Missed Encounters | An Interview with Jorge Consiglio

By Carolina Orloff

Despite all the journeys that my library has taken—from Argentina to Canada, from Canada to England, then to Scotland, back to Argentina, and eventually back to Scotland again—and all the shedding and parting that has happened in between, I have managed to hold on to all my books by Jorge Consiglio. In my humble but precious collection, Consiglio’s writing occupies an untouchable place. Perhaps it is because (and I only discovered this recently) he comes from the same neighborhood where I grew up in Buenos Aires and which gives the title to his most recent short story collection, Villa del Parque, published by Charco as Southerly. Buenos Aires is a huge, busy metropolis, with myriad neighborhoods. Yet somehow Villa del Parque remains a kind of quiet secret amid the chaos. A leafy, almost secluded part of the capital; an uncomfortable place for the curious mind. Perhaps I have clung to Consiglio’s books because there is something in the tone of his prose, in the poetry and detail of his craft, that conveys to me an echo of truth, the familiar but also indefinable sound of home.

When I first read Fate (originally published in 2018 under the title Tres monedas, meaning “three coins”), I couldn’t put it down. More importantly, I couldn’t stop translating it in my head. For me, this manifestation of desire, this urgent pull, is what must—ideally—exist at the core of all literary translations. It is a need, intellectual as well as physical, that eventually becomes the heart of the work. Since I am not a native speaker of English, I wouldn’t dare do a translation into English on my own. That is where the co-translator of Fate, Fionn Petch, comes in. I know Fionn very well (and this is key when co-translating, I think!), as a translator and as a thinker. I knew his background in philosophy, his knowledge of Buenos Aires, and his obsession with the playful intricacies of language would bring the perfect elements to the alchemy required to translate a novel as carefully constructed as Consiglio’s.

Increasingly apparent in his recent fiction is the fact that Consiglio’s prose goes down. I mean that the stories he tells us move forward—sometimes in conventional linear fashion, sometimes less so—but somehow, as we move on with the characters, we begin diving deep down into their subconscious, into those existential doubts they may not even be aware they have. We come up to the surface to breathe, to witness some occurrence of seeming banality, only to be taken down again to discover new dimensions, to look at these characters (and in turn, at ourselves) in different, unsuspected ways. As a reader, I am moved by this kind of experience; it can be transformative on many levels. New York Magazine wrote that Fate could be likened to a pointillist painting by Seurat, “with each dab of color and each descriptive passage contributing to what is finally a beautifully structured and brilliantly shimmering whole.” I could not agree more, and I would add that each dab of color in that metaphor is also a peephole into the intricate emotional network of Consiglio’s characters—individuals who, in multiple ways, resonate with the people we are or try to be.

Consiglio and I talked over the phone and exchanged emails about the inspiration behind Fate, his cinematic and literary influences, the importance of detail, and the art of threading different narrative strands into one.

Carolina Orloff: How do you write? Do you have rituals?

Jorge Consiglio: For a decade now, I have been working from home. I am a day person. I wake up early, pour myself a coffee, turn on the computer, and start writing. In general, that writing time extends until midday. In the afternoon, I read, work with students, or do administrative tasks. When I write, I like having my books nearby. Most of the time, I need to check them, not so much to collect information but rather to find the sound that the text I am working on demands. That acoustic search often takes me to poetry. Frequently, words are like mantras: they unlock language, they provide that momentum required to keep on narrating. Another tool that I use a lot is the dictionary of synonyms and antonyms. Writing is a rhizomatic, derivative task: you know where it starts, but you never know where it’s going to end.

CO: What was the origin of Fate? What does it stem from?

