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The Linden Tree
The Linden Tree was written in 2003. In it the narrator, who could be Aira himself (born the same year, in the same place, a writer who is now also living PBK in Buenos Aires) revisits down his childhood memories. Beginning with an enigmatically beautiful black father who gathered linden flowers to make a sleep-inducing tea, and continuing on to an irrational and physically deformed mother of European descent, the narrator also catalogs his best childhood friends and the many gossiping neighbors. Aira creates a colorful mosaic of an epoch in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Pero´n, aspired to a newfound middle class. Moving from anecdote to anecdote, alternating between the touching, amusing, and sometimes surreal, we are comforted by the fact that for Aira “everything is allegory.”
This is a charming novella—evocative, reflexive, amusing, intelligent—that invites the reader to look further into Aira’s great body of work.
This is a charming novella—evocative, reflexive, amusing, intelligent—that invites the reader to look further into Aira’s great body of work.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
César Aira
253 books1,039 followersCésar Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. He taught at the University of Buenos Aires (about Copi and Rimbaud) and at the University of Rosario (Constructivism and Mallarmé), and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Perhaps one of the most prolific writers in Argentina, and certainly one of the most talked about in Latin America, Aira has published more than eighty books to date in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Spain, which have been translated for France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Romania, Russia, and now the United States. One novel, La prueba, has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun was chosen as one of Argentina’s ten best books. Besides essays and novels Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 1996 he received a Guggenheim scholarship, in 2002 he was short listed for the Rómulo Gallegos prize, and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
September 18, 2017
A novella really, but incredibly dense nontheless. What may be a fictionalized version of the authors own life. A black father, who was an ardent Catholic before he became a Peronist, seems he couldn't be two things at once. His deformed, overly dramatic mother with her thick glasses and outlandish idea. His town called Pringles, and yes I thought of the potato chip brand every time he mentioned the name, his friends there, his teachers. Free flowing thoughts, one blending into the next as he describes their lives under Eva Peron. A time when the poor were encouraged to think they could rise to the middle class.
As I said very dense, and I know I probably missed the significance of much, not being overly familiar with this time period. This is, I suspect, that needs a second reading. I believe this is one of those books that one would notice more and more, if read more than once. Right now all I can say was that while I found it interesting, I probably missed more than I took in.
As I said very dense, and I know I probably missed the significance of much, not being overly familiar with this time period. This is, I suspect, that needs a second reading. I believe this is one of those books that one would notice more and more, if read more than once. Right now all I can say was that while I found it interesting, I probably missed more than I took in.
March 21, 2018
Estamos de festejo: Aira acaba de publicar su libro número 100. Así que arranquemos el homenaje con una confesión: me gustaría ser Aira. Parezco Macri diciendo la otra vez en el día de la mujer que agradecía a las mujeres que lo habían hecho feliz. Pero que no se me malinterprete, cuando digo que me gustaría ser Aira digo que quisiera ser como él; no tomar su lugar, no volverme él de forma negativa, buscando su desaparición física y espiritual para coronarme como el nuevo Aira de un exótico país latinoamericano (?). Lo que trato de decir es que su literatura tiene un poder tan inmenso y atrayente que despierta el deseo de escribir como él. Una forma de escribir como él es aprender de él. Por eso leo dos o tres libros suyos al año. Habría que inventar alguna aplicación para celu que te elija uno al azar de su vasta bibliografía al momento de leerlo, ¿cómo se hace si no? ¡Hay quienes dicen que todavía tiene 30 inéditas! Desde acá, como siempre, le cantamos:
César, mi buen amigo
esta campaña volveremos a estar contigo
te alentaremos de corazón
esta es tu hinchada que te quiere ver nobél
no me importa lo que diga
la academia Suecá
yo te leo en todas partes
cada vez te quiero másss <3
Pero bueno, todo a su tiempo. El nobel ya va caer. Hoy nos convoca El Tilo, novelita de poco más de cien páginas que cuando te querés dar cuenta ya la terminaste. Es la decimosexta novela suya que leo y creo que recién ahora se me abre el panorama, de a poco, sobre sus distintas etapas estéticas. Desde la pequeña y humilde superioridad moral que me permite hablar sobre su obra, creo que se pueden diferenciar varias etapas dentro de su proyecto literario. El Tilo conforma lo que sería su etapa más radical en mi opinión, donde Aira se hace conocido, donde postula un mundo propio, cerrado y autónomo. Acá está el Aira que todos queremos, el desbocado, el que monologa, el que habla sobre los chismes de su pueblo a modo de leyendas, el que le dedica largas páginas de reflexión al espacio que va después de la coma, el que inventa que las hojas de un tilo puede tener efectos nocivos en su padre, ¡el que habla de peronismo, acá tienen al Aira político, detractores snobistas del resentimiento!
Mi hipótesis: en los 70 y 80 Aira empezaba a ensayar su método, en los 90 la consolidación y los mejores relatos, de los 2000 en adelante se dijo a sí mismo: “ya foe ya soy César Aira, lo conseguí, así que voy a seguir tirando fruta total estos se comen cualquiera”. Esta periodización hay que tomarla entre pinzas para que profundicen futuros académicos, les tiro la idea pero no se olviden de citar esta reseña.
El Tilo desarrolla el Aira que salta de tema en tema, el autobiográfico de “Cumpleaños”, el que utiliza el monólogo para que el relato crezca sin una dirección determinada, solamente guiado por la propia escritura, dejándose llevar por el vaivén de las palabras, perdido en ellas como si le importara menos contar una historia que seguir escribiendo, íntima y apasionada o desapasionadamente, hasta el infinito.
