On Nocilla and the Urbanization of Consciousness: Multiplicity

and Interdisciplinarity in Agustn Fernndez Mallos Fragmented

Trilogy
Benjamin Fraser
Hispania, Volume 95, Number 1, March 2012, pp. 1-13 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
For additional information about this article
Access provided by your local institution (5 Nov 2013 04:14 GMT)
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Hispania 95.1 (2012): 113 AATSP Copyright 2012
On !"#$%%& and the Urbanization of Consciousness:
Multiplicity and Interdisciplinarity in
Agustn Fernndez Mallo`s Fragmented Trilogy
Benjamin Fraser
The College of Charleston, USA
Abstract: This essay reappropriates the segmentary Iorm oI the three works oI Agustin Fernandez Mallo`s
Nocilla project (Nocilla Dream |2006|; Nocilla Experience |2008|; Nocilla Lab |2009|) en route to an
urban reading oI its Iragmentary structure. The project`s interdisciplinary push, overwhelming incorpora-
tion oI both scientifc and literary/cultural reIerences, and method oI collage evoke the shiIting fow and
complex nature oI contemporary urban liIe. The ubiquity oI reIerences to urban communities within the
text oI Nocilla itselI suggests connections to work by such fgures as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin,
Louis Wirth, David Harvey, Raymond Williams, Guy Debord, Henri LeIebvre, and Jane Jacobs. Moreover,
the present essay`s extratextual reIerences, driIting method, and punctuated structure constitute a ftting
scholarly tribute to the interdisciplinary approach that Fernandez Mallo has labeled 'postpoetic.
Keywords: Agustin Fernandez Mallo, cities/ciudades, Nocilla project/proyecto Nocilla, science and
literature/ciencia y literatura, urbanized consciousness/consciencia urbanizada
1
C
omprising the novels Nocilla Dream (ND, 2006), Nocilla Experience (NE, 2008), and
Nocilla Lab (NL, 2009), Agustin Fernandez Mallo`s Nocilla trilogy suggests numerous
interpretive approaches. Nevertheless, going beyond its author`s postpoetic declarations
(section 5, below)his status as a degree-holding licenciado en Ciencias Fisicas (sec. 9), the
surge in 'zapping literature (a word evoking rapid channel changes), the persistent trope oI
postmodernism (sec. 10), and so onperhaps the most totalizing and thus compelling reading
oI the trilogy is one grounded in the urbanization oI consciousness.
Make no mistake, the chaotic, cacophonous, and Iragmented structure oI the Nocilla trilogy
seems to be sorely in need oI some sense oI unity: the novels are vertebrated not by traditional
chapter titles or divisions but by a series oI incrementally increasing positive integers (1, 2,
3, 4, 5., such as those similarly employed in this essay) that only occasionally reIerence the
same previously introduced cast oI characters. The eIIect achieved is one oI narrative collage
interpolating brieI enigmatic narratives, poetic images, and philosophical theorizations, along
with direct quotations reappropriated Irom works oI other notable fgures across both artistic
and scientifc felds. These numerous semiautonomous subsections (which reach a total oI over
one hundred in each oI the frst two volumes) necessarily contribute to the trilogy`s Iragmented
character while at the same time linking up with a seemingly endless stream oI extratextual
literary, musical, flmic, and TV reIerences (sec. 6). As this essay will argue, despite (or better
yet, precisely because oI) its diIfcult Iormat and disparate content, the trilogy`s representation
oI a chaotic modernity squares with accounts oI the urban experience by theorists Irom Georg
Simmel and David Harvey to Henri LeIebvre and Jane Jacobs. Upon frst glance, what makes
this urban-centered approach to the trilogy so compelling is Fernandez Mallo`s own inclusion oI
key reIerences to cities and urban communities throughout Nocilla. More importantly, however,
2 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
these myriad instances (and occasionally their curious absence; see sec. 2) accompany an
interdisciplinary method, Iragmented structure, and multiple narrative threads, which together
evoke the multivocality and multiplicity that characterize liIe in today`s urban environments.
In the thirteen numbered sections comprising this essay, I oIIer an additional tribute to
the Nocilla trilogy by reappropriating its somewhat eccentric Iorm, interdisciplinary push,
and method oI collage (Ior the sake oI readability, however, the present essay`s transitions are
decidedly less abrupt that those that appear in the Nocilla trilogy). The intent oI embracing
such an alternative organization Ior this essay is to give the reader a better sense oI the brev-
ity and topical variation that characterize Fernandez Mallo`s numbered narrative Iragments
and, through that structural appropriation, to evoke the same sense oI the shiIting, chaotic,
and multiplicitous ground oI the modern urbanized consciousness that the Nocilla trilogy so
careIully articulates. While the subsections oI this essay may seem to move quickly Irom the
relation oI one oI Nocilla`s themes to another (Irom cities, to music, to art, to science/literature,
and back to urban communities and capitalism), it is important to appreciate that this essay
purposely driIts Irom one topic to the next (just as does Nocilla) as an evocation oI a mental
state attributed to the urbanization oI consciousness and discussed below (sec. 3). Ultimately,
the trilogy is a selI-consciously stylized product oI the urbanization oI consciousness not solely
because oI its Iocus on urban environments, but moreover because oI the way in which even the
most disparate disciplines acquire their Iorce and meaning within an urbanized context, whether
that context is explicitas it certainly is in Nocillaor merely implicit. This essay makes the
case that Nocilla is a decidedly urban product, not because it IaithIully represents the textures
oI urban liIe, but more Iundamentally because oI its articulation oI an urbanized and driIting
consciousness (Simmel 14952; also Benjamin).
