"This...novel is written in short stories with the purpose of facilitating the task of the reader. In this way the reader does not have to begin the book near a given cover and finish it at a point nearer the opposite cover. Each chapter being a complete story in itself, the reader may pick up this book and begin it at the back and end it at the front, or he may begin it and end it in the middle, depending on his mood. In other words, he can read it in any fashion except, perhaps, upside down."
"Aside from the superficial arrangement, I am not entirely to blame for committing this novel; the characters used in its being, I believe, far more responsible than myself."
Believe it or not, the above two quotes from the opening page of Felipe Alfau's Locos were written in 1928 when the author was age twenty-six. After multiple rejections, Alfau finally found a small NYC publisher in 1936 willing to commit to printing a short-run. Perhaps not surprisingly, the novel went nearly unnoticed in the literary world until republished by Dalkey Archive Press in 1988.
Born in Spain, Felipe Alfau's family moved to New York when he was a teenager. Felipe lived his entire adult life in the US and Locos as well as his other novel, Chronos, were written in English.
Are you a fan of postmodernism? If so, you're in for a special treat reading Locos: eight interconnected stories wherein characters refuse to stick to one assigned age or role and stories nest within stories within stories. Almost like a dare, the narrator (forty-three years prior to Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler!) advises us to simply enjoy the literary ride rather than trying to figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together. But who can refuse the bait? Indeed, it is reported one ambitious reader compiled a large box of index cards in an attempt to cross reference all the many connections, enough to drive any sane reader loco.
But enough generalizations. To share the novel's distinctive rasa, I'll squeeze the Locos fruit to extract some juice by focusing on the first two chapters:
IDENTITY
"I'm writing this story, I am fulfilling a promise to my poor friend Fulano.
My friend Fulano was the least important of men and this was the great tragedy of his life. Fulano had come to this world with the undaunted purpose of being famous and he had failed completely, developing into the most obscure person."
So begins this tale where the narrator offers a few sad snatches of just how invisible and insubstantial poor Fulano before relating an episode taking place in a Madrid café when he was conversing with his friend Dr. José de los Rios and absorbed in contemplating the characters he expected to use in his book.
Then, as if out of nowhere, he spots Fulano sitting next to him for the first time, although Fulano has been trying to get his attention for half an hour. Wow! Now that's a man who is truly insubstantial!
But fear not - after a few bouts of Fulano-style moaning and groaning between other bizarre café happenings (make note of all the women and men as they will reappear in morphed form in subsequent chapters), the good Dr. José de los Rios comes up with a surefire solution: Fulano should pen a suicide note, travel to Toledo, to the the bridge of Alcántara (ah, such a historical background will lend color to his action), and leave the suicide note along with his jacket, personal identification, credentials, money. In this way, everyone will think he really did commit suicide. He can read all about his now famous self in the next day's newspaper.
Any bets this plan, all very logical, will actually work for poor Fulano?
A CHARACTER
“The story I intend to write is a story which I have had in mind for some time. However, the rebellious qualities of my characters have prevented me from writing it. It seems that while I frame my characters and their actions in my mind, I have them quite well in hand, but it suffices to set a character on paper to lose control of him immediately. He goes off on his own track, evades me and does what he pleases with himself, leaving me absolutely helpless.”
Such an opening! And, again, written decades prior to the metafictional acrobatics of Calvino, Pynchon, Barth and Barthelme. Now that his character is on the loose and can exercise a degree of freedom, here's what the fictional man says before striking out on a night walk on a real street among real people:
“Now that my author has set me on paper and given me a body and a start, I shall proceed with the story and tell it in my own words. Now that I am free from his attention I am able to do as I please. He thinks that by forgetting about me I shall cease to exist, but I love reality too much and I intend to continue to move and think even after my author has shifted his attention from me.”
I'll make a fast-cut to a gripping scene deep into the story: the character sits up in bed, emotionally traumatized, and relates a dream: he's back in the house where he lived as a young man. “At the end of the corridor there was a room that had formed a kind of superstition in the family. No one liked it, they were all afraid of it.” Do you hear echoes of Julio Cortázar 's House Taken Over? And as we soon discover, this eerie tale quickly shifts to one of Gothic horror.
How should I conclude my review of this stunning work I can't recommend highly enough? Here's a quote from a more recent reviewer on reading the Dalkey Archive edition: “You keep reading this hypnotic novel the way a sleeping person wants to keep dreaming.” And this from the publisher: “Felipe Alfau creates a mercurial dreamscape in which the character – the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitués of Toledo's Café of the Crazy – wrench free of authorial control, invade one another's stories, and even turn into one another.”
Read Locos. You'll want more. Fortunately there is more. Felipe Alfau's second novel, Chromos.
Felipe Alfau, 1902-1999
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