Texas
by Claudio Gaudio
Quattro Books, 2012
Toronto, Ontario
ISBN 978-1927443095
Reviewed by
Ian Thomas Shaw
Claudio Gaudio’s
highly experimental style in his novel Texas is poetry trespassing on
the contours of prose.
Texas is neither an easy read nor a
page-turner. The rapid-fire cadence of the narrative is best savoured
in small doses—one page here, another there. For every four lines
of text is a poem, and Gaudio’s mastery of allegory and epigrams
invites the reader to journey through a devastating criticism of
power politics and post-colonialism.
The plot, or rather the shadow of a
plot, ostensibly has as its protagonist a diplomat, whose primary
function appears to be to wheel cartloads of dollars through various
third world countries, subverting their regimes and imposing more
acquiescent governments in their place. The name Texas is a thinly
veiled euphemism for the US.
The diplomat, having run his course of
luck on several continents and leaving behind chaos and misery, is
suddenly kidnapped in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, with a
striking resemblance to Iraq, although perhaps seasoned with a little
of Afghanistan. The diplomat, imprisoned in a barren room in a
non-descript suburb, awaits his impending execution. His warder
Hakim, his only human contact, is an infrequent visitor.
As the diplomat loses all hope that his
political masters will ransom him, he confides to the only other
living creatures in his surroundings—a bird and a mouse—his inner
thoughts about his long career in financing revolutions and coup
d’états, quelling rebellious nations and “state-building.”
Poetry as political criticism is not
new, but Claudio’s exceptional talent in weaving it into a
thoroughly enjoyable full-length novel is, at least for the Canadian
literary scene.
Texas is Gaudio's first novel and is
published by Toronto's Quattro Books.
Great read.
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