Novel by Valeria Luiselli; translated by Christina MacSweeney. (2015). Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.
“This is the story of my teeth, and my treatise on collectibles and the variable value of objects.” (p. 17) So begins, Luiselli’s experimental “novel-essay” of the story of Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, otherwise known as Highway. As reflected in this quote, themes around teeth, the value of art, and the variable nature and interpretation of stories are woven throughout the book. Highway works as a security guard at a juice factory located in Ecatepec, an industrial and marginalized area just outside of Mexico City. Through a twist of fate at work, however, he eventually trains to become a successful auctioneer and leaves the factory to amass riches (money and objects), including a new set of teeth that once supposedly belonged to Marilyn Monroe. Highway’s journey continues as he organizes an auction of a collection of teeth to help save a local church. He accomplishes this using his “hyperbolic” style of auctioneering. For each tooth, he shares a story about the person whose tooth it was, thereby, hopefully increasing its value. These stories, however, are completely invented by Highway since the teeth themselves are his teeth he removed when putting in his dental implants. Many of these supposed owners of the auctioned teeth, as with other allusions sprinkled throughout the book, were famous authors, philosophers, or artists. In the later parts of the book, Highway must confront issues with his son whom he abandoned, work on dictating his dental autobiography to his protégé, he met by chance, and organize his final auction, the “Allegories of Ecatepec.” The final section of the book, however, reveals a different side to the autobiography of Highway, bringing to the forefront the tension between the truth and embellishment in storytelling.
Several addendums to the book found in the English translation help illuminate certain enigmatic aspects of the book. These additions are not included in the Spanish language version, and in fact, Luiselli states in her afterword that parts of the English and Spanish versions of the novel itself are also different. The translator, Christina MacSweeney authored a section called “The Chronologic,” which is a timeline of the major people or events alluded to in the book, alongside a timeline of Highway’s life, and acts as a glossary/guide for the reader.
Luiselli also includes an afterword that explains the process of writing the novel. Originally, she was asked by curators at Museo Jumex, an art museum located near the Jumex juice factory in Ecatepec, to write a work of fiction to be included in the catalog for an upcoming exhibit. Museo Jumex is a contemporary art gallery funded in large part by the Jumex Foundation, associated with the Jumex juice factory (https://www.fundacionjumex.org/en). The exhibit sought to explore and foster the connections between the factory and the museum. Luiselli wrote each section of the book separately, which were printed by the museum curators as chapbooks distributed to the factory workers. A group of interested workers read and discussed the sections, and the curators recorded their discussions, which were sent to Luiselli who was in New York. After they discussed each section, Luiselli wrote the next one, and sent it to them in the same way. She also reworked previous sections. Many of the thoughts and stories of the factory workers became incorporated into the novel, and in many ways, it is a collaborative novel even though Luiselli and the factory workers never met throughout the process other than through MP3 recordings.
Overall, themes around teeth, the value of art, and the variable nature and interpretation of stories are woven throughout the book. Connections in the book exist to the historical practice in the 1700s and 1800s in Europe and the U.S. of wealthy people implanting the teeth of others (or animals) in their mouths given the poor oral hygiene at the time and the fledgling field of dentistry. It also reinforces the historic and recent trend of the pursuit of a “Hollywood smile,” which often is an illusion, as Highway seeks to change his teeth for those of Marilyn Monroe. Illusion comes out in reference to stories throughout the book, as well. The book demonstrates the power of stories to add value to objects. Highway turns items that might not be worth much into something more valuable through his allegoric auctioneering style.
The following are excerpts from the book that can be used to spark discussion. They are divided into two sections: “Teeth/Oral Health” and “The Power of Stories.”
Teeth/Oral Health
“I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I’m grateful for that inauspicious start, because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides Lopéz Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming. When my father first saw me, he claimed his real son had been taken away by the new mother in the next room. He tried by various means—bureaucracy, blackmail, intimidation—to return me to the nurse who had handed me over. But Mom took me in her arms the moment she saw me: a tiny, brown, swollen blob fish. She had been trained to accept filth as her fate. Dad hadn’t.
The nurse explained to my parents that the presence of my four teeth was a rare condition in our country, but one that was not uncommon among other races. It was called congenital prenatal dentition.
What kind of races? asked my father, on the defensive. Caucasians, sir, said the nurse.
But the child is as dark as the inside of a needle, Dad replied.
Genetics is a science full of gods, Mr. Sánchez.
