The Mirror Man is an excellent documentary about Jorge Luis Borges. I recently learned (via flameape) that the documentary is available online at UBUWEB, a site that describes itself as the YouTube of the Avant-Garde.

Note that the documentary is 47 minutes but the video on UBUWEB seems to stop abruptly about 35 minutes into the film, sigh. So, if you want to see the whole thing you may need to find a copy via BitTorrent. Regardless, even if you see only the partial video on UBUWEB then you will come away with a rich experience.

Mirrors & themes

The script of the documentary was written by Alberto Manguel, a person who knows a lot about Borges. Manguel writes that the central theme of Borges works was the “curious paradox of being human in a mysterious and incomprehensible world.”

Even if you’re not so interested in Borges the documentary features archival video footage of Buenos Aires during the early 20th century. Also, there are interviews with Borges’ mother Leonor Acevedo, Maria Kodama, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Edgardo Cozarinski, as well as Borges himself.

The title The Mirror Man comes from Borges’ childhood fascination with mirrors and mirror-like surfaces. “More than anything the boy feared another self reflected in the polished furniture and dark mirrors of the house.”

The documentary gives a very good overview of the life of Borges and the influence of living in Europe during his youth. Living abroad enabled him to discover Argentina. Borges said, “Absence made it possible for me to see things i would not have seen if i had stayed at home.”

Upon the return of Borges in the 1920s Manguel writes that Borges “wandered through Buenos Aires with the passion of explorer.”

“What is the use of writing poetry during a period of unrestrained fascism?”

Over this past month I’ve been reading and re-reading an essay by the poet Marjorie Agosín titled “How to Speak with the Dead? A Poet’s Notebook” (Human Rights Quarterly 15 (1993)214-223).

In the essay Agosín raises complex questions on writing about victims and survivors of state terrorism. “Up to what point is it feasible to make poetry about the tortured body?” How do we ask someone what it means to be the mother of a disappeared or a political prisoner? “Why should I see them cry?”

Writer in a foreign land & the inability to represent pain

Though she was born in the U.S., Agosín was raised in Chile until her family returned to North America after Pinochet came to power.

While most authors by their nature are introspective, Agosín exhibits an unusual level of self-awareness about the limits of writing in representing and adequately portraying the suffering of those who experienced traumatic, violent social conflict.

She talks about Latin American writers, like herself (“We are and are not the disappeared”), who go into exile and “recover memory and nostalgia through the temporary and borrowed scenery of an imaginary landscape.” Distance may appear to offer objectivity but it also further distorts the writer’s own perspective. “They write as survivors.”

Fiction or Non-Fiction

One of the issues I’ve been struggling with is whether it’s better to read fiction or non-fiction about the disappeared and the last dictatorship. (Of course, a reader doesn’t have to choose and can read both, but a writer must choose.) Can fiction adequately represent the horrors? In what ways are fiction writers limited in their portrayal of these realities? Conversely, do writers of fiction have more latitude than writers of non-fiction when it comes to exploring these themes? Which fiction writers should take on this material? Should fictional accounts of these emotionally charged topics be limited to those who lived through the times, have some first-hand experiences? What are the dangers of appropriating the difficult lives of others for one’s own fictional world? Or is it merely the skill of the writer? Is the literary imagination of any writer open to convey, or at least, attempt to enter this dark world of loss and memory? Would those attempts seem false, contrived?

Would it not be better simply to read non-fiction accounts of these times? Are not the testimonials of survivors more moving than any fictional accounts?

Often, I thought that non-fiction provides a clearer insight, more true. Yet, non-fiction also has its flaws, the biases of its writers, even those purporting to be objective. (Just reading what is written in most foreign newspapers about Buenos Aires should be enough for most residents of this city to realize that non-fiction is not a depiction of the truth but simply one writer’s perspective.) We must read, examine, and absorb various accounts of any topic before reaching conclusions (and even then our thoughts may continue to shift and change). Perhaps it’s the process itself – reading, writing, reflecting – that is ultimately important, more so than our actual beliefs.

(And with that swirling vagueness perhaps I’ve just rambled, somersaulted, crashed into my own pseudointellectual pomposity).

Agosín points out that literature seems less real and is easier to read precisely because we realize that it is not real, fiction camouflages repression and torture. Agosín describes her own obsession with identifying and writing about the disappeared to the point where she felt like she lost objectivity. “Now I ask myself, with what right did I speak of them? Why did I appropriate their zones and the theme of pain? What model did I follow to speak about the dead?”

“The boldness and nudity of the poem”

That line is Agosín’s. Poetry, for her, is the only way that she can access these issues. She writes, “I believe that poetry, with its atemporal qualities, its symbolic language that identifies, yet at the same time negates, allows me to create a zone of ambivalence.”