JC: I never know for sure what the triggers that lead me to write a fictional text are. Nevertheless, in the case of Fate, the process was different. From the first moment, an image planted itself in my mind which then worked as the genesis for the novel. It’s the image of a Ferris wheel. In my imagination, I could see it erected in an urban area. It was the main attraction of a second-rate fun fair. I thought of a character staring at the horizon when the turn of the mechanical ride placed him at the highest point. That was the first image. Then I imagined the structure of the story: several narrative lines—three or four—each one revealing the life of a character. As the novel evolved, those narrative lines would find their way to mix with one another. That is to say, the characters would get to meet each other and, in that way, the plot would emerge. I also wanted to have a powerful narrator. A third-person singular who would have no connection to the main action but who would rather gain in prominence through enunciation: giving his opinion, getting inside the characters’ minds, understanding more than they did about the situations they were involved in. I also knew that I wanted to build uncertainty with all these elements. I suppose also that in my fiction in general, there is a theme that is always present: encounters and missed encounters. In Fate in particular there is also the tension between destiny and chance. These are ideas which I am constantly thinking about and which end up appearing in everything I write.

CO: How does the filmic element—for example, The Third Man, which you mention in your Author’s Note—intertwine with the narrative?

JC: In relation to The Third Man, the film by Carol Reed, I focused precisely on the scene that takes place high up on the Ferris wheel. There, the two main characters have an extraordinary dialogue about power and corruption that has always stayed with me. The movie is set in an impoverished Vienna after the Second World War. During the scene I am describing, one of the characters, who’s involved in the penicillin black market, belittles the value of the lives of those affected by his crimes. The Ferris wheel cabin where the action takes place becomes a kind of confessional. It is a place of neutrality where the most indecent and amoral thoughts can be revealed. That is to say that this place acquires a symbolic value that imposes itself over the actual one. Reed’s film certainly contributed, in more than one sense, to constructing the space for the peak of Fate’s dramatic tension.

CO: How is the suspense of the novel organized?

JC: In literature, the idea of suspense is linked to concealment. Think of detective novels: a crime is committed and the tension of the story is directly linked to solving it. We, as readers, follow the course of the detective, we accompany them, and we share in their astonishment when the mystery is unveiled, when the crime is explained. The intrigue, in this sense, is an effective artifice to consolidate the suspense in a story. In Fate, however, it does not appear like that. There is a different type of intrigue that has more to do with imminence rather than concealment. The narrator’s point of view circles above what he’s narrating. Even though the story is narrated in the past tense, there is an immediacy to the way the story is told. The suspense in this novel has to do with the action, which is constantly on the edge of itself. This effect relates to the turn of events—the peripetia, that zigzagging of narrative lines—and to a matter of syntax. The short sentences contribute to what in music would be the light accentuation of the staccato. Fate has a dimension of suspense based on the instability of what is being told. What the novel proposes is a universe governed by fortuitousness, and it is exactly on that unpredictability that the intrigue is founded.

CO: You also try and avoid the key events of the novel. Like the separation between Marina and Karl.

JC: For the sake of the construction of this novel, avoiding the key events was the most important aspect. I wanted to organize the text from the margins, to narrate from an angle, from an oblique perspective. The narrative strategy used by Juan Carlos Onetti in a great part of his work has always appealed to me. He tells the story as if those hearing it already knew it from before, he takes for granted many details about the plot that of course the readers don’t really have knowledge of. I like that manner of narrating rooted in intrigue. It strengthens the opacity of the text and allows meanings to proliferate.

CO: We see your characters struggle with the things that happen to them. In trying to give shape to their lives, they believe that they are taking big decisions that will transform them. Is this search for coherence only an illusion?

JC: The minutiae of the everyday is something that always appeals to me when it comes to narrating. The token, daily tragedies. The diminutive set design of our lives. We search for the meaning of our existence while we are making pumpkin soup. I love that combination, destroying the notion of the grand Shakespearean stage. The lives of the characters in Fate, even at their highest dramatic points, take place in a whisper, far from the great proscenium arch. Everything overlaps. In the novel, the pain felt at the breaking of a glass is connected with other existential sufferings which are harder to define and, therefore, more difficult to express.

CO: There is a violent undertone to Fate, a kind of electricity that often threatens to—and sometimes actually does—short circuit. Was this deliberate? What impact did the violence of a city like Buenos Aires have on the composition of Fate?