2
In approaching the trilogy through an urban lens, it is essential to recognize that the notion
oI place is highly important to Nocilla, even iI its very structure prohibits a close engagement
with any given location. Because the trilogy is constituted by a multiplicity oI narrations, loca-
tions, characters, and topics, it is diIfcult at best to determine where the novels 'take place.
Nonetheless, a relatively sizable portion oI the early narrative action centers on the stretch
oI US Highway 50 that links the cities oI Carson City and Ely (Nevada), a Iact that roots the
trilogy in the tradition oI a Spanish cultural production strangely Iascinated by the lonesome,
crowded desert oI the North American West.
1
Yet, the trilogy`s initial desert settingwhich
is bolstered by occasional intercalated reIerences to the real desert oI Albacete (ND 91, 105;
NL 33) and deserts in general (ND 108)also serves to highlight the conspicuous absence oI
its logical counterpart, the city. As the Iorerunners oI the still-Iorming discipline oI Cultural
Studies understood it, the city could in no way be defned without recourse to rural and un-
urbanized areas. Raymond Williams, Ior example, in his seminal text The Countrv and the Citv
wrote that 'the contrast oI the country and city is one oI the major Iorms in which we become
conscious oI a central part oI our experience and oI the crises oI our society (289). The Nocilla
project certainly presents us with a Iorm challenging enough to permit a conscious assessment
oI modernity, commenting even directly on contemporary crises in capitalism (sec. 12), but
it also uses the desert as a way oI evoking the logical consequence oI the continual and even
accelerating process oI urbanization and its accompanying population density. At the dawn oI
the twenty-frst century, approximately halI oI the globe`s population now lives in citiesand
as urban sociologists already realized some seventy years ago (Louis Wirth, quoted below in
sec. 3), this increased urbanization has come to infuence modern social liIe even among rural
populations and can now be said to constitute the base oI the modern experience, urban or
not. Appropriately enough, however, the large urban centers oI the contemporary world food
the pages oI Fernandez Mallo`s project (e.g., not only Carson City and Ely, but also Madrid
3 Fraser / Urbanization of Consciousness
|ND 115|, Paris |ND 124|, Chicago |ND 3940|, Copenhagen |ND 93|, Pripat, Chernobyl |NL
13|, Las Vegas |NL 3839|, New York |NL 58|, Peking |ND 155|, Bangkok |NL 66|, and others).
The idea oI creating an urban literature is nothing newFernandez Mallo`s trilogy must
necessarily be contextualized within a tradition oI Spanish urban literature that began over one
hundred years ago. Noted 'Generation oI 98 author Pio Baroja`s novel Aventuras, inventos v
mixtihcaciones de Silvestre Paradox (1901), Ior example, was in many ways a direct comment
on the wave oI urbanization that Madrid had undergone Irom the mid-1800s to the dawn oI
the twentieth century. E. Inman Fox writes in his introduction to the novel`s 1989 edition that
'|p|ara comprender mas claramente el cuadro que nos regala Baroja, conviene saber |que| |e|n
lo que va desde mediados del XIX hasta 1900, la poblacion de la capital aumenta de una manera
asombrosa: de 298.426 habitantes en 1860 a 539.835 en 1900 (21). Nevertheless, while Baroja
and nineteenth-century writers such as Benito Perez Galdos (18431920) and even Mariano
Jose de Larra (180937) sought to give a more or less detailed understanding oI the specifc
dimensions oI city-liIe in urbanizing Spain,
2
Fernandez Mallo`s novel is relatively uninterested
in the textures oI city liIe. Even though Nocilla spends much time dealing with events taking
place in specifc urban centers, it is more interested in the mental conditions that the metropolis
encourages and induces in the city-dweller. Accordingly, its Iocus driIts Irom one topic to the
next seemingly at whim, juxtaposing the most disparate places and ideas and justiIying its very
interdisciplinarity character. Although there may be less attention placed on matters oI poverty
and industrialization in Fernandez Mallo`s literary production than there may have been in
the work oI Baroja, Galdos, and even Larra (or in the Anglophone works noted in Blanche
Housman GelIant`s classic study oI The American Citv Novel ), Nocilla is no less exemplary oI
urban literature. That is, in articulating a vision oI urbanization that goes beyond the physical
conditions oI cities and toward the mental conditions the metropolis creates, Fernandez Mallo`s
text reIuses to reiIy urbanization as a thing or an object and instead recognizes it as a complex
process. As discussed below, this perspective is itselI one strongly rooted in the tradition oI
twentieth-century urban thought.
3
The true measure oI the relevance oI the urban approach to Nocilla thus lies not in the text`s
mere incorporation oI cities but in its more Iundamental articulation oI an urbanized and driIting
consciousness. Fernandez Mallo`s willingness throughout the trilogy to fow to and IroIrom
the desert to urbanized areas and back again, Irom one place to another, Irom the city to the
beach and fnally even an oII-shore rigsquares with an understanding oI 'urbanization as
a process whose eIIects naturally extend each year Iarther and Iarther away Irom the sites oI
actual cities themselves. As early as 1938, in his essay 'Urbanism as a Way oI LiIe, the urban
critic Louis Wirth oI the Chicago School oI Urban Sociology argued Ior seeing even the most
remote areas oI the globe Irom an urban perspective:
The degree to which the contemporary world may be said to be 'urban is not Iully or accurately
measured by the proportion oI the total population living in cities. The infuences which cities
exert upon the social liIe oI man are greater than the ratio oI the urban population would indicate,
Ior the city is not only in ever larger degrees the dwelling-place and the workshop oI modern
man, but it is the initiating and controlling center oI economic, political, and cultural liIe that
has drawn the most remote parts oI the world into its orbit and woven diverse areas, peoples,
and activities into a cosmos. (2)
From this perspective, the city exerts an infuence on Nocilla not only in terms oI Fernandez
Mallo`s routine reIerences to large modern urban centers across the globe (above), but also in
the sense that the trilogy`s very structure testifes to the eIIects that urbanization has had on
contemporary thought in a more general sense. From this perspective it is not necessarily the
4 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
mere reIerencing oI cities that makes the work an urban product, but rather its emphasis on such
qualities as multivocality, multiplicity, Iragmentation, alienation, and chaosall hallmarks oI
what goes by the name oI urbanized consciousness.
