A book in three movements.
Slow motion music.
The first movement, that of the dream; the second, that of the waking dream (where you don’t know if it’s headed toward falling asleep or waking up, toward understanding or not understanding what happened); and the third, that of eyes wide open, forcing you to see everything you wanted not to see for so long.
Dream, waking dream, dreamless.
† The past is that book that, in turn, would be a complex and rousing second act: the intermediate part between two other parts, the part that’s dreamed (or the part that, insomniac, dreams of dreaming), between the part that’s invented and the part that’s remembered.
And so, inventing and dreaming and remembering like the three faces of memory.
Three books configuring a trilogy, not linear and advancing, but horizontal and happening simultaneously (all times at the same time, like the time of that cosmic voyager untethered from time).
Three strangers who, finding themselves together, see each other and, without looking each other in the eyes, dismayed, recognize they’re all parts of a whole and, after so much spinning and circumlocutions, they say to each other: “In lak’ ech” (“I am another you”) and “Hala ken” (“You are another me”).
“More in a moment.”
“Same as it ever was.”
“There is no question about it … I can feel it … I can feel it … I can feel it …”
And, once more, at last, from that moment on, feeling again that feeling of letting the bright days and the pages with bright ideas go by.
Now, again, into the blue and into the future.
Toward that place where sooner or later—deep down or high overhead, ever present—you always end up asking yourself: how did I get here?
Attempting to answer that question is why he writes.
Writing as if saying goodbye but thinking of sticking around.
Of not going anywhere, of continuing to spin around above his own body of work and his own life and …
At long last he’s sleepy.
In the end dreams do come.
Good night …
Good night to everyone …
To everyone everywhere …
Good night.
Time is an asterisk.
The wind in his heart and the dust in his head.
Watch out, because here it comes.
Here comes the twister.
†*.
COUNTING SHEPHERDS:
A Thank-You Note
Wake up.
—DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
“Oblivion”
Up next, the shepherds behind The Dreamed Part, now headed off to slumber alongside The Invented Part: friends and family and readers and books and authors and movies and directors and songs and musicians and paintings and painters and scientists whose company and work and research and influence—near or far, frequently distorted, like everything you look at with your eyes shut—is felt in the waking dream of this book.
Here, with the lights turned off and my heart turned on, I count all of them, not to make myself fall asleep, but to congratulate myself for the fact that they’re all there, keeping me always alert and acutely aware that, just outside, the ferocious sheep are howling.
“Dreams of Distant Lives,” by Lee K. Abbott; “Canción mixteca,” by José López Alavez; Carlos and Ana Alberdi; Everyday Robots, by Damon Albarn; Robert Altman; Martin Amis; Wes Anderson; Carmen Balcells and Balcells Agency; J. G. Ballard; John Banville; The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family, by Juliet Barker; Djuna Barnes; Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes; Overnight to Many Distant Cities, by Donald Barthelme; Franco Battiato; The Feast of Love, by Charles Baxter; The Beatles (all together then and now and separately); Eduardo Becerra; Saul Bellow; “Nighttime,” by Big Star; Adolfo Bioy Casares; “I Never Learnt to Share,” by James Blake; Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom; Warhol: The Biography, by Victor Bockris; The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in the Age of Artificial Night, by Paul Bogard; Juan Ignacio Boido (and El ultimo joven, by Juan Ignacio Boido); Roberto Bolaño; 22, A Million (“29 #Strafford Apts”: “Sure as any living dream / It’s not all then what it seems / and the whole thing’s being hauled away”), by Bon Iver; Book of Dreams and “Nightmare” and “A New Refutation of Time” by Jorge Luis Borges;, by David Bowie; fa fa fa fa fa fa: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century, by