Red Ants by Pergentino Jose

 

Red Ants

By Pergentino Jose

Translated by Thomas Bunstead
Published by Deep Vellum, 2020
Print Price: $14.95

Pergentino Jose's new story collection, entitled Red Ants, is the first literary work written in the Sierra Zapotec language and translated into English and I am wondering why I should care. I did not know what that language is but I assumed it was an indigenous language native to Mexico and I was right. Again, who cares? I mean just because it is the FIRST does not mean it's GOOD. 

Similarly, Jose's resume includes being a member of the Mexico20, some imaginary list of the best Mexican writers under 40 (There is and has been only ONE great Mexican writer). The author also seems to be a member of many elitist government organizations and takes welfare in the form of fellowships. He seems to be just the type of writer white liberal millenials would hail as a genius. If Jose was American, I am sure you would have seen "published in the New Yorker" in his bio. 

The rancor I feel towards this writer is because everything about him is a sham. Hailed as the next Carlos Fuentes, his writing is amateurish at best. The blurb on the back of the book even calls up the annoying specter of Gabriel Garcia Marquez! Please, don't sip this Kool-Aid.

Really the only good thing about these stories are that they are short. All of them come off as sketches or ideas for Twilight Zone episodes that never got fleshed out. In most of them you only have the barest of impressions about what is going on. And the writing itself is jarring and disconnected and can't seem to follow one idea for any length of time. Some might chalk this up to style, but I get the sense that the author is just awful and it is not intentional. 

From what I remember about the stories, which is very little, they seemed to involve lots of people trapped in dark spaces and not knowing how they got there. Or the protagonist is looking for someone and nobody knows where they are and then when they find them we still have no idea who they are or why they were being looked for. Some of them appear to be views of indigenous people's culture and they seem to go somewhere but where? It's almost as if Jose is like "hey, this sounds like a cool concept! I'm gonna write a story about it!....Well done with that, only took me 3 minutes tops. Masterpiece!" 

You get impressionist sketches of drug cartels, indigenous religious rites, and even terrorist recruitments but everything is filtered through the author's obscurity and lack of focus. 

This is a short book and the stories are all very brief so a lot of readers more dedicated than me could probably read it in one sitting, but any remembrance of its contents will probably be forgotten before you sit down to read your next book. 

MY GRADE: D-