ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Coinciding with Father’s Day (March 19), in Ulad we have thought of dedicating a series of entries to books that deal, in one way or another, the issue of fatherhood: exalting it or problematizing it, showing its multiple joys, and also its miseries and difficulties. Books of very diverse times and literatures, which reflect on the way children relate to their parents, and parents with their children. We hope it is interesting and that, together, the series allows to open reflections on what it means (which can or should mean) to be a father today.

Year of publication: 2023

Valoración: Highly recommended (even if it does not respond exactly what I expected of it)

Reading Chilean poeta very special sensitivity is already detected (dyed, yes, by the elongated shadow of Bolaño) by Alejandro Zambra to describe family, paternalophilial relationships and also the world of childhood, its way of seeing the world, its particular language and its imaginative universe. Children’s literature It recovers many of these issues, and very particularly the idea of ​​relationship between parents and children (the masculine here is not generic, if it is really), adopting in this case a generic format close to autobiography (or self -fiction).

The book is divided into two parts, and there is between them a specular relationship: the first (which corresponds to what he expected of this book) focuses fundamentally on Alejandro Zambra’s relationship with his son and, in general, with his newly acquired paternity (before, during and after); And the second part, on the other hand, orbits more about the writer’s relationship with his father, so, being equally well written, he has interested me a little less. There is no doubt that this correspondence between both parties responds to one of the central ideas of the book: that the relationship with a child makes you rethink the relationship with your own father, and reconsider your own childhood. Or, in the words of the text itself, “when you have a child, you are a son again.”

The author is aware of this aesthetic choice, obviously, and also that it goes against a certain idea of ​​masculinity and “good taste”, and reflects it in the text itself:

Other texts of this first part deal with other aspects of the experience of fatherhood: the choice of name, reading stories before sleeping and, just at the end of this section, confinement due to the Covid. None is up to it, I think, from the first, the newspaper of a first -time father, but they are all good, each in their own way.

Then, in the second section, the focus of the book is turning towards the other angle of the theme of fatherhood: the relationship that the writer has with his own father, especially from the chapter entitled “skyscrapers”. (Before comes a story starring children, “scribbles”, who without being bad does not seem to me to fit into the whole). Also in this second part there are notable chapters, always in that autobiographical/self -fiction register, counted with sensitivity and humor, such as “blue -eyed cogotos” or “late fishing fishing lessons”, but personally I have not enjoyed so much this second part of the book, because what I expected, what I was looking for, had already found it in the first.

In any case, this book is one of the best representatives that I can think of for this week of reviews dedicated to fatherhood …