Sunday, February 28, 2010

Jardines de Kensington

Jardines de Kensington (Kensington Gardens) is a book from Rodrigo Fresán, a guy from Argentina who writes amazingly good. Woow I'm not quite sure how this post is going to look like because I feel like having a lot of lost pieces to bring together... and I just began the reading so I guess there are also some pieces missing.


First, on the writer: I just surprisingly realized that this guy has a very poor entry on wikipedia, which I don't understand. In there it's said Jardines de Kensington has only recently been translated into english: that might be a good reason for the short entry. So, this writer is from Argentina and seems to be a friend of Roberto Bolaño's, which is a cornerstone in this story. I now see Bolaño has a larger text on wikipedia.


Second, on Jardines de Kensington: This is the book I'm reading right now. The story happens in London and has tons of references to Peter Pan and to the literary world build upon it --I mean Peter Pan's creator and all the not-growing story--. I find this book so terrificly good and metaphor-blown-up (?) that I think there won't be anything left to be written after it... so: good riddance to the never-concluded dream of mine of me becoming a writer :D for there's nothing left to be written.

I was describing the book to a friend few minutes ago and came up with a fine metaphor --which I surely made up by linearly combining the ones I've read on Jardines de Kensington so far--. This book is the closest thing to minimal techno music I've ever heard. Like being always excited, alway about to get to somewhere, but you don't get to it. I don't know exactly how much I do like this feeling. By now I love it :D!

Third, on how I got to this book: and here we have to go back to the ever-present 2666, in which, I think; it's been written everything else which was not in Jardines de Kensington; included my whole life. Thus if one book took away from me the idea of being a writer, the other one stole my free-will and sentenced me to have a fate from which I can't scape... fine, this is another story I might tell at another time.

Back to the topic, it seems to exist a strange passage in 2666 where some characters happen to be in Kensington gardens at the same time as some other characters from Jardines de Kensington do. At least those from 2666 see the others, and I'd be amazed if the same thing happened in the opposite way!! A friend of mine who I love found the relationship and just showed up with Jardines de Kensington for me.

I couldn't wait to be sinked into the reading and I hope I can write a little bit more another day... It's enough for today!