Review: Glosa (The Sixty-Five Years of Washington) by Juan José Saer
The author’s title means something like: Commentary. I like it better, the English translator was hoping for sales I guess. How unnecessary! This is one of the best books ever written. I’ve read it three times now and it gets better every time.
The Setting: two barely-acquainted young men meet by chance on an avenue in Buenos Aires in 1961 and walk awhile together. Leto, a poor struggling book-keeper is quite daunted by the well-heeled (but deeply insecure) Mathematician who is just back from a tour of Europe but this gives them something to get conversation going. Eventually, the conversation veers to Jorge Washington Noriega’s 65th birthday party and here’s the thing, neither attended it; not the Mathematician who was in Europe, nor Leto, who can’t decide had he been left off the invitation list or did it go without saying that he didn’t need to be invited. All the information about the party was furnished to the Mathematician during an encounter with another acquaintance, Barco, a week earlier.
Nothing of note happened at the party, but Saer, in full comic flow, uses this device to comment on memory, interpretation and representation as each of the characters puts the barely interesting account through his own particular filters and prejudices. Best of all: eventually, they encounter another mutual friend, Tomatis, a disaffected journalist who proceeds to take apart Barco’s version of events. Then, to cap it all, when Tomatis leaves, the two walkers do their best to repair the story.
None of the above is a spoiler, because the book is not about the party. The first time I read it, I had never seen Buenos Aires so I had to imagine the street. I clearly recall imagining a tree-lined Italian avenue and building up images of the protagonists, the party etc. In January, I walked that street and then re-read the book, expecting a new experience. Not at all! I was still in Italy. We all have our own versions of reality and we’re not about to let truth get in the way. In a lovely flash-forward, 20 years later the Mathematician meets another friend who was at the party who clearly recalls that he, the Mathematician, also attended it.
None of the above comments manage to capture the pangs of sheer pleasure that this book evokes. A typical sentence in it runs for a page and a half and there’s immense pleasure, almost musical, in tripping through it with never a mis-step or a false note. The personal lives of the key players, both left-leaning idealists in 1960’s Argentina are fantastic side-stories. How is it possible that everyone is not talking about this book? This is a master-class in writing. I’m reminded of the reviewer who said of Waiting for Godot, “nothing happens, twice”.
Asynchronists 