Few books are abstruse as this. Attila perhaps has this reputation in the original Spanish, and translating anything - no matter how dutifully - is a hermeneutic process that results in inevitable distortions. This is compounded by some weird factors from the translator. In her introduction, Katie Whittemore talks about her difficulty with this process, resorting to consulting ChatGPT and her psychic medium. The English reader goes into this wondering to what degree the text's unintelligibility is a failure on part of the author, translator, or one's own understanding. Obversely, to what degree is any glimmer of understanding a projection of the reader onto the text? What hallucinations of AI (or psychic forces from beyond the grave) are projecting shapes onto an otherwise incoherent text? Needless to say, the challenges of interpreting a text here are dialed up to eleven, and at some point you just have to plumb the text yourself and read it.
The first two and a half chapters are surrealist logorrhea regarding a fictional play and novel both titled "Laocoön". It isn't until the second chapter that the reader gets a few footholds to discern anything. The novel is set in a fictionalized 5th century. Attila the Hun's sons are hostages held across the Roman empire, and one of these sons, Quixote, is set to marry the emperor's daughter, Ipsibidimidiata. Attila, however, intends to recall Quixote and other hostages and retreat back to the steppe where he will create a new society with all that they have learned from settled civilization. He does not want to repeat the mistake they made with the Chinese, settling among them and being dragged down by their decadence.
It's at this point we may draw some thematic connection to the aforementioned mythic Laocoön, who warned his fellow Trojans against bringing the Horse in the walls. Attila's sons can be seen as Trojan horses to Rome, or perhaps the ideals of civilization can be seen as Trojan horses to steppe society, and Attila (like Laocoön) is warning against them.
Hello, did you read the companion volume released in English translation shortly after this, with the same title? In my opinion, it was the better novel.
No, I haven't read Serena's novel yet. I wanted to approach Coll's novel relatively blind. I thought that since Serena's novel is about Coll, it may have hindered that approach. Perhaps I should read Serena's before rereading Coll's. Do you think Serena's novel stands on it's own as a work? And to what degree does it help clarify Coll's work?
I took this approach as well and I'm not sure whether it was the right one. I think if I could go back I would have done it in reverse and started with Serena. Yes, it absolutely stands on its own - it captures the sort of eccentricity that inexorably leads to a work like Coll's in the real world very, very well. It's an amazing character study, and eminently believable, even though much of the details are fictionalized. As far as clarity goes, I don't really think there's any to be found by reading Serena.