The Museum of Useless Efforts

By Cristina Peri Rossi

Book Overview

In The Museum of Useless Efforts Cristina Peri Rossi renders familiar, everyday situations uncanny through lyrical reinterpretations; at the same time, she somehow makes the uncanny appear quite ordinary. Crafting peculiar-and sometimes claustrophobically small-worlds, Peri Rossi explores the universal themes of desire, violence, and truth and the simultaneous and contradictory human capacities to repress and resist, speak and silence, desire and ignore. In these tales an insomniac is tormented by a stubborn lamb that refuses to jump over the fence; the momentary hesitation of a man on a crowded subway staircase who forgets whether he was going up or down unleashes pandemonium; and a patient receives a frantic call from his psychoanalyst, distraught that his wife has taken a new lover. Uruguayan-born Cristina Peri Rossi has lived in exile in Spain since 1972. A novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer, she has written twenty books, including Solitaire of Love and The Ship of Fools. Tobias Hecht is the author of At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080328764X
• ISBN13: 9780803287648
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Bison
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

humorous surrealism with a touch of social criticism

Cristina Peri Rossi has the knack of taking the absurd and building a surrealistic absurdity on it using clean, rational, direct langauge. A man suddenly unable to decide whether to go forward or backward, a cruise without a destination, a librarian working on documenting useless efforts, a person unable to cope with the decisions necessary to get out of bed. ... Simple, familiar actions turned topsy-turvy in a world uncomfortably our own. Recommended.

A "Museum" worthy of Borges

"The Museum of Useless Efforts" is a marvelous collection of short stories by Cristina Peri Rossi, a writer from Uruguay who has lived in exile in Spain. The stories have been translated into English by Tobias Hecht. There are 30 short pieces in this collection; a good number of them are in the 3 to 6 page length range.Many of Peri Rossi's stories are surreal or absurd. Some have subtle comic touches. Although her work invites comparison to other such Latin American writers as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, Peri Rossi is a remarkable talent in her own right. Her stories, as translated by Hecht, have both a stark, crystalline purity and a painful beauty."Museum" includes stories about violence, death, alienation, dislocation, and frustrated desire. The stories often feature unnamed characters in unnamed locales. Some of the most intriguing pieces in the "Museum" include "Tarzan's Roar," a deconstruction of a Hollywood icon; "The Lizard Christmas," which ironically comments on Christian tradition; and "the Effect of Light on Fish," which moves gracefully from an innocuous beginning to a disturbing climax. Overall, a frequently stunning collection by a very talented writer.