4
It is certainly de rigueur Ior urban theorists to point out that the twentieth-century urban-
ization oI the world`s populationas highlighted by David Harvey in a now classic text, The
Urban Experiencehas taken shape along with the twin processes he terms the urbanization
oI capital and the urbanization oI consciousness. This dialectical premisein one shape
or anotherhas been articulated by numerous theorists as an extension oI Marx`s original
social, economic, and necessarily philosophical critique oI capital (Marx is also reIerenced
occasionally in Nocilla). SelI-proclaimed Marxist thinker Henri LeIebvre (Elden 809; Fraser,
'Toward 341)a signifcant infuence on Harvey (Harvey, Justice 219)has powerIully
extended Marx`s critique oI alienation (Critique 249) and related it to the spatial development
and individual experience oI the city (Right 167), Ior example, as has Marshall Berman in his
All That Is Solid Melts into Air (a title that reIerences Marx`s Communist Manifesto). One oI
the most well-known Iormulations oI this cacophonous urban alienation remains that oI Walter
Benjaminand undoubtedly so, as his ambitious work The Arcades Profect, written during
the 1920s and 1930s, Iocuses on the fgure oI the aneur, driIting along Parisian boulevards.
Yet, as Marxist urban critic Andy Merrifeld points out (5053), even Benjamin was heavily
infuenced by his predecessor Georg Simmel`s earlier and still classic 1903 essay titled, 'The
Metropolis and Mental LiIe.
Simmel couches his description oI urbanized consciousness in terms oI the 'the intensihca-
tion of nervous stimulation which results Irom the swiIt and uninterrupted change oI outer and
inner stimuli (149; emphasis original), Iurther commenting that:
Lasting impressions, impressions which diIIer only slightly Irom one another, impressions which
take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habitual contrastsall these use up,
so to speak, less consciousness than does the rapid crowding oI changing images, the sharp
discontinuity in the grasp oI a single glance, and the unexpectedness oI onrushing impressions.
These are the psychological conditions which the metropolis creates. (149)
Simmel`s point is that, Ior the city-dweller, the 'deeply Ielt and emotional relationships
(149) oI rural or small town liIe are eIIectively obsolete. A consequence oI the modern urban
experience is thus the urbanite`s 'blase attitude or 'state oI indiIIerence (Simmel 151, 153),
which allows him/her to stay afoat in the rapid current oI urban liIe. Simmel`s image oI the
modern urban pedestrian who is at odds with the chaotic environment oI the city is a perIect
point oI entry into the Nocilla project`s cacophonous and constantly shiIting prose. The reader
accustomed to the rhythm oI more traditionally structured narrative (comprised by lengthy
chapters or extended sections) is challenged by the Iragmented Iormat and rapidly changing
topics oI the Nocilla trilogy, necessarily conIronting his or her own expectations by asking,
'What am I expecting Irom this text? As with Simmel`s description oI the urbanization oI
consciousness, here even more savvy readers will necessarily have to adopt a diIIerent set
oI expectationsiI not a 'state oI indiIIerencein order to cope with the 'rapid crowding oI
changing images (maniIested in Nocilla`s narrative segments, reappropriated quotations, and
so on) that comprise Fernandez Mallo`s destablized, multivocal, and multiplicitous text. It is as
iI Nocilla were conscious oI the dual nature oI the image oI the city: 'As an image, the city is
too large and complex to be thought oI as only a literary trope. It has a double reIerence, to the
artiIact in the outside world and to the spectrum oI reIractions it calls into being in the minds
oI the author and reader (Pike ix). Without ignoring the city`s built environment, the trilogy`s
5 Fraser / Urbanization of Consciousness
author directs himselI more energetically to its image and its eIIects, a situation that perhaps
calls Ior the unique perspective oI a poet.
5
In order to Iully appreciate the connection between the Nocilla project`s disparate prose
Iragments and the topic oI urbanized consciousness, it is crucial to refect upon Fernandez
Mallo`s own assessment oI his creative agenda. The Galician-born author (A Corua, 1967)a
Irequent contributor to El Pais as well as his own blog titled 'El hombre que salio de la tarta
(blogs.alIaguara.com/Iernandezmallo)coined the term 'poesia postpoetica in 2000, subse-
quently becoming one oI the fgureheads Ior a new group oI literary mavericks in Spain. Iker
Seisdedos writes in El Pais that '|t|he Nocilla generation boasts the likes oI Jorge Carrion,
Vicente Luis Mora, Eloy Fernandez Porta and Juan Francisco Ferre, pointing out that the
motivation to use the term 'Nocillathe Spanish version oI the Nutella chocolate-hazelnut
spreadin truth, came Irom a song by rock band Siniestro Total. Fernandez Mallo situates his
trilogy as yet another postpoetic salvo, writing in the backmatter oI Nocilla Experience that
'Provecto Nocilla responde al intento de trasladar ciertos aspectos de la poesia postpoetica,
que en su dia teorice, al ambito de la narrativa (NE 205).
