Savage Theories

Starred review from October 31, 2016
Acclaimed in Argentina when it was first released, Oloixarac’s brilliant, dextrous debut novel is a twisty tale of academia, lust, and culture. At its core are three narratives, two of which take place in the present: the adventures of young Kamtchowsky and her boyfriend, Pabst, as they sift their way through the Buenos Aires music, drug, pornography, and video game scenes; and the pursuit of the novel’s narrator, known only as Rosa Ostreech, as she tries to draw the attention of her older professor (by seducing another man), also in Buenos Aires. The third story line begins in 1917 and focuses on a Dutch anthropologist—and later his disciples—as he explores a theory that ties human civilization and behavior to the violence seen in our primate ancestors. These ambitious narrative threads overlap, yet characters disappear for long stretches, making their stories unfold in fits and starts, which may frustrate some. However, the author’s ability to incorporate diverse elements, including 1970s Argentinian sex comedies, early 20th-century psychological theory, Elton John, and Thomas Hobbes singing in bed, makes for a singular and humorous experience. Perhaps best of all is Oloixarac’s prose: discursive, surprising, and off-kilter—like the characters themselves, it reveals a ceaseless appetite for understanding and belonging.

Starred review from October 15, 2016
Set in Buenos Aires, Oloixarac's debut novel ranges widely, from initiation rites to computer hacking, from human prehistory to ketamine-fueled parties.The mysterious narrator stalks a middle-aged professor, desperate to reveal that she alone understands his brilliant Theory of Egoic Transmissions ("soon I will illuminate the dark side of your philosophy"). Parallel to this narrative runs a sexual picaresque, beginning "amid the violence of the Years of Lead, in the late 1970s." The heroine of this thread, Kamtchowsky, and her boyfriend, Pabst, become involved with another couple. Dark and humorous in turns, the tone is wry, erudite, raunchy, and the text is sprinkled with references to politics, philosophy, anthropology, and pop culture and the occasional illustration. Academic posturing is mocked. A character finds himself "caught in a burst of metatheory as regarded the meaning of jerking himself off." At the heart of Oloixarac's ambitious book lie the human relationship to violence and the significance of our prehistoric shift from prey to weapon-wielding predator. The narrator is interested in "an ontology of human acts," "an anthropology of voluptuousness and war." She sees the individual existing within "a space dense with ghosts and purposeful geometries" where "the totality of past and present points of view...pierce through space, and one another." This could also describe the structure of the novel, making for a sometimes-dizzying ride. The narrator embarks on a calculated seduction of a former leftist guerilla and toys with him, the prey becoming predator. Meanwhile, Kamtchowsky, "little diva of amateur porn," invents a computer game based on Argentina's Dirty War. A hack embedded within it makes possible a project that maps Buenos Aires in a wholly new way ("The city was an utter mess. And yet it was beautiful"), illuminating "the cyclical history of a country where events occurred and then revolved around one another, merely existing, unable to account for themselves." While there are echoes of Borges and Bolano here, the synthesis of ideas and the manic intelligence are wholly new. Brilliant, original, and very fun to read.

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December 1, 2016

In her black comedy pastiche, Argentine essayist and journalist Oloixarac develops two story lines. In the first, Kamtchowsky and Pabst, a pair of unattractive young adults involved in drugs, orgies, and social media, develop a video game with the help of some geeky friends that hacks Google Earth. In the second thread, which develops the theme of intergenerational conflict, the pseudonymous narrator stalks a University of Buenos Aires professor whose incredible anthropological theory she aims to correct. Overlaying the minimalist plots and characters are digressions on anthropology and political philosophy in a text saturated with polysyllabic phrasing and distracting references to popular music, movies, television and social media. The translator footnoted 15 of the most obscure ones (mostly those referring to Argentine culture), but numerous others will pass by many readers as they question their purpose. Ultimately, Oloixarac's intentional pretentiousness satirizes the academic research community, with the "savage theories" of the title becoming manifest in various ways as objects of prey turn into predators. VERDICT Though the inclusion of blogs, video games, and viral videos into mainstream literature is appealing, it's not enough to offset the recondite style and pseudointellectual pose.--Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State Coll., Mansfield, OH

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016
In this dazzling, frantic tour de force, Argentine author Oloixarac traces several intertwining threads. Rosa Ostreech distracts herself from completing her convoluted thesis by attempting to seduce an aging professor. Portly Kamtchowsky and her lover, Pabst, engage in pornographic high jinks, and a Dutch anthropologist works on a theory about human evolution rooted in the predatory practices of our primate ancestors. Oloixarac's suspiciously cagey narrator, sounding like an aggressively witty intellectual, and who has no problem divulging explicit sexual details, doesn't so much weave together as assemble into a pastiche these competing story lines. She also manages to resurrect ghosts from Argentina's Dirty War and dive headfirst into the twenty-first century's strange technological frontier. Though the novel is daunting in substance and structure, with a wide range of cultural references from Aristotle and Leibniz to Elton John and Jenna Jameson, readers willing to indulge this careening carousel of a novel will be rewarded with an unexpectedly prescient experience. In spite of its first publication in Spanish in 2008, Oloixarac's tale proves timely in light of Argentina's recurrent political turnover.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)