Taming the Divine Heron

The second novel in Pitol's Carnival trilogy following The Love Parade continues his daring, genre-melding, picaresque style.From the famous Mexican author, Sergio Pitol, comes his 1988 classic translated by George Henson. Taming the Divine Heron tells the semi-autobiographical story of a novelist working on his newest masterpiece. The protagonist struggles to tell the perfect storyhis own imagined protagonists mere imitations of the likes of Lord Jim and Alyosha Karamazov. To help eradicate writers block, Pitol uses his vessel to praise his own favorite authors. Pitol applauds Bakhtins world building, Gogols carnivalesque [literary] breath, and Dantes dizzying intensity. The character finds a muse in Marietta Karapetiz, whom he aptly dubs Dante C. de la Estrella, and the two debate the literary greats. As the pair attempts to pull from the techniques of the worlds best writers, Pitol creates a love letter to literature from around the globe while simultaneously telling his own magical story. To quote Pitols protagonist, the quality of the story, its effects, its brilliance, its intensity, ma[k]e the most absurd circumstances plausible. Taming The Divine Heron, second in a trilogy including already-published The Love Parade (Deep Vellum, 2022), houses history, hyperrealism, myth, folklore, and memoir; to read Pitol is to appreciate the power of language.