The trilogy is indeed a transposition oI Fernandez Mallo`s creative poetic impulse to the
realm oI narrative, but one that nonetheless has an explicitly urbanized 'poetic methodol-
ogy. Critic Jesse Barker points to two essays in particular where the Galician writer defnes
his postpoetic agenda ('Poesia postpoetica in Quimera |2006| and 'Poesia postpoetica in
Lateral |2004|) and recognizes the interdisciplinary and urban-infuenced poetic perspective oI
Fernandez Mallo`s work. In a prelude to his published interview with Fernandez Mallo, Barker
suggests that the author
|p|ropone una apertura a otros modos de pensar, como las ciencias, la cocina, la publicidad, las
artes visuales, entre otras, para inIundir nueva vida a la literatura. Compara este procedimiento
con la practica situacionista de la 'deriva: vagar por la ciudad como una Iorma de investigacion
espacial y conceptual. Asi, los situacionistas elaboraban 'psicogeograIias de los aspectos de las
zonas urbanas que escapaban al control del planeamiento racionalista. La diIerencia es que ahora
la post-poetica propone un paso no por la ciudad, sino por las distintas zonas de conocimiento
y expresion que conIorman la cultura actual. (Barker 342)
Signifcantly, the Nocilla project itselI explicitly reIers to the Situationists and the 'Theory oI
DriIt by which Guy Debord and others implicitly rejected the over-codiIed city environment
produced by the bouregois science oI urban planning. In Nocilla Dream, the narrator notes
that 'Justo en la Iranja limitroIe del sur de Paris donde Guy Debord y sus correligionarios
Situacionistas en 1960 ponian en practica su Teoria de la Deriva, ahora hay un gran numero
de casetas de obra habitadas y dispersas en aparente azar. (124; continued on 13435, 137).
Debord`s 'Theory oI the Derive, originally published in 1958 in Internationale Situationiste,
advocated 'a technique oI transient passage through varied ambiances (50) as part oI a series
oI 'psychogeographical articulations oI a modern city (53). In general terms, these articulations
constituted an attempt to uproot the static understanding oI the city and to emphasize a dialecti-
cal relationship between mind and matter on the way to making revolutionary action possible.
Both Debord`s 'Theory oI DriIt and Nocilla`s textual meandering recall Walter Benjamin`s
eclectic analysis oI the Parisian arcades, which was already an accounting (a la Simmel ) oI the
psychological shiIts accompanying urban modernity. Debord`s psychogeographical approach
to the city recalls Benjamin`s emphasis on '|a| diIIerent topography, not architectonic, but
anthropocentric in conception (86). Moreover, Benjamin writes oI the aneur that 'his
way oI liIe still conceals behind a mitigating nimbus the coming desolation oI the big-city
6 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
dweller. . . . He seeks reIuge in the crowd. . . . The crowd is the veil through which the Iamiliar
city beckons to the fneur as phantasmagoria (10). Nocilla presents itselI Ior consumption to
the contemporary reader in the Iashion oI the varied spectacles oIIered by the arcadeseach
discrete narrative segment Iunctions as an isolated commodity, all contained in a work that
evokes at once the chaos oI urban liIe in general (Simmel) and also the hustle-and-bustle oI the
crowded marketplace (Benjamin). And thus, in light oI this critical tradition, Fernandez Mallo
succeeds in IaithIully representing not the architectonic city nor the built urban environment,
but the modern urban experience itselI and its human signifcance.
6
Read in light oI his conscious application oI the Situationist 'Theory oI DriIt and the
implicit resonance with Benjamin`s unfnished Arcades Profect, feeting reIerences to music
(and to Anglophone indie music in particular) constitute one oI the threads oI continuity holding
the driIting consciousness expressed through Agustin Fernandez Mallo`s postpoetic-prose Irag-
ments together. In this way, the Nocilla generation`s fgurehead maintains a Spanish tradition oI
extranational cultural reIerences that points implicitly to the post-Franco impact oI bands like
the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, the countercultural musical Iorms associated with La Movida,
and the stylized punk literature and flm oI the turn oI the century.
3
The trilogy`s volumes abound
with reIerences to musicians both obscure and popular, including but not limited to: Daniel
Johnston (ND 13), Steve Albini (NE 95), Radiohead (ND 50; NE 119), PJ Harvey (NE 128), The
Wedding Present (NE 139), Beck (NE 154), Belle & Sebastian (NL 39, appearing also on the
original cover oI ND), and so on. Similarly, cultural reIerences are not purely musical but reIer
also to visual media: among many others, flms and television programs including Bertolucci`s
El ultimo tango en Paris (ND 14849), La Matan:a de la Sierra Mecanica de Texas (ND 195),
Apocalvpse Now (NE 17, 31, 59), Bladerunner (NL 15), and Michael Landon`s appearances in
Autopista al Cielo (ND 148) and La casa de la pradera (ND 148). And, oI course, the volumes
evoke the presence oI literary fgures and critics including Marguerite Duras (ND 13), Allen
Ginsberg (NL 78), Octavio Paz (NL 54), The No-Syndicate (NE 125), Juan Benet (ND 105),
Paul Auster (NL 4651), Susan Sontag (ND 149), Italo Calvino (ND 37; NL 18), Georges Perec
(NL 65), and Julio Cortazar (NL 81).
Nonetheless, the one literary fgure whose shadow hovers over the entire project is none
other than Jorge Luis Borges (frst mentioned in ND 48), an inclusion pointing implicitly to one
oI the trilogy`s primary aimsthat oI reconciling the universal and the particular. Borges`s story
'El Alepha literary reIerence that is curiously absent Irom Fernandez Mallo`s voluminous
three volume text until well into the frst section oI the third volume Nocilla Lab (59)Iamously
told oI a single point that was connected with all other points in the universe, a singularity Irom
which all other points in the universe could be seen iI not reached. One could say that the Nocilla
project is itselI a cultural product born oI this singularity. Appropriating Louis Wirth`s refections
on the scope and scale oI the city`s infuence, one might say that the project ambitiously attempts
to 'draw the most remote cultural products and ideas into its orbit (2); alternately, and making
use oI a Ielicitous description present in the trilogy`s text itselI, one might say that Nocilla is
indeed that 'polo magnetico que comenzo a atraer hacia si a otros objetos para dotarlos de vida
(NL 20). In any case, the trilogy`s obsessive and almost overwhelming barrage oI reIerences
(which might be considered another oI its postmodern aspects; sec. 10) is geared to induce in
the reader an eIIect quite similar to the 'intensifcation oI nervous stimulation that Simmel
once Iamously attributed to the metropolis.
