...all one thousand one hundred pages...for their unusual, beautiful, euphonious horror: I am not complete in the mind greets the reader on page one. A man who lived beyond the violence that stole his family from him utters those words, to a psychologist, as the report takes shape, as the professional records the words and assesses the soul that left the body of the speaker, so as to bear witness.

I didn't read the original Spanish, but I'll wager there's nothing lost in the translation. It's too precisely evocative. It's also extremely prolix in its one hundred forty-two pages. Words pile up, words wind around your eyestalks, words make dizzyingly alien geometries as they flow from the desperately purging narrator. Words distance him, though not the reader, from the blood and hate and evil he must view as structures and concepts in order to earn his five thousand United States dollars for copyediting one thousand one hundred pages of agony. The slaughter of untold bodies is actually the less revolting part of the tale...Wounded, yes, is hard to be left, but dead is ever peaceful is not something a grandmother should have cause to say of her murdered descendants...and the litany of one thousand one hundred pages reminds us that the narrator is doing a job, is taking the written results of an investigation, is applying grammar and punctuation to the massive, traumatized shouting of the victims of genocide.

We all know who are the assassins.

[Tony]

The first-person protagonist is defined, at the very top of the inside flap, as an alcoholic, atheist, sex-obsessed writer. And yet oddly I did not see myself in him. Not for these reasons, mind you, but the protagonist was not really an alcoholic; his atheism didn't define him; and while sex-obsessed to be sure, he objectified women in such a way that any thriving relationship would be impossible.

This flawed narrator has fled from El Salvador (something he said) and is now in Honduras where he is editing 1,100 pages of testimony from 'survivors' of military atrocities. His assignment is bankrolled by the Catholic Church. Oh, the irony.

The atrocities are vividly stated, as are the sexual escapades. What appealed, mostly, were the italicized fragments of survivors' testimonies, that served a poetic purpose, a chorus:

Their clothes stayed sad . . . The houses they were sad because no people were inside them . . . Because for me the sorrow is to not bury him myself . . . Because I don't want for them to kill the people in front of me . . . If I die, I know not who will bury me . . . For always the dreams they are there still . . . For me remembering, it feels I am living it once more . . . They were people just like us we were afraid of . . .

Which is why, perhaps, the novel begins with another survivor's words - I am not complete in my mind - which the narrator clearly adopts. And so the reader.

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

I know it is popular to bash America because of our current elected President. I get that. And Americans are spectacular self-loathers. However, I have tried to make the point, previously, that we are a large country and have many different positions, philosophies and dogmas and that it is wrong to paint us with a single, broad brush. I suspect I have mostly failed. It is not my intention to engage in an argument about that here and now. But consider this:

Horacio Castellanos Moya, who wrote this book, had to flee El Salvador, like the protagonist. He had to flee Honduras too. He fled those countries because of what he said, what he wrote. The atrocities he exposed are real. He has lived in Guatemala, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Germany. But when he fled, he came here. Not just to the United States. He came to Pittsburgh, where he lives in exile. He is a ten-minute drive from me. He could wander downstairs to a bookstore filled with nyrb-classics. He can walk three blocks and take in a major-league baseball game. I could show him a joint around the corner that will play live jazz that will bare souls. He can be religious or not. He can sit by the river, next to a Fred Rogers statute on a crisp sunny day. He can make love, if he's lucky enough.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Or, in the words of the telegram the protagonist received:

Yesterday at noon the bishop presented the report in a bombastic ceremony in the cathedral; last night he was assassinated at the parish house, they smashed his head in with a brick. Everybody's fucked. Be grateful you left.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long-sentence Bernhardian ranting thanks in part to exposure to a one thousand one hundred page report of atrocities. The narrator seems pretty much freaked out, neurotic, lupine. Common petty vices (venery, intemperance, greed) are juxtaposed with uncommon crimes against humanity. Sex scenes are sort of hotly/humorously described. If this were less "comic," the presentation of the atrocities may have had more heft and things in general may have also been funnier, the way Bernhard's endless deadpan ranting about suicide et cetera ad infinitum often makes me laugh out loud.

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of like a cross between the horror of Camus and the repetitive triviality of Thomas Bernhard (but achieves the greatness of neither writers). The narrator is both unlikeable and unlikely. The former doesn't bother me but the latter does a little. The exaggerated paranoia of the narrator was at times too much and did not work for me. The humor was there but also didn't completely work. I liked how the political material came through the narrator, though, but like another reviewer on Goodreads, I also think that it would be nice if the narrator was somehow changed. Or that he was at least believable in the beginning, instead of starting out already a caricature. The premise had so much potential and Moya is clearly a skilled writer, but it seems he hasn't really found his unique voice yet in this book.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A weird, wild ride of a book – the protagonist is a writer who is commissioned by the Catholic Church to copy-edit a 1100 page report they have recently gathered up which details the massacre of many indigenous citizens. He is not a religious man, and he is certainly not a fan of the Church. He takes on the task to earn some money, which he feels is not commensurate with his efforts anyway. Wikipedia informs me that the country is Guatemala, despite this never being indicated in the text (but you would know this if you knew the names of the presidents that the author brings up). As he proofreads, he is struck by the horror of it all, but all he can do is let the horror wash over him while he notes down for himself some choice sentences from the testimony of the victims. Oh, and, of course, he is obsessed with sex.

The back and forth between descriptions of monstrous brutalities and base sexual desires was jarring throughout the book. A chapter would discuss mass genocide, and then he would transition into talking about his night away from proofreading, where he would try to seduce women in bars. I am not exaggerating when I say that there is more verve in the prose surrounding his sexual exploits than those discussing the injustices done to the natives. For instance, I felt utterly helpless and stuck watching the car crash of a chapter that was the writer finding himself finally successful in his pursuit of a beautiful woman of his desires, only to have her remove her boots at the height of foreplay and let loose the most foul stench known to man. What to do? He buries his face in her skin, hoping to distract himself from her scent with her scent, but it’s a battle.