César, mi buen amigo
esta campaña volveremos a estar contigo
te alentaremos de corazón
esta es tu hinchada que te quiere ver nobél
no me importa lo que diga
la academia Suecá
yo te leo en todas partes
cada vez te quiero másss <3
Pero bueno, todo a su tiempo. El nobel ya va caer. Hoy nos convoca El Tilo, novelita de poco más de cien páginas que cuando te querés dar cuenta ya la terminaste. Es la decimosexta novela suya que leo y creo que recién ahora se me abre el panorama, de a poco, sobre sus distintas etapas estéticas. Desde la pequeña y humilde superioridad moral que me permite hablar sobre su obra, creo que se pueden diferenciar varias etapas dentro de su proyecto literario. El Tilo conforma lo que sería su etapa más radical en mi opinión, donde Aira se hace conocido, donde postula un mundo propio, cerrado y autónomo. Acá está el Aira que todos queremos, el desbocado, el que monologa, el que habla sobre los chismes de su pueblo a modo de leyendas, el que le dedica largas páginas de reflexión al espacio que va después de la coma, el que inventa que las hojas de un tilo puede tener efectos nocivos en su padre, ¡el que habla de peronismo, acá tienen al Aira político, detractores snobistas del resentimiento!
Mi hipótesis: en los 70 y 80 Aira empezaba a ensayar su método, en los 90 la consolidación y los mejores relatos, de los 2000 en adelante se dijo a sí mismo: “ya foe ya soy César Aira, lo conseguí, así que voy a seguir tirando fruta total estos se comen cualquiera”. Esta periodización hay que tomarla entre pinzas para que profundicen futuros académicos, les tiro la idea pero no se olviden de citar esta reseña.
El Tilo desarrolla el Aira que salta de tema en tema, el autobiográfico de “Cumpleaños”, el que utiliza el monólogo para que el relato crezca sin una dirección determinada, solamente guiado por la propia escritura, dejándose llevar por el vaivén de las palabras, perdido en ellas como si le importara menos contar una historia que seguir escribiendo, íntima y apasionada o desapasionadamente, hasta el infinito.
August 3, 2023
EL TILO (2003, translated into English as THE LINDEN TREE, 2018) is another short novel by the prolific, renowned literary critic César Aira. You will find the usual Aira blend in it: frenzied imagination, autobiographical elements, metaliterary musings and some essayistic writing.
The story is told by an unnamed narrator who was born in 1949, the same year Aira was born. Like Aira, he was born in the same provincial town of Coronel Pringles, and now, like Aira, he is living in Buenos Aires. EL TILO is a colorful story of this character's childhood, braided with some history of Peronism (Aira frequently introduces in his novels an irreverent version of Argentine history) and some musings about the art of storytelling.
The meandering narrative is filled with loose memories that range from Aira's infancy to his early teens, a period that coincides with the rise, first rule and 1955 fall of the divisive figure of Juan Perón and his famous wife Eva. EL TILO has been described as a fictional memoir: indeed it feels like a very personal book, funny and playful, inventive and dreamlike.
The story is told by an unnamed narrator who was born in 1949, the same year Aira was born. Like Aira, he was born in the same provincial town of Coronel Pringles, and now, like Aira, he is living in Buenos Aires. EL TILO is a colorful story of this character's childhood, braided with some history of Peronism (Aira frequently introduces in his novels an irreverent version of Argentine history) and some musings about the art of storytelling.
The meandering narrative is filled with loose memories that range from Aira's infancy to his early teens, a period that coincides with the rise, first rule and 1955 fall of the divisive figure of Juan Perón and his famous wife Eva. EL TILO has been described as a fictional memoir: indeed it feels like a very personal book, funny and playful, inventive and dreamlike.
April 29, 2018
This says novel, I say there isn't anything here to make a novel out of. It reads like a series of memories, recollections, grouped together in a linear fashion. If there is fiction or imagination, I'm missing it, because it could easily be read as straight memoir.
I'm not sure it matters. But still, this is probably not the book of Aira's to start with if you wish to become acquainted with the prolific author.
I did find some of tidbits interesting, such as the way the class system shifted so significantly with the Perons and after, how his parents navigated that world and how their roles changed, how the narrator (Cesar, I imagine) has to read between the lines to understand a major shift before his brain is really mature enough to do so.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title through Edelweiss. It came out April 24, 2018.
I'm not sure it matters. But still, this is probably not the book of Aira's to start with if you wish to become acquainted with the prolific author.
I did find some of tidbits interesting, such as the way the class system shifted so significantly with the Perons and after, how his parents navigated that world and how their roles changed, how the narrator (Cesar, I imagine) has to read between the lines to understand a major shift before his brain is really mature enough to do so.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title through Edelweiss. It came out April 24, 2018.
September 11, 2018
I have loved all the books I have read by Cesar Aira. His The Linden Tree is a fictionalized biography of his childhood in Colonel Pringles, located between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca. I don't have much of an idea of how much is biography and how much is fiction, but it almost doesn't matter. If I were to write my own biography, I am sure that quite a bit of fiction would find its way into the text.
The portrait of the author's father is particularly interesting. He is described as being "blac," but in a different sense of the term than we would use. To Aira, black meant partially of indigenous ancestry. The Argentinian Indians were, for the most part, massacred in the 19th century in the so-called Conquest of the Desert as ordered by then President Julio Argentino Roca. Here is one passage about his father than I particularly liked;
The portrait of the author's father is particularly interesting. He is described as being "blac," but in a different sense of the term than we would use. To Aira, black meant partially of indigenous ancestry. The Argentinian Indians were, for the most part, massacred in the 19th century in the so-called Conquest of the Desert as ordered by then President Julio Argentino Roca. Here is one passage about his father than I particularly liked;
About my father's earlier life, I never discovered anything, and I didn't care to ask. Somehow he had managed to create the impression, among the three of us, that the slightest movement of his thoughts in the direction of the past would trigger an irreversible nervous breakdown. Like those drive mechanisms with a fixed pinion that simply cannot operate in reverse.Interestingly, this is not a bad description of Aira's plotting of his stories, which in other reviews I have compared with a Roomba Robot Vacuum, which only goes in one direction. With Aira, this winds up being a giant plus.
Read
July 10, 20224. Why It's Best to Say Cesar Aira Does Not Write Books
I had been reading Aira's novels as they were translated, but I stopped a couple of years ago. "The Linden Tree" is unusual, and now I need to use the present perfect progressive instead of the past perfect progressive: I have been reading Aira, I might still read Aira. It's difficult to get the tense right because Aira's novels inspire a kind of wavering devotion. I have decided that what wavers is my interest in the books as units.
