Libro azul con mosca
Luis Mario twists words to reveal aspects of the world and of language accessible only through poetry, calling our own intellectual perception into question.
In 15th- and 16th-century European painting, it was common to depict a fly with an extraordinary degree of realism in an attempt to deceive the viewer and thus demonstrate the artist’s technical skill. We’re not entirely sure whether the stories in these pages are actually stories, but what is clear is that this book is teeming with flies—small interruptions of reality, brief anomalies in everyday life, subtle trompe-l’œil effects that, as such, make us see what isn’t there, but with one key difference: in these stories, what isn’t there ends up being there.
A man digging potatoes from his garden pulls out the last potato, without having yet pulled out the second-to-last one. Not even the third-to-last one! A garden where daisies offer answers like “he loves me” and “he doesn’t love me,” but also “maybe” or “your cousin” or “color clothes at thirty degrees” or “x=v(i2‡z)” or “please, not even as a joke with Enrique.” A woman who swallows a blackbird. A hyperrealist painter who paints the portrait of a man with a colon tumor because she “paints what’s there,” not just what she sees. A faucet from which a single drop drips, over and over again—the same drop, always the same drop—it’s clear, you just have to look at it; they’re identical, after all!
PRESS
«Luis Mario’s writing is a miracle […]. Come on in, read it, and be amazed.» Laura Fernández
«Luis Mario walks between words and things, making us rethink the world semiotically, sketching out the triangle between signifier, signified, and referent as if it were the ‘three Spider-Men’ meme. […] This book bugs you with its far-fetched plots until you let the humor sink in and abandon your skepticism for a blind trust in his language.» Publishers Weekly
«Unmistakable. […] Scenes that resemble canvases and, alongside these anomalies, […] Luis Mario doing what we least expect of them, like signs that come together and teach us to see reality from another point of view.» Tania López García, Vogue
«Exquisite intelligence and sensitivity, and astonishing ease.» Luciana De Luca
«To enter Luis Mario’s imagination is to feel popping candy in your mouth. Everything bursts beautifully. What a playful intelligence. It’s a little joy to return to a voice like this.» Lana Corujo
«Luis Mario finds in the small glitches of reality a gateway to the poetic.» Carmen Burné, ABC
«This book is full of small disruptions of reality, brief anomalies of everyday life, subtle trompe-l’œil effects that, as such, make us see what isn’t there—but with one key difference: in these stories, what isn’t there ends up being there.» Cristina Carballo Del Amo, Cadena SER
«The author twists reality and language in a collection of unusual, poetic, and humorous micro-stories. A playful literary creation with echoes of Magritte.» Isabel Loscertales, Woman
