Thats roughly the mechanism of my stories, I get my inspiration from a real life event and then I transform it into something fantastical or supernatural. Her neo-Lovecraftian stories The Litany of Earth and Those Who Watch are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land and The Deepest Rift. Ruthanna can frequently be found online onTwitterandDreamwidth, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic householdmostly mammalianoutside Washington DC. But Pinat does, and doesnt try to investigate the slum from her desk like some of her colleagues. This article about a collection of horror short stories published in the 2010s is a stub. They learned how to swim. The time stamp suggests that he at least knew that two young men were thrown into the Ricachuelo River. Influenced by the works of Stevenson, Poe, James, Lovecraft, Bradbury, Silvina Ocampo, and Stephen King, she takes up the North American gothic and deterritorializes it toward an Argentine setting and toward Argentinas history, drawing on a feminist perspective that revises and broadens its meaning. Argentina had taken the river winding around its capital, the woman observes, which could have made for a beautiful day trip, and polluted it almost arbitrarily, practically for the fun of it. If the foul water itself werent bad enough, she learns that police have murdered kids by throwing them off a bridge into it. Up next is u/Joinedformyhubs with the penultimate story in the collection, Green Red Orange, on Wednesday, December 21. In the distance, she hears drums. The journalist and author fills the dozen stories with compelling figures in haunting stories that evaluate inequality, violence, and corruption. Hallelujah? The church has been painted yellow, decorated with a crown of flowers, and the walls are covered with graffiti: YAINGNGAHYOGSOTHOTHHEELGEBFAITHRODOG. Under the Black Water isnt quite a Shadow Over Innsmouth retelling, but it riffs on the same tune. She tries to get them out of there, and he grabs her gun. The women who immolate themselves in the purifying ritual of fire draw attention to their own scars as a feminist victory, standing up to chauvinist violence, stepping up and publicly displaying their deformed and mutilated bodies: They have always burned us. This river has been polluted for many years, just as I reference in my story. I think that most readers think that the first story in the collection ('The Dirty Kid') is the best one, and indeed - it's a great story. I write for myself, thinking about my country and its reality. Fairy tales are the ancestors of scary tales. Hes tried! The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. I live between movies, celebrities, music, and theatre. I dont have much contact with reality in my journalism. We discussed Argentina as a country and a character, the place of politics in literature, and what inspires Enriquez when shes working on astory. Personalize your subscription preferences here. Silvia hated public. And in trying to make those insular locals truly terrifying, the narrative gets problematic as all hell. Its just that even the weirdest fiction needs a way to elide the seams between real-world horror and supernatural horrorand many authors have similar observations about the former. The police brutality, I think yeah, if you have to choose something as an echo of that [the dictatorship]. He has translated the novelsImmigration: The Contestby Carlos Gmez Prez andThere Are Not So Many Starsby Isa Moreno (Katakana Editores), as well as the verse collectionIntensive Careby Arturo Gutirrez Plaza (Alliteraton). I want my stories to have an air of familiarity, especially those in a collection or in a book. A demonic idol is borne on a mattress through city streets. Translation is its own art, of course, and je ne parle pas Espanol, so the story Ive actually read may be as much the work of Megan McDowel as Enriquez. I just wrote a review of the concert, but on another level, I always have antenna for this weirdness.. Pinats dressed down from her usual DA suits, and carries only enough money to get home and a cell phone to hand muggers if needed. Its not that her protagonists fear a slide into poverty, but that the niceness of their lives is so clearly perched on evil filth. Tens of thousands were tortured, killed, or disappeared under circumstances later nullified with a blanket amnesty. The river is sort of a symbol of carelessness and corruption. Adam Vitcavage: This short story collection has a lot of reoccurring themes related to the horrific and the mysterious. Adam Vitcavage is a Phoenix-based writer whose criticism and interviews have appeared in Electric Literature, Paste Magazine, The Millions, and more. Just a while ago an English work of Antonio Di Benedetto was recovered. Mariana Enriquez (Buenos Aires, 1973) has published novelsincluding Our Share of Night, which won the famous Premio Herraldeand the short story collections Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in the Fire, which sold to 20 international publishers before it was even published in Spanish and won the Premio She leaves the church crying and shaking. Meanwhile, in his house, the dead man waits dreaming. So what is prisoned under the river? Site designed in collaboration with CMYK. Her narrators have to shrug past almost unbearable sights as part of their everyday routines. