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The Rest Is Silence
The one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso—Latin America’s most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed “the most beautiful stories in the world”—The Rest Is Silence presents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of a provincial Mexican literary critic, one Eduardo Torres, a sort of Don Quixote of the Sunday supplements, whose colossal misreadings are matched only by the scale of his vanity.
Presented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres’s friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant’s own comically botched attempts at “criticism.”
Monterroso’s narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are—and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall.
Presented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres’s friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant’s own comically botched attempts at “criticism.”
Monterroso’s narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are—and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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902 people want to read
About the author
Augusto Monterroso
102 books184 followersAugusto Monterroso Bonilla (1921-2003) es la máxima figura hispánica del género más breve de la literatura, el microrrelato, y una de las personalidades más entrañables, no sólo por su modestia y sencillez, sino también por su excepcional inteligencia y su exquisita ironía. Autodidacta por excelencia, abandonó sus estudios tempranamente, para dedicarse por completo a la lectura de los clásicos, que amó con pasión, como a Cervantes, cuyo influjo es evidente en su obra. Guatemalteco de adopción y centroamericano por vocación, dedicó una buena parte de su vida a luchar contra la dictadura de su país, antes de darse a conocer internacionalmente con el cuento «El dinosaurio», que, se dice, es el más breve de la literatura en español. Maestro de fábulas, aforismos y palindromías, su papel docente fue de capital importancia en la formación de los más conocidos escritores hispanoamericanos, y de otras latitudes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
May 20, 2025
Monterroso es un maestro del humor naive y burlón, como se puede ver en sus cuentos. Esta es la única novela que le he conocido. Su lectura me ha confundido, y finalmente me ha gustado mucho. En un monólogo narrado por un supuesto Eduardo Torres, un espíritu burlón naive recorre los textos barrocos y pretenciosos (aunque esencialmente tontos), con la incómoda sospecha de que uno es el objeto de burla (“tú que lees”). El autor siembra la duda sobre si a) el autor de toda la obra es el mismo Eduardo Torres, que trata de confundir arrojando sospechas sobre el autor “burlón” , b) el burlón es Monterroso, y Eduardo Torres no existe; c) ídem y E. Torres es él (se podría hacer, tal vez, un anagrama: Torres+mono-Monterroso) , d) o todo es cierto, como en un juego de espejos, en que la fantasía refleja mejor la realidad que la realidad misma. O viceversa.
Sea como sea, un libro muy inteligente y desafiante, que con el humor característico de Monterroso, resulta en una lectura muy gratificante.
Sea como sea, un libro muy inteligente y desafiante, que con el humor característico de Monterroso, resulta en una lectura muy gratificante.
August 8, 2025
I recently finished Augusto Monterroso’s ‘The Rest Is Silence’. It’s only about 130 pages in length, but feels like a 500-page compendium (in the best way possible). I believe the correct technical term is Festschrift. The fictional literary critic Eduardo Torres lives in the fictional town of San Blas in Mexico. He is well-read enough… obsessed with quoting Cervantes (emphasis on quoting) and misquoting just about everything else. To him, the impression of having read lots means more than actually having read lots. He will grind the dinner party to a halt in order to rank order books that he has not even read, but will get pissy if people hint at this fact. It’s all scholarly appearance and zero substance. This makes him an ideal candidate for a Festschrift!
You have tributes from friends and family, selections from his works, and a series of aphorisms and maxims by the paper tiger genius. There really is far too much in here for me to quote, and I truly do want to quote it all. I cannot begin to count the number of times I burst out laughing. A colleague would have agreed to write a tribute piece for Torres only to take up 15 pages talking about anything but. Plato is attributed to Shakespeare and the latter is attributed to Darwin. The aphorisms section is worth the price of admission alone, so I will end with a few of those:
“If it hadn’t been for the Second World War, the Allies would never have dreamed of winning it.”
“When one door opens, a hundred close.”
“One could say that, before History, all was Prehistory.”
You have tributes from friends and family, selections from his works, and a series of aphorisms and maxims by the paper tiger genius. There really is far too much in here for me to quote, and I truly do want to quote it all. I cannot begin to count the number of times I burst out laughing. A colleague would have agreed to write a tribute piece for Torres only to take up 15 pages talking about anything but. Plato is attributed to Shakespeare and the latter is attributed to Darwin. The aphorisms section is worth the price of admission alone, so I will end with a few of those:
“If it hadn’t been for the Second World War, the Allies would never have dreamed of winning it.”
