Overview

The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In Optic Nerve, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Géricault's workshop; Gustave Courbet's devilish seascapes incite viewers to have sex, or to eat an apple; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau's honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator's life in Buenos Aires--her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies. Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English-language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.

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9781665123792

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Maria Gainza was born in Buenos Aires, where she still resides. She has worked as a correspondent for the New York Times in Argentina, as well as for ARTnews. She has also been a contributor to Artforum, the Buenos Aires Review, and Radar, the cultural supplement from Argentine newspaper Pagina/12. She is coeditor of the collection Los Sentidos (The Senses) on Argentinean art, and in 2011 she published Textos elegidos (Selected Texts), a collection of her notes and essays on contemporary art. Optic Nerve is her first work of fiction and her first book to be translated into English. Agustín Fernández Mallo was born in La Coruña, Spain in 1967. Before devoting himself full-time to his fiction and poetry, he worked for many years as an experimental physicist. His collected poems were published in Spain in 2012. Thomas Bunstead has translated Enrique Vila-Matas, Aixa de la Cruz, Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, and Rodrigo Fresán. His own writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review Daily, and TheIndependent on Sunday. Agustín Fernández Mallo was born in La Coruña, Spain in 1967. Before devoting himself full-time to his fiction and poetry, he worked for many years as an experimental physicist. His collected poems were published in Spain in 2012. Thomas Bunstead has translated Enrique Vila-Matas, Aixa de la Cruz, Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, and Rodrigo Fresán. His own writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review Daily, and TheIndependent on Sunday. Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children's adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.

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