Agosín goes on to describe what she considers her failed, “nightmarish”, attempt to write a book about René Eppelbaum, one of the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Agosín’s intentions were to write a political discourse, a history but she says, “My attempt at reproducing the pain of a woman whose three children had been disappeared by the State became an impossibility.” So, Agosín returned to poetry to write about a woman “who did not want to be history, but nevertheless was history.”

With unexpected candor Agosín states that her poem was received very negatively by Eppelbaum. Agosín says, “In making her human, I took away the Plaza and left her along with her dead.”

Many more questions

Agosín’s essays raises many more questions than it answers, much more than can be addressed in this post. In Buenos Aires the disappeared and the last dictatorship are never very far from the present. Occasionally, I hear a few people assert that the past should be left in the past and that it’s time to move forward, continue rebuilding the country. Regardless of one’s perspective, the questions always will remain, the past is part of the identity.

Towards the end of Agosín’s notebook examining how to speak with the dead is this paragraph:

“In my experience, I could only formulate questions without answers. Is there a coherent self that can write and speak of political repression? Or does the being that writes, due to the nature of the topic, remain a fragment, distanced from the course of history? Would it be possible for the literature of political violence to defy the political conscience of the society that allows violence? How to avoid the creation of myth around the individual without offending? What is the correct distance between the victims and she who writes about them? How does one speak of the fear? How to speak about being a testimonial writer without ever having been imprisoned.”

A new blog about William Henry Hudson points to a nice article in The Christian Science Monitor: William Henry Hudson, “A Revival of Argentina’s Thoreau”.

Confusion about Hudson’s nationality is understandable. He was himself confused. Argentine born, the child of Anglophile immigrants from Massachusetts, Hudson thought he was destined to be an Englishman. He would be that, and much more. Through his writings and civic efforts to create laws to protect birds and other animals, he fiercely rejected the biblically sanctioned notion that the natural world was man’s to conquer and dispose of at will. His was a voice in the wilderness which, like that of Henry David Thoreau, was actually heard. Were he to be writing today, he’d surely find an audience in the green movement.

…

Hudson artifacts are displayed in the three-room house: his watch; a sketch for the William Rothenstein portrait of Hudson that hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery; and rustic touches that recall his naturalist activities: ostrich eggs, a puma skull, the skeleton of an armadillo, the clay nest of the peculiar oven bird.

A painting of a bird, donated by the Japanese city of Yokohama, recalls Hudson’s link to Japan, established by the marriage of his grandniece, Laura Denholm Hudson, to Yoshi Shinya, the first Japanese immigrant to Buenos Aires. Their child, Violeta Shinya, became the first director of the museum, in 1964. Hudson’s books reached Japan late in the 19th century, and were included in the curriculum when the study of English was instituted in the schools.

I’ve been to the small town of Hudson but, somehow, missed the house where he was born that is now a museum. Again, here’s the link to the new blog about the place: Parque Ecológico Provincial Guillermo Enrique Hudson.

I definitely must go to Hudson again….field trip!

The annual Buenos Aires book fair opens its doors to the public today and runs through May 7. It’s an excellent showcase for Argentine writings though not as much of an international scene as the fair’s sponsors would like to suggest. The main English language writer at the fair is Scott Turow, author of legal thrillers.

Contrast that to the upcoming Parati Literary Festival in Brazil where the headliner is Nobel prize winner J.M. Coetzee (one of my favorites) and an author whose works are readily available in Spanish here in Buenos Aires.

Though to be fair to the Buenos Aires book fair, the Parati festival is a very different kind of event. And there are a number of Chilean and Paraquayan writers who will be presenting at the Buenos Aires book fair, an opportunity that these writers are unlikely to find elsewhere.

A good guide to the Buenos Aires book fair comes as a supplement to today’s (Thursday) Clarín.

Even without going to any of the book signings or lectures, the book fair is a fun way to spend a few hours browsing among all the books and finding something to buy. Oddly, there’s no discount on books at the fair. Again, I have to raise the question as to why books are so expensive in Buenos Aires? The costs of printing in Argentina must be lower than it is in the U.S. but the books in Buenos Aires are as expensive, and often, more expensive than in the U.S.

Well, perhaps Buenos Aires is one of the few places where book publishing is still a good and profitable business to start.

Anyway, be sure to take some time and go to the Buenos Aires book fair, buy a book, and read it.

Reading is fun. All the cool kids are doing it!

It’s easy to identify the classic writers in any language but learning about the respected contemporary writers is much more difficult. The SPLALit blog has posted a listing of the best 100 novels written in Spanish during the past 25 years.

The list is based on an article written by Semana, a Colombian magazine.

