“Skyscrapers”
by Alejandro Zambra
translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
from the August 22, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
It’s been some years since I last read anything by Alejandro Zambra, but I have liked everything I’ve read so far. His work is often interested in narrative structure, and it appears this one goes there too. I like how the first little section gets us involved in the narrative immediately, even though we don’t know what’s going on.
I didn’t go to New York, because I didn’t want to cut my hair. And my father didn’t read my “Letter to My Father.”
“I’ll read it next time I feel like crying,” he told me. “Except I never feel like crying.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I never knew how to respond. That was why I wrote; that’s why I write. I write the replies I don’t think of at the time. Or drafts of those replies, really.
The first time I tried to write this story, for example, I erased you. I thought it would be possible to conceal your absence, as if you simply hadn’t shown up for that day’s performance and we, the other actors, had to improvise at the last minute.
Only now do I realize that this story started with you, because, although I might prefer to somehow avoid acknowledging it, this is, above all and in every sense, a love story.
Please feel welcome to leave your thoughts below!
Alejandro Zambra’s “Skyscrapers” is an awesome comic yet still quite serious short story. Like Trevor mentioned, Zambra experiments with narrative. But I think he brilliantly breaks the bonds of a traditional short story. If traditional short stories are like American soap opera episodes (quite mild and tepid in structure by comparison), than this story is like a full-fledged first episode hyper telenovella told by a grown up, yet still younger seeming Chilean Holden Caufield confident of making his way in life no matter what. And he never defers to anyone or only very slightly. All set within the format of an old (yet thoroughly modern) world letter addressed to his beloved.
This is supposedly a love story but amazingly packs in so much love in so many ways. Love of books, love of father, love of being independent and especially the love of the offbeat very sharply stated in the line; “She’s different.” “Different from who?” “I don’t know. Everyone, I guess.”
Precise perfectly placed short dialog does much of the heavy lifting in the gradual changing of limited perception into gradual realization. This story contrasts love and hate (or at least, extreme aggravation), life in books and movies compared to real life in skyscrapers that hold 25,000 people during the day against stacked up piles of books that hold together many characters lives that are presented in a more accessible way than if the person were just walking out on the street. It also compares the trust one has with what and who he knows with the distrust or desire not to communicate in any depth with someone who he does not know as well as he might be expected to know (father) or (beloved) would like to know better.
The protagonist refers to his prospective girlfriend as “you” second person singular and says he tries to omit her from his story but can’t quite. So “you” also assumes a kind of second person plural shadow as the “you” is the second person of his longed for youse twofer, his “I” to her “you” or reversed likewise in thought perception for gender parity.
This story is somewhat in the form of a letter, which is an old literary form yet retrofitted with emotionally supercharged bits of conversation that move the ambiguity of “you” into understanding for “I” or vice versa. It retains certain elements within “Catcher in the Rye” as it comically tilts more inward. The arc of this story is that “I” unknowing slips into revealing to himself, bits of understanding through limited reflection on his prior experience.
This guy, so laid back, yet so alive with energy and exuberance that he jumps headlong into new and unexpected experience through rejecting the mundane and mediocre parts of his prior existence. This protagonist combines a serious sense of what’s most important coupled with a understated yet shrewd “let the chips fall” comic attitude. The story treds on the edge of the ridiculous, married up to boldly facing the unavoidable reality of what is or what will happen.
“Skyscrapers” is part of a Spanish short story collection with a shared through line (so one could read them as chapters of a novel) that will be published in March of next year. It has the working title of “Literatura infantil” and “Skyscrapers” is an English translation out of the original Spanish. We will probably have to wait for the English translation of “Literatura infantil,” but several English translations of Zambra’s previous novels are available from Amazon and some of them are in Kindle or audio book format.