Four Pillars of New Latin American Narrative (part II): Macedonio Fernández and Roberto Arlt

By: Luisa Ripoll Alberola

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

Note: This is the final portion of a two-part piece on the pillars of Latin American Literature. To read the first part, please refer to: Four Pillars of New Latin American Narrative (part I):  Felisberto Hernández y Horacio Quiroga

Where does Latin American literature come from? What gave birth to its voice? The modern Latin American literature is genuine and differs notably from the occidental tradition. This was first globally manifested with the Latin American Boom–the literary movement that united many young Latin American novelists in the 60s and spread their work around the globe. The Latin American Boom seems to be the beginning of the assertion of this new voice in the literary world. And thiscould be the reason why Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar – among others – are so popular. 

I wondered if these authors had been some kind of geniuses to create such a new and original form of written expression unexpectedly. What did they read? What was their inspiration? What features were picked up from other literary movements? One day, I found the answers to these questions hiding in a prologue in the words of Carlos Fuentes. His opinion shows these influences in four essential Latin American authors. According to Fuentes; Felisberto Hernández, Roberto Arlt, Horacio Quiroga and Macedonio Fernández are the four fundamental pillars to the renewal of the 20th century narrative. 

To satisfy my curiosity, I started reading one important book per each author –these were written around the 1920s. Hereafter, I will tackle my reading experience with these not-widely-known classics of the Latin American literature.

Macedonio Fernández

The other day I was asked which was the strangest book I have ever read; my answer was Museo de la Novela de la Eterna (The Museum of Eterna’s Novel) by MacedonioFernández (1874-1952). Macedonio Fernández is an Argentinian author–known for being quite eccentric. In all his life, he never stood foot outside of his beloved Buenos Aires. Fernández collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges in many magazines and had a good friendship with Borges’ father. 

The influence of Fernández in Borges is irrefutable. As it is pointed in the summary of Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, “Two intuitions sufficed: the obsession for the work inside the work itself, and the dreamlike conception of reality.” A basic recurrence in all of Fernández’s work,also taken by Borges, is the idea that ‘the true nature of the literary condition of the writer is the reader itself.

Macedonio Fernández was an avant-garde writer. He took part in the Argentinian ultraist group  of writers, who continued dadaism and other avant-garde movements. Una novela que comienza (A Novel that Starts) is part of this experimentation. Ironically, this is precisely a novel that doesn’t start–it is an aggrupation of prologues about a story and some characters that will never be real in any novel. The vanguard naughtiness, that provocative spirit, stayed in later literature. The avant-garde is the total rupture of stablished rules. Authors of the next generation, such as Cortázar, made this ‘game’ their main source of inspiration. The game is focused precisely on this: the invention of new rules. The destructive vanguardist aspect was necessary to wake up the destructive impulse of the game. 

Museo de la Novela de la Eterna torn its readers in two. In my opinion, Fernández’s book was dull. But it is this same boredom that marvels me the most. At the same time, Fernández achieves to give us both dull repetition and intrigue. This book, however, is very important for its influence in Cortázar’s Rayuela: a short chapters structure with no lineal connection between them, fragmented so it looks like a collection of pieces of text. The main difference is that Cortázar was concise, he invented concrete brilliant characters and worlds. Fernández, on the other hand, is more abstract. Other similarities are the pretentiousness of Fernández, comparable to Morelli’s style in “De otros lados” chapters of Rayuela; the metaphysic awareness; the structural experimentation of concatenating footnotes and parenthesis inside parenthesis. 

‘It is nowadays common to recognise in the fragmentarism of Rayuela, the print and presence of Fernández; but it is this fragmenting that transforms in into the rhetorical instrument that best adapts to the inherited attitude inherited in historical avant-gardes, being Dadaists, surrealists… regarding the old desire that emerged in the romanticism of presenting the writer as a provocative agent of the collective drowsiness, a rebel without more cause than himself or the mysticism.’ 1

The legacy of Macedonio Fernández, I believe, is the importance of the reader. He gets this argument to the absurd: writing a novel with insubstantial characters, with a radically abstract discourse, so it is not eclipsed by the limelight of the reader in the act of reading. Museo de la Novela de la Eterna is a mirror of four hundred pages: it is as boring as staring to oneself in a mirror for four hours. He himself affirms it in the words of one of his characters: ‘what occupies me is the reader: you are my topic, your fading existence; the rest is an excuse to have at reach from my process.

In the new Latin American narrative, although not in such a drastic way, the relation between author and reader wins importance. It becomes more dynamic, a true exchange. The author will want to move the reader in new, undiscovered ways. Consequently, the interpretation of the reader in the facts of the novel starts to be more interestingin the reading experience. 

Roberto Arlt

My favourite of the four authors, Roberto Arlt was anArgentinian author, porteño (born in Buenos Aires) frombirth to death (1900-1942). According to Ricardo Piglia, Arlt inaugurated the modern Argentinian novel with his new style. Many fellow-native writers still recognise in Arlt his mastery and consider themselves followers of his school.

His novels Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen) and the follow-up Los lanzallamas (The Flamethrowers), were in my opinion, like reading Quentin Tarantino. Although I would have loved to, I didn’t get to read the next book El amor brujo (The Wicked Love). Hence, I will share my feelings with the first two novels aforementioned. If I compare Arlt with Tarantino it is because of their similarities: the presence of the sleaze and the street, the importance of dialogues that touch on any imaginable topic, and the banalization of death–all covered in profound sarcasm, and an existential irony. Arlt drives the reader to a very entertaining universe, in which it reins the contrast in the personalities of the characters, the insanity and a sincere nonsense. 

I don’t need to read more of his novels to know that Arlt dominates literary styling, which is characterised by the orality expressed in the spirit of the Latin American conversation. He masters it with such a naturality, avoiding all the time literary rigidity, that he is told to ‘write badly’. In that moment, he coexisted in Argentinawith a current of literary academicism, whose memberscriticised Arlt sharply. Arlt even addresses this criticism: ‘…it is said about me that I write badly. It is possible.”2And it is more than possible, as he makes grammatical and orthographical mistakes constantly, however he proves that not all the literary enchantment is in an impeccable style.

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To sum up,  these four authors are all very interesting. I would like to encourage all readers, literature enthusiasts or beginners, to start their own literary investigations. Ask questions and dig deeper about any topic that interests you, any genre that connects with that specific moment you are living, or any group of authors you want to know more about.

Latin American literature plays, in my opinion, in another league in the panorama of world literature. For me, the feeling it transmits is not comparable to any other written thing. If you start reading these authors I–or any other great Latin American authors–I welcome you to aNew World. 

Luisa is a Spanish 3rd Year Industrial Engineering student at the Technical University of Madrid. She is passionate about literature and philosophy.

Bibliography

1 Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente, “Prólogo” a Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, p. 65-66. Editorial Cátedra, Madrid, 1995.

2 Roberto Arlt, “Prólogo” a Los lanzallamas, ArchivosALLCA XX, Barcelona, 2000.