The obvious connection to make is between Castellanos Moya’s writing and that of Thomas Bernhard. Long, unbroken sentences. Repetition of motifs. Tinge of paranoia. It did not achieve the same effect, but there were moments of pure emotion (hurt, anger, anxiety, and chagrin). For that reason, and the fact that it’s a short book anyway, it may be worth your while.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

• SENSELESSNESS by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver

✨ Quick summation:
You are what you read...

A man takes on an editorial job with the Catholic Church in an unnamed Central American country (loosely based on Guatemala?). All day long, he reads hundreds of pages for a Truth and Reconciliation commission, investigating atrocities and massacres perpetuated by the military on Indigenous people. Hours a day reading horror... and then he goes home, out to dinner with friends, attempts to date a coworker... Phrases and scenes he has read keep coming back to him, and it's a descent into madness for both the narrator and the reader. What is real?

A wild ride. Hard to say "enjoyed" this one, but intrigued to try more Moya.

[مسعود · Rating 3 out of 5]

دیوانگی است اما اگر واقعیت باشد چه؟

دیوانگی (اثر اوراسیو کاستیانوس مویا، با ترجمه‌ی حسین ترکمن‌نژاد، نشر خوب ۱۳۹۹) داستان مردی است که به گواتمالا سفر کرده تا یک گزارش بیش از هزار صفحه‌ای از قتل عام بومیان به دست ارتش این کشور را ویراستاری کند. کارفرمای او مقامات ارشد کلیسای کاتولیک گواتمالا هستند و همه شرایط را برای او فراهم کرده‌اند تا کارش را در دفتری آرام و بی‌مزاحمت به درستی پیش ببرد. گزارش مملو از تصاویری دهشتناک و سیاه از این جنایات است که از زبان بازماندگان آن قتل عام نقل شده و گاه آن روایت‌های تاریک و دهشتناک آن‌قدر شاعرانه می‌شوند که ذهن راوی و شخصیت اصلی داستان را درگیر می‌کند -اصلا مگر می‌شود هزار و صد صفحه گزارش دقیق از تصاویری منزجرکننده خواند و درگیر نشد؟- بارها و بارها آن جملات را با خود مرور می‌کند، در دفترچه یادداشت شخصی‌اش می‌نویسد و صدالبته که آن وقایع را تصور می‌کند. تصوری که آرام آرام هراس و جنونی را در ذهن راوی شکل می‌دهد از توطئه و جنایتی که ممکن است اداره اطلاعات ارتش (ملقب به آرشیو) که در چند قدمی او مستقر است این بار علیه خود او اعمال کند. راوی به الکل و رابطه با زنان پناه می‌برد اما جنون و هراسش لحظه به لحظه بیشتر می‌شود و آن روابط هم درگیری‌های تازه‌ای را برایش رقم می‌زند و پایش را به موقعیت‌های هراسناک تازه‌ای باز می‌کند. توهم توطئه و پارانوایی که گاه حتی باورناپذیر می‌شود، ترسی بی دلیل که گاه به جنون تن می‌زند و گاه حتی خواننده می‌گوید «نه، این که دیگر واقعا نمی‌شود، نویسنده این یکی را واقعا نتوانسته خوب در بیاورد».
چیزی از جنس با عقل جور در نیامدن که شاید عنوان درست‌تر داستان باشد:
Senselessness.
اما از کجا معلوم که جهان بیرون واقعا به همین اندازه دیوانه نباشد؟ پرسشی که پاسخ آن را تنها در پایان کتاب خواهیم یافت.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something about this book didn't seem quite fully developed. The book should have been a bit longer, but I'm not quite sure what would have been added to the book that wasn't already there. Maybe bring the absurdity more to the surface of an atheist working for the Catholic Church or something. I don't know. Maybe because the blurb on the book mentioned that I wanted to see that more developed.

The narrator is working for the Catholic Church doing a final copy edit on a thousand page report of first person accounts of atrocities in a Latin American country. He's an exile from another Latin American country where he made an awful comment about the President that has put his life in danger. Or maybe his life isn't in danger. Paranoia and unreliability run rampant in the book, and mixed with the run on rambling quality of the narration a very strange feeling is created. There is also some good old fashioned humor shot in to different parts of the book.

I really liked it while I was reading it, but afterwards I couldn't say that I'd recommend anyone to read it, not when there are so many other books out there. I would be curious to read other works of his if they get translated though.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the obvious comparisons to Thomas Bernhard are there, this is a spleenful, paranoid monologue with a character all its own. Moya skitters between the narrator's own crippling self-awareness, the increasing (and apparently justifiable) terror that he will become a target for a military that has no qualms about massacering large swaths of the indigenous population, and also obssessing over the monsterous details of the human rights abuse report about those massacres that he is editing. And the way that all of these forces inerconnect and strengthen each other is brilliant, and also totally sinister. Obviously, this is a DARK book, but what makes it jaring is how short it is. I feel like most authors trying to create something this heavy would go on for hundreds of turgid pages, but Moya creates this perfect storm of fear in under 150. It also contains what is probably the funniest, most painfully hyper-aware sex scene I've ever read. I'm not sure if its place amidst so much horror is a reprieve or a reinforcement or what. But it did make me laugh out loud in an otherwise hellish view of El Salvador.