“When one door opens, a hundred close.”
“One could say that, before History, all was Prehistory.”
September 22, 2020
Unexpectedly, I liked this satire. It is a crazy mixture of various texts with very little connection between them, except the "praise" of a fictional intellectual (Eduardo Torres) from an unnamed Latin American country. But it is all created in a way that it mocks the intellectual life.
February 20, 2025
Read this in basically one sitting because I was supply teaching at a high school and high school students just play on laptops all day now, essentially. So I read at the desk. There was a girl in one of the classes who was clearly named after a woody allen character and it was so distracting I lost my place when taking attendance. Anyway this collage-esque novel is delightful, a great entry into the pantheon of literary morons who occasionally stumble into profundity
August 13, 2024
Poeta, non regalare il tuo libro: distruggilo tu stesso.
#quote
#quote
April 22, 2025
A parody of the literary life composed from wry, playful fragments stitched up into something resembling a novel. Apparently, to the delight of García Márquez and Calvino. What they did, however, more explicitly has by Monterroso been more implicitly and fragmentally done.
Read
July 31, 2025I would say it would be beneficial to my reading experience to have read Don Quixote before cracking this book given how often it’s mentioned, but as you go on there I got the sneaking suspicion that the characters talking about DQ haven’t read it either…
I would recommend this book heartily. It is an experiment with mixed results but it’s a roller coaster experience!
I would recommend this book heartily. It is an experiment with mixed results but it’s a roller coaster experience!
Read
January 13, 2025Terribly funny in parts, quirky and enjoyable especially early on, but as it progressed, overall it ended up a little erudite for me 😅
January 11, 2025
The fragmented structure did not really work for me as a novel. I really liked Monterroso's short fiction but while sections of this were good, amusing even, it never came together for me.
July 1, 2025
How whimsical, how joyous! Monterroso's concatenated itinerary of a Fettschrift to Mexican literary critic Edouardo Torres points self-assuredly to the wonders and horrors alike -- and indeed the natural inclination to encompass both these qualities and more -- of the literary traditions with which we critics occupy ourselves maintainaning. Here is a man (Monterroso, not Torres) so involved in his craft that he -- and here there can be no doubt, for his idiosyncracies of penmanship are (as with other kinds of birthmarks) quite distictive -- is forced to invent a pseudonymic character (this would be the so-called Torres) onto whom he may thrust his follies, while all the while accepting what applause may come his way; this is, of course, when he is not allowing Torres to recieve praise for his insightful (except where amateur) deployments of literary reference, or allowing some belittlement to come in his (the author's, naturally) direction, likely as a means of diverting attention from this strategic ploy in creating a foolproof (or perhaps foolhardy) authority against whom his work might be weighed in comparison.
Though the space for this review runs rapidly shorter with every word I write, I shall attempt to list but a few -- for an exhaustive list would be too long for this space -- of the lauded (though at times strongly criticised) Monterroso's particularities (articulated of course through in the visage of the esteemed Dr.Torres) here:
(a) Like a Berlantian thesis, nothing is foreclosed for our author - except when it is, in which case it is quite firmly shut, as one might a door that ought to have a board nailed across it or a a great stone rolled in front, as was the case with Ulysses' famous cave.
(b) Perhaps this is most keenly identifiable in Torres' knack for run-on sentences, tethering clause after clause (not unlike the puppet Pinocchio as he attempts at lying in his classic appearance Shrek the Third) in what may be an unwitting attempt to intentionally discombobulate an (in)attentive reader -- for how else can one be disoriented than being aware of being unaware, or unaware of how aware they truly were?
(c) Torres (or is it Monterroso?) possesses an affinity for self-contradiction, as when at two intervals (here included as curated fragments) in the same lecture he states "the artist does not create, but collects" and "the artist creates", but one of the clearer testimonies of his Janus-faced character -- more on which will be illuminated momentarily.
(d) Even a literary giant must have his blunders, and our author is no different, whether in misattributions, faulty logic, or simply stating the obvious. However as all literary critics make mistakes, we must acknowledge the truth of the corollary opposite that all mistakes are made by literary critics, and as such Torres' idiosyncracy is really a sign of his trade, and is as such a forgivable offence.
