RaveWorld Literature Today[A] brilliant poetical novel ... A topsy-turvy blend of bildungsroman and roman à clef, Poeta chileno ...amends the poetics of contemporary \'autobiographictions,\' verifying the need to renovate their validity. Zambra does so by brilliantly coaxing his readers in each of the novel’s four parts to believe his frequently hilarious tales ... a novelistic epigone but primarily a charming, very rare, and disconcerting tribute to the poet’s vocation; a poignant settling of scores.
César Aira, Trans. by Katherine Silver
RaveWorld Literature TodayArtforum is fictional in Aira’s typically imaginative fashion. That is to say, it is a story full of Duchampian fits and starts in which witty eccentricity struggles with originality to make a point about obsessions—here, a magazine—and Aira is a master at relaying them in each and every one of his tales ... Aira does not know if he wants to break or refill his pages with interjections and stops whenever he feels like it. Since he believes that the spirit of narrative becomes a painting, here he visualizes a story of sorts.
