Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

by Felipe Alfau

Book Overview

The interconnected stories that form this novel take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 Arabian Nights and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young author.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679728465
• ISBN13: 9780679728467
• Release Date: July 1990
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The birth of speculative fiction

Felipe Alfau's phenomenal LOCOS: A COMEDY OF GESTURES anticipates a number of other movements and writers - Nabokov, Borges, Calvino and Cortazar could all be said to owe this novel a huge debt, whether they realize it or not. In 9 interlocking stories which all coalesce around a cafe (and cafe culture) in pre-Franco Madrid, Alfau (who only wrote one other novel, before taking up a working-class life in New York) creates a series of characters who step in and out of each others' dreams and stories, interacting with the author, who in turn is pulled into the novel as a character. I'm afraid that my synopsis doesn't really do this mind-bending piece of fiction approriate credit. I would however recommend this to anyone with a love of literature, or anyone impressed by the vast accomplishment the human imagination can occasionally be capable of. A magnificent book. -David Alston

work of a genius

This may sound absurd - but "Locos-...." is truly the work of a genius. Some books surpass the boundaries of time and this is one such book. To summarize the book in one sentence will be like this "non-characters are characters, fiction is reality and solutions are problems". Felipe Alfau was a strange character and so are his books - very very different, they remind us of the writings of Vargas Llosa with a taste of Cortazar. This is not a translation rather Alfau has written the book in English so all the spices of the Spanish culture are visible. This is extremely rare even with the best of the translators. You get a taste of Spain and a vivid picture of the vibrant society which was so different from the rest of Europe. The people are full of life and passion. Love and passion are the means for making life flow and may be we all need to follow that some day.You can look at this book either as a short story book or a novel - since it has nine short stories which can either be individually read but they are also connected to each other.I am long time fan of Marquez and I can promise that this book is equally impressive as any book from Marquez. It is a must buy.

A Comedy Tragically Ignored

I share the puzzlement of the reviewer below over why this isn't considered one of the 20th Century's great works of fiction. I'd go further and say this is probably the most underrated novel of the last 100 years. The most important literature not only blazes a trail, but does so in a way that compares favorably to the books it inspires. This is true for Locos. The book should have had a stronger edit, but what Alfau achieves here - stories that rewrite each other, characters who morph into each other - unleashed new powers from the fictional narrative that have yet to be fully tapped. There's a moment at the end of a story called "A Character" that is one of the very few mindblowing experiences I've had reading fiction. Alfau was probably the first novelist since Laurence Sterne to understand this potential in narration. There's a character in Locos named Fulano who, desperate to get others to notice him, breaks a storefront window. The owner comes out, ignores Fulano and wonders how such a thing could have happened. In a sad way, Locos is like Fulano. Everyone marvels at the glass it shattered, but nobody can see Locos.

He echoes Gogol whilst anticipating Borges & co.

I can't understand why this is not regarded as one of the greatest works of modern fiction. It anticipates many of the great writers of the latter half of the century, while being every bit as good as those who came later. The first two chapters are a bit hard and left this reader thinking Very clever, but.....However the next three stories are excellent and I was quickly drawn into the surreal world of Alfau. Each chapter works well as a short story, but the further the reader digs, the more the stories link into a single novel rich in characters and ideas. Borges, Calvino, Kundera and the Boom-time Latin Americans were great writers, but after reading Alfau I realise they were not as original as I'd long thought. A book waiting to be rediscovered (again!).