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[The Roof Rat Review.]

Éric Chevillard, Wyatt Mason (trans). Palafox. Archipelago Books, 2004 (1990). It's a romp, and the mutable animal is one of those great unstageable Gogolian conceits... but it's all tilting against some version of realism that may not even exist any more, and wouldn't notice us if it did.

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Texts and images copyright (C) 2022 Pauline Kerschen. Layout adapted from the Single A Tumblr theme by businessbullpen. The Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) has zygodactylic feet, leaving X-shaped tracks with ambiguous direction. The Pueblo and Hopi used the X symbol to mislead evil spirits. Border folklore in the early twentieth century held that a roadrunner would lead a lost traveler back to his path. In Mexico the roadrunner is known as paisano, countryman.