The Story of My Teeth
Read The Story of My Teeth Online
Authors: Valeria Luiselli
Praise for
The Story of My Teeth
“
The Story of My Teeth
is a sly and melancholy romp (yes, romp) that reminds us of the power and sway of great stories, especially those we tell ourselves that, by sheer persistence, we come to believe.”
—
STEPHEN SPARKS, GREEN APPLE BOOKS ON THE PARK
“It’s easy to see why Valeria Luiselli was chosen by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35 honorees. Within just a few paragraphs of her new novel,
The Story of My Teeth
, you’ll be completely drawn into the weird and wonderful world of Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sánchez Sánchez. This captivating story is filled with memorable characters and situations, but what is even more intriguing is the background story of how this work was written in collaboration with workers at a Jumex juice factory in Mexico City.”
—
SHAWN DONLEY, POWELL
’
S BOOKS
“
The Story of My Teeth
fascinates me: An emerging writer collaborates anonymously with a group of juice factory workers to write a story about art, identity, and who can own either. Wonderful and strange,
The Story of My Teeth
transgresses against straightforward storytelling by witnessing and remixing to make something so fresh and new that it defies easy description. Just know that it dazzles on every page. I love this book.”
—
JEREMY ELLIS, BRAZOS BOOKSTORE
“Valeria Luiselli’s
The Story of My Teeth
is suffused with a casual, funny intelligence that is neither too showy nor shallow. Like her hero, Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sánchez Sánchez, Luiselli’s tales run tall and askew. Not unlike question marks, they loom larger than any plotted course from their story’s ‘Beginning’ to ‘End.’ Highway is a master auctioneer and Luiselli, a writer—where they meet, and perhaps more appropriately never parted at all, is the ‘Middle.’ A gaping maw, the Middle is fitted with the false teeth Highway wears and sells but is also an expanse of possibilities, where the names dropped are, as they fall, recognizable, and, as they land, something new. In this way, too, Luiselli declares her literary influences without incorporating them or making them purely her own—hitting the page, their names shatter into jumbles whose comedy is also a serious truth about the creation (and valuation) of art. Each step—from influence to art—we find in her stunning new novel is a collaborative effort, whose end begins in a new story somewhere in the Middle.”
—
BRAD JOHNSON, DIESEL OAKLAND
“Written in collaboration with the workers at a Mexican juice factory, featuring a delightfully delusional auctioneer, bending styles, playing with references, and challenging the idea of translation,
The Story of My Teeth
is unlike anything you’ve ever read. With this brilliant, weird, zany second novel, Luiselli has solidified her place as one of the most interesting and imaginative minds putting words on paper today.”
—
JOSH COOK, PORTER SQUARE BOOKS
“Lovely, exuberant, and unlike anything you’ve read before,
The Story of My Teeth
is the story of Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sanchez Sánchez, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest auctioneer in the world.’ Sánchez is a model of self-invention, a worthy successor to Quixote or, at the very least, Sancho Panza. With wondrous prose, Luiselli explores the relationships we have to the objects in our lives, as well as the context of their worth. Bursting with imagination, playfulness, and good-natured invention,
The Story of My Teeth
is a love letter to stories and the profound act of telling them.”
—
MARK HABER, BRAZOS BOOKSTORE
“If Vila-Matas, Aira, and Borges (all of whom figure into the tale) had collaborated together on a book about a storytelling auctioneer with an affection for literature, we might have seen something like
The Story of My Teeth
. Stylistically unique, but squarely centered within the rich tradition of playful, allusive Latin American fiction, Luiselli’s story evinces an enviable flair which belies her age. Like its main character, Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez (affectionately referred to as ‘Highway’ throughout),
The Story of My Teeth
is, at times, enigmatic, idiosyncratic, magnetizing, and delightfully charming.”
—
JEREMY GARBER, POWELL
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S BOOKS
Copyright © 2015 Valeria Luiselli
Cover and book design by Mary Austin Speaker
Author photograph © Alfredo Pelcastre
English translation © Christina MacSweeney, 2015
“Book VII: The Chronologic” © Christina MacSweeney, 2015
Originally published in Spanish as
La historia de mis dientes
by Sexto Piso, Mexico, 2013
Vintage marbled paper used by permission of University of Washington
Libraries, Special Collections, DEP2046, DEP0051, DEP0056, DEP0071, DEP0287, DEP0050, and DEP0013.
Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution,
cbsd.com
or (800) 283-3572. For personal orders, catalogs, or other information, write to:
[email protected]
.
Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Luiselli, Valeria, 1983–
[Historia de mis dientes. English]
The story of my teeth / Valeria Luiselli ; translation, Christina MacSweeney.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-56689-410-4 (eBook)
I. MacSweeney, Christina, translator. II. Title.
PQ7298.422.U37H5713 2014
863’.7--dc23
2015009759
for the Jumex factory staff
