The church has been painted yellow, decorated with a crown of flowers, and the walls are covered with graffiti: YAINGNGAHYOGSOTHOTHHEELGEBFAITHRODOG. Defiled churches, shambling inhuman processions hey. (Its the most remarkable word weve ever seen.) Table of Contents: Things we lost in the fire - Schlow Library . You Are Here: ross dress for less throw blankets apprentissage des lettres de l'alphabet under the black water mariana enriquez. Normally there are people. Oh come, Emanuel? Before she can react, he shoots himself. What is the price of a body? But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. In the Villa, shes startled by silence. Today were reading Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water, first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. Characters range from social workers to street dwellers to users of dark magic. She runs, not looking back, and covers her ears against the sound of the drums. I felt unpleasant echoes of That Only a Mother, a much-reprinted golden age SF story in which the shocking twist at the end is that the otherwise precocious baby hasnt got any limbs (and, unintentionally, that the society in question hasnt got a clue about prosthetics). 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. You shouldnt have come, says Father Francisco. We publish your favorite authorseven the ones you haven't read yet. We discussed Argentina as a country and a character, the place of politics in literature, and what inspires Enriquez when shes working on astory. An outsider comes in to investigate, and ultimately flees a danger never made fully clear. T hough the terms are often used interchangeably, or as a compoundGothic Horrorin their primeval essences Gothic fiction and Horror fiction can be said to have as much to do with each other as classic and modern Country music.Modern Country, like Modern Horror, is a literal, unpretentious genre: we're from the American South, we sing how we talk, and primarily about the subjectsbeer . I live between movies, celebrities, music, and theatre. 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. New York. In "Angelita Unearthed," the eponymous infant wears its feet down to the "little white bones" as it follows the narrator into an . The story ends with a lingering look towards her exemplary act of violence, which must soon follow. He hasnt brought a lawyerafter all, he says, hes innocent. This is a police force tainted by recent history, an aftershock of a violent past. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. Wed Jul 11, 2018 2:00pm. The Writing Life in Argentina in the 1990s, Kelly Link Makes Fairy Tales Even Weirder Than You Remember, When Reality is More Terrifying Than Cursed Bunnies, Booktails from the Potions Library, with Mixologist Lindsay Merbaum. And her gun, of course. So, time to leave her desk and investigate. For more information, please see our 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. All of this is added to the deconstruction of subjugating courtly love, and to the sacralization and sublimation of sex, crystallized in the many women who dominate, objectify, and consume men in her stories. He passes her, gliding toward the church. These industries run unregulated by the State. 208 pages. 202 pages. He tried to swim through the black grease that covers the river, holds it calm and dead. He drowned when he could no longer move his arms. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory. Most dont. Vitcavage: Since youre a journalist as well, is there a sense of need when it comes to including political commentary within yourfiction? What about these themes exciteyou? Seven Stories About Scary (and Possibly Sentient) Plants, What We Do for Wraithlike Bodies: Hilary Mantels, 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. Marina Pinat, Buenos Aires DA, isnt thrilled with the smug cop sitting in her office. Then, starting in the 1970s, the social meaning of the gothic was renewed in view of its political vision, based on the idea that the ominous is integratedif hiddenin our ideology and everyday existence. There are hints of sacrifice, mysterious deaths of the young. I didnt do it, the cop says. $24.00. A few years ago in Buenos Aires, two policemen detained two poor, young men who were coming back from a night club. Its also challenging to not be repetitive. Maybe the girl is lying? Privacy Policy. Is this enormous symbolic production around evil a response to economic crises and the implementation of ever-more-savage neoliberal policies? The coddled suburbanite does not exist. She recognizes that little yellow house, so shes not lost. These ghostly images flicker out of Mariana Enriquezs stories, her characters witnessing atrocities or their shadows or afterimages. The slum spreads along the black river, to the limits of vision. [But] it wasnt about the boys, it was about them, feeding off each other, their energy, and trying to release something. "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. "[5], In a review in Vanity Fair, Sloane Crosley was impressed by Enriquez's skill at using supernatural stories to explore Argentina's political turmoil: "In her hands, the countrys inequality, beauty, and corruption tangle together to become a manifestation of our own darkest thoughts and fears."[6]. You have no idea what goes on there. Its interesting to me that there can be a certain disdain for whats popular, but I reject that, thats an elitist way of thinking. How do they affect women? In "Under the Black Water," Marina is an attorney who works with the people who live in impoverished in the slums of Buenos Aires. Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. 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. Pinats dubious about all this, or wants to be. 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. 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. