Alberto Barrera TyszkaRezensionen

Ernesto Durán sabe que está enfermo. Aunque los resultados clínicos digan lo contrario, desde que se ha separado de su mujer y vive solo, padece todos los síntomas de un mal que, según sospecha, puede ser mortal. Su obsesión va más allá de la mera hipocondría, y tiene la certeza de que sólo hay un médico que puede salvarlo. Pero el elegido, el doctor Javier Miranda, en esos mismos momentos se enfrenta a una tragedia personal: un diagnóstico irrefutable que señala que su padre tiene cáncer, y le quedan pocas semanas por vivir. Mientras Durán necesita desesperadamente hablar de su caso y de él mismo, el doctor Miranda se siente rehén del silencio, es incapaz de hacer con su padre lo que siempre ha hecho con sus pacientes: decir la verdad. La vivencia de la enfermedad en estas dos personas que ocupan posiciones tan distintas, el médico que sabe acerca de la vida y de la muerte y no quiere o no puede hablar, y el enfermo de angustia que sólo sabe que su sufrimiento no le deja vivir, es la columna vertebral que sostiene a esta hermosa novela, madura, adulta, reflexiva y refinada, que nos susurra desde su primera página algo que está en nuestra naturaleza: vivir mata.

¿Hasta dónde está dispuesta a llegar la televisión en su desesperada búsqueda de audiencia? Esta pregunta parece respirar en todas las páginas de esta historia. Rating es una novela que explora los límites morales en el crudo mundo de los reality shows y que hurga, desde su interior, en la exitosa industria de la telenovela latinoamericana. La novela alterna, hasta fusionarlas, la voz de Manuel Izquierdo, un guionista en plena crisis de los cincuenta, que después de dos décadas escribiendo melodramas televisivos se ha vuelto cínico y descreído, con la de Pablo Manzanares, un estudiante de literatura que quiere ser poeta y ha conseguido un trabajo menor en un canal. Desde las palabras de estos dos personajes, de estas dos experiencias que se cruzan, Barrera Tyszka propone un relato que desarrolla una sola historia y termina construyendo una única voz, apostando incluso por la creación de una sintaxis que reproduce el efecto caótico de la retórica televisiva.

The main focus is on the relationship between Dr. Andrés Miranda and his father, who is unaware he is dying from cancer. Andrés has always believed he should be frank with his patients about the severity of their illness, but is conflicted when it comes to talking to his father.
Alongside this is the story of Ernesto Durán, a former patient who Andrés dismissed as a hypochondriac, whose desperate emails are secretly answered by his secretary in Andrés' name.

A short novel with a hefty punch, dealing with death, mortality, deception of self and others, and the blurred boundary between deception and realism, and how we use both, wilfully or otherwise, to navigate life and impending death.

Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote one of the first biographies of Hugo Chávez, in 2005, so it's perhaps a little bit unexpected that he chose fiction as the medium in which to write about the President's death. But it isn't a totally crazy idea: by framing the book as a novel and looking at Chávez from the point of view of a wide range of characters from different social backgrounds and with different political opinions, he can bring out the difficulty of pinning down a character who was so focussed on the projection of his own image. We follow the situation in Venezuela between the announcement in June 2011 that Chávez was being treated for cancer and his death in March 2013. Amongst others, we watch him from the point of view of a retired doctor, who sees himself as politically disengaged but becomes interested in Chávez as a suffering human being (the last thing the President wants the world to imagine him as); the doctor's very anti-revolutionary wife; two journalists, one Venezuelan and one from the US, who are both finding it very difficult to write books about Chávez; a Cuban guest-worker trying to get herself and her family out of the island for good; a middle-class woman who is mostly just concerned about getting the tenants out of her apartment; a working-class woman who has become a prisoner of her fear of street crime; three militant Chavistas from a poor barrio on the fringes of Caracas; and a couple of young children who happen to have got caught up in the middle of it all.

