An abandoned house brims with shelves holding fingernails and teeth. Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howards sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn. And it definitely shouldnt be swelling. [Scheduled] South American: Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enriquez, "Under the Black Water" Welcome to the discussion of "Under the Black Water," the 10th story from Mariana Enrquez's Things We Lost in the Fireshort story collection. Current schedules can be found on the sidebar, in the top tabs, and pinned on the front page of the sub. The consequences are dire, but theres nevertheless a sense of agency in directing ones gaze. Anne M. Pillsworths short storyThe Madonna of the Abattoir appears on Tor.com. What makes you do something like that? Welcome to r/bookclub! The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. Not the only one but that I can assure you; that was weird. My favourite writers have written horror; Robert Aikman, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King I dont have a problem because I think Im in good company.. Then she runs, trying to ignore the agitation of the water that should be able to breathe, or move. $24.00. The slum spreads along the black river, to the limits of vision. Wed Jul 11, 2018 2:00pm. Even so, the genre was almost completely pushed to the margins of the canon, considered minor and a colonial imposition. The district attorney could have stayed in the car, or stayed in her office, behind brick and glass. Its not that her protagonists fear a slide into poverty, but that the niceness of their lives is so clearly perched on evil filth. Yeah, skip continents, and the tainted roots of horror will still get you. He runs Debutiful, a site dedicated to celebrating debut authors and their books. And of course, whatever lies beneath the river might have been less malevolent, if it hadnt spent all that time bathing its ectoplasm in toxic sludge. Meet Mariana Enriquez, Argentine journalist and author, whose short stories are of decapitated street kids (heads skinned to the bone), ritual sacrifice and ghoulish children sporting sharpened teeth. He tried to swim through the black grease that covers the river, holds it calm and dead. He drowned when he could no longer move his arms. Silvia hated public. Yeah, Im sure, agrees Mariana matter of factly, because were all about politics and football. The fact that Mariana has no such qualms is in some ways thanks to Aira. I felt unpleasant echoes of That Only a Mother, a much-reprinted golden age SF story in which the shocking twist at the end is that the otherwise precocious baby hasnt got any limbs (and, unintentionally, that the society in question hasnt got a clue about prosthetics). Personalize your subscription preferences here. Thus, resistance is body politics, and its goal is empowerment through control of the body, which becomes a dissident political subject (an allegory of movements like NiUnaMenos or the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) in order to articulate womens sovereignty: a new ideology, a new way to fix the value of the body, of life, and of death. political horror like "Under the Black Water, " "El desentierro de la. Already in 1976, Ellen Moers had coined the term female gothic to refer to women writers who cultivated this genre as a subversive space in which to display the social and political oppression of women, the confinement of their bodies, the marginalization of their work, and the impossibility of their expressing their sexual freedom. [But] it wasnt about the boys, it was about them, feeding off each other, their energy, and trying to release something. Its just that even the weirdest fiction needs a way to elide the seams between real-world horror and supernatural horrorand many authors have similar observations about the former. And Enriquez achieves all this with an ambiguous, stark, coarse, and crude language that bombards us with uncomfortable questions: How does the gothic speak to us about the real? All these tales are told from a womans point of view, often a young one, and they seem to be able to hold out against the horror that lures them for only so long. Argentina had taken the river winding around its capital, the woman observes, which could have made for a beautiful day trip, and polluted it almost arbitrarily, practically for the fun of it. If the foul water itself werent bad enough, she learns that police have murdered kids by throwing them off a bridge into it. OK, nice, is her reply. He laughs. We read and post about several books each month that are suggested by members and selected by popular vote. Never mind how the priest knows shes there about Emanuel, or knows about the pregnant girl who pointed her this way. In Under the Black Water, a district attorney pursuing a witness ventures into a slum that even her cab driver wont enter. Even more brutal is 'Under the Black Water', a story that blends an investigation into police brutality with the reality of pollution and fear of the unknown. Vitcavage: Since youre a journalist as well, is there a sense of need when it comes to including political commentary within yourfiction? But I have to be careful that my personal passions and obsessions dont take over my stories and make them all sound toosimilar. A demonic idol is borne on a mattress through city streets. Normally there are people. Never mind how the priest knows shes there about Emanuel, or knows about the pregnant girl who pointed her this way. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. I swear we dont keep picking stories with shootings and killer cops deliberately. Do all lives have the same worth? Table of Contents: Things we lost in the fire - Schlow Library . Beyond this empty area live the citys poor by the thousands. And in trying to make those insular locals truly terrifying, the narrative gets problematic as all hell. But it would not be until the start of the twenty-first century that this new reading would attain global success thanks to TV series, comics, and bestsellers like Millennium, Twilight, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and many more, which have filled our imaginations with monsters, zombies, vampires, mutants, ghosts, cyborgs, and other supernatural beings that coexist with us in a sort of global-gothic world. The poor men, she deadpans back. Today we're reading Mariana Enriquez's "Under the Black Water," first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. Instead we get deformed children with their skinny arms and mollusk fingers, followed by women, most of them fat, their bodies disfigured by a diet based on carbs.. And death, how much is death worth? The body of Emanuel Lpez, the second boy, still hasnt surfaced. What is it about the fiction of Mariana Enriquez that makes the whole world, book market and academics included, like it so much? Not one of the blind kids with misshapen hands gets characterization, or even a speaking role other than to mouth platitudes about dead things dreaming. In the middle of the night, invisible men pound on the shutters of a country hotel. He came out of the water. Girls can be like bees or like locusts: there's something toxic and delicious and exotic about . Since Esteban Echeverras foundational 1871 work The Slaughter Yard, Argentine literature has offered plentiful examplesArlt, Lamborghini, Chejfec, etc.of the representation of forms of violence. "[5], In a review in Vanity Fair, Sloane Crosley was impressed by Enriquez's skill at using supernatural stories to explore Argentina's political turmoil: "In her hands, the countrys inequality, beauty, and corruption tangle together to become a manifestation of our own darkest thoughts and fears."[6]. But the police throwing people in there, that was stupid. Enriquez: Time! Hallelujah? Meanwhile, in his house, the dead man waits dreaming. So what is prisoned under the river? 208 pages. Copyright 2023 Kenyon Review. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. This article about a collection of horror short stories published in the 2010s is a stub. Site made in collaboration with CMYK. 2023 Macmillan | All stories, art, and posts are the copyright of their respective authors, Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water. But now the streets are dead as the river. She met Father Francisco, who told her that no one even came to church. He hasnt brought a lawyerafter all, he says, hes innocent. They physically abused them and threw them in the Riachuelo River. Shes trying to get a glimpse when the thing moves, and its gray arm falls over the side. Even for me and Ive been there. All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in May! I like these genres for various reasons: theyre popular and entertaining, and at the same time theyre very profound. Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. A few years ago in Buenos Aires, two policemen detained two poor, young men who were coming back from a night club. Its interesting to me that there can be a certain disdain for whats popular, but I reject that, thats an elitist way of thinking. Under the Black Water: A nightmarish story of a woman who tries to find the murderer of a teenage boy, a slum city full of violence and death, and the cult of the dead. Penguin Random House. Silvia was the one who came up with the idea of the quarry pools that summer, and we had to hand it to her, it was a really good idea. The journalist and author fills the dozen stories with compelling figures in haunting stories that evaluate inequality, violence, and corruption. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Theyre carrying a bed, with some human effigy lying on it. In the Villa, shes startled by silence. I just wrote a review of the concert, but on another level, I always have antenna for this weirdness.. You Are Here: ross dress for less throw blankets apprentissage des lettres de l'alphabet under the black water mariana enriquez. But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. So we share interests then? Its refreshing to encounter somebody so political and literary who, instead of turning from genre, adopts it to save her work falling into preaching or pamphleteering. Fear, as an emotion, the ultimate puppeteer. What is the relationship like in Argentina between politics and literature? Does our apathy make us complicit? This process thereby generates a violence, both symbolic and material, that produces disease, precarity, and death. Shes relievedobviously, everyone has just gone to practice the murga for carnival, or already started to celebrate a little early. The children born with those defects are, alas, treated more as symbols than characters, or as indications that the river leaches humanity. Her father, who once worked on a River Barge, told stories of the water running red. The contamination is due to the factories and slaughterhouses on the shores of the Riachuelo that dump their waste into the river, polluting it. The psychic interiority of broaching ones own darkness is the mainstay of horror fiction, the genre to which these stories clearly belong. She runs, not looking back, and covers her ears against the sound of the drums. Mariana Enriquez (Buenos Aires, 1973) has published novelsincluding Our Share of Night, which won the famous Premio Herraldeand the short story collections Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in the Fire, which sold to 20 international publishers before it was even