[Mohammad · Rating 1 out of 5]

فاقد اهمیت. چرک
دیوانگی ظاهراً قرار بوده داستانی راجع به تصحیح گزارشی در خصوص بازماندگان جنایات ارتش گواتمالا در زمان جنگ داخلی سی و شش ساله‌ باشه که لابلای اون راوی چیزهایی هم از خودش تعریف می‌کنه. اما برعکس شده؛ و آبجو خوردن و حمله‌های عصبی و فکر و خیال‌های بی‌شمار سکسی و شرح بوی بد پای همخوابه، نود درصد حجم داستان رو تشکیل داده. آقای مویا گند زدی به خاطره‌ی خوب کتاب نفرت‌وبیزاری که قبلاً ازت خوندم

[Jim Elkins]

The Difficulty of Maintaining a Sublime Beginning

Very, very disappointing book. The protagonist is copyediting an enormous manuscript that documents atrocities committed against indigenous people. As the book opens, the copyeditor is hypnotized by a sentence he has read: "I am not complete in the mind." It was written by an indigenous man after he had witnessed his family being cut to pieces. The copyeditor knows the things he is reading about, and the ways they are expressed, are too much for him, and he wonders if they are affecting his mind. His inner monologue runs in two and three page-long sentences, as if he is incapable of arriving at a stopping place in his own thinking. He treasures talismanic sentences from the document, which he knows he loves as poetry, even though he knows that may be irresponsible or cowardly.

A spectacular beginning, conjuring the whole problem of the representation of evil, from Adorno onward, and echoing any number of contemporary writers on the subject of represented evil, from Georges Didi-Huberman to Dave Eggers, W. G. Sebald, and William Vollmann. But then the book becomes a comedy. It's full of supposedly entertaining misunderstandings, sexual escapades, and conventional farce. He sleeps with a woman with smelly feet. He trembles in the presence of his boss. He escapes through a bathroom window. Castellanos Moya is trying to show how he becomes paranoid, thinking he's being followed by the military, and on the last page we learn he might well have been. But that does not make up for the tremendous disappointment of falling so far, so quickly, and with so little hope of recovery, from a sharp peak of existential and literary force to a low swamp of common sex comedy masquerading as trauma. The book is trivial, with one tremendous idea in its first two pages.

[Andrew]

I had been facing a bit of burnout on the potential of the novel, and particularly the potential of the experimental novel, wondering why I read turgid nonlinear prose that occasionally goes over my head (or under).

This. This is why.

Latin American Thomas Bernhard, with the same antipathy towards Catholicism but with a far more palpable lust for immediate sensual gratification rather than the pure life of the mind, works on a report on the not-too-distant atrocities of the El Salvador stand-in that is our setting. As you can imagine, it doesn't go great.

People have a tendency to think of tropical climes and, first, think of swaying palms and trade winds. Books like Castellanos Moya's are a reminder that quite a lot of tropical life is colonels at salute sweating through their uniforms in the midday sun, flocks of crows gathering in the trees, and that the Garcia Marquez mode of existence easily survived the dawn of the internet age.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Moya because 'Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador' was too wonderful a title to ignore, and that sucked me in to looking at his other books. Very glad I did; if Marias is Henry James meets James Bond, Moya is Bernhard meets Joseph Conrad or some other angry anti-imperialist. You get great style and the utter horror of murderous governments, without the soothing that often comes with that stuff. The narrator is an asshole, all too prone to making other people's suffering into his own. You and I, too, are assholes.

Also, can't miss drive-by attack on magical realism [kisses fingers and mouths, belissimo!]

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better at channeling Thomas Bernhard than even Herve Guibert. Unexpectedly comic story about an editor having a nervous breakdown while cataloging atrocities in an unnamed Central American country and confronting the blasé attitudes of its citizens toward torture. Haunting and relevant. Still thinking about the ending.
4.5 stars

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/se...

What I noticed almost from the very start of this book was that the character was going to be a familiar one to me. Not so much a character I had already met in fiction but in truth a man I already knew to some degree in the work I last got a living from for over twenty-two years. I wrote a film script titled Alphonso Bow several years ago and this character I knew in real life made his debut on the pages of my fiction. The screenplay went on to be made into a film by my oldest son and enjoyed a nice run while traveling around the country being shown in several independent film festivals.

This chief character in Senselessness is smarter than mine however, and more articulate. His language is very sophisticated when sober, and he has been trained in writing so he speaks well on the page as narrator. However, my guy and he are both flawed characters and really not too likable. But I am drawn to these types of men. I love having lunch with them and hearing them spew off about anything that might come into their minds. For me, this is the most significant character trait these men have in common. Whatever comes to mind gets spewed out of their mouths as if they had no filter in which to clean their thoughts or language before their spontaneous obstruction regurgitates. The speed in which their minds and voices play out is dumbfounding to me, and purely entertaining. I do not see my old friend much these days anymore because he tends to bore me. Repeatedly different versions of the same story. He would say we do not see each other because I no longer help him be employed. But truthfully, as much as I do appreciate him, it is the same opinionated garbage continuously spewing forth from his mouth that I am literally sick in the face from.

But I do like this book. I am over halfway in and still feel it is relevant and extremely entertaining. Unlike some others who have read it, I want it not to end. There is little about the man that endears me to him other than his extremely flawed opinions of women and sex and his mistrust of all those around him. He is disparaging and judgmental, and actually someone I would probably not like if I had to deal with him on a daily basis or if I were expected to be his constant friend. But I am not his friend. I am only listening in to all his conversations and the rapid thoughts that race constantly through his mind. So far, Moya has done an excellent job of keeping his own work contained within the framework of a somewhat raging lunatic. Not an easy thing to do. People resembling this chief character seem almost unreal because they become caricatures of what has seriously taken over their minds. It is almost as if they cannot help themselves and are looking for somebody to save them. Or at least listen to them releasing the tension that builds constantly and unforgivingly all through their busy minds. They are unreal to those of us in more control of our own impulses. But these people really do exist and I will be interested to see how Moya finishes this tale. I am not going to compare Moya to Bernhard as there is really nobody like him. There are plenty of writers who have invoked the spirit of Bernhard in their work. But the challenge for me is in the character each writer develops and if they each have their own unique voice and ideas of the world even within the somewhat similar energetic rantings and ravings that can bring to mind a writer the likes and brilliance of Thomas Bernhard.

