Where The Bird Sings Best (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
“Weird” might be my choice if I had to describe Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Where the Bird Sings Best” in one word. That was my biggest impression, but there are so many dimensions to this “autobiographical novel” that make it unique and at the same time another masterpiece of Latin American literature. I will warn readers that there are many disturbing scenes, but from what I gather, those familiar with Jodorowsky’s other work will find this to share many of his trademark elements. In fact, his family history, through a curtain of fiction, helps explain where he comes from and why he is the way he is.This book starts several generations back and ends just prior to his own birth. Four of the five parts (more than chapters) feature sections of his family tree – where the title of the book comes from. “My Father’s Roots” tells of how his paternal grandparents started his father’s generation. By the end of this first part, he explains how the Jewish family came not to the United States but to Chile. The family’s beekeeping is left behind, and they start from nothing in South America. They meet a monkey-like one-man-circus, as they find that Alejandro (the author's grandfather and namesake) can work as a cobbler, and his wife Teresa, under a different name, can join the circus along with her seven trained fleas. His grandfather had a double identity, as a Rabbi, who his fiery grandmother controlled at will – to the point of declaring the Rabbi a ‘fabrication’ (Teresa comes across as quite formidable, and confronts anyone, even God). This ghost stayed with him in the five years of military service that he spent away from his family, whose development he had to catch up on after returning. His is the first strange pilgrimage to be carried out in the book.Jodorowsky’s maternal heritage is rooted in lion taming. His other grandfather, also named Alejandro, after early abuse found a devotion to dancing. In one of many inexplicable events, he ended his life in flames and in art, song and dance, leaving the family talents to his daughter. The maternal grandmother found a new husband, and with little promise from the Jewish Colonization Association, moved up north to farm with her sister. The author’s mother, now a child, hides her appearance for safety, and hides her singing for her mother's sake. They manage to get by, all the half-sisters and cousins, until the northern Patagonian landscape erupts, leaving them in darkness and changing their direction.The third part tells how his paternal grandparents split apart only to reunite too late, after they both transformed and were used up to the point of almost no longer being human. The Rabbi reincarnates himself in Jaime, the author’s father. Jodorowsky narrates of his conscience well before he was born – but, not only him: his entire family is reincarnated into each other: they are all one.National politics stirs up more violence, another unfortunate branch of suffering in these pages. These were the most challenging features for me to endure. Why so much rape and other forms of violence? And why, not just this book, but so many others, and in movies, etc.? What is the balance of horror and art? Add incest and bestiality: how much of all this is hallucinatory, how much is grounded in true memory? The craziest things happen, and are told in a quick, casual way. And yet, these events fit together in the line of the story. After the initial shock, there are consequences to deal with.The reader wonders how the author's parents eventually meet. He narrates as a spirit waiting to be reincarnated under the perfect conditions. While his mother is hidden, his father undergoes several transformations of his own. He leaves his days in the circus and is healed by a Mapuche, for an unusual payment – a word that can describe much of this book. Before all that he was a fighter, a boxer, but he later takes on the appearance of a "holy penitent" carrying the cross, learning lessons in politics and religion. Eventually he crosses paths with Recabarren, the anarchist, or more accurately the communist party leader, who assisted the first generation of Jodorowskys when they arrived. The politicians from the two main parties buy the peoples’ votes in any case, and take advantage of them. But Recabarren was different, and when Jaime’s life takes another turn, he is back into the circus, performing “the master”’s theater interpretations, which if read literally make little sense, but are metaphors of the political climate. His role, as it turns out, was that of the lion tamer. These theatrical allegories are not hard to recognize, but the use of ambiguous, or