David Bowman; Brian Boyd; Ronaldo Bressane (& Chico Buarque); Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (annotated by Janet Gezari on the version in the original language for Belknap/Harvard; the translation into Spanish used is, with “interventions” and “interferences” by Penelope, by Nicole d’Amonville Alegría for Penguin Clásicos); Brontë family; Mid Air, by Paul Buchanan; On Going to Bed, by Anthony Burgess; My Education: A Book of Dreams, by William S. Burroughs; Kate Bush; Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia, by Blake Butler; David Byrne; “Los dientes apretados,” by Andrés Calamaro; Music for a New Society/M: Fans, by John Cale; Martín Caparrós; Jorge Carrión; Casablanca, by too many people, all of them; John Cheever; El carapálida, by Luis Chitarroni; Coen Brothers; Joshua Cohen; “Darkness” and “The Guests” (“And no one knows where the night is going …”) and “You Want It Darker,” by Leonard Cohen; Lloyd Cole; Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola; Jordi Costa; Elvis Costello; The Beatles Lyrics, by Hunter Davies; Ray Davies & The Kinks; Robertson Davies; Iván de la Nuez; White Noise and Mao II, by Don Delillo; Sergio del Molino; Philip K. Dick; Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne; The Longest Cocktail Party, by Richard DiLello; Stephen Dixon; E. L. Doctorow; Bob Dylan (for everything; but here, very especially, for “Series of Dreams”); Sum, by David Eagleman; Ignacio Echevarría; At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch; Stanley Elkin; My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, by Brian Eno + David Byrne; Frederick Exley; Marta Fernández; Rodrigo Fernández; Francis Scott Fitzgerald; Penelope Fitzgerald; Alain-Fournier; Nelly Fresán; Adolfo García Ortega; Alfredo Garófano; Tom Gauld; Freud: A Life for Our Time, by Peter Gay; Time Travel, by James Gleick; Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück; The Goin’ South Team: Truman Capote & William Faulkner & Barry Hannah & Carson McCullers & Flannery O’Connor; Glenn Gould; Henry Green; “Birds of the High Artic” and “The Incredible,” by David Gray (& Tarjei Vesaas); Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen J. Greenblatt; Leila Guerriero; Isabelle Gugnon; Gloria Gutiérre; The Glass Key, by Dashiell Hammett; Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature and Sleepless Nights, by Elizabeth Hardwick; The End of Absence, by Michael Harris; Something Happened, by Joseph Heller; Felipe Hirsch & Paulo Werneck (& Mark Twain); Robyn Hitchcock; Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, by J. Allan Hobson; Ein Brief, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Anna María Iglesia; A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, John Irving; Donnie Darko, by Richard Kelly; Book of Dreams, by Jack Kerouac; Henry James; Insomnia, by Stephen King; Vincent Theo (KLM); But What If We’re Wrong?, by Chuck Klosterman; Stanley Kubrick; Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson; Lalo Lambda (and Brandy con Caramelos); Librería La Central (Antonio & Marta & Neus & Co.); Eduardo Lago; Jonathan Lethem; Liniers; Sleep: A Very Short Introduction, by Steven W. Lockley & Russell G. Foster; “Clock for Night Owl,” designed by Tiancheng Luo; David Lynch; María Lynch (Agencia Casanovas & Lynch); René Magritte; I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of The Music Video Revolution, by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum; J. A. Masoliver Ródenas; Fran G. Matute; Mental Floss; Norma Elizabeth Mastrorilli; The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, by D.T. Max; Valerie Miles; The Brontë Myth, by Lucasta Miller; Steven Millhauser; David Mitchell; Thelonious Monk; Rick Moody; “Early to Bed” and “The Night,” by Morphine; Annie Morvan; Mrs. Trip (actually, the adorable couple of young readers of The Invented Part that brought her to me as a gift at a booth at the Feria del Libro de Madrid, 2014: I don’t know their names, but I won’t forget their faces and their affection; and it