And, intercut between all of this, Barrera keeps turning back to the Venezuelan crowd, mostly as seen through TV reports, whose collective reaction to the President's illness has quite a different character from that of any individual. It's striking how often he needs religious language to deal with this: Chávez seems to be comparing himself to Christ almost as often as he is projecting himself as the new Simon Bolivar.

Very interesting, but perhaps too short a book really to develop all these themes — we are left rather frustrated at the end by the way none of these individual stories is resolved after the President's death. Presumably Barrera wants us to realise that the country's fate at this point is just as undecided...

Balles perdues est l'histoire d'un père qui voit à la télé son fils aîné se faire tirer dessus lors d'une manifestation et disparaître dans la foule. Le choc est d'autant plus que personne ne comprend ce qu'il faisait dans cette manifestation politique puisqu'il était le plus apolitique de la famille.

La famille après vérification s'inquiète et voudrait savoir ce qu'il est devenu. Elle va voir les hôpitaux, les morgues, la télévision (pour voir s'il n'y aurait pas d'autres images qui en disent plus). Rien, pas de nouvelles. Cependant, la famille se divise sur la stratégie à apporter : aller voir les télévisions, oui mais lesquelles, celles pro-gouvernement, celles anti-gouvernement ? On voit les dissensions arriver, chacun choisissant sa voie mais surtout il y a un grand absent dans le texte, c'est le disparu. La chute est d'autant plus marquante pour le lecteur.

En peu de pages, l'auteur passe d'un thème un peu thriller (dans le sens d'évènement palpitant), au drame familiale, à la chronique des divisions d'un pays et de l'influence des médias sur les gens. On ne perd jamais le fil même en véhiculant autant d'idées, l'histoire est menée de mains de maître. Tout est logique et naturel. C'est une vraie nouvelle avec un fond intéressant et mémorable.

C'est un très bon texte (si toutes les nouvelles étaient comme cela).½

La Correspondance des Autres est l'histoire d'un professeur qui décide d'aller enseigner bénévolement la littérature dans une prison de Caracas. Il va avoir des élèves, tous volontaires, qui vont l'écouter. Jusqu'au jour où une émeute va se produire et va bouleverser la vie du professeur mais aussi de ses nouvelles.

Le texte fait une vingtaine de pages et j'ai eu du mal à comprendre ce que l'auteur avait bien pu vouloir signifier. À mon avis, le texte parle de l'importance de la maîtrise de la parole et de l'écrit et surtout du pouvoir que cela donne par rapport à ceux qui ne l'ont pas (ou qui l'on perdu). Le texte, à travers les différentes situations et les différents personnages, envisage ces situations.

C'est un texte, bien écrit et bien amené. Il fait passer beaucoup d'idées en très peu de pages. Cela aurait peut être demandé plus de pages.

"The father and son dynamic and relationship was pitch perfect. There's an inherent awkwardness with the soon to die and its awkwardness tempered with confusion because no matter how much you love the person you never know what to say and do. "
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.com/2012/12/sickness-alberto-barrera-tyszka.html

My mum read this novella for her bookgroup and reported the variety of reactions to it. Some found it almost impossible to read but I think it was because the subject (a man dying of cancer) too close to the bone. I haven't had direct experience of anyone close to me dying of cancer and therefore I think I approached the book more subjectively than some, plus I think the brevity of the story prevented me from becoming too attached to any of the characters.

The plot follows a doctor who is finding it very difficult to tell his father that he (the father) is terminally ill with cancer. His struggle with relating this information is interspersed with a subplot - and one which drives the story forward and kept me turning the 150 pages - about the doctor's secretary, who begins an email correspondence with one of his patients.

I found that although I liked the succinct writing of this novella, I really wanted more information and description about everyone and everything. For instance, we get a glimpse into the hard life of the cleaner, whose son is becoming drawn into a local gang, Venezuelan politics are touched upon very lightly and an incident on a boat is narrated sparsely with little context or follow through...it all left me feeling not exactly unsatisfied, but sort of emotionally uninvolved somehow. Still, an interesting read.