at least very clever, metaphors are another characteristic of this Latin American style.How he wrote in such detail of events that happened so long before he was even born is impressive. Were family stories passed down verbally, and he filled in the blanks with imagination? What is real, what is legend, embellishment, hallucination? The lines are blurred. I wondered more than a few times how he could write such things about his close relatives (in terms of generations, if not personal interactions), wondering if this can only come from someone who does not love their family, or felt extreme abandonment. The most intimate and graphic details surface, yet they're not embarrassed, nor afraid of hiding anything from each other. So much happens in one paragraph that by the end of a page, years might have gone by. Time is more circular than linear: cyclical, spiraling, revolving. Read this book with an open mind. If you can get through the weirdness and madness, this stands as a masterpiece.Note: in exchange for an honest review, a copy of this title was generously provided by Restless Books. For more reviews, see my blog: http://matt-stats.blogspot.com/
Il problema non è tanto quando Teresa si è arrabbiata, ma quanta ragione avesse!Questo è uno di quei libri di cui non si può dire assolutamente bello o terribilmente brutto.Il suo destino è quello di essere versatile come i giudizi dei suoi lettori. È quindi d’uopo riportarvi i giudizi di alcuni rappresentanti della categoria, personalmente intervistati in strada per voi.Il lettore intellettuale: Jodorowsky è imprescindibile. Le sue tematiche finalmente scevre dal qualunquismo letterario, e intrise di un’ineluttabile senso di misticità sociologica, rappresentano il percorso di un popolo verso la sua forma definitiva, cioè l’anti esistenzialismo della massa, che preso nella sua forma più alta può condurre al destino irreversibile dell’uomo-individuo. Un libro da leggere ai propri bambini quando vanno a letto, perché la cultura va e deve essere assimilata fin da piccoli in tutte le sue forme. E comunque Viva il Che!Il lettore ingenuo: veramente si può stare nove mesi dormendo senza mangiare? Il lettore abbonato a Vogue: ma vi rendete conto? Non si lavava da giorni e a un certo punto si è messo l’abito di un morto di cui non sapeva né nome né cognome!! E sapete di che colore era il vestito? Tutto verde, capito, verde! Mioddio che sacrilegio, lo sanno tutti che gli abiti verdi senza accessori, sono come una tarantola senza peli!Il lettore consumatore abituale di droghe: Cazzo che trip! Troppa roba raga!Il lettore bigotto: non ho tempo di rispondere, sto scrivendo al Santo Pontefice per denunciargli quest’ammasso di blafemie. Questo scempio non è tollerabile. Bisogna agire subito se non vogliamo che queste scene sacrileghe si diffondano.Il lettore splatter: ma hai letto di quello che si mangiava le sue budella? Che storia, sembrava quasi di vedere gli zampilli! E di quello con le orbite piene di vermi? Troppo macabro, che figata!Il lettore trendy: Parbleu, non ci ho capito niente, ma chi se ne frega! Jodorowski è un must! Ti aspetto giù che andiamo a farci un ape.Il lettore ebreo: AHAHAHAHAH, oddio ho le lacrime gli occhi. È stupendo, ma chi l’ha scritto? Auslander dopo una sbornia colossale? AHAHAHAHAHAH! Non vedo l’ora di regalarne qualche copia in giro. 9,00 euro? Va bè, dai, lo presterò. Il lettore sessuomane: bè, tutto sommato anche la scena in cui la vecchietta viene stuprata ha un suo perché! Però quella tizia diafana lunga due metri, ummm, non so, io preferisco quelle piene col boschetto incolto.Il lettore purista: e comunque il titolo originale è La via del Tarot che ha decisamente più senso. Peccato, altrimenti gli avrei dato il massimo dei voti. Invece adesso mi tocca metterlo nella libreria del corridoio, anziché in quella del salotto.La lettrice Noce Moscata, con i baffi finti per non farsi riconoscere: non ho scusanti. Avevo già visto Jodorowsky in azione come regista. Sapevo già che avendo alle spalle la visione, per certi versi apprezzata, di Santa sangre, non potessi aspettarmi qualcosa di meno surreale, grottesco e caricaturale . Sapevo anche, che tutto si può dire, tranne che Jodorowsky non sia bravo a mantenere una coerenza magistrale nella sua lucida follia, eppure per quanto ne ammiri lo stile, devo ammettere che 300 pagine di questo tran tran di eccessi nel ben e nel male, mi hanno sfiancato, pur avendolo letto a piccole dosi. Nel suo genere è indiscutibilmente bravo, ma non è un libro né per benpensanti, né per schizzinosi. Ecco, diciamo che letto un suo libro, poi è terapeutico fare pausa per un paio d’anni. E comunque una cosa è certa: Teresa aveva ragionissima ad arrabbiarsi. Cacchio se aveva ragione!!!
