21 December 2007

Lugones' "The Pillar of Salt" and "Psychon"

I decided to finish the book off early, so the last two stories get bunched into one entry...

"The Pillar of Salt" is the story of a hermit who achieves spiritual transcendence and then seeks out the remains of Lot's wife. At this point, I can say that there seem to be two story types in this collection: creepy semi-parables and plot-less science fiction. This story is an example of the first and is pretty good.

"Psychon" is a pretty cool title, and the story despite being of the second, plot-less kind is pretty satisfying. This one is about a scientist who has managed to isolate a gas he believes may be the elemental representation of consciousness. The ending is just about at the right level of creepy and funny.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a fairly long review of STRANGE FORCES at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/latin-am.htm#forces
in which you are mentioned.

C.D. Gutierrez said...

Thanks for the mention. Another Argentine author you might find interesting is Santiago Dabove, who was a contemporary and friend of Borges and Bioy Casares. His few short stories have been published in the book La Muerte y su Traje. As far as I know, the only work of his in translations is "Being Dust," which shows up in The Book of Fantasy.