His short novels are famously improvisational and unstructured, so finishing one isn't quite like finishing a normally structured novel: you may feel the book ended on page twenty, or that you've just read a fragment. Both can be true. All hundred or so of Aira's books can be imagined as a single book, although that's more an abstraction than an idea that could make sense in detail. And every one of his books continuously begs the question of why it keeps going, why it doesn't wrap up, why the author thinks the new material he's just introduced fits with what came before.
1 The two main ways of reading Aira
These questions are part of the experience of reading Aira. There is a generous interpretation available, which many of his reviewers adopt: it's said he practices a variant of magic realism (or, more accurately, surrealism), so that every unexpected anecdote or image is to be understood as expressive. In this reading, Aira's accomplishment is his mixture of realism and surrealism (or biography and dream, or history and fantasy). It's also said that Aira's accomplishment is his version of modernist stream of consciousness writing. He calls his method "la huída hacia adelante," or "the constant flight forward." As Alena Graedon put it in "The New Yorker," "Roughly, this means that he writes without rewriting, inventing as he goes" (January 27, 2017). In this reading every turn in subject matter is best seen as an expression of the author's inimitable imagination.
These are unhelpful diagnoses because they make it impossible to criticize any of Aira's narrative decisions. If every unexpected juxtaposition of images is surrealist, then any narrative assemblage can be expressive. If every surprising turn in the storyline is a reflection of the author's vivid fantasy, then none can be criticized for being less authentic.
In fact, I imagine people stop reading Aira because his narratives can get tiresome or uninteresting. He veers unpredictably, but the veering itself is predictable. These are ways of registering that neither the surrealism nor the stream-of-consciousness is working. He has achieved some wonderful things by writing the way he does, without planning and without revising, but he has also produced a body of work that is either immune from criticism or in jeopardy of being ignored.
"The Linden Tree" is unusual in that it's autobiographical. As reviewers have noted, it begins with a story about the undependability of the narrator's memory. He could check part of the memory by visiting the town where he grew up, but he can't be bothered. (He's too "unscientific.") Besides, he says, the subject of his memory--a linden tree--has been cut down (pp. 4-5). On the other hand, his entire life has been a series of "multicolored distractions" from the memory (p. 7). One reviewer of the English translation picked up on this and proposed it as the book's theme: the unreliability and crucial importance of memory.
But the book isn't about the tree. At the end the narrator returns to the linden tree, but that's just a sop to narrative closure. I can't imagine a reading in which those closing pages are satisfying: they don't address or explain what's happened in the 80 pages in between. It's difficult for me to imagine that Aira thought much about what he was doing at the end, except finishing "The Linden Tree" to get on with the next novel: otherwise he would have had his narrator talk about how ineffectual the last few pages are.
It's useful that "The Linden Tree" presents itself as an autobiographical text, because it brings out the importance and place of themes like the retrieval of memory. His other books, as far as I know, are presented as novels, so their themes and theories don't need to drive the narratives. But the ideas of memory that open and close "The Linden Tree" don't explain what happens in "The Linden Tree" in the way, for example, that Proust's narrator's claims about memory in the opening of his novel resonate all the way to the end.
2 An alternative criterion
So what characteristics of Aira could keep me reading? For me those would be the moments when the narrator, and implied author, struggle to make sense.
Aira's essay "Cecil Taylor," in English in "Bomb" magazine (February 13, 2015) provides an interesting parallel. The piece begins with a story about a prostitute. After a couple of paragraphs Aira introduces Taylor. He notes:
"The story of the prostitute who distracted the cat wasn’t necessary in itself, which doesn’t mean that the virtual series of all stories is unnecessary as a whole. The story of Cecil Taylor calls for the illustrative mode of the fable; the details are interchangeable, and atmosphere would seem to be out of place."
This is the sort of general reasoning that critics use to praise Aira's novels. The majority of "Cecil Taylor" is an account of a number of Taylor's early failures, embellished but all plausible. The essay is serious and devout about Taylor, and although Aira doesn't say he's been misunderstood in the same ways, it's clear throughout that Taylor's long decades of partial fame have been on Aira's mind. In another place Aira writes:
"An artist’s biography is hard to distinguish from the trials of its writing: it’s not simply a matter of representing representation (anyone could do that) but of creating unbearable situations in thought."
That idea is much more in line with my own interests, but "unbearable situations" and "trials"--which I understand not as narrative situations but as paradoxical, impossible, or implausible lines of reasoning--are not so much the norm in Aira's writing as entertaining, eccentric, and fortuitous images and thoughts. Here is an example of a passage that has more to do with "unbearable situations" than with "the illustrative mode of the fable." Early in "The Linden Tree" Aira is talking about his father, who was an incompetent electrician:
"My father's continual trips all over town on his bicycle were a kind of allegory of Electricity's invisible flight to the farthest corners... But if you think about it, everything is allegory. One thing signifies another, even the fact that I have ended up becoming a writer and composing this true account." [p. 24]
Of course it's not true that "if you think about it, everything is allegory," but the logical leap barely registers because right away it's clear that Aira is mainly interested in linking his father's profession to his own. It's also patently untrue that everything in the book is "true." There are a number of episodes that couldn't have happened as he describes them, and many more than couldn't have been experienced as he describes them, because they happened to a young boy. So the passing assertion that the account is true reads as a trick: he doesn't want us to think too much about it, and he presumably doesn't want to think about it too much himself. (That would be too "scientific.")
The passage continues:
"To follow the prompts of allegory, which also works by remote control, I too could be practicing a trade for which I am quite unqualified, manipulating objects--memories, for example--of which I know and understand nothing, in a state of utter puzzlement. But that doesn't alter the reality of the facts: my father was an elecrician and I am a writer. These are real allegories."
That last sentence, I think, doesn't make sense. The penultimate sentence does (he is a writer), but it doesn't have anything to do with his story or with allegory. Aira often writes himself into these corners: he theorizes a lot, but he also loses interest in his theories, doesn't link them together, and lets himself happily be led into stories that don't fit any theories.
It's normal to lose the thread of your own thought, to propose a theory and then get confused about it, or to launch into a new subject in hopes that it will reveal why it's pertinent. Few people think in a linear way or keep to a single level of abstraction or concreteness. The many passages in Aira's books that simply enact or exemplify this daily incoherence are sometimes entertaining but in the end uninteresting.
