The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Monstruary by Julían Ríos. Trans. Edith Grossman
Irving Malin

Julían Ríos. Monstruary. Trans. Edith Grossman. Knopf, 2001. 225 pp. $25.00.

Ríos is fascinated by images of transformation and metamorphosis. His novels—Larva: a Midsummer Night’s Babel, Poundemonium, and Loves That Bind—suggest that language is constantly changing. Thus he employs puns—a hybrid creature—and he delights in demonstrating that reality itself is so duplicitous and secretive that it cannot be solidly depicted. And, of course, he believes that all art resists genre. Although the artist Mons is the central character in this novel, he is created by the narrator-critic who tries to account for the reasons Mons creates and destroys his remarkable canvasses. Thus we find epistemological questions at the heart of the novel: How can we know the sources of creation? How can we know whether Mons creates his paintings or whether they create him? Or to put in another way: Can we identify the causes, springs, rivers of creativity? And to complicate matters, can we know whether or not Mons himself is created by the narrator? At several points in the novel, the narrator explores other creators—Joyce and Kafka—and we almost forget Mons’s singularity. And the novel moves to the final chapter in which Mons, healthy once more and located now in Madrid—he has played airport roulette, choosing his destination that first appears in the “announcement of departure”–decides to stay at the Prado “because he has a great mountain of ideas for resuming (won’t he ever change?) his Monstruary.” The text ends with a departure to the Prado and then, presumably, a future departure to France. Exits and entrances, departures and arrivals, Mons’s pilgrimage continues. And so do Ríos’s stylish, philosophical inquiries. [Irving Malin]