Sunday book pick: In ‘The Famous Magician', Argentinian writer César Aira weighs literature in gold

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22-06-2025

'Magic, he said, was very limited, limited to itself: it was what it was and nothing more.'
Argentinian writer César Aira's 2013 novella The Famous Magician begins with the musings of a writer who resembles Aira in many ways. 'Past sixty and enjoying a certain renown', the writer feels he has 'already read too much' and there's nothing new that he really wants to read. In addition to this, he has hit a writer's block. But neither concerns him too much since he's past the age to worry about money and in his semi-retirement stage has mercifully realised that he has saved up enough.
A Faustian dilemma
One morning, when he's at a secondhand book market that he frequents, he meets Ovando, a 'fat, scruffy man, somewhere in between forty and fifty' whom the narrator (César) considers the 'residue of residue' of real booksellers. While he was predisposed to ignoring Ovando, something peculiar happens that morning which shifts César's sense of reality.
Ovando suggests that he can 'bend' the laws of physics. Taking it as ramblings of a madman, the narrator jokes with him and shows him the different ways that he can mess with the laws of physics. Putting an end to the banter, he transforms a cube of sugar into pure, solid gold. He doesn't stop here – Ovando offers to take César under his wing. But there's a condition: he must give up writing. And what about reading, César enquires. Ovando solemnly says, 'It's a waste of time and dangerous for the purity of the soul.' Both reading and writing have to go.
César is in a real Faustian dilemma: Should he surrender his soul?
After years of 'laboriously' writing fiction and 'sweating away like Sisyphus', an opportunity of 'magical instantaneity' has finally arrived. César doesn't want to lose out on it but he's sceptical about giving up Literature. He decides to consult his friends (also intellectuals) and his wife, who is away. He'll have to email her. Even as the possibility of becoming a magician looms in his mind, he's not free of mundane obstacles such as the internet that stops functioning when he has to write to his wife or the work that demands his attention.
His friends are intrigued by the offer but immediately shoot it down. The clause is too ridiculous – reading is harmful and that was why it was so 'cherished'. Moreover, his friends were no strangers to magic. One of them rubs a pencil stub between his fingers and transforms it into a Montblanc Bohème. This discovery saddens César, who rues that he has 'never lived'. All he has done is read and write and enjoyed the devotion of a handful of writers – 'a simulacrum of real life.'
As he considers the offer and waits to hear back from his wife (who is wiser than Hegel!), César has to take a short trip to Egypt for a literary event. At the airport, he is subjected to humiliating interrogation and he starts to worry about how strict rules for international travel were stopping artists from playing rogue, an element essential for creating fantastic art.
Sweating away like Sisyphus
Too caught up in real life, César almost forgets Ovando's offer. The deadline has come and gone, and César has to give an answer.
César, despite saying he has given up writing, cannot stop thinking about the many sleights of hand and tricks that he has employed in the course of his literary career to write fiction. He had polished rough ideas into shiny themes and plots. In fact, he has become so good at it that he is knowledgeable enough to teach and formulate theories. Like his friends and Ovando, he is also creating magic, albeit slowly and at great personal frustration.
Over time, the gold cube loses its sheen and so does the Montblanc pen, whose nib becomes dull. And yet, it is César's laboriously constructed fiction that generates new meanings and ideas with every read. And much like magic, it demands the suspension of belief and an implicit trust in the written word.
In The Famous Magician, author César Aira considers the entanglements of fiction and reality, including the tremendous power that an author holds in creating the world of make-believe while borrowing liberally from real lives. Between Ovand's transformation of sugar into gold and the narrator's concocting elaborate stories, the line between magic and creative power begins to fade. While the author's 'magic' is there for his readers to see – concrete and sure, the same cannot be said for Ovando's trick.