What keeps me reading is passages like the one I quoted, where the narrator is struggling to figure out what makes sense, and how. And this means I won't be reading books by Aira, but I'll be reading in books for certain passages. It's not that I've given up on what he is doing, it's that I understand that by its nature it isn't a project that results in books.
I had been reading Aira's novels as they were translated, but I stopped a couple of years ago. "The Linden Tree" is unusual, and now I need to use the present perfect progressive instead of the past perfect progressive: I have been reading Aira, I might still read Aira. It's difficult to get the tense right because Aira's novels inspire a kind of wavering devotion. I have decided that what wavers is my interest in the books as units.
His short novels are famously improvisational and unstructured, so finishing one isn't quite like finishing a normally structured novel: you may feel the book ended on page twenty, or that you've just read a fragment. Both can be true. All hundred or so of Aira's books can be imagined as a single book, although that's more an abstraction than an idea that could make sense in detail. And every one of his books continuously begs the question of why it keeps going, why it doesn't wrap up, why the author thinks the new material he's just introduced fits with what came before.
1 The two main ways of reading Aira
These questions are part of the experience of reading Aira. There is a generous interpretation available, which many of his reviewers adopt: it's said he practices a variant of magic realism (or, more accurately, surrealism), so that every unexpected anecdote or image is to be understood as expressive. In this reading, Aira's accomplishment is his mixture of realism and surrealism (or biography and dream, or history and fantasy). It's also said that Aira's accomplishment is his version of modernist stream of consciousness writing. He calls his method "la huída hacia adelante," or "the constant flight forward." As Alena Graedon put it in "The New Yorker," "Roughly, this means that he writes without rewriting, inventing as he goes" (January 27, 2017). In this reading every turn in subject matter is best seen as an expression of the author's inimitable imagination.
These are unhelpful diagnoses because they make it impossible to criticize any of Aira's narrative decisions. If every unexpected juxtaposition of images is surrealist, then any narrative assemblage can be expressive. If every surprising turn in the storyline is a reflection of the author's vivid fantasy, then none can be criticized for being less authentic.
In fact, I imagine people stop reading Aira because his narratives can get tiresome or uninteresting. He veers unpredictably, but the veering itself is predictable. These are ways of registering that neither the surrealism nor the stream-of-consciousness is working. He has achieved some wonderful things by writing the way he does, without planning and without revising, but he has also produced a body of work that is either immune from criticism or in jeopardy of being ignored.
"The Linden Tree" is unusual in that it's autobiographical. As reviewers have noted, it begins with a story about the undependability of the narrator's memory. He could check part of the memory by visiting the town where he grew up, but he can't be bothered. (He's too "unscientific.") Besides, he says, the subject of his memory--a linden tree--has been cut down (pp. 4-5). On the other hand, his entire life has been a series of "multicolored distractions" from the memory (p. 7). One reviewer of the English translation picked up on this and proposed it as the book's theme: the unreliability and crucial importance of memory.
But the book isn't about the tree. At the end the narrator returns to the linden tree, but that's just a sop to narrative closure. I can't imagine a reading in which those closing pages are satisfying: they don't address or explain what's happened in the 80 pages in between. It's difficult for me to imagine that Aira thought much about what he was doing at the end, except finishing "The Linden Tree" to get on with the next novel: otherwise he would have had his narrator talk about how ineffectual the last few pages are.
It's useful that "The Linden Tree" presents itself as an autobiographical text, because it brings out the importance and place of themes like the retrieval of memory. His other books, as far as I know, are presented as novels, so their themes and theories don't need to drive the narratives. But the ideas of memory that open and close "The Linden Tree" don't explain what happens in "The Linden Tree" in the way, for example, that Proust's narrator's claims about memory in the opening of his novel resonate all the way to the end.
2 An alternative criterion
So what characteristics of Aira could keep me reading? For me those would be the moments when the narrator, and implied author, struggle to make sense.
Aira's essay "Cecil Taylor," in English in "Bomb" magazine (February 13, 2015) provides an interesting parallel. The piece begins with a story about a prostitute. After a couple of paragraphs Aira introduces Taylor. He notes:
"The story of the prostitute who distracted the cat wasn’t necessary in itself, which doesn’t mean that the virtual series of all stories is unnecessary as a whole. The story of Cecil Taylor calls for the illustrative mode of the fable; the details are interchangeable, and atmosphere would seem to be out of place."
This is the sort of general reasoning that critics use to praise Aira's novels. The majority of "Cecil Taylor" is an account of a number of Taylor's early failures, embellished but all plausible. The essay is serious and devout about Taylor, and although Aira doesn't say he's been misunderstood in the same ways, it's clear throughout that Taylor's long decades of partial fame have been on Aira's mind. In another place Aira writes:
"An artist’s biography is hard to distinguish from the trials of its writing: it’s not simply a matter of representing representation (anyone could do that) but of creating unbearable situations in thought."
That idea is much more in line with my own interests, but "unbearable situations" and "trials"--which I understand not as narrative situations but as paradoxical, impossible, or implausible lines of reasoning--are not so much the norm in Aira's writing as entertaining, eccentric, and fortuitous images and thoughts. Here is an example of a passage that has more to do with "unbearable situations" than with "the illustrative mode of the fable." Early in "The Linden Tree" Aira is talking about his father, who was an incompetent electrician:
"My father's continual trips all over town on his bicycle were a kind of allegory of Electricity's invisible flight to the farthest corners... But if you think about it, everything is allegory. One thing signifies another, even the fact that I have ended up becoming a writer and composing this true account." [p. 24]
Of course it's not true that "if you think about it, everything is allegory," but the logical leap barely registers because right away it's clear that Aira is mainly interested in linking his father's profession to his own. It's also patently untrue that everything in the book is "true." There are a number of episodes that couldn't have happened as he describes them, and many more than couldn't have been experienced as he describes them, because they happened to a young boy. So the passing assertion that the account is true reads as a trick: he doesn't want us to think too much about it, and he presumably doesn't want to think about it too much himself. (That would be too "scientific.")
