Rachel Engelman in front of Walrus Books in San Telmo. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Buenos Aires is a book city. Many of the continent’s most influential writers have at some stage had a porteño post code. Indeed, the work of great writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and José Hernández have all been shaped by the passion of the city’s thriving literary contingent. Fast forward to 2012 and there is a burgeoning literary movement emerging in the capital once more – albeit this time hidden down amongst the shelves of a quaint San Telmo bookstore.

Founded by Geoffrey, from the US, and his wife Josefina, from Salta, Walrus Books has become something of a local institution. It is a mecca for ex-pats, tourists, and Argentines alike who all pilgrimage down the cobbled streets of San Telmo in search of their next English language read. But Walrus Books is more than just a bookshop these days; turn the page and it has plenty more to offer. The store has become a welcoming backdrop for original literary discourse and a meeting place for the sort of booklovers that momentarily close their eyes and sigh deeply as they enter it.

Back in March 2012 and under the watchful eye of 4,000 used, new, and hard-to-find titles from the shop’s impressive catalogue, Walrus Courses began. These literature and writing courses are the brainchild of writer and infectiously passionate ex-pat Rachel Engelman, who has studied fiction under Pulitzer Prize winning author, Steven Millhauser. So, how did they come about? After coming into contact with many young people in Buenos Aires who treated reading as a romance rather than a hobby, the Los Angeles native approached Geoffrey at the Walrus with the idea of running a few courses and they have not looked back since. “It’s something fundamentally missing from BA culture and we thought it would be a great thing for a good many people. Literature and Writing classes given in English, not just for foreigners, but for Argentines. For everyone, really,” commented Engelman.

The courses that have been run to-date have covered an eclectic range of subjects approaching literature from a mixture of angles. Over the past few months ‘The Modern American short story’, ‘The J.D. Salinger Seminar’, ‘The Short Story Course’, ‘The Art Of Fiction: A Course In Reading And Writing’, and the ‘Creative Writing Workshop’, have all been the focus of rigorous debate amongst their participants. Whether a first timer or a seasoned literary scholar, Walrus Courses offer an environment within which expression is encouraged and everyone has room to speak. The class size is limited too, which keeps it intimate and personal.

Rachel Engelman leads a literature class in Walrus Books in San Telmo. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Now entering their third wave, the demographic is expanding – “there are the loquacious Argentines with remarkable vocabulary and poetic souls – all writing in English. Then there are the brasileros learning about Ginsberg and the British reading Raymond Carver and the Argentines falling over themselves for Flannery O’Connor,” Engelman added.

The upcoming courses, which are scheduled to start in September and run until late October, include ‘The Paris Writers’ a look at the short stories of the great writers of ‘The Lost Generation’ in 1920s Paris; ‘California Writers vs. New York Writers’ comparing notable authors from both shores and considering how particular settings inspire particular forms of art; and ‘Creative Writing’, an introduction to fiction writing, which will include narrative assignments designed to hone narrative skills and develop participants’ creative senses. And with interest growing fast, there are plans to open an institute in Palermo Soho with more class variety. But fear not, the evening courses at their spiritual home of the Walrus will remain a mainstay.

It is not just all about the subject material, however. “The courses offer the chance for foreigners to get to know locals on an intimate (and authentic) level,” states Engelman. But diversity does not come just in the form of nationality; previous students have been of all ages and have come from a wide range of backgrounds. There are not only the classic, young literature students, but also economists, film students, translators, salesmen, journalists, and stay at home mothers who have taken courses to-date. It is people from all across the globe meeting under one roof to talk about something they love with a passion. After all as their founder reminds us, these are not lecture courses – “they are conversations in which the classes take on the intimacy of a group of very opinionated friends in a living room”. Except this living room just so happens to have Borges, Cortazar, Hernández and co. looking down on you and hanging off your every word. Unlike the books which encircle them, however, none of the ideas being presented and discussed are second-hand.

For more information visit walruscourses.com or Walrus Books.

The Argentina Independent would like to invite talented writers to submit short stories, excerpts and poems in English, for the second edition of our short story competition. The contest is open to all writers who want to share their unique voice with Argentina’s English speaking community. Deadline for submissions is Friday 5th October.

We will announce the five finalists on 10th October, and readers will be invited vote to decide the winner, who will have their piece published on our homepage. All five finalists will have the chance to read their pieces at the BA Books Lover’s Night on Friday 26th October (details to follow shortly).