(e) And, of course, a lengthy list of other proclivities, such as pedantry, occlusion, pseudonym, meandering, logical fallacy, putting the cart before the horse, rambling, tangents, plagiarism and obliviousness.
Ah, but we digress. A promise has been made to place under scrutiny the name of our deceptive author -- a promise which we plan to live up to.
At heart in Monterroso's curated anothology for Torres are questions of integrity and authorship (naturally, because all questions of authorship are questions of integrity), and yet the question is never raised as to whether our "author" is as genuine as he seems. Indeed, as a reader turns their watchful eye to the turning pages of Monterroso's text, it seems clearer than ever that as opposed to Torres being the farcical figure, it is the imagined curator of this edition, the so-called "Augusto Monterroso" -- who is almost immediately given away by the sheer outlandishness of this pen-name -- that is the true pseudonym.
Look and see: if it is Torres' habitus to be at once self-indulgent and magnanimous, while possessing the humility to aim the odd depricating prod in his own direction, it is most evident in the curatorial design of the text, surely only creditable to Monterroso as an authorial figure. The structure of the anthology serves as an excellent example of this, introducing Monterroso by full name and attributung an entire (ostensibly falsified) history to the man, which is completely negated (that is, ignored) in favour of the so-called "ficticious" Torres.
Yet, while Monterroso is proclaimed to have expired decades ago, in 2003, Torres lives on in the text (indeed, necessarily, we hold his life in our very hands!). If the author is dead, as Roland Barthes so boldly announced, having served his purpose in writing the text, then clearly it was Monterroso's name as "author" that Torres -- whose writerly voice is admittedly not entirely camoflaged or inconspicuous in Monterroso's work -- needed to put to rest having fulfilled its role as a conduit for his text (and dare I say, scapegoat had anything gone wrong in publication and distribution).
So: Torres, under a variety of pseudonyms critiques Torres, who is Monterroso, who, as has become clear, is none other than Torres himself! And what a tangle of nested narrators it quickly becomes. But this bears with it a kernel of truth, which we may thank Torres (or Monterroso, whomever you please, for even in revealing a true identity the other still resists dispelling, epsecially when bound to such a vast array of other literary work) for imparting, and that is this. If there were no narrators, then humankind would have no stories to tell -- none whatsoever! -- except those that do not need any in the first place.
Though the space for this review runs rapidly shorter with every word I write, I shall attempt to list but a few -- for an exhaustive list would be too long for this space -- of the lauded (though at times strongly criticised) Monterroso's particularities (articulated of course through in the visage of the esteemed Dr.Torres) here:
(a) Like a Berlantian thesis, nothing is foreclosed for our author - except when it is, in which case it is quite firmly shut, as one might a door that ought to have a board nailed across it or a a great stone rolled in front, as was the case with Ulysses' famous cave.
(b) Perhaps this is most keenly identifiable in Torres' knack for run-on sentences, tethering clause after clause (not unlike the puppet Pinocchio as he attempts at lying in his classic appearance Shrek the Third) in what may be an unwitting attempt to intentionally discombobulate an (in)attentive reader -- for how else can one be disoriented than being aware of being unaware, or unaware of how aware they truly were?
(c) Torres (or is it Monterroso?) possesses an affinity for self-contradiction, as when at two intervals (here included as curated fragments) in the same lecture he states "the artist does not create, but collects" and "the artist creates", but one of the clearer testimonies of his Janus-faced character -- more on which will be illuminated momentarily.
(d) Even a literary giant must have his blunders, and our author is no different, whether in misattributions, faulty logic, or simply stating the obvious. However as all literary critics make mistakes, we must acknowledge the truth of the corollary opposite that all mistakes are made by literary critics, and as such Torres' idiosyncracy is really a sign of his trade, and is as such a forgivable offence.
(e) And, of course, a lengthy list of other proclivities, such as pedantry, occlusion, pseudonym, meandering, logical fallacy, putting the cart before the horse, rambling, tangents, plagiarism and obliviousness.
Ah, but we digress. A promise has been made to place under scrutiny the name of our deceptive author -- a promise which we plan to live up to.
