Four students from Madrid travel to France during the summer holidays to work in the vineyards to harvest grapes. Things do not go as planned. They get different jobs from the same agency, working on chicken farms and feed farms. The four friends behave like young men do outside of the control of society and their parents: drinking, smoking weed, quarelling, making noise and litter in the camping where they stay, while at the same time discussing literature, philosophy and societal issues.
Hachemi's style is very direct, and as he himself writes: there are no metaphors or symbols. It says what it is and what it does. He refers to Borges for the philosophical aspects, to Roberto Bolaño for the literary style, which is close to the reading experience of the latter's "Savage Detectives", while at the same reflecting on the value of writing and the relationship between reality and its written reflection.
"I always assumed telling the story of what actually happened would be easier than writing fiction (after all, reality is more painstaking than even the most exhaustive inventions), but I'm beginning to notice that's not the case. Reality is under no obligation to be interesting - neither is memory - while literature is. I can't seem to clear enough room in my memories to make space for mystery and surprise. True, I could shutlle them around, but doing so would be untruthful in its own way. I believe Borges followed a similar thought process when he wrote 'Funes the Memorious', a short story about a guy who can't forget and therefore can't think (let alone invent). Borges's story - like all good fantasy stories - isn't concerned with rigour. A while ago I tried my hand at fixing 'Funes the Memorious' and wrote a piece of flash fiction called 'Ireneo's Memory', which later won a prize."
Here is a litter paragraph, just to illustrate his writing style.
"In fairness, the campground owner is right. Toss a couple of syringes on the ground, snap a photo, and you could use the image in one of those 'Say no to drugs' pamphlets the state hands out all over Madrid. Our campsite looks like a settlement in Las Barranquillas. We've got into the habit of drinking late into the night (around here any hour after midnight is considered late, even though the heat keeps us from doing much until sundown) and leaving beer cans strewn all over. There are also a few cigarette butts on the ground and the remnants of a campfire we could swear we didn't light. On top of that, our books are scattered all over the site: La saga/fuga de J. B., a volume ofJuan Gelman's complete poetry, and Ender's Game. We've gone from boredom to despair in the space of a single day, and only now does it cross our minds that pissing on the side of a tree night after night in lieu of walking 30 metres to the toilet might not have been the brightest idea. Darkness, as we know, magnifies distance. The smell doesn't bother us because our clothes still reek of chicken - damp chicken now - overriding the stink of piss. We hang our clothes up to dry and sit down for another coffee. Too embarrassed to go topless, I decide to throw something on, but the others remain half-dressed. It's 9.30 a.m., the other campers have started to rise, and flash us looks of hatred, revulsion and disbelief. Guess we must be ruining their holidays."
The reading is fun and fast, because of the self-reflection and self-criticism of the writer's voice, his economic use of language and action while at the same time often trying to explain the psychology of what is happening, like Bolaño often using alternatives or even complete paradoxes, as if the manifestation in reality is the result of conflicting or vague internal drivers, or at least hard to fathom for outsiders. This questioning of society also happens when they are actually inside the corporate world with its bizarre self-laudatory jargon and self-esteem, suspected to cover up practices that should not be known to the external world. While touching on all these subjects, Hachemi is sufficiently smart not to give answers of clear-cut messages or opinions, but rather to stay with the question, assuming this is already a sufficient platform for the reader to make up his or her own mind.
Easy to recommend, and great that it's translated.
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