Welcome literaries, savants of culture, vultures of prose, decentralizers, insomniacs, underliners, Chicanos, and all those obsessed with the written word in all its formats!
As I stumbled through the SDSU PRESS room's tower of inventory, I found, behind a couple of straggler books, a pile of thin, terracotta red ones. Their innocuous presence was contradicted by the title, a thing that caught my eye... "Nailed To The Wound" by José Manuel Di Bella, translated by Harry Polkinhorn, is a collection of fourteen short stories from one of Baja California's most innovative contemporary fiction writers.
The foreword by Tomás Di Bella incites the curiosity needed to explore as the tales take on a relentless stream of consciousness. Each narrative unfurls into itself, chasing ideas with the enormity that can only come from an acolyte of Carpentier, Pirandello, and Borges. It is a dangerous trinity to inherit, and an especially punishing one to attempt within the compressed architecture of a short story.
It is certainly an ambitious read. But us readers, we like to be bodiless, subsumed from our needs as we jump into the next story. I dived without commitment, and found a beautifully chaotic prose, a question in the dark, and a frenzy began to emerge in me, your humble informant.
Di Bella's inspects borders, agonizing love and art. The necessary space between creator and consumer, the ego of it all, to be, to want to seem to be... As the story is ingested, at times we may ask, which way is up? But we do know, like a shining light being pointed at the answer, that this collection will challenge us, our loss, our nostalgia, our disappointing conformities.
By Daniela Moreno
Ready for the next intoxicating read? Purchase a first edition copy here!
Paperback $9.95
ISBN:1879691140