I especially enjoyed what I thought was a well-made sex scene, nervous and as claustrophobic as can be, and almost totally unrewarding given the circumstances actually of her god-awful smelly feet and the soon-to-be-returning military boyfriend. Again, the scene reminded me of my old friend Alphonso who cares only for his own needs being met and always finds fault with whomever (and the more the merrier) he is having sex with. But this character in Moya's book is as well a nutcase surely, though highly educated and with gifts, and all the countless imaginings in his head are delightful for a person like me standing outside it and safely anchored in a warm house in a more-than-welcome neighborhood.

With only three chapters remaining to read (out of the original twelve I began with) I cannot fathom Moya blowing this tale to smithereens. There is tension, danger, and deceit; enough for all of us to mash our teeth on while waiting for more gore. This is a lively novel, and perhaps because of its short length, a bit too small to be considered by those who count a masterpiece. But I might have to differ upon completion of this book. Of course, first I shall have to see if Moya succeeds in bringing this to a proper close, one that would bring justice to at least a few participants in this violent and quite nasty tale of control, and reeking of a vengeance unheard of since McCarthy's Blood Meridian. This book is not for the faint-hearted or those who find it too uncomfortable reading about bloody massacres and machete-wielding tortures resulting in multiple severed appendages.

"I am not complete in the mind," are the first seven words of the very first sentence of this book. I fathom now that Moya was originally speaking in a cleverly veiled way about his chief character instead of the chief character seemingly relating the words he had read in a one thousand one hundred page manuscript written as testimony by the Indian survivors of a brutal military dictatorship. This chief character is evidently becoming extremely unraveled, and all is not what it seems, especially to him. Because of the deftness of the author Moya I am really not sure who to believe here. I kind of think the chief character is on to something, but he certainly is a whacko supreme so I also have my doubts about the whole affair. And add to the confusion that his "friend" Erick who got him the job in the first place with the archdiocese has not made any friendly appearance in which to add any credibility to our chief character's suspicions. There is no proof at all that Erick is even a friend at all as the evidence does not support this general statement issued often from out of the mouth of this chief character who still has no name I am aware of.

Late in these last chapters the chief character, an obvious alcoholic, has gone without any booze in his system for several days now due to the penicillin he is injecting because of the venereal disease he contracted recently from one of his female associates referred to in a paragraph above where I was praising a certain sex scene and all its implications excluding that one. I am afraid the chief character is losing his mind. He is definitely unhinged and hallucinating while feverishly attempting to complete his copy-editing of the one thousand one hundred page testimony. By all accounts things are not looking promising for the chief character. The anxiety is ramping up to dangerous levels, and without serious medication or some stiff drinks I am certain our character is going down for a very hard fall.

This was a crazily rewarding novel to read. By all accounts somewhat political given the nature of that part of the world that Moya himself hails from though today it is said he resides in Iowa. And throughout this short book there was no in-your-face agenda, though exorbitantly extreme in its telling. The violence provocatively real along with the sex, but our chief character's mind remains, it seems, forever obscurely fucked. His relief is found in his wide abuse of alcohol, and certainly not in his remembering of the atrocities discovered in the thousand one hundred pages of testimony that will persist now until the end of time.

[Aquavit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not complete in the mind

The title is the opening sentence in this strangling little novella - I read Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya in something like two GRIM HOURS. It’s hard to believe I was laughing at page 60-something and then by page 135 I felt I’d been beaten up. The style is breathless and fast - starting right off with enormous sentences peppered with commas that run the length of three and a quarter pages, the violence tangental and brutal, and the narrator’s mental decompensation at first funny and then frightening as he tries to both conflate and improve himself with survivors from the San Salvadore genocide.

The author blurb on the back is from Roberto Bolaño, who sadly died before this book was published; he says:

[Castellanos Moya’s] vertices are horror, corruption, and an ordinariness that trembles on every single page he has written, and makes the reader tremble as well. [He] writes as if he lives in the depths of one of the many volcanoes in his country. This sentence sounds like magical realism. Nevertheless, there is nothing magical about his books, except perhaps his ‘will to style’ …One of the great virtues of [his work]: nationalists of all stripes can’t stand it. Its sharp humor, not unlike a Buster Keaton film or a time bomb, threatens the fragile stability of imbeciles who, when they read, have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

This is a more accurately drawn than most portrait of the microcosm of the 20th century settler state, replete with multitudinous testimonies, open war crimes in positions of power, and nitpicking over political correctness and literary motifs trumping any sort of true, humanizingly destabilizing and/or revolutionary activity. The back of this work claims that the narrator's frenzied state is as much a traumatized side effect of this unnamed settler state's artificially maintained hierarchy of physical genocide of the lower class by the upper class and the textual catharsis of the middle class through lower class records, and I could see that. Ultimately, it really comes down to how much experience one has already in observing the murder media machine where bank is made off of once strenuously targeted marginalized folk who have now become international celebrities, and there's always a bogeyman maintained through various means (CIA toppling of socialist governments, US guns funneling into third world countries for the sake of communism and then raising said countries up on high as the new anti-christ once said communism falls, you name it, we got it), and the fact that the narrator refers to himself as 'Indian" is telling. All in all, though, I simply didn't find this gripping enough to rate it higher. I understand where Bolaño's coming from in his praise for Moya, but writing is as much aesthetics as it is meaning, and between the cunnilingus and the hit-man squads and the complete and utter lack of self awareness beyond what is neoliberally and/or libidinously beneficial, I just got rather tired of it all. Someone (probably tons of people if I'm honest) probably needs to read this in order to get some sort of holistic revelation, but I had that a while ago with less engorged members involved.

