{"id":298456,"date":"2014-06-27T17:57:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T17:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/06\/27\/uruguay-vs-costa-rica-world-cup-of-literature-first-round\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:12:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:12:38","slug":"uruguay-vs-costa-rica-world-cup-of-literature-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/06\/27\/uruguay-vs-costa-rica-world-cup-of-literature-first-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Uruguay vs. Costa Rica [World Cup of Literature: First Round]"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

This match was judged by Kaija Straumanis. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this,<\/a> and download<\/a> the bracket.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of my personal concerns going into the World Cup of Literature was ending up with a book I had already read\u2014something that quickly became not an issue at all, since out of the 32 representing titles I\u2019d read a whopping one of them. ONE<\/span>. So, unlike many of my fellow judges, I entered this with zero biases (unlike the Real World Cup, where GERMANY<\/span> ALL<\/span> THE<\/span> WAY<\/span>! You done got jawohled, USA<\/span>) or existing knowledge. Which definitely made this a partly disconnected and partly ridiculous\u2014but wholly entertaining\u2014experience.<\/p>\n

Representing Costa Rica in this literary matchup is \u00d3scar N\u00fa\u00f1ez Olivas\u2019s Cadence of the Moon<\/em>, which is based on the first known serial killer of Costa Rica, and is pretty much the only book written in that country, ever1<\/a><\/sup>. Among other things, it\u2019s filled with chauvinism, smoking, and a lot of sultry women with huge racks who just don\u2019t seem to get laid enough or at the right time. It\u2019s also filled with some of the weirdest, non-standard narrative descriptors I have ever, ever read. (More on that later.)<\/p>\n

To put the structure of Cadence of the Moon<\/em> simply, think All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>, but with crappy journalism, better hair, ritualistic violence, and if Watergate had ended with everyone saying \u201cSo do we know who our culprit is? No? Oh, okay. Well . . . Hey look at how cool the moon is!\u201d<\/p>\n

And in case you want to know what Costa Rica was like in the mid 1990s, serial killings aside, Cadence lays on the sexism: Maricruz, our Journalist Extraordinaire and one of the main protagonists, barters with her editor, Juan Jos\u00e9 Montero, for the right to cover the story of the Psycopath murders for\u2014any guesses?\u2014a kiss:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf you want to cover [the story], I\u2019ll give it to you but the price is a little taste of those goodies.\u201d He indicated her lips by pursing his own, musty, nicotine-stained ones.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even though this disgusting display of, well, everything, ends up being more of a \u201cfriendly\u201d teasing tactic the editor uses to rev up his employees, it\u2019s apparently entirely normal; Maricruz proceeds to tells off her boss, who laughs, then they exchange a few more comments on the case, and then he gives her the assignment. No one gets slapped, no one gets fired. Same old, same old in Costa Rica. Then Maricruz is advised by her colleages to cozy up to the cop working the case, Gustavo . . . And no they don\u2019t bang. Poor, curvy Maricruz. The plot is stilted, the characters frustratingly simple\u2014and this is a novel sparked by a serial killer. Nixon\u2019s shady doings dropped a far more interesting plot-brick than this. And what kind of gets me about this is that N\u00fa\u00f1ez Olivas himself is a journalist. There\u2019s even an ironic section later on, in which the newspaper\u2019s owner, Mr. Grey, is insulting Juan Jos\u00e9 Montero\u2019s staff, and Montero comes to his employee\u2019s aid, saying something along the lines of \u201cWhat do you think this is, the Washington Post?\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Within the first 40 pages of this book, Cadence<\/em> has scored an embarrassing, slow-rolling self-goal, putting Costa Rica up 1-0 before anything really even happens. And oh, by the way, NOTHING<\/span> EVER<\/span> HAPPENS<\/span>. At this point I\u2019m begging for someone to get bitten. But oh no, Uruguay keeps its mouth shut as Cadence<\/em> continues to make things worse for itself, progressing from being Woodword and Bernstein\u2019s Aspergersy, Canadian second-cousin to Dan Brown\u2019s Post-it covered, Montessori-bound lovechild. I once listened to The Lost Symbol<\/em> on a two-day drive from New York to Minnesota, and 10 hours into my drive I was about to lose my shit because no one had died, nothing major had happened, the plot hadn\u2019t gone anywhere, I was in Indiana, by myself, and with a guaranteed twelve more hours left of that awful, awful book. GAH<\/span>! <\/p>\n