The passage continues:
"To follow the prompts of allegory, which also works by remote control, I too could be practicing a trade for which I am quite unqualified, manipulating objects--memories, for example--of which I know and understand nothing, in a state of utter puzzlement. But that doesn't alter the reality of the facts: my father was an elecrician and I am a writer. These are real allegories."
That last sentence, I think, doesn't make sense. The penultimate sentence does (he is a writer), but it doesn't have anything to do with his story or with allegory. Aira often writes himself into these corners: he theorizes a lot, but he also loses interest in his theories, doesn't link them together, and lets himself happily be led into stories that don't fit any theories.
It's normal to lose the thread of your own thought, to propose a theory and then get confused about it, or to launch into a new subject in hopes that it will reveal why it's pertinent. Few people think in a linear way or keep to a single level of abstraction or concreteness. The many passages in Aira's books that simply enact or exemplify this daily incoherence are sometimes entertaining but in the end uninteresting.
What keeps me reading is passages like the one I quoted, where the narrator is struggling to figure out what makes sense, and how. And this means I won't be reading books by Aira, but I'll be reading in books for certain passages. It's not that I've given up on what he is doing, it's that I understand that by its nature it isn't a project that results in books.
February 5, 2018
Read my review at The Literary Sisters.
César Aira’s The Lime Tree is the first (December’s) Asymptote book club pick and a book I had heard absolutely nothing about before receiving it. Aira is an incredibly prolific Argentinian author, having published around 80 books and being one of the most lauded Latin American authors – facts which made me ashamed for not having heard of him before but very happy to have finally come into contact with his writing. According to the book’s jacket, Aira’s writing ‘is marked by extreme eccentricity and innovation, as well as an aesthetic restlessness and a playful spirit’.
The Lime Tree is a very short novella (or novelita as it is called at the back of the book – such an adorable term!) of 106 pages and yet it is so hard to describe it accurately. While not mentioned anywhere as an autobiographical work, it is evident that many elements of the author’s life have been transplanted in his narration, the place (Pringles, Argentina), age and first-person narration being some indicative features.
One of the reasons why this book is so hard to describe is probably because there is no specific plot to it. Instead, the novelita consists of the author/narrator’s thoughts, memories and reminiscences, the point of departure of which is the plethora of lime trees the narrator sees at the Plaza in his hometown, Pringles, which remind him of his father and how he used to gather the lime tree’s leaves or flowers in order to make tea which helped with his insomnia. From that point on, the narrator tells us about his family – his dark-skinned father with his supposed ‘other family’, his deformed but imposing mother and his childhood years which were shaped by the Peronist political movement.
I truly enjoyed how the author managed to give so much cultural, social and political information about the time his story took place without resorting to actual history recitations or mere recounting of historical facts. Aira very skillfully intertwines his story with Argentina’s history and context (perhaps because the country’s history is so deeply embedded in the author’s personal story) that even people like me who knew nothing about Peronism prior to this book, leave enriched and satisfied.
Aira’s writing style is very pleasant to read. Perhaps due to the nature of this particular novelita the prose was a bit dense at parts and the narrator’s frequent stream-of-consciousness method might not entice all readers, but I’m sure the short length of this book will make up for its shortcomings. Although there were fragments of magical realism here, I would love to explore other works by this author where magical realism is even more prominent. Certainly, one out of 80 books of Aira’s oeuvre is nothing sort of representative, and I am more than excited to read more of his books in the near future.
César Aira’s The Lime Tree is the first (December’s) Asymptote book club pick and a book I had heard absolutely nothing about before receiving it. Aira is an incredibly prolific Argentinian author, having published around 80 books and being one of the most lauded Latin American authors – facts which made me ashamed for not having heard of him before but very happy to have finally come into contact with his writing. According to the book’s jacket, Aira’s writing ‘is marked by extreme eccentricity and innovation, as well as an aesthetic restlessness and a playful spirit’.
The Lime Tree is a very short novella (or novelita as it is called at the back of the book – such an adorable term!) of 106 pages and yet it is so hard to describe it accurately. While not mentioned anywhere as an autobiographical work, it is evident that many elements of the author’s life have been transplanted in his narration, the place (Pringles, Argentina), age and first-person narration being some indicative features.
One of the reasons why this book is so hard to describe is probably because there is no specific plot to it. Instead, the novelita consists of the author/narrator’s thoughts, memories and reminiscences, the point of departure of which is the plethora of lime trees the narrator sees at the Plaza in his hometown, Pringles, which remind him of his father and how he used to gather the lime tree’s leaves or flowers in order to make tea which helped with his insomnia. From that point on, the narrator tells us about his family – his dark-skinned father with his supposed ‘other family’, his deformed but imposing mother and his childhood years which were shaped by the Peronist political movement.
Babies, by their very nature, are in a sense little monsters; I might have turned out to be a dwarf or to have needed spectacles […] I was human plasma, unpredictable and protean, like Peronism.
I truly enjoyed how the author managed to give so much cultural, social and political information about the time his story took place without resorting to actual history recitations or mere recounting of historical facts. Aira very skillfully intertwines his story with Argentina’s history and context (perhaps because the country’s history is so deeply embedded in the author’s personal story) that even people like me who knew nothing about Peronism prior to this book, leave enriched and satisfied.
Aira’s writing style is very pleasant to read. Perhaps due to the nature of this particular novelita the prose was a bit dense at parts and the narrator’s frequent stream-of-consciousness method might not entice all readers, but I’m sure the short length of this book will make up for its shortcomings. Although there were fragments of magical realism here, I would love to explore other works by this author where magical realism is even more prominent. Certainly, one out of 80 books of Aira’s oeuvre is nothing sort of representative, and I am more than excited to read more of his books in the near future.
How could we have changed so much, if everything was still the same? It all seemed too much the same, in fact. I felt nostalgic for time itself, which the Plaza’s spatial stories made as unattainable as the sky. I was no longer the small child who had gone with his father to collect lime blossom, and yet I still was. Something seemed to be within my grasp, and with the right kind of effort, I felt that I might be able to reach out and take a hold of it, like a ripe fruit… so I set out to recover that old self.
