travel across Candeira 
The loneliness of ventriloquists ; Tropo Editores, Zaragoza, 2008.
Before giraffes ; Pages foam, Madrid, 2011.
play this back with your hands
Candeira Matías, Before giraffes
In one of the stories of his first book, The loneliness of ventriloquists (Tropo Editores, Zaragoza, 2008), we read this paragraph: "If it rained in a manner consistent with such violence prehistoric leaks in the building seemed monsoon a landscape that continually strafed closed, which was an expedition penetrate into another reality "(p. 124). I venture to emphasize these lines as a probable poetic storytelling all the work of Matthias Candeira (Madrid, 1984), who despite his youth and has been featured several stories anthologized as one of the most thoughtful of the young explorers gender. The paragraph quoted above has three elements which, in my opinion, operate as columns of this narrative: the construction of outdoor spaces as a representation, we might say romantic - of the psyche, the success of some visual images - we might label as poetic no demerit in the partnership-and, above all, the centrifugal stress that leads to an aesthetic stories away from the realism that constitutes, in effect, as an "expedition to another reality. "
This irrational aspect (sometimes fantastic, sometimes dreamlike, surreal very rarely) in the stories of Candeira seems very suggestive and interesting. Have occurred in recent years many polarized views of the English Short Stories. Some pointed to the distinction between the children of Carver and the children of Borges. Others, the difference between writing short texts with support in the experimental (grouped into Mutantes, the anthology of Julio Ortega and Juan Francisco Ferré) and another perspective based on traditional values \u200b\u200b( XXI Century , Gemma Pellicer and Fernando Valls, no longer interesting to note that, as he saw sharply Jorge Carrión , no authors in common between the two anthologies, proposing both, according to Javier Calvo saw as totalizing ). Calvo said that the opposition between these two ways of looking distinguished fragmentary narrative realistic, and may be one way of looking, but if we talk of realism I would speak of another binary opposition. I guess it will be made over and over again, but my ignorance, I can repeat it as mine: the opposition between children Chekhov and Poe. Both authors are always in vogue in our view, even counting collective tributes published by the storytellers themselves: it is to Poe and he that of Chekhov. The more realistic wake of Chekhov, including its symbolic dimensions, extends his trail by many current texts, as well as Poe's fantasy, not obliterate its pragmatic parts detective, had barbarous offspring. There are few writers who believe that, in reality, there is no reason to waive any of these traditions. In my case I have books that could be ascribed to the first and others second, and the same is true of many colleagues. But it is true that there are writers who seem to have opted for one of the lines, even programmatically, as can be deduced from some poetic or occasional essays on gender.
Candeira is a steady advocate of absolute freedom of the text, fantasy, and various forms of irrationalism, while they may destabilize the text sometimes, will seek other unforgettable hits. So, stories like "When the refrigerator dies," "Play" or "Second Life" The loneliness of ventriloquists or "strange" or "A voice on the threshold" of Before giraffes (Pages foam, Madrid, 2011 ) I find stories written in a state of grace, showing permeability between the fantastic side of life and more everyday and vagabond. Candeira rarely puts their stories into pure fantasy, on the contrary, the situations are more common, people describing the binding of daily survival, suddenly crossed the threshold of the imaginary. His poetry, therefore, falls within a clear opposition to realism, at least to blunt realism. This is an issue (the distinction between a conscious literary realism, critical realism and the usual blunt and ignorant of their epistemological oxymorons) of which we raised in Singularities and which has extended an excellent theoretical relative very important to understand Candeira Matías, Angel Zapata. Zapata, who has been, if my data does not fail, creative writing teacher Candeira, and appears as a master or reference cited in the endnotes of his two books he had written in a certain place and with no small success that
"Realism in literature and all, is not exactly believe that 'the world is well done, as the poet said, but yes, at least, the world-for better or worse - is made once and for all: that things contain within themselves a solid core, opaque berroqueño and reality, refractory to the languages \u200b\u200band codes that shape human desire, indifferent to the historicity, deaf mystery. Realism is that tautology Cazurra says that things are what they are ... And the words, after all, nothing more than words " .
And of course the narrative is hardly Candeira deaf to the mystery. Fraught with human desire, and inhumane also continually slips through passageways that lead our world to other less tangible, standardized protocol for the regulation of consciousness. In the narrative of Candeira roof is much talk but, significantly, rarely walls, unless it is to point the way to cross anywhere except the door. In some poetry has been in favor of a short story written "without depend as much on the giant whale realistic " . It is also remarkable ability to understand a concept of identity as malleable and subject to metanoia, as well as his taste by the fiction to occupy the place of another ("I am them," The loneliness of the ventriloquists, p. 155; "we are you", Before giraffes, p. 42), even when the other is not a person but a monster. Because the narrative is full of monsters, if Before giraffes focuses its narrative focus Candeira figures as Dr. Octopus, no less worrying are the tenants mossy tunnels or women with ventral The loneliness of ventriloquists . The wells, canals, locks and other passages, understood as a symbolic means of penetration of the irrational in the rational (but also as "semiotic channels" to use the expression of Echo Mirrors and Other Essays ) abound in these stories, even in the preceding sections: "I saw a hole ... a hole black. The hole was opened while watching " behold the appointment of Charles Burns opens Before giraffes, along with other no less explicit poet David Eloy Rodríguez and Fogwill. The literature understood as a system of communicating vessels between the real and imaginary, or rather between the real and hard real possibly that is the kernel of the aesthetics of Matthias Candeira. Remember what Nabokov said, speaking of Don Quixote:
"Art has its ways of transcending the limits of reason. I want to propose this theory: the novel would have died of laughter that his picaresque plot intended to provoke, if not containing episodes and passages that gently introduces the reader to the dreamy world of permanent art and irrational ".
I think the short story also would have died without that occasional antirealist drive without the calling of diving pelagics in the worlds of the unconscious. But it is a position that does not look be right but, rather, be irrational. So do not make me much attention.
Candeira is still very young writer, and his two books, as happens in many books stories, are heterogeneous, and with varying quality. Notable pieces are interspersed with other expendable as "That man there," "our future" or other supported solely on the joke, like "Assault 99. His books are still burdened with the impetuosity and boldness commendable wish you an author of his age, but the important thing is to highlight the refinements that have not yet and that experience will give him, but his natural talent, his gift for building story time beautiful and visionary, and its ability to introduce new worlds or allow us to see it the same with other, perhaps better, eyes.
( personal relationship with the author reviewed we are friends on Facebook, that is, no. Relationship with publishers: troops, no; Pages foam published my last essay.)
