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The Story of My Teeth by Mexican author Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney and published by Coffee House Press is an unique experience to say the least. Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City (1983) and grew up in South Africa. She currently lives in New York City.
Christina

MacSweeney the translator specializes in Latin American fiction. She has her own chapter in the book titled The Chronologic which centers the novel in chronologic order and serves as a kind of index or map of the works. I really liked it.

The publisher is a nonprofit literary publisher located in Minnesota.

The goal of the publisher is "celebrate imagination" of which this book is a perfect example of imagination. The afterword tells us that this work is a work of collaboration. The author was commissioned to write a work of fiction for the catalog of The Hunter and The Factory. Jumex (Mexican juice) has a large art collection. There is a gap between two worlds, gallery and factory. The author decided to write this book in segments and have it read at the factory with workers. (This was done in cigar factories in Cuba). the book was written therefore in collaboration with the factory and with factory workers. NPR review refers to the work as a kind of novel-essay and I think that is excellent description of a book about teeth, collections, fortune cookies and contributions various authors (Robert Graves, Charles Lamb, Proust) and texts. Another interesting fact is that Luiselli never was at the factory or met any of the workers reading and listening to her work while she wrote the book. Two people from the Jumex team took pictures of the artwork, gallery, neighborhood and sent them to her so she could virtually experience the spaces she was writing about. All of these components made this book one that I wanted to read and am glad to have taken the time to enjoy. Even the book's feel, look and structure is an art form. Rating 4.29

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LibraryThing member lisapeet

This is a cool oddball little book about a lot of things, tangentially, but mostly about art—our relationship to it, and its arbitrariness/subjectivity. Which is a bad subject for a heavy hand, but Luiselli kept it whimsical and weird, which I liked. Whiffs of García Márquez, Calvino, Borges,

but it's definitely its own thing. I saw a few social media reviews where people were wishing they'd read the Afterword first, because it explains a lot about the book's genesis and mechanics, but I kind of liked reading it blind and just going with the flow.

Also, it's such a great-looking book that it was fun to see people surreptitiously checking it out during my commute.

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LibraryThing member MusicalGlass

A wacky, brilliantly creative construction from found objects—photographs, bits of literature. Bar rooms and roadside debris, art installations. Clowns and teeth and factory work. A book about the writing of a book, stories of stories.

Clown Shoes Chocolate Sombrero Stout
Pipeworks Blood Orange

Guppy Session IPA

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LibraryThing member PrimosParadise

No. 1 on my alt.TOB list and I'm not sure what I think. I mean obviously for a slight novel there is a lot going on here. While I enjoyed the story of Highway itself, I felt a little like there was so much symbolism going on here that it started to get overwhelming; plus the numerous and varied

references to names I knew, should have known and had no idea about just made me think that I was in a conversation with all of these industry insiders who were constantly making inside jokes and references that I knew I was clearly not in on the joke. A strange story by someone way smarter than I. I get the whole unreliable narrator thing but I really felt I was missing something that would have made this thing a whole lot more enjoyable.

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LibraryThing member reganrule

The premise of this book is a rather simple one: the self-proclaimed world’s best auctioneer, Gustavo “Highway” Sanchez Sanchez auctions his own teeth. Of course, rotten teeth are not particularly valuable in themselves, and so the novel proceeds by demonstrating the auctioneering methods

used to increase their value.

Luiselli has said that the book is about the relative value of art. What imbues an object with value? Highway, as an auctioneer, knows that his art is the art of creating value where there may be none. This practice is not unlike storytelling--it involves it--but it also involves, like storytelling, a bending of the truth. "I wasn't just a lowly seller of objects but, first and foremost, a lover and collector of good stories, which is the only honest way of modifying the value of an object." We might ask the question: what could "honesty" possibly mean here, given that one is peddling junk by way of decent tales?

Of the reviews I've seen, few talk at length about the structure of the book--divided into 5 "Auctioneering Methods" (Circular, Elliptical, Parabolic, Hyperbolic, Allegoric)--and its importance to decoding the novel. Each book (chapter) is written according to its eponymous method, and each inflects the story of Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez Sanchez's teeth with a certain value. Early in the novel Highway explains that “the strand that any auction follows is, in turn, determined by the relative value of the eccentricity (epsilon) of the auctioneer’s discourse; that is to say, the degree of deviation of its conic section from a given circumference (the object to be auctioned). The range of values is as follows”:

The Epsilon of the Circular Method is Zero.
The Epsilon of the Ellipitical Method is Greater than Zero but less than One.
The Epsilon of the Parabolic Method is One.
The Epsilon of the Hyperbolic Method is Greater than One.
The Epsilon of the Allegoric Method is Infinite.

Now, I have very little clue what “the degree of deviation of its conic section” means, but I have some sense of the fact that, besides the Circular method, all auctioneering methods are a matter of increasing the value of an object through compelling and eccentric storytelling. Given this breakdown, one might expect the novel to proceed upbuilding-ly through the methods, ending with the Allegoric. It doesn’t. It begins with a straight story, followed by the hyperbolic, parabolic, circular, allegoric, and finally elliptical. I am not smart enough to make sense of this ordering, but it seems significant that Luiselli disrupts the methodological ordering that Highway lays out. I’d love to hear any theories anyone has.