December 11, 2020
Aira's work is described in this thoughtful article as "nearly indescribable in its lunatic variety" which seems about right. The only other of his I've read, The Seamstress and the Wind, is hallucinogenic... and obviously not without logic, although I don't think I really got it. That article includes this, which I found helpful in confirming that Aira does indeed make sense, if you look at him hard enough:
The Lime Tree, or The Linden in some formats, is relatively straightforward, a memoir with political edges and (the start of a) Künstlerroman, and anyway vivid and fluid. Lovely, in fact. As to the meaning (mothers, fathers, electricity as metaphor for the creative process?, the decrepit palace of imagination), that will take a little more thought but I feel it might be within reach. I suspect that with Aira you need to read dozens of his little novels to understand even one. Interesting marketing technique.
Aira declares that “even nonsense cannot escape the gravitational law of sense”—a premise that licenses him in a bravura, half-mad series of close readings of Lear’s first 50 limericks. What should be an unbearable exercise becomes an astonishing display of interpretive ingenuity. “There was an Old Man of Kilkenny / Who never had more than a penny; / He spent all that money / In onions and honey / That wayward Old Man of Kilkenny”: when Aira announces that these lines are a meditation on “concentration and dispersion,” one wants to laugh in disbelief—until he shows how Lear first doubles down on the formal tightness of the limerick with a thematics of scarcity and hunger, then “opens an incongruous epic panorama on this Irish desolation” with the Greek-sounding onions and honey, and finally pushes the poem further into the orbit of Odyssean wandering with the apparently unmotivated choice of the word “wayward” in the final line. Aira’s quasi-Talmudic interpretations of Lear achieve a cumulative intensity, as this aggressively minor literary figure stands revealed as a poet of improbable stature. A collateral effect, of course, is to send you back to Aira’s own work with a renewed conviction that he is a deadly serious artist.
The Lime Tree, or The Linden in some formats, is relatively straightforward, a memoir with political edges and (the start of a) Künstlerroman, and anyway vivid and fluid. Lovely, in fact. As to the meaning (mothers, fathers, electricity as metaphor for the creative process?, the decrepit palace of imagination), that will take a little more thought but I feel it might be within reach. I suspect that with Aira you need to read dozens of his little novels to understand even one. Interesting marketing technique.
November 1, 2017
the fifteenth of césar aira's many books (over eighty!) to be translated into english, the linden tree (el tilo) is a "fictional memoir" of growing up in coronel pringles during the post-perón era. entirely devoid of the genre-shifting narrative for which the prolific argentine author is well known, aira's novella offers glimpses and recollections of his parents, small-town life, and near poverty. while grateful for any autobiographical insight (however fictionalized) into the life of an enigmatic writer, the linden tree provides mere sketches, reminiscences, and a fondness for childhood memories. nonetheless, hit or miss, aira is always a delight to read and each new english-language entry commands an ardent look.
*translated from the spanish by chris andrews (bolaño, et al.)
a child's father is a model, a mirror, and a hope. more than that, he's a typical man, a specimen of fully formed, adult humanity. a kind of adam constructed from all the fragments of the world that the child progressively comes to know. it's hardly surprising that some parts don't fit and the whole turns out to be rather mysterious. the father is like a big, complex riddle whose answers appear one by one over the course of the child's life. i would even venture to say that those answers are our instructions for living.
*translated from the spanish by chris andrews (bolaño, et al.)
April 5, 2019
Un libro maravilloso. Mi primer Aira, quiero seguir con otro, es adictivo. Lean El tilo. Lean a Aira.
June 13, 2021
The narrator recaptures the lost world of his adolescence, as Aira conjures up the drudgery of life in Pringles, a town of small minds and smaller dreams, but which one young teenager is able to transform into a fairy-tale kingdom, a kingdom of all-powerful book-keepers, of his dwarfish mother and 'black' father, whose eccentricities stand in stark contrast ordinariness of their neighbours, a city whose fragrant lime blossom is able to sedate his hyper-active father and take the narrator back to his youth. 'The Lime Tree' contains many of the better aspects of Aira's fiction, from his irreverent sense-of-humour or his dry observations on the drudgery of daily life, but it lacks some of the punch and brilliance of his other stories. Enjoyable, but not memorable, 'The Lime Tree' is the kind of book which will quickly fade from the reader's memory and not even the taste of lime blossom tea is likely to bring it back,.
June 1, 2021
This short fictionalised memoir is ideal for a single sitting, a couple of hours of reading.
I’ve only read Aira in the last year, and have managed 5 of his in that time. In each one he continues to demonstrate his versatility.
This is set in the small town of Pringles in Argentina and concerns the narrator’s early years as he tries to understand his parents and his family’s place in society. Though not autobiographical, the timeline matches Aira’s own birth, the looming spectre of Peronism at the heart of his writing. He would have been 7 years old when the coup to overthrown Peron took place.
Touches of absurdity and subtle humour grace the chapterless pages, but nothing like the amount in his more outrageous work. This has its feet on the ground. In particular, the descriptions of his father’s quirkiness and his work as the town’s first electrician linger.
For me, very readable and enjoyable, but not one of Aira’s best. I like them outrageous.
I’ve read in a few media reviews that it’s a good starting point for Aira. I disagree, better to come later to it. Better, something like The Proof.
I’ve only read Aira in the last year, and have managed 5 of his in that time. In each one he continues to demonstrate his versatility.
This is set in the small town of Pringles in Argentina and concerns the narrator’s early years as he tries to understand his parents and his family’s place in society. Though not autobiographical, the timeline matches Aira’s own birth, the looming spectre of Peronism at the heart of his writing. He would have been 7 years old when the coup to overthrown Peron took place.
Touches of absurdity and subtle humour grace the chapterless pages, but nothing like the amount in his more outrageous work. This has its feet on the ground. In particular, the descriptions of his father’s quirkiness and his work as the town’s first electrician linger.
About my father’s earlier life, I never discovered anything, and I didn’t dare to ask. Somehow he had managed to create the impression, among the three of us, that the slightest movement of his thoughts in the direction of the past would trigger an irreversible nervous breakdown. Like those drive mechanisms with a fixed pinion that simply cannot operate in reverse.
