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The
351 Books of Irma Arcuri
by David Bajo is about self discovery through searching for
others. It's the story of Philip Masryk, a mathematician who
is left the entire book collection of his lifelong friend
and sometimes lover, Irma Arcuri, after she disappears. For
Philip, his ex-wives and their families, Irma is special.
Every life and book she touches she changes, for better and
for worse, so they are compelled to find her to find answers.
Irma
claims, "Most of us can't accept being the protagonists of
our own lives." People need someone else, and in this book
that person is Irma. She's like the wind, watching or interacting
in the character's lives without really committing. In disappearing
she shows ultimate control over her life. She cuts all her
ties and frees herself to do whatever she wants. Couple that
with her attractiveness to both men and women, and you get
the perfect figure for an obsessive search.
This
quest takes place in the real world, the memories of the characters,
and the fictional worlds of Irma's books. There's even parallel
memory in 'The Theory of Peter Navratil,' Irma's fictional
autobiography of her strange relationship with Philip. Bajo
spreads his clues through all these settings and weaves beautifully
amongst them, sometimes switching within a single paragraph.
The book is like a mind flicking between thoughts as it tries
to fall asleep: it's confusing in a positive way. It has a
dreamlike quality where the reader floats between maths, literature
and memory and never gets totally lost.
Philip
finds himself revisiting places that show key moments in his
life with Irma, or others, and this journey takes the reader
from running up volcanoes in Mexico, to university life around
Philadelphia and finally the world of bookbinding in Spain.
Bajo's descriptions really draw the reader's senses into these
worlds. In a Corsican sea Philip "arced in the... green darkness.
The colder water... seemed to shear him, peel away a dead
layer, the husk drifting behind him like smoke."
The prose
style is rich and beautiful in the same way Belgian chocolates
are. For the first couple of pieces, the taste is mind-blowingly
good, but consuming too much too quickly leaves a person feeling
ill. The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri is a book to be savoured
and enjoyed as the language is full of wonderful images and
thought provoking theories.
If this
book had a rating it'd be R for raunchy. But while there's
a lot of steamy content, the reader realises the passions
in which characters indulge are reflections of their love
towards literature and experiencing life. Sometimes Bajo draws
this link explicitly as Philip starts to imagine scenes in
his life as the covers of pulpy paperbacks: "The paperback
cover would have... the dark haired woman behind the glass...her
lips and legs are parted... her green dress cling[ing] to
her form in the steamy cafe." Once the reader accepts the
link between books and sex, even the more prudish should be
able to deal with the sensual passages.
Bajo
really gets the reader into Philip's mind. He thinks of his
life in mathematical formulas: "His main character was the
rectangular hyperbola x2 - y2 =1, and that she somehow had
to free herself... from ef and e-f." Philip uses formulas
to map out his search and his life choices. Maths becomes
another language in the text, like the sentences in Spanish
or Portuguese: However, Bajo explains these equations so that
the reader doesn't need a BS in math to access the text. The
formulas reveal the different way in which Philip's brain
works, granting readers a bridge into this world of numbers
they might not normally have.
There
is another important language in the text: the language of
books. Bajo's story demonstrates a real love for the tangible
object as well as the literary content. Irma was a bookbinder
who bound her own creative works and altered great works of
fiction. All the books Philip receives have been rebound and
modified by her, and they become a physical equivalent for
Irma when she is not present: "Books aren't just for reading
Pip," Irma told him when he discovered her passion for them,
for their physicality and content. "They are loaned, borrowed,
and stolen things."
In one
scene, Philip lends one of Irma's books to an old lady on
a bus, and she simply holds it. In the age of computerized
reading platforms this story reminds people why they love
the book so much. Irma's shop becomes almost like a hospital,
where books are nursed into new bindings to give them a second,
even third life. This story may even send the reader to curl
up with their own book collections again.
If, like
Irma says, "every book is a performance," The 351 Books
of Irma Arcuri, is a performance with audience participation.
In reading this book, the reader's own perception of the world,
relationships, and literature will be altered.
(March,
2009)
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