Contest Guidelines

1. All entries must be less than 1000 words. There is no minimum word count.

2. All entries must be submitted by Friday 5th October at midnight.

3. Please submit a Word or Text document, size 12 pt. font. Include your name, a title, and word count. Please proofread thoroughly.

4. Participation is limited to one submission per person.

5. The writing entered and all rights to it must be your own. In submitting your entry, you agree to The Argentina Independent’s non-exclusive use of your writing on our website, newsletter, and associated printed press. You maintain full copyright for your entry and, where used by The Argentina Independent, the writing will be will be credited to you as the author, with a link to your website or blog where applicable.

6. The winning entry will be published in our November edition and online.

SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO: competitions@argentinaindependent.com

Please title your email Writing Contest: [Your Name].

Lead image by Jeffrey James Pacres

Near the end of ‘Varamo’ – the latest novel by César Aira to make its way into English – the title character, an unmarried, fifty year-old civil servant, wanders into the company of some men who work in publishing. They urge him to write a book. Writing is “very easy” and can “be done very quickly”, they explain to Varamo, who’s never written before: “Do you have anything to do tonight? No? It shouldn’t take you three or four minutes to fill up a page, if you concentrate. That’s twenty pages an hour. In four or five hours you could finish off a decent little book.”

A decent little book, indeed. The joke is that Varamo will go home to write a “celebrated masterpiece of Central American poetry”, the “dazzlingly innovative” poem ‘The Song of the Virgin Child’, and that he’ll do so by stringing together words from scraps of paper left in his pockets, notes from a failed fish-embalming project, and code from a notebook he’s been asked to re-scramble. If it sounds fanciful or odd, that’s the point: Aira’s literary terrain, trod consistently and copiously in 80-some novels since 1975 (no one seems able to keep a proper tally) is all about stringing together sequences of unlikely events – and like Varamo’s poem, the results are often dazzling, and always odd.

‘Varamo’, published in Spanish in 2002, is the sixth of Aira’s “decent little books” (they’re usually around 100 pages) to be issued by New Directions in English translation; in 2010, New Directions’ President Barbara Epler declared Aira heir-apparent to Chilean dynamo Roberto Bolaño (also published by the press). Released this month in the US, ‘Varamo’ will join ‘An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter’ (2006), ‘How I Became a Nun’ (2007), ‘Ghosts’ (2008), ‘The Literary Conference’ (2010), and ‘The Seamstress and the Wind’ (2011) on Aira’s North American bookshelf. In the coming years, New Directions plans to release six more.

This is good news for English readers. Aira’s novels, or novellas, or nouvelles, or novelitas, as they’re varyingly classified, really are best when read in bulk. Each single book is almost too peculiar, too idiosyncratic, to stand on its own – as if Kafka had written ‘In the Penal Colony’ and nothing else. And this is Aira’s intention. Known as much for his method of production and the rate of his output as he is for any individual work, Aira claims as his predecessors process-obsessed avant-guardists like John Cage (“a musician…with cork in his ears”) and the Dadaists.

Alternately called “the continuum” and “a forward flight” (fuga hacia adelante), Aira’s chosen ‘procedure’ is this: every day, he sits in a café and writes a page by hand. He perfects it through the evening, but never, in the days that follow, goes back to make changes or revise. The result is a string of stories that are digressive and unpredictable, and uniformly so. Freed from the conventions of “high” literature – among them quality (what he calls “the well-made”) and narrative consistency – he relies instead on improvisation and surprise.

‘Varamo’, in this way, is a typical Aira affair: we meet our protagonist and are immediately swept into the random peregrinations that precipitate his penning of a major literary work: payday, buying candy from a street vendor, dinner with his mom. The events are both mundane and uncanny, often jumping between the two (he’s paid in counterfeit bills; the candy from the street vendor attracts a swarm of pecking birds; his mother cooks quasi-embalmed fish), and the novel, like all of Aira’s work, follows these conflicting whims until they reach an unlikely resolution – in this case, the writing of an avant-guard classic by a civil servant who fails at fish embalming.

What’s really unique about Aira’s output, considering the speed with which he ‘flies forward’ (seemingly by the seat of his pants), isn’t that he produces so much work, or that it’s fanciful and odd, but that what he’s produced forms a coherent body of work – and one that’s consistently enjoyable to read.