This book's sensational enough in both narrative style and subject matter that it's a good thing that it isn't any longer than it is, else it'd come off less as incisively striking and more as hysterical à la Tarantino films. As I said, the interpretation that makes this piece work for me is that of a cross section of a settler state's infrastructure laid bare, where slowly but surely one sees how all the horrors are tied together with the banality into a working ecosystem of human sacrifice that whets academic appetites and literary markets as much as it elects political overseers and fills NGO coffers. It's a cynical, even fatalistic, portrait to be sure, but it is undeniably accurate as some of the best satires are, and the fact that I didn't love it has no bearing on the fact that this is an important work doing important things. The fact that this has less magical realism than my recently finished The Sea, The Sea tells you a lot about the Anglo literary empire's grip on genre conventions. In short, a nasty, brutish, and short sort of piece, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have something vital to say.

If you couldn't already tell, this is a much more Bolaño type of Latin American lit than it is a, say, Márquez or Allende or Borges. I've dealt with enough people recently who whine about Latin American lit as some kind of monolith whole that I'm increasingly relieved by the community of legitimately discerning readers who think otherwise, but I still find the malignant label of "magical realism" trailing through otherwise solid evaluations. Moya is Bolaño's fellow eye on the underbelly of socioeconomic capitalism in all of its genocidal forms, and while I don't like this author as much as his praiser, I do have to be glad that he's still alive. It's possible to look up the country that serves as the setting of this work's narrator's voyage through paranoid rhapsody, and what is true and what is false can only be determined by the narratives of gumption amidst the trauma that the presiding government chooses to let loose from its clutches. More paranoia on top of paranoia, to be sure, but in this reality, can you blame me?

[Vladimir Ćeha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ja nisam sasvim čitav, glasi prva rečenica ovog kratkog romana i možda najbolje svedoči o psihičkom stanju naratora, ateiste koji je prihvatio posao crkve da lektoriše više od hiljadu stranica izveštaja o genocidu nad indijanskim plemenima u neimenovanoj srednjoameričkoj zemlji. Tekst ostavlja na njega snažan utisak, tako da počinje da nasumično zapisuje i citira pojedine rečenice koje je pročitao, istovremeno ubeđen da se zamerio vlastima zbog svog osetljivog zadatka i da zbog toga žele da ga likvidiraju. Postaje paranoičan, a duge, komplikovane rečenice oslikavaju njegovo psihičko stanje. Zanimljiv roman, pun potresnih svedočanstava i bizarnih avantura naratora.

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un escritor es contratado por la Iglesia, organización por la cual no siente ninguna simpatía, para revisar el informe sobre las violaciones a los derechos humanos en un país centroamericano, tal vez Guatemala.

A través de las lecturas y el filtro de su mirada, se va mostrando el horror, presentado de manera sobria para evitar el desborde paralizante o melancólico; y en forma inesperada, junto al horror, cierta (dolorosa) poesía en los testimonios de los sobrevivientes.

Muy buena novela.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

some guy who's editing a report on military atrocities against indigenous people goes on increasingly insane and anxious Bernhardian rants while also having panic attacks. fun for the whole family!

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first of castellanos moya's works to be translated into english, this novella is a heady mix of paranoia and politics. senselessness, however engrossing in its brevity, leaves one longing for more. rife with both horror and humor, the tale elicits an empathy all the more surprising given its concision. there are, as well, a few scenes which may not be so easily forgotten. hopefully his previous works are being considered for translation, as his writing is refreshingly intimate, lucid, and seemingly of great import.

castellanos moya has penned eight books, five collections of short stories, and a book of essays. he is a salvadoran exile currently living in pittsburgh as part of the cities of refuge (formerly cities of asylum) program that provides sanctuary to writers persecuted in their home countries.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

The one-thousand-one-hundred page manuscript that Moya’s narrator is tasked with editing is, of course, the manuscript of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, which is the same number of pages in the original Spanish edition, and was published the same year as Senselessness, in which, at one point, our editor-narrator explains his vision for a restructuring of this manuscript: “I explained [...] that the report could be divided into four volumes, [...] the fourth [in Bolaño, The Part about the Crimes] consisting of a list of the massacres and their victims.”


***


Otherwise,
Senselessness is the sort of book at which and with which one laughs and, when one does, laughs as well at oneself.

[Aravindakshan Narasimhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The conscience-stricken government, the grinding military, the holy church :


Horrifying, brutal, paranoia, shivering, maniacal, assault on viscerality, and everything that can be hellish and beyond.

I am not sure why the description says boozing, sex obsessed, atheist when describing the protagonist.The central character doesn't drink to the level of being named alcoholic or even slightly atheist (though he claims so). He is surely inclined towards sex and it features one of the most peculiar and depressing episodes of an intercourse.

The description given here in GR and in the back of the book is enough to describe the situation the protagonist finds himself and it is enough to pique the interest of the would be readers.

What essentially many of the GR reviewers point to is the fact that the protagonist is making up the most of it in the mind. Which is true to an extent, but it is rather, as evidenced by the last sentence, or the last turn of event in the book, was that, he was, though suffering from extreme case of paranoia, was indeed almost right about the terror that is lurking from all sides.

Rather, it is mainly due to the effects of reading one of the Most( the word Most should be emphasised as much as possible) terrible and depressing tome consisting of horrors faced and recounted by the indigenous tribes by military. Interestingly, the actual contents of the report filed is only described few times. But of each of those planned massacre is the most brutal graphic violence you can ever read or imagine inside your head.

