Artforum

by César Aira, Katherine Silver (Translator)

Overview

One man’s obsession with Artforum magazine takes us on a hilarious journey to the ultimate meaning of the very creation of art

Artforum is certainly one of César Aira’s most charming, quirky, and funny books to date. Consisting of a series of interrelated stories about his compulsion to collect Artforum magazine, this is not about art so much as it is about passionate obsession. At first we follow our hapless collector from magazine shops to used bookstores hunting for copies of Artforum. A friend alerts him to a copy somewhere and he obsesses about actually going to get it—will the shop be open, will the copy already be sold? Finally he takes out a subscription, but then it never comes, so he hounds the mailman. There’s the day his stash of Artforums gets rained on, but only one absorbs the water. And interspersed is a wacky chapter about the mystery of the broken clothespins. “How weird.” “How crazy.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811229265
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	4.60(w) x 7.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

César 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 100 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 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 addition to winning the 2021 Formentor Prize, he has received a Guggenheim scholarship, and was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos prize and the Booker International Prize.

 

Katherine Silver's award-winning translations include works by María Sonia Cristoff, Daniel Sada, César Aira, Julio Cortázar, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Julio Ramón Ribeyro. The author of Echo Under Story, she volunteers as an interpreter for asylum seekers.

Editorial Reviews

12/16/2019

Aira’s clever, whimsical collection of autofiction (after The Musical Brain) draws on the author’s obsessive 30-year-long pursuit of collecting the international art magazine Artforum. Initially able to obtain issues in Argentina only by chance, Aira comes to believe the glossy objects are enchanted by “divine automatism” after one volume shape-shifts into a form resembling a soccer ball, having absorbed the rain from an open window and keeping his other magazines dry, “like a magical and heroic solider.” After exhausting a search for new issues in local bookstores, he orders a subscription, only to face an interminable wait for new issues. As they trickle in from the U.S., he begins counting down the days to each issue’s expected arrival date. He travels to a used bookstore in Buenos Aires to buy a stack of back issues that belonged to a dead gallery owner, and as his patience grows thin, he decides to make his own version of the magazine. As Aira illuminates the dead ends in his drive to collect the magazine, he offers rich insight into the appreciation of art and the desire to possess. This entertaining jaunt through the writer’s creative development satisfies with brevity and grace. Agent: Michael Gaeb. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Aira is unencumbered. He does what he does, and what we receive is giddy, unquestionably self-indulgent, and yet absolutely perfect...For a novella like Artforum, one doesn't need to reach deep into the toolkit of literary theory. Aira creates his own epistemology. It's marvelous to witness."

NPR - Kamil Ahsan

"[W]hile the volume may be slim, it is a surprisingly rich work. For those who have not read him, it is also an excellent place to start a relationship."

4Columns - Reinaldo Laddaga

"I can think of no other writer as concerned with formal and thematic questions of pace (not of time, but of the various speeds at which we feel time pacing): not only are the individual books quick-moving, but he’s published over a hundred of them, with no signs of slowing down."

Frieze - Steven Zultanski

"Artforum, the newest work by César Aira to be published in the U.S., is one of the most fascinating experiences in modern literature. A novel that synthesizes surrealism, pseudo-memoir, philosophy, and theater into the compact space of eighty-two pages, it somehow still retains the fluttery and playful tone that makes this book so enjoyable to read."

Rain Taxi

"Aira’s cubist eye sees from every angle."

The New York Times Book Review - Patti Smith

"His novels are more meaningful when taken together, each a shard of the same symbolic object. Artforum is a minor work that creates a minor cosmos, and in so doing feels — like the rest of Aira, and the best of art — major."

The Los Angeles Times - Tyler Malone

"César Aira is an experimental Argentinian author whose short fiction is often funny and always mind-boggling. His new novella, Artforum, is an excellent entrypoint into his wild body of work."

GQ

2019-12-23
A collection of stories about one writer's obsession with, of all things, a magazine, attainable but difficult to find in a way he often finds maddening.

Argentinian writer Aira (Birthday, 2019, etc.) has produced more than 100 books, a good number of which have been translated into English. His works tend to be slim and offbeat—a zombie novel here (Dinner, 2015), a kidnapping there (Ema the Captive, 2016)—but they're always eminently readable. Even this one, which is, yes, pretty much about hunting down a magazine and then, after having taken out a subscription, waiting for it to come in the mail. Is this fiction, as it's labeled, or nonfiction? Aira's work is so personal and frequently peculiar that it doesn't make much of a difference. He's spent a couple of decades thinking about Artforum, judging by the dates at the end of each story—not so much about the magazine's content as his difficult quest to obtain it. Naturally, he turns each interaction into a beautifully crafted experience, even in the most banal circumstances. Take the opener, "The Sacrifice," written in 1983, in which an issue of Artforum saves the narrator's other diligently acquired magazines from a particularly vicious rainstorm. Later there are contemplations of the magazine's price, translated here by Silver as $10, and the personal glory of finally getting a subscription. In 2002, a short-tempered writer goes searching for a trove of Artforums spotted, by happenstance, by a friend. "Conjectures" and "Melancholy" describe the narrator's state of mind while he waits impatiently for the next issue to arrive in the mail. The writer's obsession with the magazine is also explained in the context of his life, in which he's always had "the problem of empty time, of ominous afternoons like the open mouth of an abyss." This book is a slim affair, but for those who want to understand the mindset of an authentic collector, it comes straight from the heart.

A marvelous little collection about compulsion, obsession, and the extraordinary joy that a simple pleasure can bring.

Kirkus Reviews