7 Fraser / Urbanization of Consciousness
7
The inclusion oI so many reIerences in such a confned and Iragmented prose-space permits
(and perhaps requires) the reader to take a more active role, thus seeking out curious connections
between so many seemingly disparate segments. As in the flmic Kuleshov eIIectwhere it
was shown in the early twentieth century that the meaning oI cinematic images came not Irom
their content (a given Iacial expression, Ior example) but Irom the wonders oI the technique
oI montagehere the reader must fll in the gaps present in such a discontinuous narrative
Ior him/herselI, ultimately coming to discern hidden connections between one given idea or
passage and another. Taking a moment to highlight two oI these curiously entwined ideas, in
particular, allows a glimpse oI not merely the author`s impressive range oI reIerences but also
his more consistent employment oI a key themethe dimensions oI the creative process itselI.
First, the reader encounters intermittent reIerences to Henry J. Darger, surely one oI the
most interesting iI obscure Chicago artists oI the twentieth century. Darger`s story, as Nocilla
explains it most concisely and completely in Nocilla Experience (12627), was that upon
his death, his apartment was Iound to contain a 15,000-page manuscript and more than 300
watercolors depicting the epic story oI the Vivian Girls. Darger`s textual and visual narrative
portrays seven young princesses with male genitalia oI the fctional kingdom oI Abbiennia who
fght valiently against adults who enslave and torture children with all the explicit violence
oI Goya`s uncomIortable series oI images Los desastres de la guerra.
4
Nocilla Experience`s
persistent reIerencing oI Dargerprompted, in part, by the character Marc`s listening to a song
by indie musician SuIjan Stevens titled 'The Vivian Girls are Visited in the Night by Saint
Dargarius and his Squadron oI Benevolent Butterfies (NE 33)perhaps serves to highlight
the seemingly inexplicable and ungraspable nature oI artistic creativity. In addition, however,
this portrayal oI an archetypal fgure oI the solitary artist (in the characters oI both Darger and
Marc), evokes the tension between solitude and interconnection that is so important to the
Nocilla project as a whole.
Second, however, in his characteristic interdisciplinary (and here scientifc) style, Fernandez
signifcantly has Marc envision Darger as 'el Iermion absoluto, el solitario por antonomasia
(NE 109, also 57), using the term Ior an elementary particle ('Iermion) named aIter the Italian
Physicist Enrico Fermi (190154) (one that according to the Dictionary oI the Real Academia
Espaola is 'similar to the proton and neutron). Remembering Jesse Barker`s description
above (sec. 5), the incursion oI such scientifc vocabulary into the realm oI art accurately real-
izes one oI the aims oI Fernandez Mallo`s postpoetic and interdisciplinary project. But Nocilla
seeks to accomplish more than merely to 'inIundir nueva vida a la literatura (Barker 342); in
addition, the project seeks to connect the very idea oI literary creation back to the extratextual,
extraliterary notion oI creation present in scientifc accounts oI the universe itselI. This other
pole oI creation serves as the basis Ior numerous scientifc digressions included in the text oI
Nocilla, such as the Iollowing:
8
Desde 1965 se sabe que el Universo se halla en expansion, ahora se ha descubierto que ademas
se esta acelerando, como si a grandes distancias existiera una antigravedad que, en vez de
atraerlas, repeliera a las masas. Nadie sabe a que se debe, por lo que esa antigravedad ha sido
bautizada con el nombre de Energia Oscura. Lanzar una piedra al aire y que nunca regrese. Un
anciano que cuanto mas anciano menos arrugas tuviera. La logica del nauIrago y el mensaje en la
botella, que se lanza para que no vuelva. Ademas, estan los cuerpos que crecen indefnidamente,
las parabolicas, las azoteas. (NE 120)
8 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
9
Such digressions are, in Iact, part and parcel oI the method oI an author who holds a degree
in Ciencias Fisicas and who, like other notable Spanish authors beIore him sees scientifc
production and literary production as being intimately connected.
5
Fernandez Mallo routinely
turns to matters oI physics by way oI intercalating lengthy quotations by Richard P. Feynman
(ND 54) and Martin Cooper (ND 136), Ior example, but also by weaving in passing reIerences to
Newton`s 'Principio de Inercia (NE 96, 111), Galileo`s 'Principio de Relatividad (NL 10203),
Einstein`s 'Teoria Especial de la Relatividad (NE 90), 'Heisenberg (NL 60), 'agujeros
negros (NL 45), and so onat times posing provocative philosophical-scientifc questions Ior
consideration (i.e., 'Nadie sabe por que poseemos masa, ni siquiera los Iisicos teoricos, NL
4445). The entire Nocilla project even begins with a quotation taken Irom B. Jack Copeland
and Diane ProudIoot`s essay 'Un Alan Turing desconocido (ND 15). From a perspective
Ioregrounding scientifc content, it seems that the trilogy`s numerous Iragmented and isolated
subsections Iunction as the narrative equivalents oI subatomic particles, perhaps those 'casuali-
dades que, como las particulas y la entropia, tejen vida (NL 33). The narration is constantly on
the look-out Ior Iundamental laws that might govern day-to-day experience: general laws (NL
1516), universal laws (NL 21), an 'antisymmetrical law (NL 32), and another assurance that
smoking will necessarily maintain the body`s proper water content (NL 97). Page 102 oI Nocilla
Dream even includes a list oI Iormulas Ior common constants oI physics. Notwithstanding this,
Fernandez Mallo is concerned not merely with the history oI established science, but also with
more marginal scientifc works (transhumanism, NE 116) and pseudoscientifc/occult events
('Las caras de Belmez, NE 98; demonic possession portrayed in El exorcista, NE 12324), even
expressing mystical awe at the quotidian science oI aIIecting the gas bubbles in mineral water
(NE 73). Nocilla intimates that, all things considered, science can only be one part oI a larger
puzzle to fnd meaning in 'lugares donde no hay equilibrio (NL 15). Moreover, the meaning
oI the trilogy itselI can in no way be reduced to a mere scientifc allegory given that there are
also countless reIerences to literary matters and ultimately, as we will see, the scientifc and
the literary aspects oI the novel are complementary parts oI a much more complex wholea
whole that Fernandez Mallo ultimately comes to equate with the city itselI.
