The Magician of Vienna. Sergio Pitol

The Magician of Vienna

International Praise For Sergio Pitol

“Pitol is a writer of another kind: his importance lies on the page, in the creation of his own world, in his ability to shed light on the world.”—DANIEL SALDAÑA PARIS, author of Among Strange Victims

“Reading Sergio Pitol will make any serious writer want to write—and write better…In Pitol’s life and his writing, neither images nor thoughts flow naturally and automatically to their logical associations.”—3:AM Magazine

“Reading him, one has the impression . . . of being before the greatest writer in the Spanish language in our time.”—ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS

“A gorgeous, insight into literature, history, and a life lived through words. Sergio Pitol is one of Mexico’s greatest authors.”—MARK HABER, Brazos Bookstore (Houston, Texas)

“Sergio Pitol is a legendary Mexican writer, whose ability and fame are best explained by noting that he has won both the Herralde and Cervantes Prizes.”—TONY MALONE, Tony’s Reading List

“Sergio Pitol is not only our best active storyteller, he is also the bravest renovator of our literature.”—ÁLVARO ENRIGUE, Letras Libres

“The Art of Flight has none of the obsessive, Proustian detail of Knausgaard, or the metafiction of Lerner. It resists the light-heartedness of Bolaño’s depictions of youth and escapades, and the moroseness of Hemingway. Instead, it resembles a cloudy gemstone: at once glimmering and opaque, layered and precise.”—ROSIE CLARKE, Music & Literature

“The Art of Flight is an homage to the value of stepping out of your comfort zone, to the difficult imperative of staying true to yourself, to living a life consumed with an intense quest for knowledge and perfection, and above all, a paean to a love of life and the power of books.”—JENNIFER SMART, The Dallas Observer

“A dense, fascinating world, both familiar and strange, a world where different times, spaces, texts, journeys, ideas, and memories fuse and recreate one another.”—RAFAEL LEMUS, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

“The Art of Flight reads like a long overdue celebration for a timeless art form that is constantly changing, constantly reinventing itself through the years, but rest assured, will never die.”—AARON WESTERMAN, Typographical Era

“The Art of Flight is a book bursting with energy and curiosity. It is a collection of observations, set of diaries, travelogue and much more. It defies categorisation and cannot be summarised. Only experienced.”—TULIKA BAHADUR, On Art and Aesthetics

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH BY SERGIO PITOL:

The Art of Flight

translated by George Henson

The Journey

translated by George Henson

Deep Vellum Publishing

3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501c3

nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.

Originally published as El Mago de Viena in 2005.

First edition, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-941920-49-7 (ebook)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2016959374

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Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com

Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution · (800) 283-3572 · cbsd.com

Contents

MANUAL FOR DEVOTEES OF SERGIO PITOL

An introduction by Mario Bellatin

MAGICIAN OF VIENNA

AFTERWORD

Margo Glantz

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR BIOGRAPHIES

MANUAL FOR DEVOTEES OF SERGIO PITOL

Mario Bellatin

Afternoons on Times Square tend to possess a certain exaltation that is impossible to understand whether it comes from the hundreds of people who cross the corner of Broadway and 42nd, or from the immense billboards that turn real people into insignificant beings and the characters that appear on the signs into the symbol of exaltation of that which is human. Most of the time, the people chosen to see their images represented on a scale hundreds of times greater than reality aren’t acclaimed models. They are simply people who appear just as they are in ordinary life, perhaps as a reaffirmation that anyone can reach the heavens offered in the amplified images. One might ask which of those groups is truly participating in the celebration that that public space attempts to become. Would it be the beings frozen in the advertisements or the anonymous passersby? Perhaps neither of the two are capable of recognizing themselves as the beneficiary of this privilege, offered without an apparent limit. Standing on this corner, obstructing with my body the assortment of walkers so often calculated in different PR offices, I tried to compare the relationships between the anonymous and the representation of its essence that it claims to offer there. The device that Sergio Pitol tends to use to present us with memorable characters, it seems to me, is similar, basing them almost always only on ordinary prototypes who, in daily life, we would shy away from knowing just the bare minimum of their qualities. How is it possible that a group of the mentally handicapped, of beings living in their own sad realities, trapped almost always in detestable modes of existence, oftentimes making a display out of contemptible behaviors, suddenly turn into our leading characters? What strange and enthralling creative touch is capable of stretching the plausible to this point?

There is a dance club located near the docks along the Hudson, next to one of the city’s largest old meat warehouses. It is known as The Mother, although some attendees call it by other names. On some occasions the fun consists of watching guys beating themselves in a display of the maximum joy that it is possible to reach while undertaking such an act. At the end of that particular spectacle, an enormous cow heart typically appears, which is furiously bitten by the participants. Despite what some might suppose, this show encourages the jocular more than the perverse. I think that it would be important to reflect on how it is possible that laughter and celebration are positioned in the midst of the grotesque scenes that are staged there. In an endless

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