{"id":430062,"date":"2020-04-13T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=430062"},"modified":"2020-04-13T10:48:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T14:48:17","slug":"430062","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2020\/04\/13\/430062\/","title":{"rendered":"“Tentacle” by Rita Indiana [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win<\/a> posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Tobias Carroll is the author of the books\u00a0<\/em>Reel,\u00a0<\/em>Transitory, and the forthcoming\u00a0<\/em>Political Sign.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tentacle<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Rita Indiana, translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas (And Other Stories)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rita Indiana\u2019s Tentacle<\/em> is a novel I\u2019ve written about multiple<\/a> times<\/a>, which might give you a sense of how I feel about it. Some short novels use their size to deliver a hyper-focused dose of plot and setting to the reader\u2014immersing them in a character\u2019s psyche or exploring the ramifications of a particular action. Tentacle<\/em> goes in the opposite direction: part of the novel\u2019s charm is in checking off all of the things that Indiana includes in the narrative. A partial list would include environmental catastrophes, time travel, gender and society, and the Caribbean\u2019s relationship to the rest of the Americas.<\/p>\n

As translated by Achy Obejas, Tentacle<\/em> is a compelling combination of seemingly disparate elements. Its protagonist, Acilde, leaves a dystopian future for a voyage back in time, to avert the catastrophic circumstances that led the world down such a bleak path\u2014but it\u2019s also a journey that effectively bifurcates Acilde\u2019s consciousness. Acilde finds a fulfilling life once he arrives in the past, and there\u2019s an ecstatic element to some of these passages\u2014the allure of an idyllic life in a scenic location while great music can be found. (If you\u2019re a fan of Giorgio Moroder\u2019s work, you\u2019ll find plenty to enjoy here.)<\/p>\n

Indiana deftly illustrates Acilde\u2019s existence in simultaneous times, sometimes in the same paragraph:<\/p>\n

He thought the late twentieth-century life in Sos\u00faa playing out in his head might be a side effect of the Rainbow Brite. Back in Sos\u00faa, in the little house where the natives revered him, in front of the mirror that hung from a nail over the faucet in the yard, he assured himself, like a midwife with a newborn, that this new body didn\u2019t need anything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acilde\u2019s adventures in time are juxtaposed with a more overtly satirical plotline set in the past timeline about a misanthropic, frustrated artist named Argenis. The way the novel\u2019s two plotlines eventually converge isn\u2019t initially apparent; instead, Indiana plants clues to the novel\u2019s resolution throughout the narrative, and does little hand-holding of the reader as Tentacle<\/em> reaches its conclusion.<\/p>\n

In other words, there isn\u2019t just a contrast between Tentacle<\/em>\u2019s blissed-out segments and its dystopian elements. There\u2019s also a greater one between its familiar segments and the subtler plotting that Indiana does throughout the novel. This is a book which rewards multiple readings, in a way that\u2019s oddly reminiscent of the works of Gene Wolfe. (Despite the fact that this is, otherwise, very far removed from the fictional territory that Wolfe covered.) Did I mention there were pirates? There are pirates, too.<\/p>\n

Writing about <\/a>Tentacle<\/em><\/a> in The Guardian<\/em> last year, Suzi Feay observed that \u201cTentacle<\/em> reads like Kathy Acker with a tighter narrative grip.\u201d Indiana\u2019s novel has plenty in common with the work of Acker or Iain Sinclair, including an unruly and politically charged blend of realism, satire, and the uncanny. And if you think that comparing Indiana\u2019s work to two other writers whose work is famously difficult to pin down is a bit of a paradox: exactly. This is an author whose fiction carves out its own distinctive space, both familiar and fresh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards.\u00a0 Tobias Carroll is the author of the books\u00a0Reel,\u00a0Transitory, and the forthcoming\u00a0Political Sign.   Tentacle\u00a0by Rita Indiana, translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas (And Other Stories) Rita Indiana\u2019s Tentacle is a novel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":423572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[37936,49736,70292,70282,69072,37876],"class_list":["post-430062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-achy-obejas","tag-and-other-stories","tag-rita-indiana","tag-tentacle","tag-tobias-carroll","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430062","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=430062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430112,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430062\/revisions\/430112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}