10
The literary Iorm oI the trilogy works together with the scientifc content to Ioreground
a tension between unity and entropy (in Iact, the author`s 'postpoetic method might equally
suggest the reverse: that the novels` scientifc 'particle-Iorm works equally with the literary
content). Just as the work seems to be recovering the structure oI a more traditional novel
(in NL, where Ior the frst time we see three major section divisions |Part I, 1178; Part II,
79144; Part III, 14580|), this Iorm begins to rapidly unravel. This unraveling is highlighted
through the progressive erosion oI the section titles themselves ('Parte I: Motor Automatico de
Busqueda, 'Parte II: Motor Automatico, and then fnally only 'Parte III: Motor |Fragmentos
encontrados|). AIter Nocilla Lab`s initial (and uncharacteristic) sixty-plus pages oI uninter-
rupted narration, the incremental positive integers appear once again only to cede terrain in
the second part to eight Iull color photographic images oI television screens (NL 13033), and
ultimately, in the third and fnal part, to devolve (or morph?) into a graphic novel (NL 16978).
More so than the preceding two volumes (and masterIully in its frst part), Nocilla Lab is guided
by continual excursions into previous content. The section starts and fnishes with the story
oI a man who returns to Chernobyl and is unable to locate his house (NL 15, 78)but, even
within the narration, previous reIerences (to a Gibson Les Paul guitar, to the island oI Cerdea,
to Coca-Cola, and to the magazine Mundo Obrero, Ior example) continually rise to the surIace
9 Fraser / Urbanization of Consciousness
oI the work`s sheets oI narrative matter (perhaps evoking the ambiguity between the two views oI
reality suggested by twentieth-century physics; reality as wave and reality as particle).
The third volume likewise sees a marked increase in the selI-reIerentiality oI the text,
including even the titles oI its previous volumes (ND in NL 31; NE in NL 65; and both in NL
66). Implicitly appropriating an early event in Paul Auster`s New York Trilogv, the narrator
(named Agustin Fernandez Mallo) soon meets a man claiming to also have the name Agustin
Fernandez Mallo (NL 18822).
6
Beginning on page 123, previous pages oI the very novel we are
reading are reincorporated into the text as entire paragraphs Irom pages 15, 51, and 78 reappear
on pages 12325. Such tactics, which are commonly associated with postmodern aesthetics,
accompany literary meditations on the autonomy oI literary creations, such as the Iollowing:
que todo se parece a otra cosa es una ley universal, es el principio de la mimesis, de la creacion
tal como la entendemos desde que el ser humano ha interpretado y representado el mundo, y
si bien esto es asi, tambien es verdad que toda creacion es autonoma y hasta el genero mas
presuntamente real, el documental, no es real sino 'realista: emula a la realidad pero es un
corta y pega, un producto de montaje, una construccion, de tal manera que podria decirse que
'ninguna creacion es la realidad, sino una representacion, es una fccion, y es ese el merengue
que el arte ha estado batiendo durante siglos en solitario hasta que siguieron su ejemplo los
telediarios, la politica y la publicidad. (NL 22)
Despite the Iact that the narrative later mentions 'el momento en que la sociedad ejecuta el paso
de la modernidad a la posmodernidad y caen las ideologias, izquierda/derecha (NL 100)a
periodizing thesis position rejected by the more elegant approaches oI David Harvey (The
Condition, ch. 3) and Fredric Jameson (The Political 2728)
7
it is Iar less concerned with
drawing divisions than making connections and pointing to the cohabitation oI opposites. Its
meandering psychogeographic (Situationist) style may also be compared to that oI the work
by Gilles Deleuze (with Felix Guattari), which it mentions citing Mil mesetas (NL 34) and to
which it pays homage through its push to write 'sin raiz, rizomaticamente (NL 26; see also
the prologue to ND by Juan Bonilla titled, simply, Ri:oma). Ultimately, both the scientifc and
literary explanations oI the Nocilla trilogy`s hodgepodge oI disparate ideas and events owe
much to the very nature oI the (contemporary) city as the complex site oI multiplicity and
multivocality. From a contemporary perspective, this evocation oI the city was perhaps most
Iamously articulated by Jane Jacobs:
11
Cities happen to be problems in complexity, like the liIe sciences. They present situations in
which a halI-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtlv
interconnected wavs. Cities, again like the liIe sciences, do not exhibit one problem in organized
complexity, which iI understood explains all. They can be analyzed into many such problems
or segments which, as in the case oI the liIe sciences, are also related with one another. The
variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are 'interrelated into an organic whole.