Born in 1949 in the Coronel Pringles, a small town 500km south-west of Buenos Aires, Aira spent years writing and publishing novelistic installments in relative obscurity – until 1998. That year, Random House Mondadori published ‘How I Became a Nun’ in Spain and out popped a literary career, Athena-like, fully-formed: Aira has gone on to publish over 50 more novels, some which had been written in the 80s and 90s (perhaps on scraps of paper stored in his pockets, like Varamo), and the rest produced since, at the disarming rate of two per year.

My favourites are those that juxtapose social reality with the absurd: like ‘Ghosts’, which manages to portray the life of a transient Chilean family in ‘80s Argentina against the sexual awakening of a teenage girl befriended by a band of naked, semi-visible phantoms. A similar feat is achieved in ‘How I Became a Nun’, where class anxiety and social unease permeate a novel about ice cream aversion and identity confusion in a six-year-old child, who, while narrating the book, is also already dead. Odd mixtures, sure, but Aira performs delightfully, without ever taking himself, or his reader, too seriously.

The six New Directions offerings all come from Aira’s prodigious pre-fame era. With a half-dozen more to come, here’s my request: give us some written on this side of the 20th century—after Argentina experienced its 2001 economic collapse. Since Aira’s procedure allows him to incorporate whatever is going on around him directly into his work (“if a little bird enters the café where I am writing…it also enters into what I’m writing”), I want to see him process a society unhinged and chaotic—you know, like ours is right now.

My suggestions: ‘La Villa’, an asburdist rendering of life in a downtown Buenos Aires Hooverville; or ‘Las noches de Flores’, which opens with an elderly couple taking up pizza delivery to make ends meet. Argentina seems to have made it through its difficult time in (mostly) one piece; perhaps a dozen “decent little books” by César Aira helped tip the scales toward recovery. Odder things have happened on the path to great literature.

Jorge Santander heads along to Buenos Aires International Book Fair, the world’s largest Spanish language book fair, to investigate Argentina’s love affair with literature.

Camera & Editing: Jorge Santander

For many historians, the 1930s were a blot on the Argentine Catholic politician Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría’s CV: during this time he publicly supported Spain’s Franco, published an anti-Semitic pamphlet postulating a Jewish cabal in New York (applauded by the Nazi press), and, as the military dictatorship’s chosen National Library Director and Minister of Public Instruction in the 1930s, advocated censorship and a strict religious education.

La Casa de los Cuervos by Hugo Wast

But Zuviría’s literary reputation may be more recuperable. In addition to these political activities and under the pen name Hugo Wast, he also wrote romantic fiction—becoming one of the best-selling authors in Argentine literary history, with more than three million copies in Spanish and further translations into 15 languages. Zuviría aimed to write for a wide public—according to biographer Juan Carlos Moreno, he always ensured his books were published in three versions, making them accessible to all budgets: “One deluxe and beautifully-bound; a second with good paper; a third, for a popular audience, very cheap.” He published short novelas and novels in installments in the pages of weekly magazines like ‘La Novela Semanal’ (which ran his novel ‘La Casa de Los Cuervos’ in three parts), and was read overwhelmingly by lower and middle class women. In his chaste stories his Catholic views on the woman’s role are present, but subtlely – like daggers wrapped in pink silk.

Today, magazine romances of the period like Zuviría’s are either ignored or are erroneously dismissed as “literature of the barrio, the pizzería, the milonguitas“. But in their role as both commentary on and engagement with the public, the stories are an intriguing source – both historians and writers seeking a socially-oriented modernism could do worse than give them another look.

Developing romance

The “romance” developed in Argentina in the mid-19th century, at the same time the nation itself was battling into existence. Like the nation, the novel followed the country/city split—one version projecting a national self-image as a land of gaucho and pampas (exemplified by Echeverria’s “El Matadero”), the other focusing on the city and social interactions. The romantic novel was an offshoot of the latter, turning specifically toward the relationships between men and women. Bartolomé Mitre’s ‘Soledad’, written at age 26 and eventually published in the Revista de Buenos Aires, was one of the genre’s first examples, capturing a tone future romances would copy. (“Eduardo made a gesture of impatience he could not hide, and which did not escape the penetrating view of his loving and jealous wife.”)

