Andrs Neuman (Argentina, 1977) By Brian L.

Price, Wake Forest University Born in Buenos Aires in 1977 to a family of musicians, Andrs Neuman lived in Argentina until 1991 when he and his family relocated to Granada, Spain. This transatlantic move has made pigeonholing Neuman difficult according to traditional divisions between Spanish and Spanish American fiction. In a recent interview he claims that A estas alturas de mi vida, ya no s si soy argentino o espaol, las dos cosas o ninguna. Regardless, Neuman remains an important voice in contemporary Hispanic literature. Two of his first three novels have been selected as finalists for the prestigious Premio Herralde. In 2007 he was included in Bogot39 list of top Latin American authors. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Alfaguara for his novel El viajero del siglo. The translation of this novel into ten languages including English brought his work to the attention of a worldwide audience, and in 2010 the British literary magazine Granta named him one of the most important young Spanish-language authors. His first novel, Bariloche (1999), published when he was 22, was a finalist for the prestigious Premio Herralde. Though Neuman did not win the competition, he obtained something of even greater worth: a sterling endorsement from Roberto Bolao. I happened to be on the prize committee, the Chilean author wrote, and Neumans novel at once enthralled me to use an early twentieth-century term and hypnotized me. In it, good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what. He concluded that the future of Latin American literature belongs to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers. The novel follows Demetrio Rota, a trash collector living in Buenos Aires, through his humdrum routine of collecting the refuse of metropolitan life. Asphyxiated by the stifling atmosphere of the postmodern city, Demetrio seeks epiphanies in garbage bags and transcendence in the occasional tryst with his work partners wife. Finding neither he attempts to assuage the monotony of his existence by assembling puzzles in the evening. Each puzzle depicts a bucolic landscape from the mountainous region surrounding the town where he grew up. Bariloche is a recuperative novel that attempts to reconcile the present with the past. Just as Demetrio remembers the alpine contours of Bariloche in an effort to reconnect with the past and find meaning in the present, Neumans prose elegantly conjures the metropolis of his adolescence with an attention to detail similar to the Dublin that Joyce evokes from Trieste and Paris. This portrait is constructed from 65 brief chapters which, like the pieces of Demetrios puzzles, offer fragmentary glimpses of both cityscape and countryside. It is only after assembling the entire puzzle that readers can clearly understand the causes of Demetrios malaise. What those final puzzle pieces reveal is a family tragedy. The abrupt arrival of Demetrios estranged older brother, Martn, brings the novel to a painful close. Unlike Demetrio, who spends his evenings reminiscing about his time in Bariloche, Martn rejects the past, preferring instead to look to the future. In this conflict we find then two key components of Neumans writing: a concern for the weight of the past on the present and the preeminence of family narratives. Nunca nadie hizo jams buena literatura con historias familiares, Marcelo Maggi tells his nephew Emilio Renzi in the opening pages of Ricardo Piglias Respiracin artificial. But this dictum cuts across the grain of Argentine historical fiction. Indeed, oftentimes family and national histories are synecdochally entwined, with branches of the genealogical tree coming to