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. They inhabit the same plane, stalk the same prey; both are offered equality in terror. But, in my opinion, she goes further, developing what we might call a gothic feminism that proclaims the empowerment of women, building upon the sinister, as a process of subjectivization. I mean, one of the places where I had the most fear in my life was a Backstreet Boys concert, Enriquez says, with no hint of mockery. In the middle of the night, invisible men pound on the shutters of a country hotel. In the specific case of the River Plate tradition, there are important precursors such as Quiroga, Cortzar (who even wrote the famous Notas sobre lo gtico en el Ro de la Plata [Notes on the gothic in the Ro de la Plata]), Onetti, Felisberto Hernndez, Silvina Ocampo, and Alejandra Pizarnik. OK, nice, is her reply. Much of Black Waters horror is the surreal constraints of poverty, pollution, and corrupt authority. Arthur Malcolm Dixonis co-founder, lead translator, and Managing Editor ofLatin American Literature Today. 2023 Macmillan | All stories, art, and posts are the copyright of their respective authors, Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water. Additionally, the river marks the geographical limit between the city of Buenos Aires and what we call Gran Buenos Aires, or the suburbs. Thus, resistance is body politics, and its goal is empowerment through control of the body, which becomes a dissident political subject (an allegory of movements like NiUnaMenos or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) in order to articulate womens sovereignty: a new ideology, a new way to fix the value of the body, of life, and of death. Defiled churches, shambling inhuman processions hey. The cows head, clearly, is just some of the neighborhood drug dealers trying to intimidate the priest. Enriquez always puts forth the body, be it deformed, mutilated, sexual, etc. To what extent do neoliberal politics bring about the appalling precarity of social classes and individuals? Enriquez: In Argentina everything is political. In my opinion, this was the finest moment in the collection and a powerful commentary on the violence and discrimination against the ones who live in the margins of a troubled . Oh come, Emanuel? That pause before the inevitable is the space of fabulist fiction, torqueing open the rigid rules of reality to create a gap of possibility. For a long time, it was considered elitist (protagonized by upper-class characters and set in opulent castles), escapist (appealing to a beyond that shuns the present), normative (vindicating a logocentrism that condemns the unknowable and the strange), and barbaric (it is no coincidence that the word gothic comes from the people called Goths, and cannibalism and violence are two of its recurring themes). "Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books", "Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enrquez review gruesome short stories", "Brooding Books for the Dark Days of Winter", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Things_We_Lost_in_the_Fire_(story_collection)&oldid=1136661150, This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 13:55. But now the streets are dead as the river. On the river banks, there are also many slums. But I have to be careful that my personal passions and obsessions dont take over my stories and make them all sound toosimilar. The driver makes her walk the last 300 meters; the dead boys lawyer wont come at all. Translation is its own art, of course, and je ne parle pas Espanol, so the story Ive actually read may be as much the work of Megan McDowel as Enriquez. Enrquez gives us a familiar plot setup: the ups and downs, the conflicts and friendship among three teenaged girls. An abandoned house brims with shelves holding fingernails and teeth. But we know that it is there through an inescapable logic, an intense awareness of the world and all its misery. She runs, not looking back, and covers her ears against the sound of the drums. The electricity made my hair stand on end; I felt like it had turned into wires, Theres something about the friendships of girls when theyre teenagers that to me is totally scary, is totally witchery, is totally mysterious, Enriquez says. Borges and his friendsthe writers Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampowere so fond of horror that they co-edited several editions of an anthology of macabre stories. Never mind that Pinat has his voice on tape, saying Problem solved. Powered by WordPress and hosted by Pressable. Ive traveled just a bit in the United States, but I have a few friends there. And Enriquez achieves all this with an ambiguous, stark, coarse, and crude language that bombards us with uncomfortable questions: How does the gothic speak to us about the real? How can the well-known and familiar become strange and dangerous? Among the children marked by the black water, she thinks she spots the cop, violating his house arrest. I remember having a conversation with a friend and saying, 'But you never complain when men are portrayed as corrupt politicians, violent cops, serial killers. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. Do all lives have the same worth? Ruthanna Emrysis the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, includingWinter TideandDeep Roots. Her stories of monsters, ghosts, witches, sick people, and crazed women leave the reader with no escape route, as if they were mirrors, warped and out of focus, that show the invisible Other in their reflection, just as they illuminate our most sadistic and repressed side. For more information, please see our Not the only one but that I can assure you; that was weird. A fact that made him feel very un-Argentinian. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. Anne M. Pillsworths short storyThe Madonna of the Abattoir appears on Tor.com. But, of course, her inspirations occasionally arise from those more innocuous sources: The girls, that kind of stayed with me. I didnt do it, the cop says. But now he knows: they were trying to cover something up, keep it from getting out. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory. All these tales are told from a womans point of view, often a young one, and they seem to be able to hold out against the horror that lures them for only so long. Her most recent published books areLas novelas argentinas del siglo 21:Nuevos modos de produccin, circulacin y recepcin(2019) andOtros:Ricardo Piglia y la literatura mundial(2019). The pollution, holding down whatever lies under the river, shapes the community, its children, its resentment, until they burst forth into something that will stir the river and release what lies beneath. Enriquez, Mariana. What he separated from Argentinian literature was the obligation to be solemn, to talk about politics to put imagination aside because these things were too serious to be contaminated by genre, let it be horror, fantasy, humour, whatever I can cross it [the socio-political situation] with genre and not be scared and think, 'Ah, Im going to talk about the disappeared in a horror story, this is totally disrespectful.' In Under the Black Water, a district attorney pursuing a witness ventures into a slum that even her cab driver wont enter. She dreamed that when the boy emerged from the water and shook off the muck, the fingers fell off his hands.. The children born with those defects are, alas, treated more as symbols than characters, or as indications that the river leaches humanity. In this case rather than Lovecrafts racism and terror of mental illness, we get ableism and a fun-sized dose of fat-phobia. In short, Mariana Enriquez reads Argentine society with a feminist lens that evinces the structural violence imposed by necropolitics, class inequality, and gender. And the church is no longer a church. This unpretentiousness translates well to our surprisingly laid-back conversation, considering the subject matter black magic, torture and death being discussed at this early hour. Hes only been back a little while. [Scheduled] South American: Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enriquez, "Under the Black Water" Welcome to the discussion of "Under the Black Water," the 10th story from Mariana Enrquez's Things We Lost in the Fireshort story collection. Not one of the blind kids with misshapen hands gets characterization, or even a speaking role other than to mouth platitudes about dead things dreaming. In this way, her storieskafkaesquely propheticfunction as revisions of systems like neoliberalism, positivism, and the society of reason, not only through their subject matter, but also through their form, with the use of two highly Jamesian narrative techniques: secrecy and mystery. We are delighted to offer a range of residential and online programs to support writers at every stage of their writing journey. Pinats dubious about all this, or wants to be. But now he knows: they were trying to cover something up, keep it from getting out. Why cant we be the protagonists here?. The priest refers to them as retards, but the narrative itself isnt doing much better. The themes of horror and fantasy work for me in two ways. The pollution, holding down whatever lies under the river, shapes the community, its children, its resentment, until they burst forth into something that will stir the river and release what lies beneath. Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth. We read and post about several books each month that are suggested by members and selected by popular vote. Maybe the girl is lying? 202 pages. In the Villa, shes startled by silence. The contamination is due to the factories and slaughterhouses on the shores of the Riachuelo that dump their waste into the river, polluting it. I like dark themes, and I would say that its my way of looking atthings. That is to sayI primarily write thinking about Argentina, and in a larger context about Latin America, because we share many similar realities. There both the fierceness of the military and the untamed jungle combine into a ghostly trap, where the turn into the paranormal leaves the wife with some unexpected options. June 17, 2022 . In one story, "Under the Black Water," a severely polluted river that has become a dumping ground for victims of police violence becomes a source of a zombie cult. What is it about the fiction of Mariana Enriquez that makes the whole world, book market and academics included, like it so much? Enriquez: Sure, for example, Under the Black Water was inspired by a true story of police violence. On the southern edge of the city, past the Moreno Bridge, the city frays into abandoned buildings and rusted signs. As it is, the cows head, and the yellowtainted cross and flowers, dont promise a happy relationship, regardless of who worships what. There were terms that you didnt understand, like political prisoner, or detention camps., In one story, The Intoxicated Years, a trio of adolescent girls go feral during the vacuum, post dictatorship, when hyperinflation was accelerating and the countrys infrastructure failing. The rejection of maternity, approached via the supernatural (i.e. Maybe in the past few years politicization has become more pronounced there; but in Argentina, politics has always dominated public discourse. