I have a thick book in my hands and I wonder: how much does a sentence weigh? Perhaps it is something irrelevant from a physical, material point of view, but it can have a metaphorical meaning. There are phrases that are short and light and yet can withstand the full weight of the world. Descartes: “I think, therefore I am & rdquor ;. Wittgenstein: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” “In the beginning was the Word”, from Genesis, five words that weigh like the entire history of literature.
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I hold the book. What happens when a sentence, in addition to being full of meaning, is long and worth its weight in gold? We can check it now by reading ‘Ducks, Newburyport’, Lucy Ellmann’s novel made of a single sentence which occupies 1,209 pages. A precision balance tells me that the volume weighs 1,078 grams, and to make this feat a reality, three heroes have been needed: the author who wrote it; the publishing house that ventures to publish it, Automatica, and the translator who has climbed this Everest, Enrique Maldonado Roldán. And then there is the reader, of course, who immediately grabs onto his hypnotic and sweeping prose.
What is this book about? Impossible to summarize it, and perhaps the only valid answer is “everything & rdquor ;. It can be read linearly, like any other story, but to me it makes me think of a radio: from time to time you turn it on — you open a page — and there is someone who speaks, says things with a constant ditty, and what account you like, it interests you and pushes you to know more, read more. The voice that narrates ‘Ducks, Newburyport’ is a american housewife that, before the image of a wild beast that takes care of its cubs, initiates a kind of monologue that fills the entire book. The thread of his thoughts has a clear background —the climatic emergency and the fatal destiny that we are all creating for ourselves—, but the mind wanders everywhere, makes unexpected associations, shows embryos of stories, remembers, sings, makes lists, pisses off, revives facts, and everything comes together to create a portrait of our present —an orderly chaos like life itself, or a chaotic order, which could very well be the book of the year.