Kiosko selling all sorts of reading material, including novelas. (Photo: Juan Manuel Caicedo Carvajal)

In the belle époque period Argentina developed its enormous system of publishing houses, and romance became a business. Novels began to be serialized in popular magazines; magazines also began to commission the shorter one-off romance story, or “novela rosa.” The format was convenient: a man might buy his wife a copy at a kiosco on his way home from work. It were also cheap: in 1920 a magazine cost around 10 centavos, compared to $1.50 or $2 for a book by an economic publisher.

Such professionalization was evident in the prose. Although many of the early romances seem like hodgepodges of whatever theme the author felt like putting his pen to, the magazine format spurred the development of a standardized style. Authors regarded the writing of magazine stories as a profession like law or medicine – and they had philosophical ideas about their own work.

A March 1920 copy of El Suplemento includes a section called ‘Nuestros Escritores’, with autobiographical statements by commissioned writers. To prove their sincerity and sentimental understanding, authors tended either to boast about their personal amorous experience, or, in the opposite direction, to claim a hermit-like existence lived completely through their stories. In both cases, the aim was connection with the reader. “For the reader to understand me in such a way as to consider me a best friend, that is glory,” wrote Richard Lavalle. Héctor Oliveira extended this idea to advocate an everyday language, saying that “a novel must provide more ideas than sensations, must sustain emotion – above all, emotion! To achieve this it is necessary to reduce language to artificial expressions, to the point of discarding from the lexicon any word unincorporated into the current language, plain and simple.”

That Oliveira is able to tell his readers he is writing in a “simple” way is itself of interest, and puts in question the image of a cynical, professional author churning out work for a mass audience. Readers were fully aware of the self-imposed formal bounds of the genre, and accepted them as the chessboard necessary for the game.

Dreaming within the structure

In the case of the serialized novela rosa, there were two structures: a highly-stylized, allusive baroque prose, and an ideal of Christian virtue.

'La Equivocacion de Colette', one of the many novelas rosas published by Colección Orquídea.

When publisher Colección Orquídea released a new series of romance novels, it included in the last pages of its second volume ‘Entre dos almas’ an ‘Amorous Dictionary’. The first two entries of the ‘A-D’ section, continued in subsequent volumes, reads thus: “ADEREZO (seasoning): The most beautiful seasoning a woman can have is simplicity. If virtue in dignity is maintained, love will concede its grace. BAILE (dancefloor): It is the battlefield of love and one of the many inventions of the devil. Here women often lose many things that men find.” The reference to “virtue” and the warning against potentially compromising situations reinforces the fact that the romance novel in its origins was highly Catholic. Sentimental effusions were contained within marriage, with the end of procreation; occasionally, monologues in the confessional were used to drive plot.

Although societal pressures are rarely overcome in these stories, the idea of fulfilled love was itself rather radical. Plots alluded to possibilities (even if thwarted) of barrier-crossing relationships and adultery within marriage. A structure was created within which the reader could dream.

The context? A lot of women in unhappy marriages. In 1902 José Ingenieros delivered his famous lectures at the Universidad de Buenos Aires on the psychology of the sentiment, in which he argued that society discourages passion. (The divorce law was discussed that year in the Ateneo, but divorce wasn’t legalized until 1987.) Critics today often argue that the romance developed the suffocating idea of woman as “mujer-ángel”, that in them the only feminine resources are wide eyes and soft trembling voices, and that women “don’t speak, don’t discuss, but only swear, imprecate, curse, and, above all, cry”. The very time and attention given to these actions, however, recognises that woman might have an inner life.

Modern views

It wasn’t until 1984, with the publication of Beatriz Sarlo’s groundbreaking ‘El Imperio de los Sentimientos: Narraciones de circulación 1917-1927′ that Argentina’s serialised romances were taken up seriously as texts worthy of scholarly attention. (In doing Sarlo helped introduce cultural studies to this country.) To Sarlo, however, the genre is ultimately an unfulfilled form without higher aspirations, free of the linguistic games, purposeful difficulty, and irony marking out true literature. “In my library there hardly remain examples of the sentimental novels I analyze,” she writes in the prologue to the 2000 reedition. “I sent those folletos to readers interested in knowing the literature firsthand – parting from them in the first place, because I am no collector, and in the second, because I thought and still think that I will not return to them.”