To sample just one :

Thank you. I’d rather you introduce me to her another day,” I answered the Toledan, having had the thought that the imagination is a bitch in heat, without understanding exactly why precisely at that moment hammering in my head was the thought that the imagination is a bitch in heat, when nothing in that refreshing courtyard under the morning sun had any relationship either to the imagination or to a bitch in heat, though later I understood that this thought’s intromission had to do with me and the sweet thing previously splayed open by torturers and nothing to do with the woman now walking down the corridor. Thereby was revealed to me conclusively the very image that had forced me to flee from the office where I had been working, focused as I was on correcting the report that contained the testimony of the girl raped over and over again, the image that had made my hair and my soul stand on end so intensely that I could not continue reading and the only thing I could think to do was flee to the courtyard to get some sunshine and fresh air to dispel that image, which of course did not happen, because sitting on the edge of the fountain, while Pilarica perorated about her problems with work, I again felt the shudder of that girl who walked with such difficulty through the basement of the police station, dragged along by Lieutenant Octavio Pérez, her vagina and anus torn to shreds, barely able to take a step and still unaware of the gonorrhea infection that was beginning to eat away at her and the putrid semen that was turning into a fetus in her uterus, paralyzed by terror, believing the lieutenant was leading her to the slaughterhouse, where they butchered the political prisoners and that is why she was but one single tremor of battered flesh as she entered the abattoir, where there was nothing but a prisoner hanging from the ceiling, naked, a Salvadoran guerrilla and arms dealer, the lieutenant explained to her, a mass of bloody, rotten, purulent flesh, where the worms had already made their appearance, for they had beaten him to a pulp, and he was barely able to utter a dull moan whereby the girl understood that that was still alive, an imperceptible moan that let the girl perceive a glimmer of consciousness in that dripping offal she stood, also naked, in front of, her hands tied behind her back and sheer terror in her eyes when the lieutenant grabbed her by the hair and forced her to move closer to the hanging body and told her, in the tone of voice of a scolding father, “that’s what they’re going to do to you if you don’t cooperate,” as if he had had nothing to do with the fists that had been beating her, the boots kicking her, the penises ripping through her vagina and anus, and the lieutenant signaled to the henchman in charge of the abattoir, who took out a small sickle and swiftly heated the blade over a burning ember until it was red hot then passed it to the lieutenant, who expertly with one slice cut the penis and testicles off the bloated body in front of the astonished eyes of the girl, the lieutenant made that perfect castrating cut, which produced a howl as if the victim had been fully conscious, the most horrendous howl the girl had ever heard, which would awaken her at night for the rest of her life, as she asserted in her testimony, the same howl that made me stampede out of the bishop’s office to the courtyard where I now found myself with the Toledan, while the woman who had survived such barbarism—thanks to pressure exerted by her uncle, who was a colonel, she was set free, according to what she stated in the report—went through the door of one of the offices, without me daring to let myself be introduced to her because I planned to keep as far away from her as possible throughout my stay at the archbishop’s palace.

Alongside these, it is also about how the main character descends down the hell-hole by his mistakes.

I once read, the perfect definition of kafkaesque should be:

"What's Kafkaesque [...] is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces [...] What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafkaesque."


"But of course you don't stand a chance" that is the important take from it.


And if it is the perfect definition of Kafkaesque, our protagonist is indeed the best example of it.

To quote from the book:

That solitude can break even the halest of spirits I was able to ascertain after my third day of seclusion at the spiritual retreat center, after spending hour upon hour saying not a word to anybody, exchanging greetings only at meal times with the staff, deeply immersed in copyediting the report, sleeping fitfully in that small bunk, lacking even the most minimum of pleasures, for I wasn’t even granted the relief of jacking off due to the disease afflicting me (though there were no longer any drops coming out of my penis), thus my mind began to become so perturbed that the same image kept asserting itself whenever I took a break, an image that recurred several times in the report and that little by little invaded me until it had taken complete possession of me, at which point I stood up and began to pace around the small space of my room, between the desk and the bunk, like one possessed, as if I were that lieutenant who had brutally burst into the hut of that indigenous family, grabbed in my iron hand by the heel that baby only a few months old, raised it over my head and begun to swing it around through the air, faster and faster, as if it were David’s sling from which a rock would be launched, swinging it around at a dizzying speed under the horrified gaze of the parents and siblings until the baby’s head suddenly crashed against a beam inside the hut, exploding, the brains spraying out everywhere, I swung it in the air by the heels until I came back to my senses and I noticed that I had been about to bash my arm, which I had been swinging violently over my head, against the headrest of my bunk because I wasn’t in a hut but rather in my small room at the spiritual retreat center, nor was I that lieutenant who busted the heads of newborn babies against beams in the middle of a massacre, but rather a copyeditor distressed by the perusal of this testimony several times repeated in the report. Then, in a sweat and with my nerves on edge, I sat back down in front of the computer, forcing myself to make progress on the text, for time was of the essence, I persevered at my work obsessively until a few hours later when my concentration languished and once more I became possessed by that same image, I stood up, I became Lieutenant Octavio Pérez Mena, the official in charge of the unit assigned to the massacre, I returned to the hut of those fucking Indians who would understand the hell that awaited them only when they saw flying through the air the baby I held by the ankles so I could smash its head of tender flesh against the wood beam. And it was the splattering of palpitating brains that brought me back to my senses: I found myself in the middle of the room, shaking, sweating, a little dizzy because of the vertiginous movements of swinging the baby over my head, but at the same time with a feeling of lightness, as if I had taken a load off my back, as if my transformation into the lieutenant who exploded the heads of newborn babies against beams had been a catharsis, freeing me from the pain accumulated over the one thousand one hundred pages, which I soon dug into again, in a repetitive cycle of prolonged concentration broken by intervals of the same macabre fantasy.


