Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer

I really like this series of small size paperbacks that Penguin put out a few years ago of “sci fi” classics. I read the incredible Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany in this edition, which I’d say was arguably one of my most significant readerly experiences of the past few years. So, I persist and I pick up more when I see them, as they are beautiful objects, and I’m still building up my base knowledge of SF as a genre, because I’d never really read any until my 30s.

But then – alas, alack, alam – I am finding diminishing returns as I pull away from Le Guin, Delany, Butler, etc… Did I accidentally start at the absolute pinnacle of the genre and have nowhere to go but down?

Trafalgar is a 1979 novel by Angélica Gorodischer, translated from the original Spanish by Amalia Gladhart. It’s kind of a novel, but also a cycle of linked short stories, but linked in the way that all of those semi-autobiographical stories early career Hemingway published were linked – in that they’re about the same character, though here it is an intergalactic merchant named Trafalgar Medrano…

There is only really one narrative element that ever comes back from an earlier piece/chapter(?) (and that is that one of eponymous Trafalgar’s many lovers shows up much later on with his illegitimate child, who – tbf – he promptly adopts and continues to raise as a solo parent (with the help of his house staff, of course)), and all of the sections are structured – like Wuthering Heights – with Trafalgar, the character, recounting an anecdote to someone else (mostly, but not always, a potential fictionalised version of Gorodischer).

Occasionally people doubt Traflagar’s stories, though mostly they don’t, and most of the time the discussion takes place in his favourite bar, the Burgundy. The Burgundy is in Rosario, Argentina¹, where Trafalgar recovers from his space exploits. The stories that Trafalgar tells are set far, far, far, far, far away, all on different, distant, alien planets, though everyone on them (as in all the aliens) is very, very, very, very, very humanoid, even if they often have features very different from us.

–///–

Sorry, a week passed in which I didn’t have a chance to finish this or, tbh, even think about Trafalgar very much.

I had my first WIP performance of my solo live show, BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER, at the Brighton Fringe (two more later in the month – please do come!!!) and that took all my attention. So, too, did reading other things. Things that sucked me in more…

Trafalgar was a kinda frustrating read, for me.

Not quite interlinked stories, but not quite discreet ones either. They don’t cohere into a single narrative and instead they feel more like the kinda “monster of the week” or older school long-running sitcom type narrative whereby whatever happens changes nothing. No lessons are learnt, no lives are changed, and nothing shall ever be mentioned about them again.

And though, yes, I can see how reading about the expoloits of Trafalgar Medrano might be fun to do once a month or once a quarter as part of a magazine of other short tales, but within the confines of a single volume, there’s no pleasure in return, because (if you’re reading this as a single volume, rather than as something to return back to over the course of an extended period of time), you’re not returning, you’re merely continuing.

Some of the alien worlds are engaging and exciting, and Gorodischer does a great job in creating distinct and diverse alien worlds and societies for her merchant-hero to adventure among, but I finished reading this barely more than a week ago and there isn’t really a single one of those worlds that has left much of an impression on me. Sure, there are lingering memories and images and ideas, but when I read a book of collected genre adventures, I want to feel whacked around the head and overwhelmed by something. And I didn’t.

Though, yes, it was absolutely enjoyable enough and I’m sure if I’d read Trafalgar in a single sitting on a beach or a long train journey home (rather than to) a “road gig”, I’d have maybe had a much better time. But a book read stuck in around life – for me – needs to hit hard: either take me on a narrative adventure I have experienced nothing the like of before, or make me see the world more clearly, better, than before. And that didn’t happen. Which is, likely, my loss.

So maybe it was me, not you, Trafalgar. I liked it enough to read it all, yes. But not enough to really think about it very much afterwards….

Rosario – this is an aside – is the original hometown and occasional significant location in the writings of friend-of-the-blog Fernando Sdrigotti (see my response to his most recent collection of writing here) ↩︎

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scott manley hadley aka SOLID BALD live

Here’s a video of me recently performing at the prestigious (it has a Wikipedia page) comedy night, Quantum Leopard. Listen to how much fun the crowd is having. You could have that much fun, too!