Pride and Fall

Monday night was lit class with a guest author, Martín Kohan. We read his terrific novel, Ciencias morales, about a memorably repressed 20-year-old perceptora—I guess we'd call her a teaching assistant—at the most historically important grammar school in Buenos Aires. It's set in 1982 during the dictatorship and the Malvinas (Faulklands) War, though those events are remotely inferred. Her job is to keep the kids in line, making sure they aren't transgressing. When she smells tobacco on one boy's breath, she's convinced he, and possibly others, are smoking in the boy's room. So she begins to hide out in one of the stalls, waiting to catch them. And that's where 2/3 of the novel takes place—her in the stall, observing with all her senses what goes on. It's obsessive and fascinating. Call it a cross between the intricate study of a restricted mind of The Remains of the Day and the sharp sensory imagery of Perfume.

Anyway, the author was extremely interesting. Like many literary people here, he is fluent in philosophy as well. He casually quotes Foucalt and Walter Benjamin from memory, and it was fun to hear him jump blithely from his own works to Borges and others. I was feeling quite proud of myself for doing a pretty good job following. Still, my brain lags any time there's a shift in context. At one point in the second hour they lost me. I heard "la casa blanca" or "the White House," so I knew they were onto something political. That's hard for me, because I don't always know the references, and names fly by very quickly. Then our teacher, Marcelo, mentioned Sam a few times. Really? Uncle Sam? I didn't realize he was a well known symbol here.

Several minutes later, my brain finally caught up and I realized they were talking about the movie Casablanca. You know—"Play it again, Sam." Oops. Naturally, I have no idea what they said about it.