That must have consoled my father. He finally resigned himself to carrying me home in his arms, wrapped up in a thick flannel blanket.” (pp. 17-18)
“My first job was at the Rubén Darío newspaper stand, on the corner of Aceites and Metales. I was eight years old and all my milk teeth had already fallen out. They had been replaced by others, as wide as shovels, each pointing in a different direction.” (p. 19)
“I finished primary, middle, and high school and passed unnoticed with good grades, because I’m the sort that doesn’t make waves. I never opened my mouth, not even to answer roll call. My silence wasn’t for fear of them seeing my crooked teeth, but because I’m a discreet sort.” (p. 20)
“You’re going to be our Personnel Crisis Supervisor, said the Manager, with the slightly sinister smile of those who have paid many visits to the dentist.” (p. 22)
“I had a clear goal, a destiny: I was going to become an auctioneer in order to have my teeth fixed, like that writer did with his book.” (p. 27)
“I completely disagree with my second-uncle Juan Sánchez Baudrillard when he says that ‘Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.’” (p. 27)
“I had no intention of blowing my check, but, without the least warning, the god of tiny details set paradise before me. And paradise doesn’t come cheap. Right there, in the depths of Sunday solitude of a Little Havana auction, I found them: my new teeth.
In the small glass box the auctioneer held high lay waiting for me the sacred teeth of none other than Marilyn Monroe. Yes indeed, the teeth of the Hollywood diva…As soon as I got back to Mexico, each of the teeth belonging to the Venus of the big screen was transplanted into my mouth by a world-class dental surgeon, the renowned Dr. Luis Felipe Fabre, owner of the Il Miglior Fabbro, the best cosmetic dental clinic and depository in Mexico City. I did save ten of my old teeth, the best-looking ones, for later, just in case.
For months after the operation, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I showed everyone the infinite line of my new smile, and whenever I passed a mirror or a shop window that reflected my image, I would raise my hat in a gentlemanly fashion and smile at myself. My thin, ungainly body and my rather ungrounded life had acquired serious aplomb with the appearance of my new teeth. My luck was without equal, my life was a poem, and I was certain that one day, someone was going to write the beautiful tale of my dental autobiography.” (pp. 29-30)
“We have here before us today pieces of great value [teeth he is auctioning off], since each contains a story replete with small lessons. Taken together, these stories remind us of the true meaning of one of the most important pieces of wisdom in the Scriptures: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ This famous dictum is not a call to vengeance, as is commonly believed, but an invitation to value the small details of objects. God is in the details of teeth.” (p. 44)
“The teeth are the true windows to the soul; they are the tabula rasa on which all our vices and all our virtues are inscribed.” (p. 47)
The Power of Stories
“If I was going to be a father, I told myself, I’d need to be able to tell my son or daughter stories…More than anything, however, I loved the classics [when taking classes at the university]. I read them from the first page to the last, word of honor. My favorite is Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, whose Twelve Caesars I still consult, oracle-wise, every night before going to sleep.
Once in bed, the blankets pulled up to my chest, I reach with my right hand under the pillow and draw out the book—the way a cowboy would draw a pistol from under his pillow, but a bit more slowly. Then I close my eyes and using both hands, open the book and raise it above my head, letting its pages dangle above me. Then I slowly bring it closer to my face, until my nose touches the edge of the pages and slides between two of them. Those are the pages I read.” (pp. 23 – 24)
“I had taken to reading the newspaper right through, particularly when I was sunk in the self-pity engendered by my repeated rejections in the world of dance and theater. Other people’s misery and other people’s fortune always put my own into perspective. I read a story in the paper that day about a certain local writer who had had all his teeth replaced. This writer, apparently, was able to afford the new dentures and the expensive operation because he’d written a novel. A novel! I saw my future crystal clear. If that writer had had his teeth fixed with a book, I could do it too. Or even better, I could get someone to write one for me. I cut out the article and put it in my wallet. I still keep it with me at all times, as a talisman.” (p. 25)
“I explained that what I meant was that I could tell stories whose degree of deviation from the value of the conic section of their related objects was greater than zero. In other words, as the great Quintilian had once said, by means of my hyperbolics, I could restore an object’s value through an ‘elegant surpassing of the truth.’ This meant that the stories I would tell about the lots would all be based on facts that were, occasionally, exaggerated or, put it another way, better illuminated.” (p. 39)
“When Highway first began to recount his stories to me, I thought he was a compulsive liar. But then, living with him, I realized that it had less to do with lying than surpassing the truth.” (p. 124)
“It was at Secret of Night [a bar/nightclub] that Highway finally put into practice the now full-fledged theory of his allegoric method, where it is not objects that are sold [at auctions], but the stories that give them value and meaning. The allegorics were, according to Highway, ‘postcapitalist, radical recycling auctions that would save the world from its existential condition as the garbage can of history.’” (p. 128)