For me, very readable and enjoyable, but not one of Aira’s best. I like them outrageous.
I’ve read in a few media reviews that it’s a good starting point for Aira. I disagree, better to come later to it. Better, something like The Proof.
February 21, 2018
Part of the thrill of reading a book by Cesar Aira is the headlong rush. They loop around timewise, twist their own metaphors, and hurtle us through strange tunnels. I generally try to read them through in one or two days.
This was one of Aira's more satisfying novellas. The narrator examines his own understanding of his childhood and explores how his role as a storyteller shapes his memory. Along the way, race, politics, poverty, and art are swept into the inquiry.
He suggests a meaning to his central image, then questions it and circles it, capturing social forces and how they invert the symbolism of each life.
There's a lot going on under the surface of this free-flowing remembrance. Honestly, I wasn't able to figure it all out, but I'm determined to return to the book soon to see what other secrets it turns up. I trust what Aira is doing here.
This was one of Aira's more satisfying novellas. The narrator examines his own understanding of his childhood and explores how his role as a storyteller shapes his memory. Along the way, race, politics, poverty, and art are swept into the inquiry.
He suggests a meaning to his central image, then questions it and circles it, capturing social forces and how they invert the symbolism of each life.
There's a lot going on under the surface of this free-flowing remembrance. Honestly, I wasn't able to figure it all out, but I'm determined to return to the book soon to see what other secrets it turns up. I trust what Aira is doing here.
June 30, 2022
Enjoyed reading this nice, quiet book today, four days after testing positive for Covid-19: fever of 103 F has past, throat's a bit less scratchy, tho head still feels unduly pressurized. ... Aira's little novelita -- ostensibly something like fictionalized memoir -- is about growing up in the West -- living within systems of category & logic -- our Aristotelian inheritance -- and the boons and limitations native to these systems. Probably the key to this work is a connection that is not named within it -- namely, that the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, grew up beneath (and took his name from) a towering linden tree on his father's estate.
August 28, 2024
I liked the boy's story of trying to piece together his father and his family without being given any facts or words from either parent to help him.
As a child he felt things rather than knew them, he felt his father was different because he was black, handsome, and had another family.
The description of his mum from the child's point of view is very revealing -she was white, disabled, almost a dwarf with very few redeeming features -it was a town's mystery how and why they had come together.
set in Argentina before and after the Peron era
One of the reasons why this book is so hard to describe is probably because there is no specific plot to it. the story comprises the author/narrator’s thoughts, memories, and reminiscences -he also re-reads or edited his thoughts.
As a child he felt things rather than knew them, he felt his father was different because he was black, handsome, and had another family.
The description of his mum from the child's point of view is very revealing -she was white, disabled, almost a dwarf with very few redeeming features -it was a town's mystery how and why they had come together.
set in Argentina before and after the Peron era
One of the reasons why this book is so hard to describe is probably because there is no specific plot to it. the story comprises the author/narrator’s thoughts, memories, and reminiscences -he also re-reads or edited his thoughts.
January 7, 2018
César Aira is a hugely prolific Argentinian writer – who in my ignorance was completely new to me. Born in 1949 in Coronel Pringles; Buenos Aires Province, where this novella takes place, he produces between two and four novella length books each year, and has previously been a Man Booker International finalist.
The Lime Tree is in some ways an ambiguous work, it could very well be a memoir of the author himself, certainly it feels very personal, the narrator is even the same age. A story of memory it also touches slightly on magical reality in a continuous narrative which Aira is sometimes hard to get a handle on.The Lime Tree is a novel which is hard to review – in that not a huge amount happens – it is highly nuanced and tenderly written.
The novel opens with a glorious image – that of ten thousand lime trees in a plaza in Coronel Pringles.
“My father, who suffered from chronic insomnia, would go to the Plaza with a bag at the beginning of summer to collect the lime’s little flowers, which he then dried and used to make tea that he drank at night, after dinner.”
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
The Lime Tree is in some ways an ambiguous work, it could very well be a memoir of the author himself, certainly it feels very personal, the narrator is even the same age. A story of memory it also touches slightly on magical reality in a continuous narrative which Aira is sometimes hard to get a handle on.The Lime Tree is a novel which is hard to review – in that not a huge amount happens – it is highly nuanced and tenderly written.
The novel opens with a glorious image – that of ten thousand lime trees in a plaza in Coronel Pringles.
“My father, who suffered from chronic insomnia, would go to the Plaza with a bag at the beginning of summer to collect the lime’s little flowers, which he then dried and used to make tea that he drank at night, after dinner.”
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
November 11, 2020
Demasiadas críticas en inglés, y eso que Aira decía que el que no es argentino puede perderse muchas referencias. Pero que se nombre a Peron en la novelita es un detallito. Lo que importa aca es que el que narra esta recordando su niñez, con todas sus macanas, su particular forma de ver las cosas, esa inocencia e imaginación que caracteriza a cualquier chico.
Ese pasaje, donde narra uno de esos juegos de niño tan inocentes, el que el llama "el juego de las esquinas", pensé que lo había jugado yo de chico. Tan grabado lo tenía en la cabeza que llegue a admitir en frente de otras personas que era un recuerdo de una vivencia y no de una lectura. Es que, a quien si no a un niño se le podría ocurrir tal cosa? y como yo no estuve nunca en la mente de ningun niño más que el que fui hace tiempo, asumí que era yo el que jugaba aquel juego. Y fue culpa del libro.
En fin, este relato tan corto y tan precioso siempre me saca una sonrisa. No se priven de leerlo, es cortito y está lleno de imaginación.
Ese pasaje, donde narra uno de esos juegos de niño tan inocentes, el que el llama "el juego de las esquinas", pensé que lo había jugado yo de chico. Tan grabado lo tenía en la cabeza que llegue a admitir en frente de otras personas que era un recuerdo de una vivencia y no de una lectura. Es que, a quien si no a un niño se le podría ocurrir tal cosa? y como yo no estuve nunca en la mente de ningun niño más que el que fui hace tiempo, asumí que era yo el que jugaba aquel juego. Y fue culpa del libro.
En fin, este relato tan corto y tan precioso siempre me saca una sonrisa. No se priven de leerlo, es cortito y está lleno de imaginación.
