The Polish Boxer, by Eduardo Halfon

Eduardo Halfon. The Polish Boxer. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2012. 188 pages. ISBN 9781934137536.

Eduardo Halfon's The Polish Boxer is a collection of short stories with the same main character throughout (also named Eduardo Halfon) that together form a short novel. The character Eduardo Halfon, like the author Eduardo Halfon, is a college professor of literature who lives in Guatemala, studied in the United States, and teaches in a Guatemalan University called Universidad Francisco Marroquin.

In "Distant" Halfon tracks down his star student, the only one who really gets literature, only to find that he had to drop out to support his family when his father died. "Twaining" describes Halfon's experiences at a small interdisciplinary conference on the topic of Mark Twain. In "Epistrophy" Halfon and his girlfriend meet a Serbian pianist named Milan Rakic who describes his half-gypsy parentage and deep-seated desire to be a gypsy musician. "White Smoke" describes his experience meeting two Israeli women in a bar in Guatemala. In "The Polish Boxer" Halfon shares his grandfather's story about his time in Auschwitz and how a man helped him to survive his "trial" by telling him what to say when he was interrogated. "Postcards" is a summary of the postcards sent to Halfon by the Serbian pianist Milan Rakic who writes repeatedly about gypsies and their culture. In "Ghosts" we see the beginnings of an obsession with Rakic, who has stopped sending postcards to Halfon. "The Pirouette" is an account of Halfon's trip to Belgrade to search unsuccessfully for Rakic. In "A Speech at Povoa" Halfon describes the conference in Portugal that he attended and from which he began his adventure searching for Rakic in Belgrade. The theme of the conference is "Literature Tears Through Reality," and this it seems is the theme of this collection of stories. "Sunsets" is about the death of Halfon's grandfather.

What is the reality as presented by Halfon? Are the stories real? What really happened and what didn't? Within the stories reality shifts as well. When he was a child Halfon's grandfather tells him that his tattooed identification number was his phone number, so he wouldn't forget it. Later he's told that the Polish boxer helped him survive Auschwitz. Even later he hears a different version of events.

I found Halfon's stories engaging and many-layered. In "Distant" he writes about the multiple meanings of short stories and that the reader must go beyond the surface meaning and search for additional meaning. Halfon's own stories seem to have many meanings and interpretations. Although I didn't appreciate each story in the collection equally ("Postcards" in particular was a little tedious), there is a lot to think about here, and this book would be especially good for a group discussion or a book club.