Clearly, lots of PTSD<\/span> cropping up while working through Cadence.<\/em> But then, out of completely nowhere, Costa Rica whips out its shiny bits. This otherwise boring, sluggish, based-on-real-events novel with a cover that smacks of self-publishing, suddenly started spitting out some of the most curious, awkward, brilliant sentences like:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d Maricruz lit up with the brilliance that is seen in the faces of adventurers, archeologists and taxonomists.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Whatever taxonomy N\u00fa\u00f1ez Olivas has researched, it must be goddamn glorious. Classify these samples, you say? Sure thing\u2014just give me a second in the bathroom alone with this spreadsheet . . .)<\/p>\n

And:<\/p>\n

\n

[Camila] is twisting like a snake, gyrating, licking her lips. She lifts a breast with her right hand and offers it to me. \u201cSuck it!\u201d her half-open lips seem to say, although she says nothing, she just offers the large, dark breast, whose formidable hardness is a last glory amid so much ruin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Sweet Jesus. Is this guy about to get pistol-whipped by some cougar\u2019s fake tit as she trashes epileptically on top of him like a charmed cobra? For his sake, I\u2019m hoping N\u00fa\u00f1ez Olivas is either a virgin, or gay, because no sexually active straight man should ever have to experience this, or know how to describe it so vividly.)<\/p>\n

And:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a date!\u201d Gustavo exclaimed in the voice of someone announcing the arrival of aliens.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(This sentence both baffles and tickles me. What does it sound like when you announce the arrival of aliens? Fear? Surprise? Arousal? All of the above? I\u2019m going to use this tone the to announce to someone I won\u2019t be paying back their $20.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just such a wacky brand of specificity to the writing at times that does seem journalistic in its descriptive nature, but is so, so entirely off in terms of human behavior and real-life situations. No book should read like this, no sentences this entertaining should be embedded in something so blah. And yet, I kind of love it.<\/p>\n

Costa Rica points to the sky and then flicks Uruguay in their dongles while the ref isn\u2019t looking, and equalizes during the commotion. The score is now 1-1.<\/p>\n

Uruguay\u2019s representative, Mario Benedetti, ends up being somewhat of a dark horse. It\u2019s not often that I\u2019m compelled to sit and read a 300-page book of short stories in one go, but Benedetti manages to keep things relatively interesting, very smooth, fairly metered, and overall well-trained. The Rest Is Jungle & Other Stories<\/em> is a fair opponent, blending various narrative voices with various themes\u2014political, social, gender roles\u2014and even though the text itself isn\u2019t that mind-blowing, the stories roll at a steady and clean pace.<\/p>\n

What Uruguay had in this case that Costa Rica didn\u2019t was presence. It can be hard to pit a historical-type novel against short stories, but short story collections can so often work against themselves. The Rest Is Jungle<\/em> is a collection that knows what it\u2019s doing, where it\u2019s going, where it\u2019s from. (Unlike Benedetti, apparently, who writes in an epigraph: \u201cWe are a small nook of America which has neither oil, nor Indians, nor minerals, nor volcanoes, nor even an army dedicated to coups. We are a small country of short stories.\u201d Oh honey. America? You\u2019re Argentina\u2019s fanny-pack at best.)<\/p>\n

From the very first story, Benedetti establishes his abilities to switch narrative voice. His narrators move from a precocious cleaning lady who decides to marry her way into the rich family she once worked for, to a dog observing its owners argue, to two boys sneaking into a ceiling passageway over a sports or youth club to spy on girls in the showers. The stories alternate from amusing to disturbing, from familiar to uncomfortable. <\/p>\n

One of the most poignant stories was \u201cThe Cups,\u201d in which a woman, her husband, and his brother are sitting in the living room about to have coffee. The husband has some kind of disease that has rendered him blind. At the time of the story, the three are sitting around, talking, trying to convince the husband to go to the doctor for a check-up, which he refuses to do. The three make conversation, and then we learn\u2014and see\u2014that the brother-in-law has been recently comforting the wife; we see him silently massaging her neck, cupping the back of her head in his hand, simple touches that give her strength and compassion where her husband has started to lose his. (And no, they don\u2019t bang. At least not in this scene.) They have their \u201croutine\u201d down pat, conducting every calculated, dead-quiet caress right there on the sofa in front of the blind husband coordinated and dead quiet. The story gets emotional for the wife, how she\u2019s had to learn to deal, etc. etc. Then the story closes with the coffee being ready to serve, and as the wife sets down the coffee cups, which she rotates each week so each person is drinking from a different color, the husband mumbles something that sounds like \u201cNo, dear. Today I want to drink from the red cup.\u201d End scene.<\/p>\n