'Boquitas Pintadas' by Manuel Puig

Where the critic hesitated, the writer leapt. A number of novels (and telenovelas) took the serialised romance as inspiration in the decades after it had ceased to be a popular form – Manuel Puig’s 1969 novel ‘Boquitas Pintadas’ being perhaps the most famous example. A complicated, violent romantic history unraveled in sixteen entries, each section imitates the techniques of folletin and radiotheatre, and is preceded by the tango lyrics of greats like Alfredo Le Pera. “And all of it, for what? Look, I’m going to die with this life that I have, nothing more than working in the house and grumbling about the kids,” one frustrated woman writes in a letter, never sent. Puig lovingly inserts references to products and program announcements, mirroring the way in which serialized stories were published alongside advertisements: in one scene a young girl imagines herself wearing ‘Empire Nocturne’ perfume, and prides herself on speaking like a radio announcer, S’s crisp.

The past few decades have seen Argentine literature turn inward, but in doing so it is in danger of ignoring the popular desires, rich possibilities of dialogue, and preexisting cliché expressions and slang in which Argentina is particularly rich—and which the language of the serialized romances captured. Zuviría used the structures of the serialized romance to embed his social views; today’s writers might draw on the same resources to make different points.

Lead photo by Stephen Coles

Ana María Shua – born in Buenos Aires in 1951 – is famous in Latin America as an author of microfiction. Her many books in the genre (including ‘La suenera’, ‘Casa de Geishas’, ‘Bontanica del caos’, ‘Temporada de fantasmas’, ‘Los días de pesca’, ‘Viajando se concoce gente’ and ‘Como una buena madre’) have received national and international prizes and have been anthologized in collections around the world.

Ana María Shua at work (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

She began her career as a poet; ‘El sol y yo’, her first collection, was published in 1967. Since then, she has produced more than forty books. In 1980, her novel ‘Soy paciente’ won the Losada Prize; other novels include the Guggenheim-winning ‘El libro de los recuerdos’ and ‘La muerte como efecto secundario’, which received a Municipal Prize in the novel category. Her latest novel, ‘El peso de la tentación’, was published in 2007. In 2009, ‘Cazadores de Letras’, collecting four of her microfiction books in one volume, was published in Madrid. ‘Que tengas una vida interesante’, an omnibus collection, was published the same year in Buenos Aires.

This year, her most recent collection of microfiction, ‘Fenómenos de circo’, was published simultaneously in Argentina and Spain.’Fenómenos de circo’ takes as inspiration the circus, portraying notorious impresarios, freaks, and feats across a series of incredible, paradoxical and ludicrous vignettes. Houdini has a cameo, as do more fanciful circus archetypes like the Magician, the Sword-Swallower, and the Tattooed Woman. Like a series of circus acts themselves, the stories burn for an instant and then disappear – readers are left beguiled and enchanted, with no choice but to start again from the beginning.

We caught up with Ana María Shua in her home in Palermo and spoke about the circus feat that is writing, and the inspiration behind her circus-themed collection.

Tell us about your writing process – and specifically about the process as it pertains to this new collection of circus-themed microfictions?

I usually start with a single story, and then write them down as they come to me. [This time,] when I had gathered ten or twelve short stories, I started reading about the history of the circus, the biographies of famous circus performers, and I identified different people and different circus phenomena. My research gave me more ideas, and I went on from there.

What does the phrase “Fenómenos de circo” (Circus Phenomena) mean to you?

Well, phenomena as in “freaks” – unusual people; people with deformities, different bodies, strange abilities – but also in general terms: all the components of the circus. The freaks, the performers, the trainers, the impresarios, the animals. Everything that belongs to the circus. But I also have a special interest in freaks.

Why is that?

They’re part of the history of the circus. They’re still out there on television. For some reason, our society considers it politically incorrect to exhibit them as freaks in person, but has no problem with gawking at them as long as it’s through a camera. The Discovery Channel documentaries, for example, the Tree Man, the subject of the documentary – the man with the branching tumors. I believe there’s nothing wrong with curiosity about the strange and the different. It’s a way for the performers themselves to support themselves, when their circumstances would otherwise prevent them from working a normal job. It’s a way for them to become famous, and to travel, and to live interesting lives. They can also earn a great deal of money.

So, why microfictions? These short-shorts and circus acts; the brief glimpses into performers’ lives and their routines, their “numbers” – they make for an interesting pairing. Was that your intention?