JC: Violence is a possibility that is always present for the characters in Fate. In the groundswell that moves them, there are many motivating factors, and one of the ways they can translate them is through hostility. Just like the syntax and the plot in general, these characters are also on the edge of themselves. In addition, the violence in the text is an echo, a component of the tone. The movement of the story has to do with a certain commotion, a feeling of unease that is intrinsically linked to a fit of madness and the possibility of fury.

In relation to the second part of the question, I guess that everything that surrounds me permeates what I write. Buenos Aires, in particular—and contemporary societies in general—consider violence to be their currency. In fact, they are quite creative when it comes to manifesting it.

CO: You are a devoted reader of poetry and also a poet yourself. Do you consider Fate’s prose poetic? I’m thinking particularly of the way in which you use detail.

JC: My narrative expression owes a lot to poetry in two senses. The first one relates to a concern I have about the sound of what I write. I pause at each sentence, each paragraph, and adjust the syntax so that the acoustics of the text are exactly what I am looking for. The second has to do with detail. I believe literature is based, to a great extent, on the use of metonymy. A small part of something—a splinter —must work to express an expanded and complex totality.

CO: What place does Fate have in your narrative project? How has it shaped your perception of yourself as an author? And has any of that adopted a new meaning now that the book exists in an English translation?

JC: Fate is a key novel in my narrative project. I think that, with this novel, I have consolidated the tone and economy of my storytelling. These are aspects of my fiction I had been concerned with for a very long time. This novel allowed me to enact a narrative rhythm which I had so far only managed to rehearse in shorter works of fiction, such as Southerly.

In relation to the English translation, it was an extraordinary experience. The work we did with the translators allowed me to look at my texts from a completely different vantage. There was a kind of defamiliarization (what Shklovsky called ostranenie) with my own writing that helped me grow a lot in my métier. There was a moment when we spoke every day. The intention was always to keep the sound and the color of the original text in the other language. Our translation work had to consider everything, from syntax to semantics to cultural context. I remember that we spent weeks trying to think what terms to use in English to account for a brand of cookies that one of the characters buys. Charco Press works with tremendous passion, and for that I will always be grateful. For me, the process of translating Fate was a process of re-writing, and for that reason, extremely enriching.

CO: Were you involved in the cover design process? What is the significance of the cover image?

JC: Yes, the people at Charco Press gave me the opportunity to take part in the cover design and it was a very fruitful experience for me. The designer, Pablo Font, understood precisely the concepts that frame the book. He produced a cover with several eyeballs orbiting like planets on the surface of the page. The image is hard-hitting, combined with the color of the cover, and is linked to two questions that are central in the novel. One, the idea of the gaze; the characters are constantly observing others while at the same time being observed. Two, and the core question of the text: how to find in the midst of utter chaos a direction that, somehow, justifies our existence.

Jorge Consiglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1962. As well as being a novelist, he is a poet, essayist and literature professor. He has published six novels to date: El bien (The Good, 2003), Gramática de la sombra (Grammar of the Shadows, 2007), Pequeñas intenciones (Small Intentions, 2011; re-published in 2019), Hospital Posadas (2015), Tres Monedas (2018), published by Charco Press as Fate, and Sodio (Sodium, 2021), forthcoming in English in 2023. All of his novels have been awarded prizes in Argentina and in Spain. He has also published three collections of short stories, including Villa del Parque (2016), published by Charco Press as Southerly (2018), five books of poems, and a book of essays. Fate is his second book to be published in English, after Southerly.

Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature. In 2016, after obtaining her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, she co-founded Charco Press where she acts as editorial director. She is the co-translator of Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love, which was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2018, and of its sequels, Feebleminded and Tender. She has also translated Virginia Woolf’s short stories into Spanish and has published a book on the politics in the writing of Julio Cortázar. In 2018, she was named ‘Emerging Publisher of the Year’ by the Saltire Society of Scotland.

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