Sergio Pitol (1933–2018)

I had never heard of Sergio Pitol, a renown Mexican author, before getting this book. This isn't a huge surprise, though, because his work really hadn't been translated into English until just before his death in 2018. This collection of short stories were selected by Pitol as some of his favorites from across his career (they are arranged chronologically by publication date, ranging from 1957-1994). The stories are challenging and engrossing and difficult to describe. Pitol was a fiction writer throughout his life, but professionally he was also a diplomat (he spoke seven languages and lived all over the world, eventually serving as Mexico's ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1980s), and a translator. His stories are frequently about Mexican diplomats or businessmen or writers living abroad. Often the stories are about the process of writing. The narrator may start by remembering an incident from his past, then veers to a work in progress and tries on different ways to start the story, then veers again. In almost all the cases, we are dropped into the story with a series of sentences that barely hold together, with clauses and diversions that necessitate visiting the start of the sentence again once you've finally come to the end of it. That sounds bad, but it is actually amazing! Once you get into the stories a bit, it all comes together, and the mix of memoir and fiction, and Pitol's ability to pull the reader close at the same time that he pushes you away, make for some very unusual and compelling stories.… (more)

This is an extraordinary collection. As I read I felt like I was in the presence of a unique and creative and perceptive and restless mind. The stories challenged me. Frequently I found myself wondering what I was missing. But I just lived with that feeling, because it never got in the way of another feeling, the feeling of being given a gift, the gift of a new way of seeing, a new way of perceiving the world, a new way of thinking about language and its intentions. Of being in the company of a very unusual person, someone with unique perspectives. One thing I never felt was that Pitol was trying to make things easy for me. I needed to be an equal partner. I needed to pay attention. I was deeply rewarded.… (more)