September 6, 2018
Of the Aira books I've read thus far, Linden Tree is probably the most accessible -- despite changing topics seemingly every other paragraph for 80 pages, the text stays grounded in a series of anecdotes from a narrator (perhaps Aira himself) talking about his youth in Argentina. The narrator's main concerns surround his excitable father's estrangement from the town in which their family lived, as well as the political climate of the time period. I wouldn't say I was as completely gobsmacked by this as I usually expect to be when I pick up an Aira novel, but I can't really think of too many other authors who could have so expertly lead a reader through what is essentially a rambling free-association experiment. There's also a lot here about parent-child relationships and small-town life that is particularly, painfully acute. If the book was less than 5 stars, it's only in comparison to his larger body of work. It's still very engaging, readable, thought-provoking stuff.
February 13, 2012
Excelente novelita autobiográfica o símil-autobiográfica. Es la primera vez que me encuentro con un estilo tan directamente personal en una obra de Aira, y debo decir que no me defraudó. Mantiene esa cualidad irresistible de todas sus novelas, ese afán de escritura permanente, pero le da una vuelta reflexiva sin caer en el onanismo intelectual de otros. Las reflexiones políticas y urbano-históricas sobre Coronel Pringles son exquisitas. La mirada sobre el peronismo, deforme e implacable. Todo encaja. La cerrás y pensás: qué maestro.
August 15, 2013
1 estrella, me incomoda calificar con una estrella, una estrella, pero que esta mal escrito (NO, Aira escribe muy bien), la historia no cierra ( si al final ponele que la ''historia'' cierra) , ese es el problema , el libro no va a ningun lado,es una novela? que se yo....me parecieron un monton de palabras juntas, alguna idea, nada mas. Lo siento pero fue casi interminable. NO es una novela , es una autobiografia mal disfrazada , es decir ni lo uno ni lo otro.
June 12, 2019
I was deeply entranced by this novella about a fictional young boy in the middle of the 20th century in Argentina. It’s a time where the Péron era has ended and the Peronistas have been ousted from power, even the name itself is not allowed. The narrator recounts his life growing up, allegedly fictional, but seems to parallel the author himself. The book is very moving and the translation is excellent. I can’t get past the cover though. I’ve seen few covers more stunning.
June 13, 2019
I really looked forward to reading this book by one of Argentina’s most famous authors. There were a couple of passages that made me smile mildly. Aira’s memories of his father picking the blossoms from the linden tree were sweet. All in all it felt like a jumble of incomplete and not too memorable thoughts. I kept hoping from page to page that I would find the book charming, or at least memorable. It just didn’t happen for me.
March 8, 2019
Rather like sitting around with a friend or guest who's a really good story teller, no matter how insignificant the actual story, being entertaining as they ramble on. I enjoy this sort of plotless meandering but it's not for everyone.
September 30, 2020
Hermosa novela. La infancia en Pringles y muchas reflexiones acerca de las familias en el post peronismo, entre otras cosas, todo con las particulares del universo Aira.
Me pareció excelsa por donde se la mire.
Me pareció excelsa por donde se la mire.
November 4, 2018
Uno de los mejores de Aira, contandonos en retrospectiva todas sus travesuras de niño, sus juegos y el fin de la inocencia.
August 17, 2021
I felt nice while reading this one
June 14, 2023
Bellísimo y nostálgico. Leer a Aira siempre es una caricia al alma.
July 14, 2021
The Linden Tree by César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews, is a short book that contains volumes: a poetic, musing almost-memoir (or autobiographical novel—the bios are not clear) about a young boy growing up in Pringles, Argentina, and narrated by the man now looking back at his youth.
It's a philosophical tale about how we discover 'the way things are,' about the first experience of nostalgia as a young person, about time and the strange ways it acts. We have a strange relationship to the past and to history, and the young narrator witnessed this in real time: when he was small, Perón was in charge and his father was responsible for turning on the lights of their town; just a few years later, the Revolución Libertadora banned the Peronist party. Philosophical musings—when did the comma come into existence, and what did it change? when you first discover that 2+2=4, are you truly discovering it, or just understanding something you already sort of knew?—shed light on questions of history and silence, of the ways that some people look towards the future and others to the past, of the ways that small towns weave their own realities, of the ways that people want to think they have a say in their own stories.
It was a short 91 pages, but they made me dig deep and think. I think this one will be due eventually for a reread; I'll be thinking about it for a while.
It's a philosophical tale about how we discover 'the way things are,' about the first experience of nostalgia as a young person, about time and the strange ways it acts. We have a strange relationship to the past and to history, and the young narrator witnessed this in real time: when he was small, Perón was in charge and his father was responsible for turning on the lights of their town; just a few years later, the Revolución Libertadora banned the Peronist party. Philosophical musings—when did the comma come into existence, and what did it change? when you first discover that 2+2=4, are you truly discovering it, or just understanding something you already sort of knew?—shed light on questions of history and silence, of the ways that some people look towards the future and others to the past, of the ways that small towns weave their own realities, of the ways that people want to think they have a say in their own stories.
It was a short 91 pages, but they made me dig deep and think. I think this one will be due eventually for a reread; I'll be thinking about it for a while.
July 25, 2019
Sigo intentando comprender que escribe Aira. En este caso, una mirada al pasado, una niñez lejos de las grandes ciudades, donde una generación +40 puede reconocer algo de su propia historia. Todavía no podría decir a que género pertenece, pero puedo decir que describe vividas imágenes que indefectiblemente te ubican en medio de la escena.
May 8, 2024
Set in the small town of Coronel Pringles, Argentina, where the author was born, the narrator’s early years are revealed via interwoven anecdotes, without chapter breaks, mirroring in a sense the in-the-moment of childhood, glimpses of the narrator’s past rather than a reconstruction of it. It’s a pseudo-memoir, that I assume also shares some elements of Aira’s own life, in which the specter of Peronism would have been centered. Pringles still feels the effects of Peronism, despite the coup that overthrew and exiled Peron; indeed the townspeople do their best to avoid thinking of the past, the hopes that Peron would raise their own lives. A fast and fascinating read.
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