makes me happy to know that one writes for people that are exactly like that); The Book and the Brotherhood, by Iris Murdoch; Bill Murray; “On Revisiting Father’s Room,” by Dmitir Nabokov; Véra Nabokov and Vladimir Nabokov (the translations of fragments inserted in La parte soñada are by Aurora Bernárdez and Jordi Fibla and Enrique Murillo and my own; and now, yes, with The Dreamed Part out of my system, I solemnly swear that I will try again and this time I will get past page 10 and I will finish Ada, or Ardor); María José Navia; I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place and In Fond Remembrance of Me, by Howard Norman; Miguel Ángel Oeste; Gabriel Ruiz Ortega; Pere Ortin (Altäir & Co.); Alan Pauls; Penguin Random House (Raquel Abad, Carlota del Amo, Eva Cuenca, Gabriela Ellena, Cecilia Fanti, Lourdes González, Nora Grosse, Victoria Malet, Irene Pérez, Albert Puigdueta, José Serra, Florencia Ure); Ginés “Belvedere” Pérez Navarro (for his perfect bullshots); Julio Ortega; Andrés Perruca; Ricardo Piglia (and Emilio Renzi); Pink Floyd (and Storm Thorgerson); The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, by Andrea Pitzer; Monsters, Inc., by Pixar; Chad W. Post; Patricio Pron; Francine Prose; Marcel Proust; Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon; Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, by David K. Randall; R.E.M.; Providence, by Alan Resnais; Mordecai Richler; Sleep, by Max Richter; The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, by Katie Roiphe; Federico Romani; Nabokov in America: The Road to Lolita, by Robert Roper; Guillermo Saccomanno; Karina Sáinz Borgo; James Salter; Julia Santibáñez; Traumnovelle, by Arthur Schnitzer; “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” by Delmore Schwartz; Umbrella and Shark, by Will Self; The Twilight Zone, by Rod Serling & Co. (warning for obsessives in general and for my French translator in particular: the episode mentioned with the title “The Museum’s Visitor” does not actually exist and its synopsis is nothing but the fusion/very-loose rewrite of the stories “La Veneziana” and “The Visit to the Museum” by Vladimir Nabokov); A Midsummer Night’s Dream & Co., by William Shakespeare (even though it’s pretty impertinent and rude and snobbish and redundant to thank Shakespeare for anything, right?); “That’s Why God Made the Movies” and “Insomniac’s Lullaby,” by Paul Simon; Moondust, by Andrew Smith; “No Name # 3” and “Waltz #2 (XO),” by Elliott Smith; The Noonday Demon; And Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon; The Spent Poets; Laurence Sterne; “A Chapter on Dreams,” by Robert Louis Stevenson; Gonzalo Suárez; Louie C. K. Székely (Chapter 5, fifth season: “Untitled”); Remain in Light and “Love → Building on Fire” and “Burning Down the House” and “Dream Operator” and “City of Dreams,” by Talking Heads; The Affair; “Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night” & “In My Craft or Sullen Art,” by Dylan Thomas; The Physics of Immortality, by Frank J. Tippler; A Confession, by Leo Tolstoy; “Stop Hurting People,” by Pete Townshend; John Updike (and John Freeman); Will Vanderhyden; María Rita Vidal; Enrique Vila-Matas; Villaseñor family; Kurt Vonnegut; Scott Walker; “Oblivion,” by David Foster Wallace; Lost in the Dream, by The War on Drugs; Andy Warhol; A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh; Peter Westerberg; Jim White; “Night of a Thousand Furry Toys,” by Rick Wright; Warren Zevon; The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree; Nathan Zuckerman.
Claudio López de Lamadrid.
Daniel Fresán and Ana Isabel Villaseñor.
And good night, sweet princes and sweet princesses.
And until the next part.
Barcelona, October 13th, 2016
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
Rodrigo Fresán is the author of ten works of fiction, including Kensington Gardens, Mantra, and The Invented Part, winner of the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. In 2017, he received the Prix Roger Caillois, awarded by PEN Club France every year to both a French and a Latin American writer.
Will Vanderhyden has translated fiction by Carlos Labbé, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Juan Marsé, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate another of Fresán’s novels, The Invented Part, for which he won the Best Translated Book Award.