(Death and Life 433; emphasis original)
12
Urban critic Jane Jacobs`s now classic Iormulation oI the city as a complex problem might
just as well apply to the Nocilla trilogy, which itselI needs to be understood as a problem in
organized complexity. In her 'attack on current city planning and rebuilding (Death and Life 3),
originally published in 1961, she pointed to the organic qualities oI cities and took previous
planning approaches (particularly those oI Ebenezer Howard) to task Ior their reduction oI the
10 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
city to a fattened spatial plane. Instead, she argued that the city is alive, flled with a multiplicity
oI independent yet interdependent actorsan idea that she channeled into her creation oI the
enduring metaphor oI the 'sidewalk ballet (5054), one that has had such a wide eIIect on
contemporary urban critics (notably including Barcelona`s Manuel Delgado Ruiz; see Delgado,
El animal 19, 38, 74; Sociedades 129, 13536, 245; and Fraser, 'Manuel Delgado`s). Jacobs
envisioned the city as a place where, provided that the totalizing plans oI urban designers had not
completely crushed its living rhythms, people took part in a living narrative that was unpredict-
able, worth fghting Ior, and decidedly not a mere commodity (Fraser, 'Kind oI Problem 268).
The city potentially provided Ior an inclusive notion oI community defned not in opposition
to but in Iact precisely through the concept oI diIIerence.
Although Agustin Fernandez Mallo does not reIerence Jacobs (or other similarly minded
urban critics) in his project, he nonetheless seems to be intimately concerned with both alterna-
tive Iorms oI community and also the attraction oIiI not the potential oI the city. In Nocilla
Dream, this is apparent not only when he writes oI the impromptu housing thrown up in Paris
(ND 124), but also when he devotes a segment to the very real urban commune Christiania in
present-day Copenhagen: 'En 1971, un grupo de hippies tomo una base militar abandonada
en Copenhague, Dinamarca, y proclamo alli el estado libre de Christiania, una micronacion.
Tras mantener un pulso con el gobierno danes, en 1987 Iue fnalmente reconocida como un
microestado independiente (93). The mention oI such micronations is in Iact one oI many
innumerable recurring topics in the frst volume alone (ND 38; the 'Principado de Sealand,
ND 79; 'Isotope Micronation, ND 81; the micronation oI the 'Reino de Ergaland & Vargaland
|www.krev.org|, ND 10911; and also 'Micropatologia, the science oI studying micronations,
ND 100). Signifcantly, Fernandez Mallo seems dismissive oI the commodifcation oI place, as
when he writes derisively oI privatopias, McMansiones, and 'los asentamientos urbanisticos
elaborados con cubresuelos, edifcaciones . . . baratas y Iaciles de derruir . . . que se montan
para generar ingresos antes de que las promotoras puedan abordar un proyecto mas ventajoso
economicamente (ND 174; he also mentions no-lugares in ND 170). Such constructions have
been widely equated with capitalist speculation and an increased encroachment oI capitalism`s
commodity Iorm into cities, leading ultimately to intercity competition (Harvey, Justice 298)
and what critics have called the 'selling oI place (Philo and Kearns 1). Henri LeIebvre`s dictum
perhaps says it best: Capitalism survived throughout the twentieth century 'by producing space,
by occupying a space (Survival 21; see also Production). Nocilla presciently points to capital-
ism`s crossing oI yet another break-boundary in coexisting Iorms oI alienation that separate
the individual Irom the use-value oI his or her city environment: 'El nuevo capitalismo, el del
siglo 21, no solo oIrece productos de consumo para sentir a traves de ellos un estatus o una
ensoacion, eso esta ya superado, lo que hace es crear una autentica realidad paralela que se
erige en unica a traves de los medios de comunicacion (ND 159).
The trilogy`s ultimate goal is perhaps to eIIect one oI the necessaryiI emphemeral
disalienations that, according to LeIebvre, run throughout history as humankind passes Irom
one particular alienation to another (Critique 249). II this is indeed possible, Nocilla perhaps
takes it upon itselI to propose new Iorms oI community or at least a new way oI relating to one
another in an increasingly complex society dominated by new representational Iorms oI media.
Throughout, the stress is on communicationnot only through the trilogy`s diIfcult Iorm, but
also through its content. This is, aIter all, the eIIect produced through the character Agustin`s
ruminations on his Iailed relationship (as privileged in the third volume, Nocilla Lab, where
he wonders what keeps a couple together |NL 92|), or, Ior example, in the oIIhand remark that
the Mediterranean Sea was in essence the Internet connection oI the ancient world (NL 16).
The city is, Ior the narrative voice oI Agustin, 'un cosmos en si mismo (NL 96), the terrain
oI the possible: 'Si, puedes vivir en una ciudad sin salir jamas, con la sensacion de que todos
los ambitos de la vida se crean, se reproducen y se extinguen en ella. Y si no, no importa, la
ciudad se los inventa (NL 96).
11 Fraser / Urbanization of Consciousness
By the end oI the trilogy (Nocilla Lab), Fernandez Mallo`s initial Iocus on the desert
landscape (Nocilla Dream) has gradually morphed into an emphasis on the beach landscape.
Although the frst is an inhospitable natural environment and the second an increasingly depopu-
lated 'leisure space, both desert and beach are opposed to the bustling and complex community
oI the city.