published in Spanish and won the Premio Enriquez: Sure, for example, "Under the Black Water" was inspired by a true story of police violence. Shes disturbed by his toothless mouth and sucker-like fingers. Borges and his friendsthe writers Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampowere so fond of horror that they co-edited several editions of an anthology of macabre stories. Before she can react, he shoots himself. Does it have a role to play? You have no idea what goes on there. They inhabit the same plane, stalk the same prey; both are offered equality in terror. Ive been wanting to read more weird fiction in translation, so was excited to pick up Mariana Enriquezs Things We Lost in the Fire. In Enriquezs world, no one is adequately shielded. Vitcavage: What can readers learn about Argentina from yourstories? Similarly, in the title story, a hideously burned beggar kisses the cheeks of commuters, taking pleasure in their discomfort with her. 2021. Ive traveled just a bit in the United States, but I have a few friends there. I think that most readers think that the first story in the collection ('The Dirty Kid') is the best one, and indeed - it's a great story. Fear is one of the most powerful and motivating emotions. Its stench, he said, was caused by its lack of oxygen. The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. You have no idea what goes on there. In the slum Buenos Aires frays into abandoned storefronts, and an oil-filled river decomposes into dangerous and deliberate putrescence.. In this case rather than Lovecrafts racism and terror of mental illness, we get ableism and a fun-sized dose of fat-phobia. All of this is added to the deconstruction of subjugating courtly love, and to the sacralization and sublimation of sex, crystallized in the many women who dominate, objectify, and consume men in her stories. He wouldnt touch politics, or football. Enriquez places feminisms struggle against capitalism in the foreground, given the impossibility of gender equality without class equality, through a gothic that opens up to more complex interpretations, in which women and marginalized classes, rendered ghostly, become dangerous harbingers of horror, even while being the most vulnerable and castigated subjects under capitalism. [1], "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. When Marina investigates, events grow more and more disturbing in a way that feels Lovecraftian. 202 pages. Im still intrigued by the idea of pollution as a messed-up attempt at bindingcontaining, of course, the seeds of its own destruction. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. In my opinion, this was the finest moment in the collection and a powerful commentary on the violence and discrimination against the ones who live in the margins of a troubled . 202 pages. I want my stories to have an air of familiarity, especially those in a collection or in a book. That pause before the inevitable is the space of fabulist fiction, torqueing open the rigid rules of reality to create a gap of possibility. Mariana Enriquez: When I was a girl, the first things I read were horror and fantasy. The chairs have been cleared out, along with the crucifix and the images of Jesus and Our Lady. In the end, one of the young boys drowned in the river. Under the Black Water isnt quite a Shadow Over Innsmouth retelling, but it riffs on the same tune. Its no murga, but a shambling procession. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. Instead she chooses to see for herself this diabolical landscape. An emaciated, nude boy lies chained in a neighbors courtyard. Spoilers ahead. And he says to me, I think its because we dont own the narrative. In one story, "Under the Black Water," a severely polluted river that has become a dumping ground for victims of police violence becomes a source of a zombie cult. Every author is very different but they account for the wide breadth of current Argentinian literature. Shadow Over Argentina: Mariana Enriquez's "Under the Black Water". Never mind that Pinat has his voice on tape, saying Problem solved. I distorted things of course, but mostly it was two boys, they lived around the slum near the river and they were caught by the police and tortured in the street they simulated shooting them., And then they were told to swim the river. But I saw these 30,000 girls screaming all the time. After all, a living boy is one less crime to accuse the cops of. What youre doing is basically reporting I dont think [journalism] can make you think in the long term or a very profound way, something you can go back to in 20 years and say, 'this is what was going on, this is the space people were living in.'. Under the Black Water isnt quite a Shadow Over Innsmouth retelling, but it riffs on the same tune. In the Villa, shes startled by silence. For a long time, it was considered elitist (protagonized by upper-class characters and set in opulent castles), escapist (appealing to a beyond that shuns the present), normative (vindicating a logocentrism that condemns the unknowable and the strange), and barbaric (it is no coincidence that the word gothic comes from the people called Goths, and cannibalism and violence are two of its recurring themes). So, the articulation of a univocal female community is an aporia becauseas if positioned within a materialist feminismthe problem of class permeates the problems of women, preventing a true sisterhood, as is illustrated in La Virgen de la tosquera [The virgin of the pit], a story in which bourgeois teenage girls seem to fight over a man when what is really at stake is class struggle: the war against his girlfriend, Silvia, a vulgar, common, dark-skinned girl.
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