Inga Ābele (Latvia)
High Tide
Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark)
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Esther Allen et al. (ed.) (World)
The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim & a Life in Translation
Bae Suah (South Korea)
A Greater Music
North Station
Zsófia Bán (Hungarian)
Night School
Svetislav Basara (Serbia)
The Cyclist Conspiracy
Guðbergur Bergsson (Iceland)
Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller
Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès (World)
Island of Point Nemo
Per Aage Brandt (Denmark)
If I Were a Suicide Bomber
Can Xue (China)
Frontier
Vertical Motion
Lúcio Cardoso (Brazil)
Chronicle of the Murdered House
Sergio Chejfec (Argentina)
The Dark
The Incompletes
My Two Worlds
The Planets
Eduardo Chirinos (Peru)
The Smoke of Distant Fires
Marguerite Duras (France)
Abahn Sabana David
L’Amour
The Sailor from Gibraltar
Mathias Énard (France)
Street of Thieves
Zone
Macedonio Fernández (Argentina)
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel
Rubem Fonseca (Brazil)
The Taker & Other Stories
Rodrigo Fresán (Argentina)
The Bottom of the Sky
The Dreamed Part
The Invented Part
Juan Gelman (Argentina)
Dark Times Filled with Light
Oliverio Girondo (Argentina)
Decals
Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria)
The Physics of Sorrow
Arnon Grunberg (Netherlands)
Tirza
Hubert Haddad (France)
Rochester Knockings:
A Novel of the Fox Sisters
Gail Hareven (Israel)
Lies, First Person
Angel Igov (Bulgaria)
A Short Tale of Shame
Ilya Ilf & Evgeny Petrov (Russia)
The Golden Calf
Zachary Karabashliev (Bulgaria)
18% Gray
Ha Seong-nan (South Korea)
Flowers of Mold
Hristo Karastoyanov (Bulgaria)
The Same Night Awaits Us All
Jan Kjærstad (Norway)
The Conqueror
The Discoverer
Josefine Klougart (Denmark)
One of Us Is Sleeping
Carlos Labbé (Chile)
Loquela
Navidad & Matanza
Spiritual Choreographies
Jakov Lind (Austria)
Ergo
Landscape in Concrete
Andreas Maier (Germany)
Klausen
Lucio Mariani (Italy)
Traces of Time
Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece)
Why I Killed My Best Friend
Valerie Miles (World)
A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction
Iben Mondrup (Denmark)
Justine
Quim Monzó (Catalonia)
Gasoline
Guadalajara
A Thousand Morons
Why, Why, Why
Elsa Morante (Italy)
Aracoeli
Giulio Mozzi (Italy)
This Is the Garden
Andrés Neuman (Spain)
The Things We Don’t Do
Jóanes Nielsen (Faroe Islands)
The Brahmadells
Madame Nielsen (Denmark)
The Endless Summer
Henrik Nordbrandt (Denmark)
When We Leave Each Other
Asta Olivia Nordenhof (Denmark)
The Easiness and the Loneliness
Wojciech Nowicki (Poland)
Salki
Bragi Ólafsson (Iceland)
The Ambassador
Narrator
The Pets
Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Iceland)
Children in Reindeer Woods
Sigrún Pálsdóttir (Iceland)
History. A Mess.
Diego Trelles Paz (ed.) (World)
The Future Is Not Ours
Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (Netherlands)
Rupert: A Confession
Jerzy Pilch (Poland)
The Mighty Angel
My First Suicide
A Thousand Peaceful Cities
Rein Raud (Estonia)
The Brother
João Reis (Portugal)
The Translator’s Bride
Mercè Rodoreda (Catalonia)
Camellia Street
Death in Spring
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda
War, So Much War
Milen Ruskov (Bulgaria)
Thrown into Nature
Guillermo Saccomanno (Argentina)
77
Gesell Dome
Juan José Saer (Argentina)
The Clouds
La Grande
The One Before
Scars
The Sixty-Five Years of Washington
Olga Sedakova (Russia)
In Praise of Poetry
Mikhail Shishkin (Russia)
Maidenhair
Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson (Iceland)
The Last Days of My Mother
Maria José Silveira (Brazil)
Her Mother’s Mother’s Mother and Her Daughters
Andrzej Sosnowski (Poland)
Lodgings
Albena Stambolova (Bulgaria)
Everything Happens as It Does
Benjamin Stein (Germany)
The Canvas
Georgi Tenev (Bulgaria)
Party Headquarters
Dubravka Ugresic (Europe)
The Dreamed Part Page 64