At heart in Monterroso's curated anothology for Torres are questions of integrity and authorship (naturally, because all questions of authorship are questions of integrity), and yet the question is never raised as to whether our "author" is as genuine as he seems. Indeed, as a reader turns their watchful eye to the turning pages of Monterroso's text, it seems clearer than ever that as opposed to Torres being the farcical figure, it is the imagined curator of this edition, the so-called "Augusto Monterroso" -- who is almost immediately given away by the sheer outlandishness of this pen-name -- that is the true pseudonym.
Look and see: if it is Torres' habitus to be at once self-indulgent and magnanimous, while possessing the humility to aim the odd depricating prod in his own direction, it is most evident in the curatorial design of the text, surely only creditable to Monterroso as an authorial figure. The structure of the anthology serves as an excellent example of this, introducing Monterroso by full name and attributung an entire (ostensibly falsified) history to the man, which is completely negated (that is, ignored) in favour of the so-called "ficticious" Torres.
Yet, while Monterroso is proclaimed to have expired decades ago, in 2003, Torres lives on in the text (indeed, necessarily, we hold his life in our very hands!). If the author is dead, as Roland Barthes so boldly announced, having served his purpose in writing the text, then clearly it was Monterroso's name as "author" that Torres -- whose writerly voice is admittedly not entirely camoflaged or inconspicuous in Monterroso's work -- needed to put to rest having fulfilled its role as a conduit for his text (and dare I say, scapegoat had anything gone wrong in publication and distribution).
So: Torres, under a variety of pseudonyms critiques Torres, who is Monterroso, who, as has become clear, is none other than Torres himself! And what a tangle of nested narrators it quickly becomes. But this bears with it a kernel of truth, which we may thank Torres (or Monterroso, whomever you please, for even in revealing a true identity the other still resists dispelling, epsecially when bound to such a vast array of other literary work) for imparting, and that is this. If there were no narrators, then humankind would have no stories to tell -- none whatsoever! -- except those that do not need any in the first place.
February 17, 2019
La mejor parte son los dibujos de los animales
April 19, 2024
Es un libro muy original. Nunca había leído una falsa biografía y me ha gustado mucho,. Da la sensación que el autor ha escrito el libro por diversión y que no deja de tomarte el pelo siendo muy ocurrente o sarcástico. No hay suspense respecto a la narración pero el libro te crea curiosidad por saber cómo te va a sorprender el autor esta vez.
Read
March 10, 2025This book is so clever! There's a very helpful series of translator's notes that helped me get anything that would've gone over my head. It was a much needed brain workout after reading a lot of light entertainment.
June 10, 2017
jogo de espelhos entre criador e obra criada.
nesta narrativa breve e curiosa cruzam-se a biografia de um escritor e a obra do próprio.
do melhor os aforismos de que ficam as duas entradas sobre a VIRGINDADE:
1) Quanto mais se usa, menos se acaba.
2) Há que usá-la antes de perdê-la.
nesta narrativa breve e curiosa cruzam-se a biografia de um escritor e a obra do próprio.
do melhor os aforismos de que ficam as duas entradas sobre a VIRGINDADE:
1) Quanto mais se usa, menos se acaba.
2) Há que usá-la antes de perdê-la.
June 25, 2018
Pieza maestra. Decir algo no sería justo. Leanla. Tiene un parecido a "La conjura de los necios"
May 8, 2021
"Cómo me regodeo pensando en las dudas del lector"
January 12, 2025
So rad Augusto Monterroso gave us a Garth Marenghi for the Latin American Boom. Some gems of advice for writers from “Eduardo Torres”:
“When you have something to say, say it; when you don’t, say that as well. Never stop writing.”
“As strange as it may seem, writing is an art”
“Never forget the feelings of your readers. Generally speaking, feelings are all they have; not like you, who lack them entirely, otherwise you would never have tried to get into this profession.”
“Do your best to say things in such a way that the reader will always feel that, deep down, he is as intelligent as, or even more intelligent than, you. From time to time, he will be more intelligent than you are in earnest; but in order to convey this to him, you will need to be more intelligent than he is.”
“Even the applause of the foolish pleases the wise.”
“The best way to avoid death has always been to try to remain alive for as long as possible”
Thanks, NYRB!
“When you have something to say, say it; when you don’t, say that as well. Never stop writing.”
“As strange as it may seem, writing is an art”
“Never forget the feelings of your readers. Generally speaking, feelings are all they have; not like you, who lack them entirely, otherwise you would never have tried to get into this profession.”