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. New York, NY: Hogarth Press, 2016. Isolated locals take dubious actions around a nearby body of water, resulting in children born wrong. A new and suspicious religion drives Christianity from the community. Mariana Enriquez recalls a world of dive bars, cheap wine, rockers, writers, misfits and el uno a uno: Buenos Aires before thecollapse, The author of "White Cats, Black Dogs" on why we're drawn to folk tales and how superstitions shape stories, Bora Chung uses the fantastic to examine the absurdity of misogyny and societys injustices in her short story collection, Let your spooky flag fly with a cocktail and Jen Fawkess delightfully strange stories in Mannequin and Wife. But a representation of a husband that doesnt make his wife happy something that happens all the time youre so uncomfortable with.' But Pinat does, and doesnt try to investigate the slum from her desk like some of her colleagues. All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in May! Turning to Latin American literature, we observe that the gothic has borne relatively little fruit, often considered a subgenre within the fantastic, science fiction, or magical realism (see Brescia, Negroni, Braham, Dez Cobo, Casanova-Vizcano, and Ordiz). Normally there are people. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. Before she can react, he shoots himself. In Enriquezs world, no one is adequately shielded. No matter how weighty her themes, Enriquez readily references genre fiction and popular culture in her work; films such as Kiyoshi Kurosawas dread-soaked internet ghost story Pulse and the new flesh of Cronenbergs Videodrome. Never mind how the priest knows shes there about Emanuel, or knows about the pregnant girl who pointed her this way. People swimming under the black water, they woke the thing up. Already in 1976, Ellen Moers had coined the term female gothic to refer to women writers who cultivated this genre as a subversive space in which to display the social and political oppression of women, the confinement of their bodies, the marginalization of their work, and the impossibility of their expressing their sexual freedom. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. Author: Mariana Enriquez Author Record # 265086; Legal Name: Enrquez, Mariana? He wouldnt touch politics, or football. And I think thats an effect of CsarAiras literature., Then, after some chit chat and pleasantries (a reference to Dawn of the Dead amongst them), shes off to prepare for some sort of party later in the day, which it seems is being approached in the style of her writing: It's a BBQ basically, but brutal., Things We Lost in the Fire is out now, published by Portobello Books, RRP 12.99. Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howards sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn. Virgilio Piera said that Kafka was a costumbrista writer in Havana; we might suggest, with Enriquez in mind, that the gothic is a costumbrista genre in Argentina. Next week, Lovecraft and Henry S. Whitehead explain why you should be more careful about mirrors in The Trap.. These rudderless, narcotically charged delinquents cast dark shadows in the nations flickering light: I walked slowly over to him and tried to imitate the look of hatred in the eyes of the girl in Parque Pereyra. The priest refers to them as retards, but the narrative itself isnt doing much better. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it. Beyond this empty area live the citys poor by the thousands. But theres something powerful and secretive about them. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. TW for suicide. Shes disturbed by his toothless mouth and sucker-like fingers. The title story almost takes up where Spiderweb left off, with women protesting domestic violence with a violence of their own. People swimming under the black water, they woke the thing up. By Mariana Enriquez December 11, 2016 It's harder to breathe in the humid north, up there so close to Brazil and Paraguay, the rushing river guarded by mosquito sentinels and a sky that can. First, people like these genres, theyre popular. For some reason that river to me always hid something very ancient, very evil, suggests Enriquez, a cosmic evil. Yamil Corvalns body has already washed up, a kilometer from the bridge. And in the rest of the ever-more gothified and gorified world. Cookie Notice Kenyon College I dont write pedagogically. Today we're reading Mariana Enriquez's "Under the Black Water," first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. Subscribe toTheKenyon Reviewand every issue will be delivered to your door and your device! Because even if its a long time ago, even if they are trained as a democratic force, theres still a sediment there of that brutality and impunity the power that they used to have over the people that somehow is still there., The collection's translator, Megan McDowell, states so perfectly in an excellent afterword: The horror comes not only from turning our gaze on desperate populations; it comes from realizing the extent of our blindness. This feeds well into Enriquez reply to me when asked why she focusses on the darker side of her country. While chatting with the Argentine author, Im nave enough to bring this point up. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. The evil of that police officer wanting to make the boy try to swim in a polluted river when he knows that hes going to die. The poor men. Mariana Enriquez words drip with glorious sarcasm, and I imagine her slowly shaking her head down the line from Buenos Aires. Seven Stories About Scary (and Possibly Sentient) Plants, Five Space Books to Send a Chill Down Your Spine, Five Cautionary SF Tales About Enhanced Intelligence, A Critical Division of Starfleet Intelligence: Section 31 and the Normalization of the Security State. Vitcavage: Who are some other Argentinian writers that readers shouldexplore? Vitcavage: Since youre a journalist as well, is there a sense of need when it comes to including political commentary within yourfiction? You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. The blend of horror, fantasy, crime, and cruelty has a particular Argentine pedigree. I swear we dont keep picking stories with shootings and killer cops deliberately. Characters range from social workers to street dwellers to users of dark magic. Vitcavage: It seems, in America at least, that we cant talk about anything without talking about politics. However, not until the expansion of global capitalism did Argentine literature reveal the new horrors placed before us by necropolitics. https://medium.com/media/11bfe3a6b4f7b0925df45e65c1c190a5/href. Considering her writings overlap between Borges and King, Ocampo and Jackson, an accurate term might be 'black magical realism', and its possible this strange genre brew is a result of Enriquez' historical vantage point; born just prior to the coup but too young to be complicit, or even fully aware. Mythos Making: The graffiti on the church includes the name Yog Sothoth amid its seeming gobbledygook. And the church is no longer a church. And of course, whatever lies beneath the river might have been less malevolent, if it hadnt spent all that time bathing its ectoplasm in toxic sludge. Welcome to r/bookclub! The coddled suburbanite does not exist. A DEAD BABY and her haunted great-niece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez's collection of disquieting short stories. "[4] Jennifer Szalai, writing in The New York Times, wrote "[Enriquez] is after a truth more profound, and more disturbing, than whatever the strict dictates of realism will allow. Beyond this empty area live the citys poor by the thousands. Enriquezs seams are fine ones. Yamil Corvalns body has already washed up, a kilometer from the bridge. But behind her, footsteps squelch: one of the deformed children. Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water. Either way, its good to read a story with different settings from our usual selection, different points of view, different horrors. She tries to get them out of there, and he grabs her gun. Shes disturbed by his toothless mouth and sucker-like fingers. That being said, the plot that offers the most radical feminist reading is, without a doubt, Things We Lost in the Fire. The motivation behind the story is a series of femicides whose victims are burned with alcohol, which leads a group of burning women to set their own bodies alight, subverting beauty standards and fighting back against the discipline imposed upon their bodies by patriarchal society: they are no longer burnt up by men, but rather by themselves. Originally published in Spanish, it was translated into English by Megan McDowell in 2017. She dreamed that when the boy emerged from the water and shook off the muck, the fingers fell off his hands.. Except these teenagers are thoroughly unlikeable, and they take teenage callousness and self-centeredness to unusual levels. Benedetto was tortured by the dictators militiathey faked his execution and he suffered a great deal. These are stories that speak of fear as the intimate driving force of our livesand the intimate is always politicalof the extreme violence of neoliberal capitalism, of the vulnerability of children, women, the sick, and the lower classes in the disciplinary, hyper-consumerist, normative, and patriarchal society of the twenty-first century. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. She is the author of nine books, including two short story collections, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in. The river itself has been the chosen dumping site for waste from cow offal up through the tanners heavy metals. Nonetheless, in the twentieth and twenty-first century it has called the attention of critics, since many members of the latest generation of Argentine fiction writers (Oliverio Coelho, Selva Almada, Hernn Ronsino, Pedro Mairal, Luciano Lamberti, and Samanta Schweblin) have revitalized literary horror as a critique of Argentine politics: of the military dictatorship, of the States abuses, of the ecological apocalypse, of femicides, of the uncontrolled power of cartels and drug traffickers, etc. Instead we get deformed children with their skinny arms and mollusk fingers, followed by women, most of them fat, their bodies disfigured by a diet based on carbs.. We are not currently open for submissions. But I saw these 30,000 girls screaming all the time. Spoilers ahead. She learns that strange things, including a dead man coming up out of the water, are happening in the slums. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it.
Mammoth Lakes Police Department Arrests,
Fort Bend County Inmate Release,
Qmc Nottingham Wards,
Articles U