Not all the stories captured my attention, but I do appreciate the experimentation Benedetti employs to get his words across. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Big Switch,\u201d for example, is written in a format that is very non-standard compared to the rest of the pieces. In it, a police officer is swearing (\u201cShit on the holy whore.\u201d) about all the arrest warrants he has to sign, his broken pen, and the idiots working around him. But the paragraph breaks and shifts to the other story line, where a singer named Lito Su\u00e1rez BITES<\/span> EVERYONE<\/span> IN SIGHT<\/span> AND<\/span> THEN<\/span> THE<\/span> WHOLE<\/span> BOOK<\/span> IS DONE<\/span>. Kidding. But if only . . .<\/p>\n

A singer named Lito Su\u00e1rez announces to TV viewers that he\u2019s come up with a new song, a kind of song-game, called the \u201cBig Switch,\u201d in which everyone watching will learn the four verses\/lines of the song, the proceed to sing these lyrics all day, every day, for the whole week. At the end of the week, Lito will reconvene on TV and announce a change to the first line. Suggestions are welcome from the audience, but only if they follow certain guidelines. Interesting paragraph breaks, drawn out and mashed-up words . . . It\u2019s visually exciting as well:<\/p>\n

\n

Lito Su\u00e1rez is going to announce how \u201cThe Big Switch\u201d sounds after the first transformation. \u201cor one week we\u2019ve all sung the song I taght you last Sunday. . . . I\u2019 received 5,473 suggestions to change the first verse. In the end, I selected this one: \u2018Sothat thewoundwill ooooooopen.\u2019 Yaaaaaaaaaaaay, says the channel\u2019s young audience. . . . Disappointed, Julita stops eating her nails. Her brilliant suggestion ended up among the 5,472 rejects. \u201cWithin a week, we\u2019ll replace the second verse. Agreed?\u201d Yesssssss, scream the audience<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

the colonel displays his teeth. \u201cYes, Fresnedo, I\u2019m with you. The new songs are idiotic. But what\u2019s wrong with that? . . . What does it sound like? Wait, wait. Even I know it by heart: \u2018Sothat thewoundwill ooooooopen, so thatyourl ooooooooove awaken, foryouI render myv ooooooooice, formeo oooooooonly loving you.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So even though The Rest Is Jungle<\/em> doesn\u2019t wow me, doesn\u2019t make me want to snake-dance on top of people and slap them with my anatomy, Uruguay puts in a far more solid performance via Benedetti\u2019s work. Uruguay scores another point, putting the game at 2-1 in their favor, and Costa Rica would scream in frustration, but their mouths are taped over by serial-killer-grade newspaper tape (what is that stuff on the cover, anyway??).<\/p>\n

But then again . . . Maybe Costa Rica has one more shot on goal? One more approach from Cadence<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

[Camila] entered the office and spoke in the authoritarian tone that had worked infallibly during 22 years of marriage<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cHome!\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Bill Grey did not even lift his eyes from the keyboard. He barely arched an eyebrow and replied with astonishing lucidity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you take one of your sometimes lovers? I am busy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

It was the first time that he had reproached his wife for her sexual adventures, which she had supposed he was ignorant of. Disconcerted by his response, Camila set off for her office without saying a word, afflicted by a sudden onset of diarrhoea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Noooooope.)<\/p>\n

And on that note . . . Costa Rica literarily-literally shits the bed in its final shot on goal, before tucking its tail and turning to head home\u2014giving the game to Uruguay, 2-1, and leaving a wake of streak marks behind it.<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> It\u2019s actually more like the only Costa Rican book to be translated into English, which should be remedied because OH MY GOD<\/span>.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

Kaija Straumanis is the editorial director at Open Letter, and translates from both Latvian and German.<\/em><\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This match was judged by Kaija Straumanis. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this, and download the bracket. One of my personal concerns going into the World Cup of Literature was ending up with a book I had already read\u2014something that quickly became not an issue at all, since out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[56886,39476,34566,56876,38956,56386],"class_list":["post-298456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cadence-of-the-moon","tag-kaija-straumanis","tag-mario-benedetti","tag-oscar-nunex-olivas","tag-the-rest-is-jungle","tag-world-cup-of-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337676,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298456\/revisions\/337676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}