University of Texas Press issues English-language translation of a modern Mexican classic

And Let the Earth Tremble at Its Centers, by Gonzalo Celorio
Translated from Spanish by Dick Gerdes, Foreword by Rubén Gallo

The world comes crashing down at the very center of the Mexican universe as the hero of this contemporary novel by scholar Celorio feels his life ebb away from excessive drinking and an inexplicable gunshot wound. He lies naked and vulnerable at the base of the flagpole that supports the huge red, white and green ensign, in the very midst of Mexico City’s own version of Tiananmen Square called the Zocalo.

The hero and the reader can see the irony of his situation in the predawn hours in the abandoned main square: -- dying utterly alone in the most populous city in the world. Statues in the Main Cathedral start to come loose from their perches where they have stood since the Spanish tore down the immense Aztec Pyramid and used the stones to build the vast Zocalo. Our hero is getting swept away much like the native culture of Mexico was by the colonists. In many ways it’s his own damn fault, but you get the sense reading this incredibly urbane and profane novel that essential history is being forgotten with the passing of our hapless hero. And especially Mexico City itself, the downtown area (El Centro) of which is also a main character in the book; Mexico City is found to be hurling itself forward into an unknown oblivion, its past crushed and relegated to mere garbage.

And let the earth tremble at its centers is a line from the Mexican national anthem. You have the idea of rebirth and redemption when you walk along the dark and seedy confines of the Zona Historico in Mexico City with our well-read and knowledgeable hero. It’s all so uncertain, but Celorio is a master storyteller and the reader is riveted by our hero’s fateful walk through history, and then onto the next world.

Dick Gerdes and University of Texas Press have done English readers an immense favor by bringing this stark and original novel to print.

Northern Illinois University Press to debut new fiction series

NIU Press is taking a departure into fiction with the establishment of a new series called Switchgrass Books - http://www.switchgrass.niu.edu/switchgrass/ - and they are billing it as “authentic voices of the Midwest.” One of the first books in the intriguing new series is by Chicagoan Joseph G. Peterson, called Beautiful Piece. What follows is a brief review of this book:

Plinking at the dump

Joe Peterson hits a bull’s-eye with his new novel, Beautiful Piece. The narrator of this stark tale, set during a brutal heat wave in Chicago, acquires a Glock 10 mm automatic almost by accident and through sheer happenstance. “Odd, a gun,” he says. “I wouldn’t own a gun even if I could.” But that’s not all he comes to own, as he takes up a torrid affair with Lucy, a girl he meets at the gas station in the middle of a blistering hot day. Problem is that Lucy is engaged to another man, a certain Matthew Gliss, who the narrator, named Robert, knows and likes. This realization of love is new to Robert, who finds himself at thirty-five years old living alone in a one bedroom dump, as he calls his apartment, and desperately lonely.

The unrelenting heat of the Chicago summer goes a little bit to Robert’s head and he starts fantasizing about dying alone in his one bedroom dump. His upstairs neighbor, simply called the Vet, also lives alone. The Vet is severely damaged from his tours of Vietnam during that war. These two unlikely types form an alliance, and they agree to call each other every morning just to make sure each one is still alive. Robert has a rough time getting along with the Vet, who is so much older and worldly wise, but comes to respect and admire him with all his eccentricities. Robert has another friend named Epstein. Epstein is a mystic who can turn into a stone while they go fishing on the Des Plaines River. Epstein is well-adjusted and has a wife and kids, and lives in a different world from Robert. Robert has Epstein call him up every third morning just in case he was to expire from the heat and no one would know. This is his contingency plan to stay connected with the outside world.

Robert goes to the dump on the outskirts of town with the Vet to go plinking with the Glock. There is a certain poetic meaning to the way the gun goes off and rearranges everything. The Vet loves the mechanicals, and Robert starts to rethink his relationship with the world. His instincts tell him to try and be more like the mystical Epstein and try to be one with the natural world, but his love for Lucy upends everything for him.

There is a wry humor and interesting sentence construction that make up this raw tale of urban lost souls. There is a compulsive repeating of information and unorthodox narrative construction that reminded me of Joseph Heller’s Something Happened. It’s more than just a stylistic exercise in fiction writing; Peterson has something fundamental to say about human nature here, and the tale is funny and heartbreakingly wise.