The Silentiary

November 15, 2021
In the powerful second installment of Argentine writer Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation (after Zama), a nameless narrator is tormented by sounds. At home, in the street, or during rare trips to the circus or during philosophical enquiries with his oddball friend Besarión, the narrator is plagued by the sound of engines, radios, a madman who howls like a monkey, and other more “metaphysical noises.” To offset these disturbances, he begins writing a crime novel with himself as the detective. But who will the victim be? And who are the killers? As the borders between life and fiction begin to blur, he risks exchanging the role of author for that of culprit in a crime he is blind to (“I myself, the author, will remain unaware of who the criminal is. That way the book can be prolonged indefinitely, until the crime it once was about has been entirely forgotten,” he narrates). Di Benedetto (1922–1986) recasts the major conflict of the modern world as a war between noise and silence with this sly treatise on an individual’s attempts to remain sane in a city where his consciousness is frequently set off-kilter, “in defiance of any lunatic who might pretend otherwise.” The result is existential, nervy, and crisply imagined.

January 14, 2022

First published in 1964 in Argentina, this second di Benedetto novel to be translated into English (after Zama, also translated by Allen) features a nameless 25-year-old narrator, a writer whose life is invaded by an onslaught of loud noises in his neighborhood--a bus engine, a construction zone and auto repair site, a circus, radios, an open-air market, and television, among others. Earplugs and police intervention prove ineffective. At one point, he even blasts the musical "noise" of Beethoven to drown out the external loudspeakers. His hypersensitivity to the debilitating urban clamor becomes so intense that death seems like the only recourse; in fact, he unsuccessfully shoots an air gun at his head to relieve the agony. On a broader scale, the scenario is a metaphor for the unwanted and unsolicited intrusions that threaten one's humanity. VERDICT Inexplicably ignored and relegated to minor status below fellow Argentines like Borges and Cort�zar, di Benedetto is every bit as rewarding and meaningful. The novel's message about the frustrations of an individual desperately but ineffectively fighting the system is even more relevant today, over half a century after it was written.--Lawrence Olszewski

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2021
A man confronts the encroachment of urban noise on his home and life in this novel by Argentinian writer Di Benedetto (1922-1986) originally published in 1964. The unnamed narrator is 25, lives with his mother, and works as an assistant manager at an unspecified business in an unnamed city. A few words into the novel, the problem appears: "I open the gate and meet the noise." It's the sound of a bus idling, and it "punctures our life with shocks." At work, a transistor radio plays on his boss's desk. Back home, a new shock emerges as an industrial shed is built nearby for an auto-repair shop. He moves to a place where it seems noise is unlikely, to no avail. The nemesis grows to comic proportions: a dance hall with six vocalists and three orchestras. When he isn't suffering and complaining--"noise stalks and harries me"--the narrator ponders writing a "book about helplessness" called The Roof or perhaps a crime novel. He admires a young woman in the neighborhood but marries another. He has philosophical chats with his friend Besari�n, who goes off on a "bewildered pilgrimage" in search of an unspecified sign or signal, which might be a fly that lands on his neck in Rome. This is the second novel of a trilogy, following Zama (1956). His hero's existential predicament might recall Kafka or Dostoevsky, albeit on a lighter scale. It develops in spare, careful prose and sustains a thread of dry humor in the narrator's self-importance, especially in the pomposity and awkwardness of his expressions (shades of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Reilly), suggesting the fledgling writer trying his tiny wings. Allen's translation renders these nicely, such as "Day has developed in my windowpanes" or "It feels as if someone is vociferating through a megaphone and hurling cascades of screws and bolts at me." A strange, amusing novel by a writer well worth investigating.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.