Few had already mentioned about the influence of bernhardian style and it is pretty effective throughout.

There is also these beautiful tragic lines that he copies in his notebook while proofreading, which are so poetic :

Three days I am crying, crying I am wanting to see him. There I sat down on the earth to say, there is the little cross, there is he, there is our dust and pay our respects we will, bring a candle, but when we bring the candle, the candle there’s nowhere to put it . . .

May they wipe out the names of the dead to make them free, then no more problems we’ll have.

They were people just like us we were afraid of (just like us as a very different meaning here and I don't want to break it to you)

****End of quotes

Why I gave a title like the one I have given? Because the sham government, whose hands are that of the military, accepts the mistake it did and so invites the human rights commission to systematically document the horror and Church to oversee it and inside this the holy tripartite is the grinding machine which mutilates all the common people at its will and also squeezes each body slightly for time being to put a mockery in front of the public. And the protagonist is nothing but a guinea pig struck in that Wheels on the parade.

On the lookout for more books by the author!!

[J.I. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biggest flaw in this book is that the style is consistent. Rarely a flaw in other books, this is a pronounced misstep here because the book begins and ends in different places, with the author experiencing a growing paranoia, and a kind of possession of knowledge that requires the knowledge to possess him. It begins to culminate in beautifully written sentences of horror, in which, having edited a section of a manuscript documenting the horrors of the army massacring the indians of the region: on a baby being swung around and smashed into a pole by a soldier, the narrator finds himself reenacting the motion unthinkingly. So why, again, is the consistent style the same? Because it is the same breathless long paragraphs and long sentences throughout, and while the content and the observations warp and shift with the narrator, the style is simply, consistently warped and strange throughout. It feels like a stylistic choice that makes sense only in either the first or the second part of the novel: not both.

Despite this, the book is marvelous. It follows a not particularly good person who is attached, nearly coincidentally, to a monumentally great project. He seeks to possess the bodies of women, and finds himself, later, possessed by them instead. He finds his expectations turned on their heads such that when he gets what he wants, he no longer wants it. And through it he is attempting to put the finishing touches on a one thousand one hundred page nearly single spaced document of atrocities. It overwhelms, and so the author appropriates phrases of beauty, spouting them to those nearby and being surprised that they look only horrified by the content, and not appreciative of the wordplay. It is the narrator's daftness that makes the book excel. How can we write a novel about such monstrocities? By failing to live up to them in such a way that the reader understands this--that they understand that what has been done is beyond words, and instead, we do not "see" the actual horrors, only how even JUST reading them, JUST editing them is enough to nearly destroy someone.

Rereading this a year later, I completely agreed with myself, but bumped up the rating. Because the flaw--while still real--feels somehow important to the tone of this. Or perhaps I have merely grown sentimental, or perhaps the rereading re-emphasized the brilliance of the work as a whole, overwhelming flaws.

[Darinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narrator takes a job in a Latin American country editing a thousand page report about the massacre of indigenous people.

Fast read. Paranoid and unlikable narrator. Absurd and dark story.

[Agnes Ársælsdóttir]

Svakalega flókin bók, mjög áhugaverð og hræðileg.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to a startling cover and some well-chosen blurbs (Roberto Bolano and Russell Banks), Senselessness was an impulse purchase last weekend in a Williamsburg bookshop. A strong motto from Antigone (“My lord, the good sense one has by birth never abides with the unfortunate, but goes astray.”) and a great opening sentence, long and and agile (“I am not complete in the mind, said the sentence I highlighted with the yellow marker and even copied into my personal notebook, because this wasn’t just any old sentence, much less some wisecrack, not by any means, but rather the sentence that astonished me more than any other sentence I read that first day on the job, the sentence that most dumbfounded me during my first incursion into those one thousand one hundred almost single-spaced pages placed on what would be my desk by my friend Erick so I could get some idea of the task that awaited me.”), also fueled the impulse.

The unfortunates in Senselessness are the narrator, who is also not complete in the mind, and the peasants whose tragic story is told in the one thousand one hundred page manuscript that the narrator has been hired by a Catholic human righs organization to edit. The narrator drinks too much, has a boyish obsession with girls, is paranoid, and is overwhelmed by the horrors he reads about, copying phrases and sentences into his notebook for their folkloric literary merit. He reads them to colleagues, friends, dates, partygoers—unnerving himself and others as he does. “Our houses they burned, our animals they ate, our children they killed, the women, the men, ay! ay!...Who will put back all the houses?” “If I die, I know not who will bury me.” “For always the dreams they are there still.” “The more they killed the higher they rose up.” Some are violent descriptions of slaughter and distrubingly graphic. Others are allusive but vivid indicators of the enduring trauma suffered by those who survive brutality, particularly when they are alone in their survival.

The setting is an unamed Latin American country, perhaps El Salvador. The surrounding politics is external to the narrative, which is told through the unreliable narrator. You see his world, his room and outings, his flirtations and business interactions, the manuscript as an overwhelming task, a symbol of death and danger. His paranoia distorts everything, at first in small, subtle ways, but soon in totally panicked fits of violent fantasy. Early he imagines himself perpetuating acts of violent vengenance on those who annoy him; later he imagines himself being stalked my the military, the Church, the novios of girls he’s had a tryst with and eventually they all combine. The girlfriend’s novio is the commander of a death squad; his friend Erick is involved in a conspiracy that turns party guests into the resurfaced murderers from the manuscript. Nothing is certain, except that no one is complete in their minds. The narrator begins a series of flights, from a party, from his home, to and from a monastic retreat, and finally the country. When you finally decide that his madness, which may have nothing to do with disturbances evidenced in the manuscript of human rights violations, has so overwhelmed his reliability to undermine even what he’s told us of his manuscript—what if it’s a novel he can’t write? What if there is no manuscript?—Moya brings you back to earth with a clear intrusion of the reality his narrator has been fleeing.

