Author: Jorge Eduardo Benavides
- Fiction
- Nocturnas Ediciones
- ISBN: 9788493975081
- Release Date: 03-14-2013
-Reviewed by: Brendan Riley
La paz de los vencidos by Jorge Eduardo Benavides is a novel written in diary form by a nameless Peruvian narrator, a thirty-something intellectual slumming in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Recently relocated to Santa Cruz from La Laguna, he takes a dead-end job at a slot machine parlor. The diary’s dates span October 5 to May 2 of the following spring of a nameless year(s) that seems to be late 1990s near the end of the Fujimori presidency.
In a series of moving, artfully crafted entries that impressively synthesize the emotional spontaneity of diary reflection and metatextual associations, the narrator relates his sentimental life, friendships, and love affairs past and present. The narration is limpid, easily combining memories and reflections, with an intellectual point of view that mixes the familiar anguish of the young lovelorn bachelor with keen, critical observations (piercing, touching, scathing, hilarious, mordant) of contemporary life, and the difficulty involved in retaining one’s dignity while being true to artistic and intellectual vocations. The narrator focuses on several sentimental relationships: his ex-girlfriend Carolina; his old friend Arturo from Lima, who fled to London after his parents’ assassination; the couple Enzo and Elena; the brilliant but seemingly washed-up novelist Capote; and a retired professor who tutors students at a local bar. His passing relationship with the professor, and one with a pretty young woman whose mother has a gambling problem, are particularly touching.
The story is intriguing from start to finish, braiding all storylines neatly into a surprising, satisfying open-ended finish. In some ways, Benavides’ novel is a sort of stripped-down Hopscotch, smart, touching, and funny without Cortázar’s voluminous obscurities. From all external appearances, and often by his own account, the lonely narrator seems a loser as he smokes, drinks whiskey, contemplates women, and floats away on jazz, but through his splendid diary––artful, clever, perfectly balanced––he manages to be more immediately and artistically successful than Capote, who dreams of a prestigious Canary Islands literary prize, and Enzo whose jazz piano playing does not promise fame or fortune.
Always engaging, La paz de los vencidos has the hook of popular novels and the robust intellectual reflection of the best literature; it’s sad, funny, and touching, never flat or boring. The reader is likely to care for, and care about, the narrator and his relationships. The humanity is abundant and universal; the background events do not require a reader of English to be overly familiar with the Hispanic world. The story is urban, intellectual, sentimental. It is seasoned but not cluttered with some local references to Peru and Spain that an experienced reader will certainly understand, directly or by association (the old professor is Galician and drinks orujo; the narrator talks about jazz musicians, Carnival celebrations and political turmoil in Peru; the “salon recreativo” where work is also open to teenagers who play video games there––unfamiliar to U.S. readers because in the states these pastimes exist in separate locations.
The range of sentimental relationships is familiar but not predicable; sometimes one suspects, or hopes for, some particular outcome but each is resolved in an unexpected, realistic, and gratifying way through Benavides’ lovely turns of phrase. Plot lines are evenly balanced and skillfully woven together. All contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to the narrator’s concluding sentiments and actions. The dialogue is either reported or quoted, by the narrator; like the narration, it is clear and plausible, not artificial or contrived.
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