Of the 100 titles there are 22 books by Argentine writers. Only Spain had more titles (32) in the top 100. Colombia was third with 13 titles.

The Argentine writers

Okay, now I will be the first to admit that I’ve not read any of these books! In fact, of these 16 Argentine authors there are 7 that are new to me. The striking thing is how little is known in the English-speaking countries about so much world literature. In another post I’ll talk about the lack of translation for most of the titles. There’s a lot of work for literary translators. Unfortunately, very few publishers will publish works in translation these days.

At # 8: Santa Evita Tomás Eloy Martínez (1995)
[ English translation of Santa Evita]

At # 12 El entenado, Juan José Saer (1983)

At # 23 Cae la noche tropical Manuel Puig (1988)

At # 31 El pasado, Alan Pauls (2003)

At # 33 Santo Oficio De La Memoria Mempo Giardinelli (1991)

At # 41 La GrandeJuan José Saer (2005)

At # 45 La Gesta del MarranoMarco Aguinis (1991)

At # 47 Plata quemada, Ricardo Piglia (1997).

The English translation is titled Money to Burn

At # 48 El Vuelo de la ReinaTomás Eloy Martínez (2002)

At # 53 Un Campeon DesparejoAdolfo Bioy Casares (1993)

At # 54 Los pichiciegos, Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill (1993)

At # 56 Una Novela ChinaCésar Aira (1987)

At # 60. En estado de memoria, Tununa Mercado (1990)

At # 65 Luna calienteMempo Giardinelli (1983)

At # 66 Una sombra ya pronto serás, Osvaldo Soriano (1990)

At # 71 Los fantasmas, César Aira (1990)

At # 73 La muerte como efecto secundario, Ana María Shua (1997)

At # 79 Glosa, Juan José Saer (Argentina, 1986)

At # 80 Crónica de un iniciado, Abelardo Castillo (Argentina, 1991)

At # 81 El traductor, Salvador Benesdra (2002)

At # 82 Cumpleaños, César Aira (2001)

At # 83 La Sexta LamparaPablo de Santis (2005)

At # 90 A sus plantas rendido un león, Osvaldo Soriano (1988)

It has been a while since my last post but it’s time to get back to posting more frequently.

A few posts back I talked about a series of remarkable books by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano: Memoria del Fuego

I already had a copy of the second volume of this work in English but I wanted to get all three volumes in Spanish. I had assumed, initially, that finding these three books by Galeano would be rather simple in Buenos Aires. After all, Buenos Aires has a lot of bookstores, people read a lot in this city, the books are definitely not obscure and Galeano is a well-known writer in this area.

Indeed, just before starting my search I did happen to see volume 3, El Siglo del Viento, at the Musimundo on Florida. But I figured then that I could easily find it elsewhere and didn’t want to give my book money to a place like Musimundo.

A few days later I went off to El Ateneo on Av Santa Fe. It’s such a gorgeous bookstore but, honestly, I seldom find the books I’m looking for in El Ateneo especially when it comes to literature.

Of course, one of the difficulties with locating Memoria del Fuego (or most books by Galeano) is defining the genre. Is it history? Is it literature? Or a little of both? Generally, all the Galeano books (and he’s quite prolific) are shelved together but the easiest is to ask the store clerk.

Then I wandered over to Av Corrientes. I’m very familiar with the selections in the used bookstores on Corrientes and knew that I’ve not seen Memoria del Fuego before but I tried again. I also tried Libreria Hernandez, which I often feel has a very good literature selection.

(As a side note, I do think that Libreria Hernandez definitely has the best English literature in Spanish translation). But no Memoria del Fuego at Hernandez.

Then I thought Gandhi, that’s a really good bookstore. They’re sure to have….but nope. The sales clerk at Gandhi was quite helpful and suggested trying Parque Rivadavia….more on that later, but I wasn’t yet ready to give up the search in a regular bookstore. Heck, I even checked the Musimundo on Corrientes but they didn’t have it and neither did Zival’s.

I was getting concerned by this time and was wondering what was up with this book. After all, the Washington Post called this book “an epic work of literary creation”. So, why is it so difficult to find in Buenos Aires, the city that prides itself on its bookstores?

I headed down Callao to check out the little bookstore at the back of Clásica y Moderna. They have a quality selection. But the woman there said that they didn’t work with that publisher. Hmmmm.

Then there’s another small bookstore on Callao just down from Clásica y Moderna. They didn’t have it either. But the clerk said that he believed the book was going to be reprinted later this year. Fine and good, if true, but I wanted the books now and not months later.

So, I finally decided to head back to Musimundo on calle Florida and buy the volume 3 that I had seen there earlier. But, of course, once I finally make it back to the store I find that the book is no longer there.