The novel is brief, compelling, at times absurdly comic, and at times disturbing. Moya is a deft writer, creating a complex narrator and darkly intricate tale with economy and conviction. Hope New Directions brings more of him into print in the states.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 1 out of 5]

TL;DR: This book is a complete and utter piece of shit, and New Directions should be embarrassed for having published it. The sentence: "...wanting only to descend the peach-fuzz path that would carry me to Fatima's belly button to her fleshy cave" is argument enough, but here's some more:

Up there with SALVAGE THE BONES and THE YELLOW BIRDS in terms of the most insufferable books I've been made to read as an MFA student. I honestly have not one good thing to say about SENSELESSNESS, other than the fact that I believe the title might be an unwitting summary of what is to come in the text, a nod to the state of mind you must be in for having bought it, and that's something I can tip my hat to. Beyond that, having finished the book I was left wondering, Why? For what reason does this book—which has exactly zero redemptory qualities—exist?

I can be angry about the mechanics of the novel itself—that Moya seems to know exactly one strategy of language and makes the poor decision to commit wholeheartedly to these long, rhapsodic sentences, an effect that gives rise to the sensation one feels when one has a friend who knows exactly one bar trick and one is asked to be surprised or impressed time and time again as the friend ties a cherry stem with his tongue; that this narrator is so repugnant and vile and immensely sexist, which might have worked if he was at least one other thing, if we knew him beyond his insufferability, but we do not; that the aforementioned insufferability, even worse, has no nuance to it whatsoever and is as one-note as the sentence-level writing; that the narrator doesn't even have the decency to hate himself, or to be even remotely self-effacing once throughout the text; that there is no connective tissue between chapters, plot points set up that then get completely dropped; that no one except our narrator is ever allowed to speak, an amateur and severely-limiting error; that so often the language is syntactically unpleasant and clunky and unmelodic (a problem of the original text or the translation is anyone's guess)—but what I find far more infuriating is the global problem that this is, essentially, a book about a person who is appropriating the text of a genocide's worth of trauma (the human rights report manuscript he is "manicuring"), finding poetry in the accounts of said trauma, and, in the words of Moya himself, he feels, "liberty to use them as rich and malleable literary material." A fetishization, an aestheticization, of text, of language, that is trying to hold a country's buried pain and misery and trauma does not, in any way, seem like a noble endeavor. It feels, to put it charitably, really, really icky.

I'm with John Leonard, writing for Harper's: "It isn't clear whether [the editor's] aestheticizing of traumatic utterance is intended to inspire our wonder for the indigenous or our contempt for the narrator. About the only thing we're sure of at the end of Senselessness is that the victims of a genocide have not yet found a witness worthy of them."

[Joe Kraus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I like thinking about this one more than reading it.

Our protagonist is a writer who’s been hired to put the finishing edits on an 1100-page collection of testimonies of victims of recent massacres in an unnamed Latin American nation. On the one hand, he’s sensitive enough to be drawn to the simple, often poetic power of the voices he’s helping to recover.

On the other, he’s a conniving womanizer who, when he finds his first paycheck isn’t ready, abuses the otherwise decent people he’s working for. Then, throughout the rest of the novel, he lies and manipulates his way into one woman’s bed after another.

The contrast is powerful. On the one hand, he’s doing work that gives a sense of healing deep damage to the country where he finds himself. On the other, he’s a first-rate asshole, as far as possible from the stereotype of the decent hero of such a context.

At a broader level, there’s something liberating in a novel about such atrocities that, without diminishing the power of the violence, avoids the obvious pieties.

So, as I say, I enjoy thinking about this, about the contrasts Moya gives us. Actually reading it, though, is another matter. It’s a small point, but the paragraphs are relentless, running 2-3 pages at times and leaving little opportunity to catch a breath. It’s also tough sometimes to keep up with the abrupt changes of narrative from one chapter to the next. And the unreliable narratorial perspective gets a bit frustrating. [SPOILER] We don’t know for a long time whether he’s correct that some of the people he knows are trying to sabotage the project, and the eventual reveal – in the final page – is dark in a way we haven’t quite been prepared for.

So, while I admire the experiment here a great deal, I enjoy it a bit less than I’d have liked. It’s a powerful concept, though, so I won’t be surprised if – in thinking about it – I come to enjoy it more in retrospect.

[Steev Hise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moya is one of the great world contemporary novelists. This book is like candy with an iron fist wrapped around it, or something. What I mean by that is that it's very funny and entertaining in one sense, as we follow a narrator who is a somewhat cynical and sex-obsessed horndog writer from a nearby country who has taken a unique copy-editing job: he's working for the catholic church in Guatemala (the country is never named but I recognize names, like Rios Montt, the dictator who presided over some of the worst crimes against humanity during Guatemala's civil war) to look over their huge report on the massacres against the indigenous peoples during the recently ended civil war there. On his time off he's chasing tail, with mixed success, and drinking lots of beer. But gradually the job and the perceived risks of the job start to take over his whole conciousness. He can't help repeating over and over various disturbing sentences from the report, and at every turn he thinks people are following him or watching him or planning to assassinate him for his role in the project. He's a classic "unreliable narrator" and yet, is he? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Another interesting thing about this book is that it's written in really really long sentences, and yet with such skill and finesse that you don't really notice, until you want to set the book down and you have wait for a page or two before you come to a full-stop. This formal strategy matches the sort of feverish and frenetic mental state of the narrator perfectly.