Despair in Buenos Aires

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 22

Despair in Buenos Aires

AU My Sons. By Christer Kihlman. Translated by Joan Tate. Peter Owen, 1984. 198 pp. $25.95. A Scandinavian poet and author has had a very deep, penetrating experience which he tries to write out of his recent memory in an attempt to clarify it. It consists of an encounter with a young, male prostitute in Buenos Aires by the name of Juan and his “falling in love” and suffering therefrom for the ensuing three years. Juan is described as a physically beautiful youth in his early 20s, completely amoral, stealing, soliciting, peddling drugs, and at home in the most dangerous parts of the metropolis in Argentina. Kihlman is in his late 40s, married with an adult family, and attempting to write a book about “happiness.” Juan comes to represent to him all that his life, sensuality, warmth and affection, and excitement has needed. He

pathetically waits for the young South American to meet him at appointed times for hour after hour and then rationalises lateness on the grounds of South American concepts of time. As the book continues — kept as a journal during the relationship — his image of Juan becomes increasingly allenveloping, from being his son to being all sons, to being his father and the wisdom of all ages. Interspersed are periods of depression when after not speaking he is challenged by his companion as to what he is thinking about he can only whisper “suicide!” The sexual relationship between the two is only a very minor aspect of their intertwining in terms of political status, class, age, culture, and existential despair. A sad prose poem of frantic melancholy posturing as a hymn to a deep union of minds and feelings when in reality not even the two languages are a shared communication. — Ralf Unger.