I enjoy the extreme condensation of the form—the condensation of a profound sensation or idea into a few words, a brief significance.

Circus acts are very brief. They’re quick because the artists have to demonstrate their abilities before a demanding public. They have to show off because the audience will stop paying attention right away. They’re always trying to surpass themselves, because the audience gets bored. That’s why nobody ever does three front flips in a row on the trapeze – by the third one, the audience has stopped watching.

It’s interesting to see these long, eventful, and sometimes disjointed histories condensed into such a short lyrical form. Do you have difficulty restraining yourself as you write, choosing what to include and what to leave out?

Never. When I write in this format, my mind is set to this pattern. My stories are born brief. I don’t have to cut details or condense an idea. It never happens that a long piece of work comes to me as a short story.

Big Top Circus (Photo: Tim)

You include a long and detailed historical appendix to the collection; brief biographies of all of the circus performers that appear in your short short stories. Why?

I wanted people to know what was invented and what was real. In the first part, I worked with historical information to create short fiction. This follows the way that I worked chronologically: I started with my own ideas and impressions, memories from childhood, impressions of the circus and the idea of the circus. Then I started to read about famous people in the circus, about the origins of the circus and its various incarnations. I wrote, and then I investigated, and then I wrote some more.

It was important to me, however, that the reader understand what actually happened. It’s very important to me that they read the historical appendix. That they share my curiosity. Also, the authentic has a great deal of prestige in our society. Something on film, in photographs – it’s important that people understand that these things did occur, that these people did exist.

What sorts of things did you look for? Did you seek out a particular type of story?

Not really. Whatever jumped out at me as I went along.

The story that interested me the most was the story of the monkey woman who married her impresario and then died after giving birth to a child who looked just like her. Their corpses were subsequently exhibited, sold to a Russian university, exhibited, bought back, exhibited, lost, recovered without her child’s corpse, and exhibited again. She is currently on display in Oslo, at the university, but anyone who wants to visit her has to get special permission. The archbishop of Oslo is campaigning to have her buried. It seems like there is always someone trying to display her and someone trying to inter her. It’s a fascinating story in all, a terrible story – I didn’t add much.

Chilean poet Nicanor Parra has won the 2011 Cervantes award, the most important prize in Spanish-speaking literature. The 97 year old was recognised for “a whole life dedicated to poetry” and creating the so-called “anti-poetry,” which combines colloquial language with old-fashion verse.

The award also comes with a cash prize of 125,000 euros. It was given out by the minister of culture, Ángeles González-Sinde and the president of the jury, Margarita Salas, the first woman to ever attain that position since the creation of the prize 36 years ago.

When the award was made public, the recipient had not been aware because, according to González-Sinde, they “have not been able to find him, he was not answering his phone.” The minister considered it to be a great achievement that this award was given to a poet, since she believes “the skill of writing poetry is more challenging than other styles.”

She expressed her confidence that Parra will be able to receive the award personally at a ceremony on the 23^rd of April, saying that she had been in Oporto 15 days prior with 102-year-old Portuguese cinema director Manuel de Oliveira “talking about his next projects.”

Parra was supported by most members of the jury, who respected the non-official rule in which winners alternate between Spaniards and Latin American writers.

Previous winners of the Cervantes award include last year’s Ana María Matute from Spain, Argentines Borges, Sabato, Bioy Casares and Juan Gelman, as well as Peruvian Mario Varga Llosa and Spaniard Camilo José Cela.

Kick-starting The Argentina Independent’s ‘Beyond Borges’ series is an author generally accepted as marking the beginning of Argentine literature, and arguably the first writer to play a significant role in its development.

Esteban Echeverría (courtesy of Wikipedia)

As one of the earliest romantic writers in Latin America, founder and figurehead of the first circle of young Argentine intellectuals, and the author behind the country’s first work of literary prose, poet Esteban Echeverría is a man credited with many literary titles.

His graphic and bloody vignette, ‘El matadero’, is commonly considered a cornerstone of national literature and remains one of the most studied texts in Argentina.

For this reason, his poetry and prose can be seen as marking the beginning of a new style of writing – one which signified Argentina’s literary break from the Spanish and a move away from the artistic currents that had previously flowed from Madrid. Until then, Argentine writers had grown up under independence fervour, but remained limited by a paradoxical Spanish influence that prevented them from developing their own distinct style.