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories (Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. Either way, its good to read a story with different settings from our usual selection, different points of view, different horrors. But now the streets are dead as the river. [2] That is to sayI primarily write thinking about Argentina, and in a larger context about Latin America, because we share many similar realities. Im still intrigued by the idea of pollution as a messed-up attempt at bindingcontaining, of course, the seeds of its own destruction. These women have a choice in what they notice and what they flinch away from. The journalist and author fills the dozen stories with compelling figures in haunting stories that evaluate inequality, violence, and corruption. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. Our Privacy Notice has been updated to explain how we use cookies, which you accept by continuing to use this website. Also hes very, very drunk. But the police throwing people in there, that was stupid. Just a few months ago, she helped win a case against a tannery that dumped toxic waste in the river for decades, causing a massive cluster of childhood cancers and birth defects: extra arms, cat-like noses, blind high-set eyes. Sat 1 Oct 2022 13.00 EDT M ariana Enrquez, 48, lives in Buenos Aires. From where?, The most disturbing element to this is its source material, like much of Enriquez, drawn from news headlines. Emanuel means god is with us. But what god? When Marina investigates, events grow more and more disturbing in a way that feels Lovecraftian. Or, even better: what makes readers become addicted to her poetics? 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. Silvia was the one who came up with the idea of the quarry pools that summer, and we had to hand it to her, it was a really good idea. You can be afraid of a monster and fear can also turn you into a monster. angelita" [The little angel's disinterment], . In effect, Enriquezs short fiction is populated by women suppressed by patriarchal necropolitics: lesbian teenagers (The Inn), girls both sexual and cruel (The Intoxicated Years), sufferers of anorexia (No Flesh over Our Bones), self-mutilated schoolgirls (End of Term), women who are raped, satanic, etc. They physically abused them and threw them in the Riachuelo River. Enriquezs writing is therefore often in the first person, both singular and plural, and extraordinary elements enter into this fiction through the sense of smell (El carrito [The cart]), hearing (Dnde ests corazn [Where are you, darling]), taste (Carne [Meat]), sight (Ni cumpleaos ni bautismos), and touch (Los peligros de fumar en la cama [The dangers of smoking in bed]). That boy woke up the thing sleeping under the water. I swear we dont keep picking stories with shootings and killer cops deliberately. On the other hand, Enriquezs fiction also enters into dialogue with the deeply rooted tradition relating illness and literature (Foucault, Sontag, Guerrero, Giorgi), with stories of necrophilia, cannibalism, satanic rites, anorexia, social phobias, etc. I swear we dont keep picking stories with shootings and killer cops deliberately. I would say that my socio-political commentary comes more from my experience as a citizen than it does from my career as a journalist. Enriquez places feminisms struggle against capitalism in the foreground, given the impossibility of gender equality without class equality, through a gothic that opens up to more complex interpretations, in which women and marginalized classes, rendered ghostly, become dangerous harbingers of horror, even while being the most vulnerable and castigated subjects under capitalism. A fact that made him feel very un-Argentinian. Enriquez: Of the authors I know who have works translated in English, there are Di Benedetto, Silvina Ocampo, Manuel Puig, Ricardo Piglia, and Julio Cortzar, who is very famous. Does our apathy make us complicit? But now he knows: they were trying to cover something up, keep it from getting out. She tries to get them out of there, and he grabs her gun. Beyond this empty area live the citys poor by the thousands. I was reporting as a journalist, and I hated them. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. The voices of the women are so powerful that were left on the side, and thats kind of disturbing. Our mission is to amplify the power of storytelling with digital innovation, and to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture by supporting writers, embracing new technologies, and building community to broaden the audience for literature. She recognizes that little yellow house, so shes not lost. Site made in collaboration with CMYK. I dont have a problem about being called a horror writer, she answers directly when I ask. Personalize your subscription preferences here. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. My favourite writers have written horror; Robert Aikman, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King I dont have a problem because I think Im in good company.. Meet Mariana Enriquez, Argentine journalist and author, whose short stories are of decapitated street kids (heads skinned to the bone), ritual sacrifice and ghoulish children sporting sharpened teeth. The driver makes her walk the last 300 meters; the dead boys lawyer wont come at all. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. Indeed, one of the most fertile readings that has yet been undertaken of her fiction starts from the gothic, a genre that has garnered a great deal of visibility and critical appreciation in recent decades (i.e. under the black water mariana enriquez. Arthur Malcolm Dixonis co-founder, lead translator, and Managing Editor ofLatin American Literature Today. 