The Absent City

by Ricardo Piglia

  AFTERWORD RICARDO PIGLIA. TRANSLATED BY SERGIO WAISMAN

  I have always liked novels that have several juxtaposed story lines. This intersection of plots correlates with a very strong image that I have of reality. In this sense, The Absent City is very much like life. I sometimes have the physical sensation that one goes in and out of plotlines, that throughout the day, as one circulates with friends, with the people one loves, and even with strangers, an exchange of stories occurs, a system akin to doors that one can open to enter into another plot — something like a verbal net in which we live — and that the central quality of narrative is this flow, this apparent fleeing movement toward another story line. I have tried to narrate this feeling, and I believe it is the origin of The Absent City.

  The first problem I faced was how to incorporate the stories of the machine. This raised an issue that has always interested me in the organization of a novel: the idea of interruption as a central factor in the art of narrative. As I thought about interruptions, I had in mind certain references, such as Scheherazade, and a series of texts within this tradition, until we arrive at a novel by Italo Calvino that drew my attention, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. That is, a tradition that conceives of the novel as a genre founded on interruptions, and which, taking this as its point of departure, establishes a connection with what one might call the experience of life — which is basically one of interruption and suspension.

  Another text that I very much admire, in this regard, is Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” It is written in a supercondensed manner, within a labyrinthine system, where there is always a corner that pulls you toward another story line. I liked this idea of a plot that is like a street in which you open a door and suddenly your life is completely different. It is from there, perhaps, that my decision came of using the city as a metaphor for the space of the novel.

  An additional problem in which I was interested was the idea of imprinting a certain velocity in the narration, a concern no doubt related to the manner in which the transitions between the stories are produced, as well as to the issue of interruptions, fragmentation, and suspense. This idea of velocity was something new for me with respect to my previous books. What I try to work with in The Absent City is a degree of extreme condensation and speed while dispensing as much as possible with the recourse of irony, which is a trait that comes naturally for me (it is the defining mark of the writing of Artificial Respiration, for example).

  A few words, now, about Macedonio Fernández, and some parallels with Joyce. In a way, a formula like the title “The Absent City” is the most Macedonian aspect of the novel. What I mean is that it alludes, even if it is not immediately obvious, to one of Macedonio’s fundamental ideas: that which is absent from reality is that which is truly important. This idea expresses his nonpragmatic ethics, which I believe are very appropriate for our time.