8
The fnal graphic novel segment oI the trilogy, in Iact, unites the beach and the desert
in a single visual narrative that excludes the city, rendering it an implicit intertext. The graphic
novel version oI Agustin (drawn by graphic artist Pere Joan) moves Irom the shores oI a beach
to a Repsol oil rig where he meets the graphic novel version oI Enrique Vila-Matas (who has
appeared previously in the text oI the trilogy). This encounter prompts the intercalated story oI
a man living in the solitude oI a box erected in a nameless desert. In the penultimate sequence,
the protagonist oI the intercalated story is greeted by someone breaking through the wall oI
his desert box, Ireeing him Irom his isolation, saying 'Entre. Le estabamos esperando (NL
177). This fnal image oI reconciliation serves as the ftting conclusion to an ambitious project
whose method has been precisely that oI a number oI reconciliations: oI poetry and prose; oI
science and literature; oI the city and the desert; oI musical, cultural, and flmic reIerences Irom
all over the globe; and oI each narrative Iragment with the next. At the nexus oI each oI these
reconciliations there looms the image oI the populated and complex city, the site which makes
possible the collision oI so many disparate ideas and diIIerent people.
13
Although this essay has undoubtedly (and necessarilv) leIt out countless subplots, seem-
ingly disconnected images and postpoetic nuances contained in the narrative oI the Nocilla
project, it has attempted to do justice to the totality oI the trilogy through the perspective oIIered
by an urban reading. Just as it is impossible to explain the complexity oI liIe in today`s large
urban centers through recourse to a reductive and simplistic plan, it is diIfcult to explain Agustin
Fernandez Mallo`s accomplishment without recourse to an interdisciplinary method, such as
the one I have employed in the present essay. The Nocilla project above all else points to the
importance oI connectivity, a lesson that should be lost neither on today`s urban dwellers nor
on contemporary literary critics. Moreover, Fernandez Mallo actualizes, albeit in literary Iorm,
the urban tradition oI Benjamin and Simmel beIore him, whereby the chaos oI the city suggests
a wider approach to understanding modernityIor 'modern metropolitan liIe, Simmel insists,
actually opens up human potentiality, enlarges one`s Irame oI reIerence, lets people breathe and
lose their fxed identities (Merrifeld 52). It is on the basis oI these accounts that the success oI
the Nocilla trilogy must be judged, not as mere continuation oI the Spanish urban literature
oI the previous centuries, but as a project that pushes beyond the fxed structure oI individual
narratives and the relative isolation oI cities to more IaithIully represent the driIting character
oI urbanized consciousness. Now iI only the planning oI cities were to also Iollow the lead oI
Benjamin, Simmel, and Debord, and likewise embrace, as Jane Jacobs once Iamously put it,
an 'esthetics oI driIt (Cities 221).
NOTES
1
This group includes such works as Ray Loriga`s Tokvo va no nos quiere (1999), Alex de la Iglesia`s
flm Perdita Durango (1997), Camilo Jose Cela`s Cristo versus Ari:ona (1988), and even a reIerence to
an Arizona-based cryogenic laboratory buried in Alejandro Amenabar`s flm Abre los ofos (1997).
2
Similarly, oI course, Benito Perez Galdos is a sharp-eyed chronicler oI urban liIe in Spain, perhaps
most sympathetically in Misericordia (1897). On this subject, see also the inIormative edited volume
titled Madrid en Galdos en Madrid (1988). The reader can fnd reIerences to urbanization and Madrid also
in the work oI early nineteenth-century critic Mariano Jose de Larra, Ior example, in the essay 'Modos
de vivir que no dan de vivir, where he importantly captures the growing presence oI large numbers oI
immigrants to the urban center oI Madrid: '|U|na multitude inmensa |. . . cuyo| numero en los pueblos
12 ($)*&+$& 95 March 2012
es crecido, y esta clase de gentes no pudieran sentar sus reales en ninguna otra parte, necesitan el ruido
y el movimiento, y viven como el pobre del Evangelio, de las migajas que caen de la mesa del rico
(24344). For Iurther reading on Larra and urbanization, see chapter 1 oI Fraser, Henri Lefebvre and the
Spanish Urban Experience; on Larra and Galdos, see Baker; and on urbanization and Spanish literature
in general, see Baker and Compitello.
3
For example, see Jose Angel Maas`s Mensaka (1995), Ray Loriga`s La pistola de mi hermano
(1999), and Daniel Calparsoro`s flm Salto al vacio (1995).
4
In Chicago, in November 2009, a museum recreation oI Darger`s apartment was staged at Intuit:
The Center Ior Intuitive and Outsider Art |www.art.org/intuit-show.htm|. Readers may also be interested
in Jessica Yu`s documentary on Darger, titled In the Realms of the Real (2004).
5
Two prominent examples are Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and
Medicine in 1906 Ior having discovered the neuron and who also penned a number oI short literary works
(Cuentos de vacaciones; see also Fraser, 'Madrid, ciudad histologica); and also Juan Benet, a practicing
engineer who, along with Juan and Luis Goytisolo and Luis Martin-Santos, also became one oI the most
noted (and challenging) authors oI the late post-war period in Spain (see Fraser, 'The Art oI Engineering).
6
Fernandez Mallo`s own persistent reIerencing oI Paul Auster makes this explanation plausible.
Hispanists will necessarily see a more appropriate intertext in El Quifote itselI (importantly, an infuence
on Auster), which boasts similar selI-reIerential events.
7
Critic George Yudice, in his essay 'Postmodernity and Transnational Capitalism, gives voice to
the notion that the signifcance oI 'heterogeneity within the discourse oI postmodernism corresponds to
the 'uneven implementation oI modernization and not to some 'postmodern situational sleight oI hand
(2). Whereas Yudice is concerned specifcally with Latin America in his essay, it is not unreasonable to
suggest that the 'heterogeneity that is maniIest in Nocilla`s topical driIting and its incorporation oI urban
centers Irom across the globe points also to the uneven geographical development oI modernity.
8
LeIebvre denounced 'the current transIormation oI the perimeter oI the Mediterranean into a leisure-
oriented space Ior industrialized Europe (Production 58, 122; see also, Goytisolo; Fraser, 'A Snapshot).
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