Pillars of Creation: A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World
Carlos Nicolás Flores
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Don’t be fooled or frightened by the high-falutin’ title of this novel--Pillars of Creation—or the subtitle--A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World. Yes, that interstellar image is important to main character Yoltic Cortez’s thinking, but, no, the subtitle does not suggest an egotistical quest—that Yoltic wants to make a great name for himself. That’s not what this is about.
At its core, this is a love story, but like most love stories, it involves troubles other than just losing and winning a beautiful, young woman. Yes, there’s the sort of trouble experienced by most love-struck people regardless of location, but there are also those problems particular to those living on the border, the environs of carne asadas and quinceañeras, disneylandia and el monte, el diablo and narcotraficantes. In Flores’s novel, Yoltic, a twenty-something Mexican-American, is torn by the seemingly endless contradictions of his life in South Texas. He not only desires and eventually loves a young Mexican woman but also fears the dangerous entanglements that this attachment may lead to. On top of this, he struggles with his thorny relationship with his ailing father, the hallucinatory temptations of Tezca, the seeming contradictions between science and religion, the trials of remaining gainfully employed, the fear of being nothing more than a wannabe writer, the violence spilling over the border, and the lure of a world beyond Cuatro Vientos, the impoverished colonia where he lives. And casting a shadow over all of this are the philosophical, moral, and spiritual implications with which characters are faced while living in a Nietzschean world where, Yoltic fears, “God is dead.” Flores threads all these together, often dramatically, as his main character struggles to bring order, clarity, and fulfillment to his life. |
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Pillars of Creation is dramatically different from Flores’s two previous novels in both style and plotting. Our House on Hueco, his first book, is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story set in El Paso, Texas, and is narrated by Junior, a mostly innocent ten-year-old boy. Events unfold chronologically as Junior relates the complications his family faces when they move from the barrio to the Anglo part of town. The straightforward story line, the relatively simple language, the mostly uplifting ending, and the clear-eyed first-person perspective reveal Junior’s growing understanding of the adult world, making this story accessible and relevant to both young readers and grown-ups.
Flores’s second novel, Sex as a Political Condition, however, is—as the title suggests—wildly different from his first. Raucous and politically incorrect, it’s mostly set in the same part of the U.S.-Mexico border as Pillars of Creation but occurs about twenty years earlier and involves an entirely different cast of motley characters determined to cross the border and take humanitarian aid to the people of Nicaragua. The third-person narrator’s voice is often as blunt and racy as that of Honoré, Tequila, the Governor, Cachetes, Rig, Ty, and a host of other colorful characters who both are threatened by and eventually succumb to the temptations available to would-be revolutionaries on the border: drugs, money, violence, food, sex, and even love. Events unfold chronologically, as in Our House on Hueco, but here they lead inexorably to a hilarious but tragic climax.
That Pillars is distinctly different from both of Flores’s previous books is evidence of his willingness to stretch himself as a writer and to experiment with narrative techniques that expand what a novel might do. Readers of more traditional mainstream books, including Our House on Hueco and Sex as a Political Condition, shouldn’t be distracted by the less orthodox aspects of Pillars. A literary novel with meditations on and conversations about Judaism, Protestantism, astronomy, consumerism, and writers, it’s narrated from the unconventional second-person point of view—Yoltic is referred to as “you,” not “I” or “he” as in Flores’s previous works and in most novels. While some readers might find this and the plot, which moves back and forth through time, distracting and occasionally disorienting, these stylistic choices are important to understanding Yoltic as a complex and seemingly lost character caught up in the turbulence of early 21st-century life on the border.
This often moving, consistently thoughtful, and timely story offers an original and unsentimental view of life on the margins of the country. Both philosophical and introspective, Pillars of Creation by Carlos Flores is a challenging book offering rewards for serious readers interested in the border, the people who live there, and the struggle with ideas that might give meaning to it all.
Carlos Nicolás Flores, author of the novels Our House on Hueco (Texas Tech UP, 2006) and Sex as a Political Condition (Texas Tech UP, 2015), recently completed a short-story collection called Dantesque Crimes and Other Tales of Tex-Mex Horror. He, his wife Dora, and their schnauzer Mika live in a historic customhouse in Zapata County, Texas.
Pillars of Creation is a publication by Atmosphere Press.
Flores’s second novel, Sex as a Political Condition, however, is—as the title suggests—wildly different from his first. Raucous and politically incorrect, it’s mostly set in the same part of the U.S.-Mexico border as Pillars of Creation but occurs about twenty years earlier and involves an entirely different cast of motley characters determined to cross the border and take humanitarian aid to the people of Nicaragua. The third-person narrator’s voice is often as blunt and racy as that of Honoré, Tequila, the Governor, Cachetes, Rig, Ty, and a host of other colorful characters who both are threatened by and eventually succumb to the temptations available to would-be revolutionaries on the border: drugs, money, violence, food, sex, and even love. Events unfold chronologically, as in Our House on Hueco, but here they lead inexorably to a hilarious but tragic climax.
That Pillars is distinctly different from both of Flores’s previous books is evidence of his willingness to stretch himself as a writer and to experiment with narrative techniques that expand what a novel might do. Readers of more traditional mainstream books, including Our House on Hueco and Sex as a Political Condition, shouldn’t be distracted by the less orthodox aspects of Pillars. A literary novel with meditations on and conversations about Judaism, Protestantism, astronomy, consumerism, and writers, it’s narrated from the unconventional second-person point of view—Yoltic is referred to as “you,” not “I” or “he” as in Flores’s previous works and in most novels. While some readers might find this and the plot, which moves back and forth through time, distracting and occasionally disorienting, these stylistic choices are important to understanding Yoltic as a complex and seemingly lost character caught up in the turbulence of early 21st-century life on the border.
This often moving, consistently thoughtful, and timely story offers an original and unsentimental view of life on the margins of the country. Both philosophical and introspective, Pillars of Creation by Carlos Flores is a challenging book offering rewards for serious readers interested in the border, the people who live there, and the struggle with ideas that might give meaning to it all.
Carlos Nicolás Flores, author of the novels Our House on Hueco (Texas Tech UP, 2006) and Sex as a Political Condition (Texas Tech UP, 2015), recently completed a short-story collection called Dantesque Crimes and Other Tales of Tex-Mex Horror. He, his wife Dora, and their schnauzer Mika live in a historic customhouse in Zapata County, Texas.
Pillars of Creation is a publication by Atmosphere Press.
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