represent whole swaths of the nation, if not the nation itself. Andrs Neuman employs this genealogical approach to narrating the nation in Una vez Argentina. The novel tells the story of how branches of Neumans family arrived in Argentina and how, as a result of military dictatorships and political instability, the family eventually leaves the country. Equal parts autobiographical, genealogical, and political history, Una vez Argentina (2003), draws upon vignettes from personal memories and interviews with family members to retell the story of twentieth-century Argentinas political upheavals from an intimate perspective. Beginning with the fin de sicle immigration of a Russian immigrant fleeing obligatory military service and concluding with Neumans own travels to Spain in 1991, this is a novel about exiles written by an exile. By recounting the experiences of predecessors from both paternal and maternal lines, Neuman turns the history of his family into a tale that embraces the wide swath of national experience. His family members occupy all of the political, social, and religious spheres of national life. Day laborers mingle with ostentatious dandies, musicians and artists reside alongside politicians and intellectuals, Catholics and Jews pray over the same meal, and every stripe political persuasion from anarcho-syndicalist to conservative nationalist cohabitate in these pages. Neumans family, comprised primarily of western European exiles, likewise embodies the nations nineteenth-century preoccupation with immigration as a step towards creative a progressive state. The novel carries readers through pogroms and disappearances, soccer games and concertos, massacres and exiles. At each of these moments the personal or the familial intersects with the historical, as in the case of his fathers participation in the 1968 noches de los bastones largos, his mothers presence at the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, or his own memory of Ral Alfonsns successful bid for the presidency in 1983. A common thread uniting these vignettes is the presence of authoritarian rule. The common currency of dictatorship narratives has been violence, repression, disappearances, and Orwellian state control of society. To whit novels like Manuel Puigs Beso de la mujer araa (1976), Pablo de Santiss Teatro de la memoria (2000), and others have highlighted the kidnapping, torture, and murder that characterized the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. In Una vez Argentina, when Neuman discusses the torture of family members, he does so from an oblique perspective. When his aunt and uncle are kidnapped by government agents, he does not fictionalize their time in secret prisons but instead focuses on the fear of family members who did not know what had happened to them, leaving readers with only a silhouette of the violence espoused by the military dictatorships. This, however, should not be misconstrued as an evasion of political or moral responsibility in the face of repression. Rather not narrating the suffering of his relatives makes a strong statement in favor of protecting the dignity of those who were involuntarily stripped of it. Neuman safeguards his family from further embarrassment by stepping aside and allowing our imaginationsalready fed by the narratives and testimonies of other desaparecidos and secuestradosto construct the events. Neuman alters his modus operandi for his fourth novel, El viajero del siglo, but retains his commitment to high-quality poetic writing. No longer anchored in the lost paradise of a bygone adolescent homeland, here Neuman undertakes an ambitious novel about Europe. Set in nineteenth-century Germany in the fictional town of Wandernburg, the novel tells the story of an enigmatic traveler and translator, Hans, who arrives and finds it difficult to leave. Wandernburg, as its name suggests, is a town with no fixed position on the map, where the streets and alleyways are constantly rearranging themselves, reminiscent of Calvinos Invisible Cities.

Nevertheless the novel continues to exemplify Neumans concerns for history. Though not a historical novel per se, the novels explicit temporal setting El viajero del siglo moves nimbly through intellectual traditions as Hans becomes involved with a local literary salon where members discuss European history, politics, literature, art, architecture, and religion. Moreover the novel tinkers with elements of the historical, political, philosophical, and epistolary genres. Most recently Neuman has published Hablar solos (2012), a novel about death, love, and writing set in Argentina told through the voices of three family members. Mario, the father, has recently been diagnosed with terminal illness and decides to take his son, Lito, on road trip while his wife, Elena, stays at home writing journal entries about feelings regarding her husbands immanent death and her explorations of sexuality during an affair. The novel has received favorable reviews and was chosen as one of the top books of 2012 by the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia. In addition to these longer narrative works, Neuman has also published short stories (El que espera, 2000; Alumbramiento, 2006; El ltimo minuto, 2007; Hacerse el muerto, 2011), poetry (Mtodos de la noche, 1998; El jugador de billar, 2000; El tobogn, 2002; La cancin del antlope, 2003; Sonetos del extrao, 2007; Gotas negras, 2003; Mstica abajo, 2008; Patio de locos, 2011; No s por qu, 2011), and essays (El equilibrista, 2005; Cmo viajar sin ver (Latinoamrica en trnsito), 2010).

Works Cited: Andrs Neuman regresa a la novela con Hablar solos. El Universal. 4 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Feb. 2012. <http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/874622.html> Puig, Manuel. El beso de la mujer araa. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1976. Print. Neuman, Andrs. Bariloche. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1999. Print. ---. La vida en las ventanas. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2002. Print. ---. Una vez Argentina. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2003. Print. ---. El viajero del siglo. Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2009. Print. ---. Hablar solos. Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2012. Print. ---. El que espera. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1999. Print. ---. Alumbramiento. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma, 2006. Print. ---. El ltimo minuto. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma. 2007. Print. ---. Hacerse el muerto. Madrid: Pginas de Espuma, 2011. Print. ---. Mtodos de la noche. Madrid: Hiperin, 1998. Print.

---. El jugador de billar. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2000. Print. ---. El tobogn. Madrid: Hiperin, 2002. Print. ---. La cancin del antlope. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2003. Print. ---. Sonetos del extrao. Granada: Cuadernos de Viga, 2007. Print. ---. Gotas negras. Crdoba: Plurabelle, 2003. Print. ---. Mstica abajo. Barcelona: Acantillado, 2008. Print. ---. Patio de locos. Lima: Estruendomundo, 2011. Print. ---. No s por qu. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Dock, 2011. Print. ---. El equilibrista. Barcelona: Acantillado, 2005. Print. ---. Cmo viajar sin ver (Latinoamrica en trnsito). Madrid and Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2010. Print. ---. Traveler of the Century. Trans. Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garca. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2012. Print. Piglia, Ricardo. Respiracin artificial. 1980. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2005. Print. Santis, Pablo de. El teatro de la memoria. Barcelona: Destino, 2000. Print.