A review by emitareads
El Asco: Thomas Bernhard En San Salvador / Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador by Horacio Castellanos Moya
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
I appreciate that Castellanos Moya was trying something new by imitating Austrian writer Thomas Bernard, both in style and subject matter, and it's true I've never read anything like this before. But, it started to lose its power very quickly. The whole book is basically the narrator, a guy named Vega, talking or better yet complaining to Moya. By page 25, I was so over the constant whining of the narrator. I get that the repetition is the whole point, but still. It got old real fast.
The text is also so blatantly offensive to San Salvador, its inhabitants, and everything that's related to the country, that it was clearly intencional. Provocative. And also clearly not to be taken to heart. Often times the complaints of our narrator were so ridiculous (Can he please stop hating on the national specialty, las pupusas? Just say it isn’t for you and move on, mate), that I stopped seeing it as offensive and it became whining instead. Every new topic, every new group of people, is the absolute worst thing our narrator has ever encountered. And Moya does imply he's not in agreement. There are several hints of that. So again, this signals to me that we don't have to project the ideas of the narrator onto the author (which a lot of people did do and Moya received death threats for it).
While I appreciate the work as a literary experiment, I didn't particularly enjoy reading it. I got bored halfway through and just stopped caring about what was said, because it was the same complaint over and over. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone, but it is a good book for class discussions.
The text is also so blatantly offensive to San Salvador, its inhabitants, and everything that's related to the country, that it was clearly intencional. Provocative. And also clearly not to be taken to heart. Often times the complaints of our narrator were so ridiculous (Can he please stop hating on the national specialty, las pupusas? Just say it isn’t for you and move on, mate), that I stopped seeing it as offensive and it became whining instead. Every new topic, every new group of people, is the absolute worst thing our narrator has ever encountered. And Moya does imply he's not in agreement. There are several hints of that. So again, this signals to me that we don't have to project the ideas of the narrator onto the author (which a lot of people did do and Moya received death threats for it).
While I appreciate the work as a literary experiment, I didn't particularly enjoy reading it. I got bored halfway through and just stopped caring about what was said, because it was the same complaint over and over. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone, but it is a good book for class discussions.