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Record W4379530631 · doi:10.1353/wlt.2011.0196

Clandestino by Sergio Kokis (review)

2011· article· en· W4379530631 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Edward Ousselin

Bibliographic record

VenueWorld Literature Today · 2011
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicLatin American Literature Studies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsOfficerConvictHumanitiesDictatorshipArt historyPerformance artPeriod (music)CartographyNarrativeHistoryArtClassicsLawPolitical scienceLiteratureGeographyPolitics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

towarda plausibleterminus, we never truly find a complete story. Blayze Hembree University ofOklahoma SergioKokis. Clandestino. Montreal. Levesque. 2010.256 pages.Can$25. isbn 978-2-923844-33-6 Born in1944 inRiodeJaneiro, Sergio Kokisstudied psychology inFrance before moving toMontreal in 1969. He stoppedworking as a clinical psychologist in1997 tobecome a fulltime painter andwriter. Whether set inSouthAmerica (Le retour deLorenzo Sanchez, 2008)orinanunnamed no-man's-land (La gare,2005),his novels, written in French, areoften characterized by similartraits: the perplexing experience of exile;the inherently absurdquestfora vanishedidentity ; an individual lostin an incomprehensible, totalitarian societal system reminiscent ofKafka 'sworld; thesymbolism ofchessplayingand its variousstrategies; and thechallenging encounter with literature. Clandestino isanostensibly realistic narrative of victimization andrevenge, setinArgentina during theearly 1980s, thetraumatic period oftheFalklands War. Tomas Sorge,a former lowranking military officer moonlightingas a safecracker, was betrayed by a colleagueand sentencedto sixyearsofhardlaborin a remote penal colonyin Tierradel Fuego. The end of his periodof exilein this"universcarceralsurrealiste," oftencomparedto a brutalSiberianlaborcamp ,roughly coincides withtheend ofthemilitary dictatorship after Argentina's defeatin 1982.Whilehe is stillimprisoned, Sorgeis approached bya shadowy butwell-financed organization that seeks to recruit him forunspecifiedparamilitary activities after his release. SinceSorgehasnothing and no one to go back to,he accepts, eventhough itwillmeanhisofficial "death"and assumption of a new identity, underthe name of Jose Capa. After a longtripto Buenos Aires, andhisgradualreadjustment tolife outside ofprison walls, Sorge/ Capa becomesacquainted withthe manwhoarranged for hisnewlivelihood and who turnsout to be noneother thanthecolleaguewho had betrayed him.Bidinghistime, theex-convict carriesout his new duties, whichcallforusinghisold skillsas a safecracker. Thistimehe is employed bya groupofmilitary officers whoseekto maintain their powerandwealth, evenafter thefall ofthedictatorship. Sorge /Capaalso wantsto honorthedyingwishof a former friend inprison, whohad beenviciously tortured. What couldbea straightforward revenge tragedy withpolitical overtones becomes continually more complexas theformer convict and avid chessplayer - gradually transformed into anexterminating angel - engages ina gameinwhichhislifeand his prospects for anyform ofredemption areat stake.As Sorgetellshisalter ego,Capa: "Etmaintenant que tues devenu Jose, queferas-tu pourcontinuera tesortir indemne de toutce bourbier?" (Nowthat you've become Jose, whatwillyoudo tokeepyourselfcleanofthismuck ?) Clandestino provides, against the backdrop ofsordid intrigue amongcorrupt military officers and governmental officials, a fascinating portrait of a disturbingly isolated individual who, having losthispastand hisidentity, exists onlyinwhatisoften described as an "abstract" sense. Edward Ousselin Western Washington University PatrikOurednik. The Opportune Moment, 1855.Alex Zucker, tr. Champaign , Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2011.126 pages. $12.95. isbn 978-1-56478-596-1 Patrik Ourednik (b.1957, Prague)is a Czechauthor and translator who since1984haslivedinFrance. Three ofhis novelshave beentranslated into English: Europeana: ABrief History of the Twentieth Century (translated intomorethantwenty languages), CaseClosed, andnowTheOpportune Moment, excellently translated from Czech to Englishby AlexZucker. Thelatter novelwas declared Book oftheYearinItaly bythenewspaper LaStampa in2007. Thenovelhasanintricate structure .It beginswiththe letterof an agingveterinarian, inspired by Utopian andanarchistic ideas,tohis love of fifty yearsago. This part, whichreads more like an essay, outlines a project to builda settlementhosting a freeand fraternal community inBrazilin1855, where people shareeverything and free lovewillreign. Theletter admits that theproject failed, apparently dueto poorexecution. The secondpartcontainsthe logbookof one of the colonists, beginning withthetwo-month passage from FrancetoBrazilbyship. The day-by-day accountconfronts theidealtheory from theletter with the realityof Italian anarchists, Frenchegalitariansand anarchocommunists , Germans,Austrians, Slovaks,and eventheblacksailors asthey try toorganize, share thelimitedresources , and worktogether. Thediarist takesnosides,ironically recording themounting tensions facing the colonists. This partsends whenthey stepontoBrazilian soil. The diaryresumessome six months later.This partreads like 66 1 World Literature Today ...

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesInsufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: Other
Teacher disagreement score0.468
Threshold uncertainty score0.998

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.016
GPT teacher head0.281
Teacher spread0.265 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreOther

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations0
Published2011
Admission routes1
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Same venueWorld Literature TodaySame topicLatin American Literature StudiesFrench-language works237,207