Quoting French poet Victor Hugo by describing romanticism as “liberalism in literature”, Echeverría became one of the first Latin American writers to employ literature as a vehicle for communicating strong political and social opinion.

Romantic Writing

Although he authored several works, Echeverría’s reputation as a writer rests most securely on ‘El matadero’ and on his long narrative poem ‘La cautiva’, published as the 2,100-line centrepiece of ‘Rimas’ in 1837.

‘El matadero’ was written in the late 1830s but not published until 1871. It came politically-charged and packed a powerful punch against the federalist dictatorship that existed in Argentina at the time. Set inside a Buenos Aires slaughteryard, this short story describes the capture and torture of a passing unitarian by the Mazorca – brutal enforcers of Juan Manuel de Rosas’ federalist regime.

Inside 'El matadero' slaughteryard (Photo: Sam Verhaert)

Written as a political allegory, the Mazorca can be seen to represent barbarism and the young protagonist to represent civilisation. Or in a different light, the federalists are presented as butchers and the unitarians as animals.

First published inside the ‘Revista del Río de la Plata’ twenty years after Echeverría’s death and more than thirty years after it was written, the text is widely acclaimed for its realistic presentation of a gruesome period in Argentina’s history.

The poem ‘La cautiva’, translated into English as ‘The captive woman’, marks the first instance of rural Latin America serving as poetic backdrop, and is also listed among the best known romantic works of 19th century Latin American literature.

Featuring the indigenous people of the time as its subjects, the poem was commended for bursting the illusion of harmonious racial relations. Whereas captivity tales had traditionally been told in the first person by the survivor, ‘La cautiva’ uses the third person to narrate the fate of a couple captured by indians at the frontier.

Like ‘El matadero’, the poem is noted for its incorporation of local dialects and regionalisms without the use of italics or quotation marks. It also explores the struggle to position a national identity somewhere between Europe and America – an issue which journalist, essayist, and author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento would later place at the heart of Latin American culture.

The Generation of 1837

Along with many intellectuals of the period, Echeverría sought shelter from the Rosas dictatorship in neighbouring Uruguay, where he lived until his death in 1851. What forced him into exile, however, was not the unpublished manuscript of ‘El matadero’, but his association with the group of Argentine writers and intellectuals known collectively as the ‘Generation of 1837’.

The Generation of '37 created a literary salon in the backroom of Marcos Sastre's bookstore (Photo: Sam Verhaert)

Brought together by a shared passion for aesthetics and freedom, they gathered in the backroom of Marcos Sastre’s bookstore to give readings and engage in intellectual debate.

Within six months, the movement Echeverría had been so fundamental in starting was taken underground. Renamed the ‘Assosciation of May’ and holding onto the spirit of the 1810 revolution, they became Rosas’ most determined opposition with the slogan: “May, Progress, Democracy”.

When his signature on an anti-Rosas petition eventually brought about his exile in 1840, Echeverría moved to Montevideo where he made up part of a far-reaching network of exiled intellectuals in Uruguay, Chile and France. The movement continued to actively oppose the Argentine government whilst simultaneously campaigning for the creation of a national literature that was representative and responsive to social climates.

Echeverría’s popularity among his peers was such that one present day scholar has described him as “a Beatle”, with others suggesting that his esteem exceeded the literary merit of the majority of his work, taking care to make an exception of his brief but impacting novel ‘El matadero’.

As undoubtedly the most popular Argentine intellectual of the first half of the 19th century, Echeverría became a leader of many and an attraction for the rest- paving the way for a change of direction in Argentine literature.

Along with Buenos Aires’ nomination as UNESCO’s World Book Capital for 2011 came a symbolic acknowledgement of Argentina’s commitment to the countrywide promotion of literature and reading.

Inside Argentina's iconic National Library (Photo: Tanoka)

Between last April and the coming April then, when Armenia’s capital Yereven will take over the title, we might reasonably expect to see some well-deserved promotion of home-grown authors, a hopeful boom in translation and a peaked interest in the country’s national literature. But with the exception of a few big-name cards, Argentina keeps her hand close to her chest with remarkable modesty.

Launching this Thursday, The Argentina Independent’s new ‘Beyond Borges’ series brings you a selection of the best known poets, essayists, short story writers and novelists whose writing has influenced and shaped the course of Argentine and Latin American literature.

