In the short essay “How Not to Explain My Stories,” he stated “My stories have no logical structures. They feel like personal aspects of Felisberto Hernández, writing purely for his own pleasure.

The stories tend to be the first-person narratives of nameless, interchangeable men (often piano players), generally obsessed both with the tactile nature of objects and the houses of strangers (preferably rich ones). After all, who wants to rain on a man’s posthumous parade? Not me, though my reaction to these fantastical tales has been decidedly ambivalent. His life story, being so sad, does threaten the critic’s role in this review. However, New Directions has been doing its bit to bring Hernández back, first with Lands of Memory in 2008, and now with a reissue of Piano Stories. The public still wasn’t interested and Piano Stories drifted out of print.

It wasn’t until 1983 that a three-volume collected works appeared in Mexico, and it was 1993 before he made it to English translation, courtesy of author Luis Harss. In 1947, he scored his sole commercial publication: No One Had Lit a Lamp. The same lucklessness hounded his literary career. He married four times perhaps his wives became tired of having to support him. Hernández was born in Uruguay and made his living at the piano, playing a variety of movie theaters and concert halls. He had a huge influence on Gabriel García Márquez and was admired by Julio Cortázar and Italo Calvino-but it didn’t do him much good. Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964) hasn’t been so lucky. Herman Melville is perhaps the most famous beneficiary of this treatment, which has also aided writers such as Nathanael West and Henry Green.

Talented, original, admired by their more successful brethren and ignored by the public, they toil in obscurity, die unnoticed and, if they’re lucky, get revived and stay in print. The life of the writer’s writer is not generally to be envied. (Written for Media Snobs before it was taken down)

Felisberto hernández piano stories