The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Loves That Bind by Julián Ríos
Irving Malin

Julián Ríos. Loves That Bind. Trans. Edith Grossman. Knopf, 1998. 246 pp. $23.00.

Ríos is the author of Poundemonium and Larva: Midsummer Night’s Babel—both published by Dalkey Archive—and he now gives us another complex text full of wordplay (in several different languages). This elaborate, arcane fiction consists of a series of letters from Emil, the narrator, to his missing lover. The letters are arranged alphabetically—each is a commentary on other “love” stories: we have Lolita, Zazie, The Good Soldier, The Sound and the Fury, The Great Gatsby, et al. Emil recognizes that his life cannot be removed from the words he has read. They are, indeed, salvation.

The letters are startling because they are filled with wild transformations of language. Puns abound: “I made so many wily wordplays with apples and pears in pearadice, remember? that you had to plant your feet firmly and protest. Enough! Another pearouette, no . . .” In the same letter, based on The Great Gatsby, he writes: “Save me the last waltz, please, though it’s three o’clock in the morning, before the embalming begins. Another danse macabre?” Notice that Zelda’s novel is mentioned; it is joined to Scott’s remark about the dark night of the soul at three o’clock (The Crack-Up).

It is easy to claim that Emil—and Ríos—cannot control his life; he, therefore, must shape language. His letters serve as anchors because he is drowning. The letters are desperate pleas. They are written so obsessively that they begin to control him. He becomes, if you will, their text.

Ríos structures his complete text so that his narrator’s letters seem to take on a life of their own. The alphabet cracks when “Z,” the final letter, is reached. The letter is full of ellipses, disturbances: “Zz . . . at first it was the buzz. That didn’t let me sleep a wink last night. My fault for leaving the window open. It was one of those Dutch mosquitoes that always buzz Zuider Zee . . . Zuider Zee . . . And when I turned on the light, it hid, I don’t know where, probably beside the papered-over fly on the wall. Zz . . . when I turned the light off again.”

The text remains incomplete because Emil never embraces his beloved. Although he manages to end his text with “angels”—which, of course, was the first word he used—he remains suspended. Thus he recognizes that language fails him: it cannot bind love. [Irving Malin]