Idioma original: Español
Year of publication: 2024
Valuation: Alright
Elephantastic trilogy compiles several texts (revised for the occasion) that were originally published in Raúl Ariza’s anthologies Elephantiasis (2010), The soft skin of the anaconda (2012) y Globules verses (2014).
These texts are mostly two-page stories (right now I can only think of four stories that are three pages long), although there are also a handful of poems from Globules verses. They always stick to a realistic register (except for “Crisis”, which narrates an imminent end of the world), they share a direct style not devoid of a certain lyricism and they address similar themes.
In general, they work. However, not all of them do so with the same effectiveness; to that we must add that, read in one go, they are redundant (since they explore themes such as the lack of communication between human beings, loneliness, repressed desire or existential frustration from similar angles) and they show certain stylistic flaws that I don’t quite like (for example, putting some stage directions in the dialogues in a new sentence with the first letter capitalized).
I would also criticize Ariza’s texts for the fact that many of them could be polished. Those that have first-person narrators are not always entirely credible; in “The Noise and the Cold” or in “Superhero”, for example, I can think of a couple of ideas to make the child’s voice in the first, and that of the third-person narrator focused on a child in the second, more convincing. Likewise, those that end with a twist would do well to look for more imaginative options, since in almost all of them an adulterous relationship or a crime of passion is revealed at the last moment.
So roughly I would say that in The soft skin of the anaconda There are more refined stories in the volume. There are also quite good ones in Globules versesaccompanied by their interesting poetic prose counterparts.
These pieces of poetic prose by Ariza are also noteworthy, by the way. Although I am not a fan of the genre, I admit that some of them have moved me, sometimes even more than their narrative version. This is the case, for example, of “The Imaginary Traveler”, whose verses (probably perfectly assimilated thanks to the context previously given by the story of the same name) I share below:
«I packed my bag
-four things, three poems and some dreams-
and I started walking
I turned two corners that
borders resulted
and I went into the jungles
virgins like my
bed sheets
I also drank glasses
full of rivers with
alligators and climbing
tenor curbs
from a Himalaya
He was already so old
When I tied my
shoes to leave»
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2024/09/raul-ariza-trilogia-elefantiastica.html
