The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is
one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this
larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the
first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence,
self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings
anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, Krech is more
than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger
point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and
even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely
anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European
settlement of North America. Offers a more complex portrait of Native
American peoples, one that rejects mythologies, even those that both
European and Native Americans might wish to embrace.--Washington PostMy
story, the story of 'how I became a nun, ' began very early in my life;
I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which
I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and
after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous
and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I
took the veil . So starts Cesar Aira's astounding autobiographical
novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood
experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a
first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in
Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story
rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of
uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes
adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and
oblivion, reality and fiction, Cesar Aira's How I Became a Nun retains
childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of
invention.
A few days after his fiftieth birthday, Aira noticed the thin rim of the
moon, visible despite the rising sun. When his wife explained the
phenomenon to him he was shocked that for fifty years he had known
nothing about something so obvious, so visible. This epiphany led him to
write How I Became a Nun. With a subtle and melancholic sense of humor
he reflects on his failures, on the meaning of life and the importance
of literature.