What do You think about Where The Bird Sings Best (2015)?
I received a copy of Where The Bird Sings Best from its publishers, Restless Books, via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.I had not previously heard of Chilean born film director and writer Alejandro Jodorowsky so this translated edition of one of his most popular Spanish language novels is my introduction to his work. The book is a truly fantastical journey back through several generations of the Jodorowsky family, each more bizarre than each other, as they make their way from Russia, via Argentina, to settle in Chile. We meet circus performers, political activists, shoemakers and ballet dancers, a rabbi who doesn't actually exist and a child who is desperately trying to engineer his birth. I did find it quite difficult to keep track of the vast cast of characters, especially because they all are portrayed in a fairytale style. Men and women act on sudden instinct and make life-changing decisions, but without much explanation to the reader so I never felt as if I had got to know anyone as a real person. Also much of each storyline progresses through magical occurrences and extreme coincidence so it is impossible to guess where the narrative will go next!I was totally swept up in Where The Bird Sings Best for about the first half of the book. Jodorowsky's rich language and incredibly inventive imagination make for a very different reading experience. However, I do think the book is too long to sustain its pace. I thought some of the later threads failed to maintain the promise of their earlier counterparts and felt rushed. I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to read Jodorowsky. His prose does require effort from its reader, but is certainly rewarding and I plan to try the Restless Books translations of two more of his novels at some point in the future. I just need some lighter reads to refresh my brain first!
—Stephanie
This novel is both utterly depraved (as in, gallons of every single kind of bodily fluid gushing everywhere) and sublime as it reaches for the stars from the dankiest part of the gutter. The plot and characters move along more like a series of Jewish folktales or myths, and each scene could be something out of one of his films, shot through with every extreme of humor, beauty, and disgustingness. It can be a bit wearing at times to wade through all this, but also like his films, all of this madness has a weirdly cumulative effect that is greater than the sum of its many parts. I don't think I'll want to read through it again, but I'm glad I did it once.
—Sara Gray
Jodorowsky is a storytelling master, and once again he shows it with a family saga that may read esoteric (what with all that Tarot imagery and Kabbalah) were it not for the way he somehow always manages to bend those abstruse concepts to his poetics, and not vice versa.*I would like to thank Restless Books for letting me view an ARC of this work through NetGalley.Jodorowsky does not tell a story. He tells The Story, whatever the media and the content.A tub with two honey-included bodies floats in the Dniepr toward a sunset, clouded in bees.A clown dies the way all clowns die: standing on his head.Perfect shoes stacked in a corner, covered with dust.Phrases such as,"Yes, my daughter, the past is not fixed and unalterable"and,"Your punishment will be lucidity"do some justice to the reader's lust for awe.I loved the legendary yet oddly realistic aura that surrounds the narrative. The description of Jews in Spain before Isabel, where they were free to get mad over numbers and symbols. The parallel between immigration and circuses. The contemporary fascination with both pure, individual power and organization of the masses, with both sin and the Grand Villain, with struggle and pitiful powerlessness. Jodorowsky acknowledges ambivalence and unwinds it along the ages. Only one thing he rejects: boring, arid bureaucratic control. Hence the eroticism. You can feel the beat of the universe in Jodorowsky's words. They are bold, they are true and ready to contradict themselves. His narration is only slightly touched by circularity and, perhaps for this reason, closer to real life. It is, the narration, more important to the author than plausibility. It seems like telling us that life itself is hardly plausible. Don't believe me if you like, says Jodorowsky, I know for sure my story is true. It's mine. It's yours. It's universal.And it's magic.
—Flami
