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	• The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories Horacio Quiroga University of Wisconsin Press, 2004 - 166 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Say When

The Great German poet Hersonlog Breich said of this work, "One of the most stunning arts of _expression in modern times". Of course he was writing in 1941, but the statement still stands the test of time...

A Horror Writer

If _The Decapitated Chicken_ were a new work by a US author, it would probably be marketed in the "horror" genre. Its status as an older classic by a Latin American writer means it is instead marketed as "magic realism." Do not, however, confuse this with the gentle works of such writers as Marquez and Allende.

Almost every story ends with at least one gruesome death. Many stories are entirely devoted to anticipating that death. The protagonist gets bitten by a viper or slashes himself with a machete at the beginning, then dies for the next several pages. There's not actually much "magic realism" in these stories, aside from a few talking animals.

The prose is certainly vivid, even in translation. If you like horror, I recommend this book. I'll stick to Marquez and Allende.

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Table of Contents

For those of you curious about which stories this book includes:

The Feather Pillow, Sunstroke, The Pursued, The Decapitated Chicken, Drifting, A Slap in the Face, In the Middle of the Night, Juan Darien, The Dead Man, Anaconda, The Incense Tree Roof, & The Son

Worthwhile

Quiroga (1878-1937) is considered to be one of the finest short-story writers Latin America has produced, and among the writers there with whom the modern short story begins. This anthology was published in 1976 and contains 12 of his best pieces written between 1907 and 1935. It was the first collection in English covering the span of his career.

Quiroga is known for his economy of style and power of dramatic focus, rapid narrative, and dark view of mankind, often showing people motivated by greed, fear, anger, stupidity or a desire for revenge. Most of the stories in this collection involved violence, death, madness or horror. There were also several animal tales featuring dogs and snakes that talked. Many of the pieces were set in the torrid jungle of the Misiones district of northeastern Argentina, and showed man's inability to control nature and fate. Two were set in the city. Just one story in the collection had a conventional hero and happy outcome: a courageous woman rowed for hours against a raging flood to get help for a companion.

For me, the most interesting piece was "The Pursued," an early story containing the narrator's description of the gradual descent into madness of his intellectual acquaintance in the city. The interest came from the gripping description of the descent, and the fact that the narrator's comments suggested that he too was insane and contributed to the other's disintegration. Other good stories included the title piece, which showed children's terrifying powers of imitation in a way that won't soon be forgotten, and "The Dead Man" and "Drifting," about the rage to live against approaching death. The illustrations commissioned for the edition of the book I read were also well done and contributed to the stories' atmosphere.

Some of the pieces had some affinities with magic realism, if that means the use merely of the bizarre or supernatural. His works weren't magic realism in the sense of use of nonlinear, parallel plots, unusual shifts in time and space, creation of a mythical place, or heavy borrowing from myth, legend and dream. The stories included in the collection were very linear in narrative and didn't distort reality in intensifying it. His work may be related to magic realism in the same distant way as an author like Ambrose Bierce or many writers of horror stories are related to it.

A minor criticism of this anthology might be that the atmosphere of virtually unrelieved doom and darkness got a bit oppressive after awhile. I would've liked to read additional stories by this author in this short, 160-page collection to see whether he was capable of a greater range. Within the fictional territory included in this short book, he was powerful. I'd agree with other readers that his writing is important for readers interested in Latin American fiction, particularly the short story.

Another collection in English of the writer's work is The Exiles and Other Stories, produced in 1987 by the same publisher. It focuses more on the atmosphere of the Misiones jungle and the various characters who inhabited it, and less on the intense atmosphere of dread, the supernatural and the bizarre.

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the dude a couple of reviews down is an imbecile

anyone who calls marquez and allende gentle should be decapitated themselves. read quiroga.

reviews: page 1, 2

Horacio Quiroga?s short stories are infused with the themes of life and death that so obsessed him. They span many fiction genres?jungle tale, Gothic horror story, psychological study, morality tale?and possess a universality that has made him a classic Latin American writer.

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