Review: The stories in Fernando A. Flores’ ‘Valleyesque’ hold a funhouse mirror up to the border
You get the feeling that these are precisely the ways that Flores experiences life on the Texas-Mexico border, where each side is a funhouse mirror for the other, with distortions that reveal the true colors and edges and reflect what might be hard to look at.“Valleyesque” pulls readers into coffee-shops, murals, stash houses, churches, and a massive warehouse of mountains of used clothing.
Chopin is in Ciudad Juárez trying to get his papers in order, recover his confiscated Pleyel piano and mourn his mother’s death. Emiliano Zapata emerges in the flesh from a decal on a T-shirt. Flores first came on the literary scene in 2018 with his debut collection, “Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas.” His 2019 novel “Tears of the Trufflepig” followed. It’s a Border noir tale that marked the author as an artist and visionary without equal for his capacious knowledge of literature, film, and music, not to mentionGlimmers of this insight can be seen in the story “Nostradamus Baby.
The story “Queso” evokes Adorno and Heidegger and their philosophical wrestling with the idea of authenticity. Is queso real? Not usually. Not even on the border. To be palatable, it must be altered, its essence destroyed, its orange plasticity pre-shredded and sprinkled on tacos of pre-made tortillas and eggs from a container.
Marcos, the story’s protagonist, watches TV news and rages over the fake features of the anchors. He goes to a job interview where the boss instructs him to say “kay-so” and co-opt the culture.
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