I begin the chronicle with a statement that could well be the conclusion of our writing about the writer Lilian Elphick; Without a doubt, we are facing a master in the genre of the third millennium, the micro-story, or whatever you want to call it, because it can be called mini-story, micro-story, miniature story, micro-fiction and a long etcetera.
The text that we have just read in digital format reaffirms the idea that Lilian is an exceptional narrator in the ultra-short story – another name. I met the author of “Animalia”, a small volume – like the writing it contains – in Valparaíso in 2004 at an international conference of theory, criticism and literary creation about the story that can be read while waiting for the executioner, as someone said Over there.
Later I followed his writing footprint in various texts where he has demonstrated his expertise in this discursive genre that dates back to distant times, although it is now located from the last century. Probably, for example, the Archpriest of Hita or Don Juan Manuel did not know that when they concluded their stories with aphorisms or couplets they were delivering the seed of what would become over time the minimal texts, including those with a single line like the famous and rewritten Monterroso dinosaur.
The micro-story is related to the story. This is that narrative species that came before the novel. Narrativity is the condition of both discursive forms, except that in the minimal story the codes of events, space and time are concentrated to the maximum, which is why it can be a single line, a couplet, or a paragraph.
Hidden in this synthetic character are the multiple aesthetic and interpretive resonances that these writings can generate. If writing a story that wins by knock out is a feat, even more so is the short story. Lilian Elphick has achieved this in spades. She has an amazing imagination that manages to turn it into a minimal story. Needless to say, in this tiny written form, irony, parody, intertextuality, the carnivalesque, the playful, the surprise of the outcome and other rhetorical manifestations are fully shown to the reader.
“Animalia” is a set of more than twenty minimal texts, in addition to a section called “Nostalgia for the days to come.” This is a narrative sequence of six narratives that appear to be autonomous – that is how they are read – but that in the background are a single significant unit.
The interpretive key tells us that the first texts are related to the other sequence as long as we are part of a single kingdom: animalia. The title of the volume seems great to us. The stories have the younger brothers as protagonists, as Saint Francis of Assisi would say.
Instead of animals, Lilian Elphick uses the name animalia, which gives the content a closer sense of empathy with the zoological. Indeed, the kingdom of animalia connects us with a diversity of beings that are part of a biodiverse world. Lilian’s animalia follows this path with the exception that it is not a morphological description – since it includes imaginary animalia – but rather as a literary work it immerses us in fiction through rhetorical procedures, such as the rereading of some literary classic. -Kafka, always Kafka, the essential one- or appealing to the cultural encyclopedia of the reader, as in the case of the dog Laika or the soaked Riquelme.
On the other hand, there is an attitude on the part of the narrators – Lilian, but transmuted in the language into an issuer – in which they appeal to the defense of those who are part of the common home – the Oikos of the Greeks – that is, the younger brothers with humans. The text that opens this volume by Lilian is masterful. The outstanding hunter who ends up being hunted in front of a tigress and her cubs: called to annihilate her with his rifle and expert aim, at the moment he reminds everyone of the slaughtered animals and whose stuffed heads were part of his home decoration and lowers the rifle.
The story has an ending that I will not disclose. The text “Bobby” – a common dog name – reveals the sad reality of abandoned or lost canines or felines. Bobby – an intertextual reference to the novel Paws of a Dog by Carlos Droguett – through his own speech gives an account of his miserable form that can be extrapolated to the human condition. Master story.
In “Unicorns”, Lilian takes us to the imagery of literary animalia, fantastic, wonderful, where reality and the imaginary are intertwined through a medieval tapestry. The dog Laika, for all of us who were immediate contemporaries of the space race between the two powers that were competing for outer space, is an icon of the negligence of the human species. A defenseless animalia launched into the unknown in an airtight capsule in search of human knowledge, but at the cost of a younger brother.
The short story “Laika” recreates such a crime in two paragraphs with an overwhelming conclusion. In “The Gift” the author masterfully reinterprets the presence of Gregorio Samsa, the protagonist of Kafka’s novel, “The Metamorphosis.” The story has as its narrative voice Gregorio who questions Franz and the outcome is surprising.
In summary, “Animalia”, the work with which Lilian Elphick won the first prize in the 2023 Manuel Peyrou Prize International Microfiction Book Contest in Argentina, is a book that only corroborates our initial statement: we are facing a teacher in the micro-story genre. Whoever reads it will not be disappointed, but, on the contrary, aesthetically surprised and pleased.
Datasheet:
Lilian Elphick. Animalia. Argentina. EOS. School of Trades and Knowledge. 2024. 48 pages.