“Do your best to say things in such a way that the reader will always feel that, deep down, he is as intelligent as, or even more intelligent than, you. From time to time, he will be more intelligent than you are in earnest; but in order to convey this to him, you will need to be more intelligent than he is.”
“Even the applause of the foolish pleases the wise.”
“The best way to avoid death has always been to try to remain alive for as long as possible”
Thanks, NYRB!
June 10, 2025
Easily one of the most intellectually stimulating works I have read in a while. Clever, funny, and wry, this often self-referential novel frequently required me to go back and reread passages in order to catch Monterroso's sardonic playfulness. At first glance it takes itself quite seriously (or, rather, perhaps I myself take literature too seriously!), but once I understood the writing style and was in on the joke, I was able to mock and delight in the writings of Eduardo Torres (and Monterroso) with the best of them. Definitely an author and genre I would like to return to in the future.
June 26, 2025
The problem with making a satirical book of the writings of an idiot blowhard is that it ends up being a book of writings of an idiot blowhard that winks very aggressively at the reader to make sure we know that it knows the blowhard is of an idiot variety. I read this off the strength of an excerpt from from it (a clever parody of self serious essays about the limits of translation that actually solves the aforementioned problem) but the rest of the book never reached the same heights.
January 24, 2025
Jan 2025 nyrb book club
i see what he was getting at here. and it is funny. i like the pictures
3.5
i see what he was getting at here. and it is funny. i like the pictures
3.5
December 1, 2025
wow what an incredible book this was,, just the amount of plot i like (none)
December 10, 2024
"Though it is impracticable here, of course, the possibility of writing under a pseudonym also appeals to me; and over the course of my career I have used a great number of them, perhaps dozens."
" But then tell me, is there anything having to do with the soul of a man that isn't at bottom strange and paradoxical?"
"What should one opt for when one undertakes a translation: the letter or the spirit?"
"Man isn't content to be the stupidest animal in all of creation; he has to allow himself the luxury of being the most ridiculous as well."
" But then tell me, is there anything having to do with the soul of a man that isn't at bottom strange and paradoxical?"
"What should one opt for when one undertakes a translation: the letter or the spirit?"
"Man isn't content to be the stupidest animal in all of creation; he has to allow himself the luxury of being the most ridiculous as well."
June 13, 2020
This book is the imaginary biography of a provincial town would be writer named Eduardo Torres. Constructed from a number of depositions by people who knew him (including his wife) and a selection of his purported works, we are slowly let to view Torres as a failed intellectual with an overblown ego. Torres is indeed a perfect portrait of many public intellectuals we all know too well: parading their ignorance in a pompous and fatuous way, and pretending an importance not commensurate with their feeble intellectual capabilities.
September 29, 2017
Este libro me recordó a lo escrito por Ibargüengoitia. Al terminar de leer los aforismos no supe si la estúpida era yo o el autor, una novela genial
August 5, 2025
At a complete loss for how to review this. An odd mishmash of a collage of a snapshot of a conceit.
November 24, 2025
“The Rest is Silence” is a short and occasionally quite funny satire of the mid-twentieth-century Mexican literary scene, in the form of a book supposedly presented in honor of the critic Eduardo Torres. Torres is nominally a great man of letters, but it soon becomes clear that he’s a vastly overrated blowhard, whose pretensions to literary greatness are practically nonexistent. Naturally, then, the (fictional) contributors to this volume often take the opportunity to toot their own horns instead of lauding Torres. It’s a clever and well-executed idea that suffers mainly because I didn’t get the in-jokes about Mexican literary figures or the jokes about Spanish prose in the reviews that are included as examples of Torres’s brilliance but really prove his ignorance. The translator did his best with the latter, but there’s only so much a translation can do when it has to explain to the reader more or less everything about the joke, starting with the fact that there is one. Also, in the last part of the book, a commentary on the epic poem “The Burro of San Blas (Or, There’s Always a Bigger Ass)” — Torres is from the (imaginary) town of San Blas; as you can see, not all the humor here is sophisticated and high-brow — Monterroso tries to have his cake and eat it too, by suggesting that the joke is on those making fun of Torres just as much as it is on Torres himself. Is Torres then really the hero of this work, despite his foolishness? After all, it is filled with references to “Don Quixote”. I’m not sure I totally buy it — what is the equivalent of chivalry for Torres? — but you don’t have to in order to enjoy this book.