In bi-weekly installments, we’ll introduce you to some of Argentina’s most-loved writers and landmark texts; beginning with the romantic writers and gauchesque poets of the 19th century and continuing through the heavyweights of 20th century literature, right up to some award-winning present day writers and those tipped as ones to watch.

Our ‘Beyond Borges’ series not only offers the opportunity to discover new authors and even genres you might not have read before, but also promises an enjoyable and more subconscious insight into the historical events and cultures that have shaped present day Argentina– without picking up a single history book!

So feel free to dip in and out of this new series, exploring our collection of Argentina’s most interesting and influential writers. For those of you who find yourselves with a budding interest in local literature but don’t know beyond Borges – this one’s for you.

Book Store on Corrientes (Photo: GuillermoTomoyose)

Buenos Aires is a book town. Choose a street and walk: you’re bound to pass a book store. If you’ve chosen Corrientes, you may pass 30. They say there are something near 350 bookstores in town, each one catering to who knows how many readers. The vibrancy of the literary culture, however, does not end at the city’s borders, but is fed by Argentina’s vast interior, where stories of gauchos and farmers, immigrants and indigenous peoples have inspired a long and varied literary tradition spanning back nearly two hundred years and including writers of international renown and consequence – the most emblematic and celebrated being Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.

This year, in recognition of the importance of literary culture to Buenos Aires – and to Argentina as a whole – UNESCO has chosen to honour it with the title World Book Capital City. The honour took effect last week at the 37th annual Buenos Aires Book Fair (Feria del Libro de Buenos Aires) and will be celebrated all year long with special readings, events, publications and programming. Here, at the Argentina Independent, we’ve decided to use the honour as inspiration to launch an initiative of our own: a Literary Section.

From our vantage within Buenos Aires, but on the English speaking periphery, we’re excited by what we see as an increased profile for Argentine writing abroad: ‘Granta’  magazine naming eight Argentines among their 22 ‘Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists’ (the most of any one nation); Dalkey Archive Press reissuing the work of Manuel Puig in English; Cesar Aira, Juan Jose Saer, Alan Pauls and Sergio Chejfec gaining international exposure through a number of new translations.

We hope to further stoke these flames of interest by offering, every month, a new piece of writing in translation, selecting both work by overlooked Argentine writers of the past and those younger writers telling the Argentine story of today. Alongside these short fictions, poems and excerpts from novels and plays, we will run reviews of Argentine books in translation, interviews with authors, critics and literary figures and coverage of literary events in Buenos Aires and around Argentina.

We hope to offer a lively mix of educational and entertaining, original and historic; to create a stable English-language outlet for Argentine writing; to take part in the contemporary conversation Argentine literature is having within itself and with the literature of the world. We hope to share work that is little known outside of the Spanish language as well as to provide exposure for authors who ought not to be.

Ernesto Sábato, 1964

Last week, when Argentina lost one of its great humanist voices and authors, Ernesto Sábato, who died at 99, many spoke of him as the last of a generation of writers who typified a literary rigor and cultural standing unmatched by Argentine writers before or since. We hope to honor Sábato’s legacy not by mourning a lost generation of literary greatness, but by celebrating, proliferating, translating and discussing those who have inherited it.

If you’re a writer, translator or publisher and are interested in being involved, please get in touch. If you’re a reader, visit next week for our first installment: an original translation of the short story ‘The Train Robber’, written by Angela Pradelli and translated by Andrea Labinger.

It will be our first dispatch from the nation of Sábato and Borges, Martín Fierro and the gaucho epic, the beginning of our celebration of the World Book Capital City of 2011 and of Argentine writing as a whole. We hope you’ll join us.

Beso,

Joey Rubin

Literary Section Editor

Featured authors:

Ángela Pradelli: novel excerpt ‘The Train Robber‘

Inés Fernández Moreno: short fiction ‘Argentine Beef‘

Carlos Gamerro: short fiction ‘Bad Burgers‘

Marcelo Pitrola: theatre excerpt ‘The Peronist Princess‘

Carlos Chernov: novel excerpt ‘Soulless‘

Ana María Shua: short fiction ‘Microfictions‘

Guillermo Martínez: novel excerpt ‘I Also Had a Bisexual Girlfriend‘