Andres Miranda is a doctor in the middle of a lot of drama--he's just found out his father is dying but can't bring himself to tell him, AND he's got a uber-hypochondriac patient who desperately wants the doctor to validate his firmly possessed notion that he is gravely ill. This slim novel covers a lot of ground in a quiet way, introducing philosophical questions about illness and dying, pain and lying. Translated from the original Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, the lyric style comes alive and keeps the reader turning the pages as these stories come to their inevitable ends. At times hilarious, at others, heartbreaking, this is a very impressive first novel for this Venezuelan author.

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa

"Tears are very unliterary: they have no form."

This is possibly the most dog-eared book I've ever had. Folding down corners is my method for marking significant (to me) passages, but it clearly wasn't working with this fiction novel because I was marking every page. I'd never read this Venezuelan author before, but I hope to find more of his work translated into English.

Delicate prose, deep moral questions, and a stunning pace are what kept me hooked into reading this in one sitting. The story itself is rather simple: a successful doctor discovers that his father is seriously ill. Their close relationship is strained as the son weighs the consequences of telling his father the details of his illness. In the meantime, another man, virtually unknown to the doctor, begins stalking him, imagining that he holds the cure for the the list of complaints he suffers from. There's a push and pull to the narrative, as the poignant moments between father and son,nuanced with shared memories of grief, intertwine with the creepy certainty of the stalker.

Because of the health issues that permeate the novel, questions about the nature of health and wellness are explored, but in a brief, compelling way. The author cites quotes of famous authors, ethicists and physicians, but he's not showing off, they are actually appropriate observations of how the human body deals with illness. These asides never go too long or feel like a lecture, they fit the material in the most uncanny way.

For example, Tyszka quotes Julio Ramon Ribeyro, who provides possibly the best explanation for the euphoria that exists after an episode of physical pain:

"Physical pain is the great regulator of our passions and ambitions. Its presence immediately neutralizes all other desires apart from the desire for the pain to go away. This life that we reject because it seems to us boring, unfair, mediocre or absurd suddenly seems priceless: we accept it as it is, with all its defects, as long as it doesn't present itself to us in its vilest form - pain."

Tsyzka presents simple scenes with insightful observation. On trying to read the face of a doctor while awaiting possibly bad news:

"It's the illustration that accompanies a bad diagnosis, the first installment of an expression of condolence."

On imagining his father's worries:

"Are the monsters of old age as terrible as those that assail us when we're children? What do you dream about when you're sixty-nine? ....Perhaps this is what his father dreams about: he's in a laboratory, in the bowels of a hospital, surrounded by chemicals, sharp implements, gauze, and strangers all repellently dressed in white...."

Events proceed in unexpected ways, and as a reader, you never quite know what direction you're being pulled in. You feel empathy and disgust in altering passages, and the underlying fear is riveting. I did find the ending a bit confusing...I still am not sure I've understood all the implications laid out.

One scene confounds me: It takes place on a ferry, where an obnoxious businessman makes a production of his 'importance' and maltreats his seemingly intelligent and kind wife, all the way to the point of beating her to the ground. I'm not sure what the symbolism is, although I know it's present in that scene. Is Tyszka trying to say that people are subject to humiliation, by oppression or illness, no matter how virtuous they are?

In full, this is easily going to be in my list of favorites for the year. While the subject revolves around illness, it never quite defines which 'illness' is being addressed: is it disease? regret? evil? The questions are posed, and only each individual reader can answer.

Un libro notable, escrito en un registro inusual en nuestra lengua, que mezcla lo profundo con lo veloz, que apela a las emociones pero también a la inteligencia del lector, y se adentra en las formas con las que occidente, actualmente, le ha dado la espalda a la enfermedad y a la muerte, en un empeño insaciable por construir un ideal de bienestar físico que tiene poco que ver con la verdad de la condición humana.