In the Shadow of the Owl - Luisa Mercedes Levinson
There are some academic takes into why it gets called magical realism or the genre highly associated within Latinx fiction, but not enough I think that connects the ideas to postcolonial apparatuses and then faces our problems as readers. Other postcolonial fiction too follows this same suit of the interruption of space by the so called west changing the output of the predating peoples' entire being and autonomy to minute points of academic entry. This also reasonably goes into a major amount of written works from these areas being directly influenced, critiquing or about the colonization's fallout but cannot be directed to the thought or process of outside actors who won't implicate ourselves in its creation/consumption/colonization.
...I am swept up in everybody else's world and I bleed profusely for animals, plants, things, men. I would like to spread more of me around and soothe the world with a flowing ointment, perhaps a pinch of salt, but just a pinch; my ointment is without a drop of bitterness. I would like to heal, to restore with the innocence I have lost and a wisdom I never had...and I'm sad because I know it isn't right to be sad and I don't want anyone to notice it. I prefer to play the fool than show my feelings, because sadness hurts others. Do you remember what I invented when I was a little girl? (I told you all about it then, only because you weren't able to understand me; you were four years old.) May I tell you? I would go to the old house on Florida Street and explore every nook and corner, searching for things which had been discarded, wilted flowers, old ribbons, threads from velvet material, and I would wait for the seamstress to discard broken pins and needles. I would rescue fireflies that had fallen into water and wine glasses after the grown-ups had left the table and examine the pale statues and cracked walls with concern. I'm ashamed to have to confess this antidote I had against sadness. I would bend down, you know, touch and kiss all of these things. This is how I fought loneliness. Now I would like to kiss the whole wide world, warriors who cry silently before they die, murderers and their victims, judges, the condemned, the rich and the poor, all of them, so lonely in the golden dust. But I've lost the faith our name began with, and I no longer know how to find a cure. (Levinson 189)
The reason I sought out In the Shadow of the Owl is because a book by Luisa Valenzuela came in through the returns at the library - Clara: Thirteen short stories and a novel - and as of writing this first part I am still trying to finish the eponymous novella. Levinson is Valenzuela's mother, both are Argentinian authors who are mostly only famous in their country. Tying elements of their work is gender and surrealism. In the real world too it is also the lack of translated works even with their popularity outside of academia's canonic conquest. I am the second person in the library to check out Clara... and the first to check out In the Shadow... It's an odd and kinda funny place to be at, especially because In The Shadow... has a few different misprinted items and it's unlikely we'll buy another or that there would be another without the errors contained.
After finishing In the Shadow... I checked its etymological root of its names and characters and found myself finally understanding the book. It is comparable to the way One Thousand Years of Solitude works, where the names change and the people change but fate and lineage is linked. If I remember or find the sheet I wrote out, I'll add a small writeup at the end. However, this shit is fucking out there and will be most likely an illegible attempt to review/explain the book following this.
The first part of the book is the easiest to follow as a story, and at its basis is about an estranged father dying, a man killing his wife's lover, them escaping to a remote area and enslaving (the word I'm using and his intent but not exactly a true account of what seems to be the situation from their perspective) a group of indigenous people to work a mine, her giving birth and being in abject horror to her situation, fleeing with the child to find this estranged uncle who she thought she was fucking when she was fucking the man who her husband (left to lose his sanity and body to the wilderness) killed and watching her uncle die as her new husband (one of the members of this group of indigenous people) helps her raise her baby. And then it just ends.
So if I ascribe the same logic but try to shorten the complexity - the following two parts - taking place 100 years, then 20 years after that later (Part 1 = 1800s (vague, appearing to be mid to late century), Part 2 = 1960s, Part 3 = 1980s) are the next two generation sets after this birth, and live with the stain of its happening by retaining their names and repeating the story by their own logic.
So, as a plot, the second part is then...somewhat easy to describe - a family is in America (I believe or otherwise Americanized area) and has all these weird socialite nonsenses/bizarre relations to their real world with about 15 characters that only appear in these two chapters at the beginning, the youngest daughter gets involved with a man (who may be a distant relative?) and changes her name to please him, things get bad as he takes on two violent personas utilizing the names of her brother and presumably the husband and uncle from the first part, she ends up on a boat and is almost raped and murdered by the crew but saved by a black man who is not of African decent but differentiated because his skin tone is fantastically different to humanity (the crewmen can be presumed white, or probably more accurately a miscegenation/racial caste of postcolonial Argentina is what it's pointing at) and the entire time the man ends up having multiple personalities that take different forms and change bodies, and people and violence pursue through time and realities.
I guess that's just an escalation of the previous but kind of logically matches up.
So then part three happens where there is a direct correlation because the daughter of the woman in part 2 writes a letter about her mom going missing and her emotions about the event and what she does now, disconnected to anyone before or without progression of her plot. There is also a chapter that is entirely unreal where the man from before is in space debating with cherubs/demons (God? Existence? Himself?) about whether or not to hit an nuke switch (and does) and a chapter which goes back to the beginning, a chapter about new characters who are named the same thing but not, and a chapter where the TS. Eliot book of poetry on Cats that inspired Cats talks. Nothing in this part connects or decides what happens to anyone or who lives or dies or what happened when the characters prior disappear in their storylines.
I'm fairly positive none of that description is going to help you understand the book or that you are going to find and read a copy of this, but I think you should. Ultimately I am living a semi-reality of some of the ideas here. I am birthnamed after my grandfather - who died two Saturdays ago. I have no options to move forward without all that precedes me rearing its head. Also, and because of patrilineage, I live a paradox of killing a lineage but being its last possible progenitor of traditions and violence. It does not matter who I am or what I could be and that kills me every time.
In the Shadow of the Owl, in many ways, is in part about that impossibility of lineage's existence and the surreality of its ties to violence. It is very much about actualizing and imagining the existence of what colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial reality does no matter what time anyone enters it or what role they serve within its structures and confines. It is not the simple argument of "history repeats itself" but may lend an ear to the followup commentary.
List of names to discuss if I remember to edit this post:
- Walter (Loo)/Gualterio/Alterio
- Felicitas/Felicitasnena/Phyllis
- Hermelita/Hermelinda/Lita
- La Malacara
- Esperanza
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