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. Vitcavage: Can you pick one of the stories and explain how you came up with the idea and then how you crafted it into a shortstory? But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. Loading. "[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. It is a story that shares echoes with Schweblin's Fever Dream, in that belief in the occult becomes confused with the damaging physiological effects of certain poisons. Is fear political? The tradition of horror and mystery stories fascinates me. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. The title story almost takes up where Spiderweb left off, with women protesting domestic violence with a violence of their own. You have no idea what goes on there. Normally there are people. Enriquez: No, theres not. Normally theres music, motorcycles, sizzling grills, people talking. And in trying to make those insular locals truly terrifying, the narrative gets problematic as all hell. Enriquez: Sure, for example, "Under the Black Water" was inspired by a true story of police violence. She is currently Principal Investigator of theI+D LETRAL project, director of the "Ider-Lab" Scientific Unit of Excellence: Criticism, Languages, and Cultures in Iberoamerica, and Vice Dean of Culture and Research of the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Granada. Just a while ago an English work of Antonio Di Benedetto was recovered. About Things We Lost in the Fire. (Its the most remarkable word weve ever seen.) The immense pleasure of Enriquezs fiction is the conclusiveness of her ambiguity. New York, NY: Hogarth Press, 2016. This river has been polluted for many years, just as I reference in my story. To withdraw your consent, see Your Choices. And when they are left to themselves, because theres a crisis that is quite over their heads and nobodys paying attention to them, god knows what they can do alone., The collections most darkly thrilling story is Under the Black Water, a Lovecraftian tale of two boys tortured by the police and made to cross a polluted river. Maybe the girl is lying? Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. She runs, not looking back, and covers her ears against the sound of the drums. 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. Im a cultural journalist. But I think that readers can gather that Argentina is a diverse and unequalsociety. 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. Defiled churches, shambling inhuman processions hey. Even more brutal is 'Under the Black Water', a story that blends an investigation into police brutality with the reality of pollution and fear of the unknown. I used this incident, making minor modifications, as the point of departure for the rest of my story. 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. I write for myself, thinking about my country and its reality. I adopt this term from Achille Mbembe, who uses it to define the way in which states regulate death in the Third World (femicides, the sex trade, disappearances, kidnappings, drug trafficking, etc.). Ruthanna Emrysis the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, includingWinter TideandDeep Roots. In his house, says the boy, the dead man waits dreaming. The priest is furious, and furious with Pinat for being stupid enough to come. His life and works were never the same afterthat. The full schedule can be found here and the marginalia can be found here. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. [1] "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. Were discussing her talent for forming fantastical horror from the twisted scar tissue of Argentinas recent past: police torture, political persecution, the disappeared and the Dirty War the latter a period of state terrorism where right-wing death squads tortured and killed left-wing guerrillas, and often anybody sympathetic to their cause. A DEAD BABY and her haunted great-niece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez's collection of disquieting short stories. And yet Enriquez shifts this interiority outward into a landscape made ghastly by political and economic forces. A few years ago in Buenos Aires, two policemen detained two poor, young men who were coming back from a night club. This type of story-action creates enlightened, involved readers, and this, in my view, makes her fiction necessary. Vitcavage: Who are some other Argentinian writers that readers shouldexplore? People swimming under the black water, they woke the thing up. Either way, its good to read a story with different settings from our usual selection, different points of view, different horrors. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it. In Enriquezs world, no one is adequately shielded. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it. Through them, Enriquez explores tourism in Argentina, the rich visiting the slums, plus so many more dynamic perspectives on her homecountry. [2] " Spiderweb" appeared in The New Yorker. Hes tried! For her part, the Mexican activist Sayak Valencia proposes the category of gore capitalism to interpret the modes in which Latin American subjects and their bodies are disciplined: especially the working classes, which are allowed both to die and to kill. Among the children marked by the black water, she thinks she spots the cop, violating his house arrest. I interviewed Enriquez via email; I wrote to her in English and she responded in Spanish, with Jill Swanson then translating. In the distance, she hears drums. It's clear that nothing has healed. Our Privacy Notice has been updated to explain how we use cookies, which you accept by continuing to use this website. In his house, says the boy, the dead man waits dreaming. The priest is furious, and furious with Pinat for being stupid enough to come. Eventually, Enriquezs girls and women walk voluntarily towards what they least want to see. But they project bravery as well as outrage at the awful muck theyve dipped into. Spoilers ahead. Originally published in Spanish, it was translated into English by Megan McDowell in 2017. Even for me and Ive been there. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. The full schedule can be found hereand the marginalia can be found here. He laughs. This type of phenomenaI can find no better word to describe itis ever less frequent in world literature. I write for myself, thinking about my country and its reality.. The district attorney could have stayed in the car, or stayed in her office, behind brick and glass. What is it about the fiction of Mariana Enriquez that makes the whole world, book market and academics included, like it so much? 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. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. Gambier, OH 43022-9623. 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). We dont know who has taken away a vanished girl, or murdered a child, or consumed a husband. I mention speaking with Argentine author Csar Aira just the week previous. So you could say that Im working on a novel and on another short storybook. 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. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, 1818), as well as the image of the young woman who is simultaneously a victim and a monstrous killer, became tropes in the works of well known women authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Kate Chopin, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose tutelary shadows fall over the poetics of Mariana Enriquez. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory. But theyre not evil, I think? No, I concede, impotent rather than evil. 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. And the church is no longer a church. Well, maybe not always that last. The rejection of maternity, approached via the supernatural (i.e. In the middle of the night, invisible men pound on the shutters of a country hotel. I didnt do it, the cop says. I had opened by complimenting this cocktail of politics and cult horror in her work. Spoilers ahead. 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. Check out the discussion questions below and please feel free to add your own. 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. A woman, in this case from Argentina, who writes strange, unsettling horror stories, starting from a political and aesthetic commitment that has had such an international repercussion that it brings to mind the Latin American Boom, in feminist and terrifying form. 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. It was everywhere, it was on TV, it was in magazines. But a representation of a husband that doesnt make his wife happy something that happens all the time youre so uncomfortable with.' Electric Literature is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2009. 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. There's no requirement for joining, so pick up your book and come read with us! They never stopped screaming. Silvina, the protagonist of Things We Lost in the Fire, is not yet all the way committed to the protest movement. The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. 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. After all, a living boy is one less crime to accuse the cops of. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. 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. Hes emaciated, dirty, his hair overgrown and greasy. Enriquezs seams are fine ones. Why is that a representation youre comfortable with? Mythos Making: The graffiti on the church includes the name Yog Sothoth amid its seeming gobbledygook. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. Her father, who once worked on a River Barge, told stories of the water running red. Enriquez wants to tell us about poverty, gentrification and a crippling economy, but first and foremost - she wants to scare the shit out of us, and does it marvelously. You shouldnt have come, says Father Francisco. Anne wasnt able to submit a commentary this week. 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. Never. Novel, short story collection, a long investigative non-fiction book? So, the articulation of a univocal female community is an aporia becauseas if positioned within a materialist feminismthe problem of class permeates the problems of women, preventing a true sisterhood, as is illustrated in La Virgen de la tosquera [The virgin of the pit], a story in which bourgeois teenage girls seem to fight over a man when what is really at stake is class struggle: the war against his girlfriend, Silvia, a vulgar, common, dark-skinned girl. 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. Never mind how the priest knows shes there about Emanuel, or knows about the pregnant girl who pointed her this way. The themes of horror and fantasy work for me in two ways. He tried to swim through the black grease that covers the river, holds it calm and dead. He drowned when he could no longer move his arms. The short stories of Argentine author and journalist Mariana Enriquez are seeing machineslenses that throw the uglier side of the human condition into uncomfortably sharp focus. The priest refers to them as retards, but the narrative itself isnt doing much better. 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. 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. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories ( Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. Marina Pinat, Buenos Aires DA, isnt thrilled with the smug cop sitting in her office. Her absence is absolutely not due to nefarious extraterrestrial body-snatching, we promise. Clearly these acts, and the concomitant economic instability and corruption, provide the earth for Enriquezs tales. She shows us. 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.
Crucita Ecuador Crime,
Greg And Rowley Got Into A Huge Argument About Quizlet,
Tom Eplin Now,
Articles U