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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

This is an odd novel. Valeria Luiselli wrote it as a project done with a factory, having each section read aloud, and listening to the comments of the workers. Each section is quite different, and one, a sort of chronology, is written by her English translator. The sections are divided by pictures

of hand-marbled paper, which would certainly have been more interesting in color, but as I read this as an ebook, the reproductions were in black and white. There are photographs in the final section, showing a few of the places mentioned in the book.

Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, known as Highway, is an auctioneer and a collector of odd items. Among those items are the teeth of famous people, including the full set of Marilyn Monroe's teeth, which he had implanted into his own mouth. He build a house and a warehouse next door to hold his vast collection, and he wants to catalog it before auctioning it off. Along the way, he holds an auction of teeth for the local church, finds an aspiring author to write his biography and his son takes revenge on him. Which are things that happen in this book, but I would hesitate to call these events part of a plot. This book exists as it is, a sort of entertaining experiment in just going with it.

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LibraryThing member Dreesie

A very odd little book. Reads as being annoyingly experimental.

And it is experimental, as the author explains in the afterword�Ã³Ã®she wrote it as a serial, for and with workers at a Jumex plant in Mexico (the actual setting of parts of the book). So, she wrote a section, they discussed it and

were taped (unknown to them), she listened to the recordings and wrote the next installment. Which is interesting, but it would have been nice to know that at the start.

She also discusses her belief that a translation does not need to be exact, because that makes it awkward. So she readily admits the English version is not the same as the original Spanish version. The weird timeline at the end is not in the Spanish version at all, and was actually written by the translator.

So an interesting experiment. But one of the best books of 2015? No way.

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LibraryThing member sberson

While it has some compelling moments, especially at the beginning, this was tedious reading. Alot of the techniques used in the writing did not work.

LibraryThing member poetontheone

This is a a novel of realist absurdity, about the ridiculous and laugh-provoking insights of Highway Sanchez, an eccentri auctioneer who "collects" a hodge-podge of strange items. A reader will understand the instability of that term, "collects," as the novel's oddity unfolds and we become

strangely endeared to our offbeat protagonists, his calamities, and his preoccupations. Note that I used "realist absurdity" to describe the novel (if that can be done with a phrase is doubtful) and not "magical realism." This is not remeniscent of Marquez or Allende, if anything it shyly steps towards the Borgesian while wearing the clothes of the factory.

Luiselli's afterword very much puts the book into perspective. It was written in a sort of call and response with Mexican factory workers, given to them in serialized form as Luiselli then wrote the book with their feedback and their voices in mind from chapter to chapter. This is very much, strange as it is, a novel of the people, of the worker, and that is perhaps the greatest thing about this novel.

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LibraryThing member bness2

A most unusual book, at turns baffling and intriguing.

LibraryThing member hopeevey

I very much enjoyed this work, although I have no idea how to talk about it. Just go read it :)

LibraryThing member jscape2000

A fun romp with a talkative avuncular narrator whose stories are so much less and so much more than they seem. A little padded with lists at the end, but otherwise a charming evocation of Borges and Garcia Marquez.

LibraryThing member Narshkite

Have you ever been around a precocious child? They are instantly adorable with their attempts at adult wit, and then because they want to continue pleasing the adults they go on and on and on trying to rekindle the magic. After about 3 minutes you are congratulating yourself on sticking to your

never punch a preschooler rule and after 6 minutes you feign the urgent need to visit the bathroom.

This book is that, but instead of a precocious toddler its a "philosophy of language" post doc candidate who dazzles herself with her wit and her command of Russian authors, German painters, and American iconography and assumes you too will be dazzled.

The saving grace is the chronology written by the translator which weaves our narrator's story into history. If you want to pat yourself on the back for knowing obscure factoids about Klee, or Mahler, or Wittgenstein, or Rousseau, or Mexican juice have at it. Blessedly short, spectacularly pretentious.

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LibraryThing member alanteder

Hyberbolic Teeth Auctions
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook (2015) [listened via Audible Plus] translated from the Spanish language original "La historia de mis dientes" (2013)

I had better luck with this 3rd attempt at listening to a selection from the new Audible Plus program that

requires you to listen via the Audible app rather than being able to download the audiobook. My previous attempts with the Cormac Reilly novels of Dervla McTiernan were frustrating due to the app freezing up frequently. In contrast, I was able to listen to The Story of My Teeth without any problems. Perhaps it has something to do with the shorter length of the Luiselli? More investigation and more examples will be needed to see if that is the case.

The Story of My Teeth was especially entertaining in the sections where auctioneer Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez Sanchez performs his hyperbolic auctions where he elaborates on the teeth that he is selling, attributing them to various historical figures such as Quintinian, Augustine, or Petrarch up to modern day figures such as Marilyn Monroe. The closing section of a timeline written by English translator Christina MacSweeney was odd. This was an added feature that was not included in the original Spanish edition.

The narration performance by Armando Duran was excellent.

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