This work by Chejfec was a fascinating character sketch absolutely devoid of plot. The genius of it lay with its ability to reveal the narrator ever so gradually, to create a multi-dimensional view of him from one of the most talented and intimate first person points of view I have ever read. The scenes rippled back and forth through time, yet there was no confusion of the order of events, because there were no events. Chejfec used digital imagery to good effect here, and portrayed the combination of a walking habit, thoughtful personality, and varied life with a striking vividness. ( )

Sometimes I feel bad for comparing every book I read to something I've read in the past. But a lot of times it seems helpful, especially when comparing books that have nothing to do with each other, in that they bring out a different way of reading, shadows of each reading experience accentuating the other.

Every once in a while, it isn't helpful, but also unavoidable. In cases like this, for instance. My Two Worlds is so firmly in the shadow of Sebald that I cannot not invoke his name. Chejfec uses many of the same devices, but doesn't achieve any of the magic of Sebald.

The question is: does he achieve anything else? Something of his own? That is hard to say. There are some good passages, but they quickly run out of steam, or become way too noodly, caught in a thought about a thought, instead of transcending it into a sort of meditation. A lot of it, while reading, seemed trivial while trying to be deep. The language, while interesting, doesn't sustain long enough for me to lose my breath. There is something here, but it's not enough of its own thing yet for me to truly love.

Next up on my Sebald-inspired reading list... Teju Cole's [b:Open City|8526694|Open City|Teju Cole|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327935192s/8526694.jpg|13393712]

PS: But wait! This awesome review makes a good case for this book. Maybe you should give it a chance. ( )

Although I did not like the book enough to give it a goodreads "three stars" that says that I do, the book is far better than most. For that reason I will mark it three. At least I finished it. And that was for two reasons: it was short and it came to me recommended from a friend. The many problems I had with the book I explain in the following review which can be found here if one is so inclined to read my views:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/A-Walk-with-Sergio-Chejfec ( )

This is a book about an afternoon spent wandering in a park. It's endorsed enthusiastically by Vila-Matas as an example of the future of the novel. Vila-Matas is wonderful, and I have nothing against experimental novels that try to do very little. (In a maximalist way, "The Pale King" is similar.)

The problem here is that I just can't believe Chejfec. The book has airs of the universalism of Beckett and the everyday despondency of Pessoa. The narrator isn't particular good at remembering things, making distinctions, or observing (as in Beckett's "Ill Seen Ill Said"). The city he's exploring could be any city (as in Pessoa). But I just can't believe it: the detachment, the indifference, are poses put on for this book. The narrator carries books wit him, and he is attending a literary conference, but we hear very little about either: it's as if the narrator is so deeply abstracted that he has lost touch with the day-to-day reality of the business of writing fiction. But I don't believe that: it's more like he wants to write a novel in which he appears as a detached, indifferent observer of the world.

What's especially telling here (and, in the end, particularly annoying) is that he won't tell us what city he's in. It's "a large city" in "the south of Brazil." Cities are never named in the novel. Now on the one hand, that's reasonable, if the purpose is to avoid the travelogue genre. But it's more a matter of a spurious seriousness. It's portentous and pretentious to keep saying "a city," and it has to be supported by an equally forceful strangeness in the narrator. Chejfec isn't "K," roaming unnamed cities, and he isn't Levi's protagonist, cataloging imaginary cities. Clearly he is a perfectly ordinary writer, traveling for a literary conference; he needs to get away, so he goes out wandering. An interview that came with the book confirms this; Chejfec tried to obscure it by writing a nameless, placeless prose. But he, and his narrator, aren't as absent-minded, or as transcendently indifferent, as they want us to think. All sorts of clues show this.

He says he's excellent at map reading, but when the book opens he's lost. That seems inadequately imagined, by which I mean Chejfec is clearly good at maps, and hasn't convinced me his narrator isn't. (He also adds "map reading is one of my few skills": that's one of many disavowals of skill and knowledge that are meant to establish the narrator as a slightly abstracted personality, but which read, to me, as entirely gratuitous assertions of a degree of detachment that the writer himself doesn't possess.) In another passage, he observes some people either playing cards or dice. We're told he can't tell which. The idea is that the narrator is slightly disengaged and has indifferent skills at observation. But it comes across as unbelievable: it doesn't seem plausible that a man in a park -- a writer! -- whose entire business is recording his thoughts about what he sees, cannot tell which game the people are playing. It's not that the book needs to be the ordinary realist memoir; I would have loved it if Chejfec were a second Pessoa. It's that the narrator's voice is a pose.

And last, it bears mentioning that the narrator's observations are not interesting, except in one or two cases. (A fairly good but brief passage on looking at animals; another on William Kentridge's depiction of people seeing.) Again it would be fine if the entire book were full of average, disconnected, stray thoughts about things, at the level of reverie appropriate to a city park: but it appears in some passages Chejfec thinks he's being insightful, but he isn't: he isn't Musil, or Canetti, or Benjamin. He is more like his narrator than he would like to think, but not enough like his narrator to make the book convincing.

Vila-Matas's unawareness of this is perplexing. I will try another novel of Chefjec's to see. I would have thought that Vila-Matas would pick up on the book's artificiality. ( )