August 11, 2018
Para mí, este es uno de los mejores (si no el mejor) libro de Monterroso. En él, asistimos a un paraje mítico e inaccesible (San Blas) para celebrar el descubrimiento (por parte del propio Monterroso) del doctor Eduardo Torres.
Eduardo Torres, jurisconsulto, aficionado de las notas culturales, crítico literario ocasional y poseedor de la biblioteca más impresionante de San Blas, es homenajeado aquí (por propios y extraños) y vilipendiado no pocas veces. ¿Es un espíritu chocarrero, un humorista, un sabio o un tonto? Eso es parte de lo que el lector tendrá que decidir.
En las páginas de este libro desfilan la Revista de la Universidad de México, La Cultura en México, Joaquín Díez-Canedo Manteca (fundador de la editorial Joaquín Mortiz), Luis Villoro, José Emilio Pacheco, Otto-Raúl González, Jaime García Terrés y Carlos Monsiváis, pero no como protagonistas, sino como siluetas incidentales que redondean el retrato del doctor Torres.
Un libro sobre el mundo de la literatura y sus personajes que entreje ironía, realidad y ficción como solo sabía hacerlo Augusto Monterroso y que, al final, dejará al lector con la pregunta obligada: ¿quién rayos era Eduardo Torres? Honestamente imperdible.
Eduardo Torres, jurisconsulto, aficionado de las notas culturales, crítico literario ocasional y poseedor de la biblioteca más impresionante de San Blas, es homenajeado aquí (por propios y extraños) y vilipendiado no pocas veces. ¿Es un espíritu chocarrero, un humorista, un sabio o un tonto? Eso es parte de lo que el lector tendrá que decidir.
En las páginas de este libro desfilan la Revista de la Universidad de México, La Cultura en México, Joaquín Díez-Canedo Manteca (fundador de la editorial Joaquín Mortiz), Luis Villoro, José Emilio Pacheco, Otto-Raúl González, Jaime García Terrés y Carlos Monsiváis, pero no como protagonistas, sino como siluetas incidentales que redondean el retrato del doctor Torres.
Un libro sobre el mundo de la literatura y sus personajes que entreje ironía, realidad y ficción como solo sabía hacerlo Augusto Monterroso y que, al final, dejará al lector con la pregunta obligada: ¿quién rayos era Eduardo Torres? Honestamente imperdible.
August 1, 2025
Eduardo Torres, el autor falazmente biografiado en Lo demás es silencio, es el intento de biologizar a un intelectual querido por su virtuosismo como prohombre literario y a la vez repelido por su faceta de criticón. En apariencia, una contradicción en toda regla, puesto que el hacedor de historias siempre debe acidificiarse en ellas. Si cabe, desangrarse en la página, pero sin llegar a mancillarla ni mancharla con el rastro de su aliento.
No sé si Augusto Monterroso es Eduardo Torres, si Pierre Menard es Jorge Luis Borges, si Arturo Belano es Roberto Bolaño, lo cierto es que Monterroso supo hacer del arte de la falsificación bibliográfica una manera de hablar de sí mismo sin incurrir en la dieta vanagloriosa del escritor. Genio total.
“Poeta: no regales tu libro, destrúyelo tu mismo”.
No sé si Augusto Monterroso es Eduardo Torres, si Pierre Menard es Jorge Luis Borges, si Arturo Belano es Roberto Bolaño, lo cierto es que Monterroso supo hacer del arte de la falsificación bibliográfica una manera de hablar de sí mismo sin incurrir en la dieta vanagloriosa del escritor. Genio total.
“Poeta: no regales tu libro, destrúyelo tu mismo”.
October 24, 2025
“Whenever you’re on the receiving end of a beating, you say to yourself, Well, fine, this particular beating will be the last, because now I’m going to die of sadness; but then along comes another that drives the previous one from your mind, and so it continues until you’ve accumulated so many beatings that it’s as if you’re standing at the summit of a whole mountain of beatings that have been delivered to you by life; but from that point on a sort of descent begins, and though the old beatings are still capable of causing you pain even if you make that descent cautiously, there is a part of you that enjoys remembering them, if only because they remind you that you’re still alive, or in any case, that you aren’t dead yet.”
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