Okay, the hunt wasn’t over. I went down the street to try the El Ateneo on Florida. The clerk looked baffled and said that they hadn’t had those books in a long time. But he said that they did have El fútbol a sol y sombra by Galeano. No! I didn’t want just any book by Galeano and I certainly didn’t want one on soccer!

Then I went across the street to the Cúspide. They didn’t have the book but their in-store computer reported that the books were available at both the Cúspide branches on Santa Fe and in Village Recoleta. Yeah!!!

So, I hiked up Av Santa Fe from Florida to the Cúspide store just past Callao. I think that whoever manages that store is a frustrated librarian. The store is organized by very specific subject matter. Anyway, they didn’t have the book either. Sigh. Okay, so I went over to Village Recoleta, again where the computer states all the volumes are in stock.

Like most Cúspide stores the Village Recoleta branch is arranged in a matter so that it’s almost impossible to find a specific book without asking for it. And why was I not surprised when the clerk said that they didn’t have the book in stock? But what about the computerized inventory stating that the books are in that store? The clerk says that the inventory is wrong.

Memo to Cúspide: Spend some money and fix your computerized database! Otherwise, what’s the point of having it?

Oh, amusingly, the young guy working at Cúspide quickly pulls a slim green volume from the Galeano shelf and says that they do have El fútbol a sol y sombra.

Memo to guys working in bookstores: I know this will sound weird but not every guy in the world is a fútbol fan.

Parque Rivadavia

So, trying to find Memoria del Fuego turned out to be a long, frustrating process and it was finally time to try the used book stalls in Parque Rivadavia. At least, it was a good excuse to take the A line on the subte.

The booksellers at Parque Rivadavia are similar to the used bookstores on Av Corrientes. For the most part, both have about the same selection. At Parque Rivadavia you have to go around to each book stall. Each seller has a very good idea of his offerings so it’s easiest just to ask.

I felt really lucky when halfway through the stands we found one seller with the first two volumes. Hurray!

But what about the third? Found it at the very last book stall in Parque Rivadavia. Success!!

Of course, none of these sellers seemed to have multiple copies so if you go searching now for Memoria del Fuego in Buenos Aires then you probably will just be out of luck until the books are reprinted.

Memory of Fire

Oddly, the last time I was in Walrus Books, the best English language bookstore in Buenos Aires, I did see all 3 volumes of Memory of Fire by Galeano in its English translation. So, in this case, it’s easier to find the English translation of a book by a noted South American writer than it is to find the original Spanish. Something is wrong about that.

Of course, it’s likely the publisher’s fault for not printing enough copies rather than the fault of the booksellers. But the booksellers could be a lot more helpful. I recall being surprised by the staff at Border’s in Aventura, Florida when I inquired about a book that was not in the store. Rather than offering to order the book for me, the person at Border’s immediately got on the phone and called the Barnes & Noble down the street, which had the book. I went to B&N and brought the book that day but became a regular visitor to the Borders in Aventura just because they were so helpful.

Well, at least, I finally found Galeano in Buenos Aires.

One of my favorite historical topics is the intellectual and cultural history of the early twentieth century. Recently I’ve been reading a book titled Yrigoyen Entre Borges Y Arlt (1916 – 1930). It’s the second volume in a planned seven volume history of Argentine literature during the twentieth century. The series is edited by the writer David Viñas.

What about 1916

As its title suggests, the book says a lot about the political and social aspects of the times as well as literature. Historical periods never follow calendars very clearly. Rather than focusing on just the 1920s, the book uses the two presidencies of Hipólito Yrigoyen as the cornerstones of the time period.

The 1916 presidential election was the first under the Sáenz Peña law, which reformed the election process with compulsory voting by males over the age of 18.

The new city

At the time Argentina was undergoing massive transformation, particularly impacted by immigration. In 1916 more than 50% of the population of Buenos Aires were immigrants who brought their own languages, cultures, and ideologies to the city. (Robert has an interesting post on the housing projects built for immigrants).

From a literary angle, the population increase also raised the number of potential readers and consumers of newspapers, magazines, and books.

Architecturally, the city transformed into a modern metropolis with an urban landscape very different from its 19th century version.

When I read about the literature produced during this period, I’m always reminded that those writers were very aware of this urban transformation, the changing demographics, the multitude that changed the perception of everyone in Buenos Aires. Writers such as Borges and Arlt took the appearance of the new Buenos Aires as their subject: “its social conflicts, fascination with the modern and cosmopolitan, the injustices, the beauty, and the horror.”

While any such period of rapid change may bring a sense of nostalgia and melancholy, those same perceptions often lead to resentment and prejudices. For a generation before even 1916 the threat of the immigrant to the traditional Argentine culture had been a focus of many writers, from which emerged a type of cultural nationalism.

A corresponding political nationalism was quite active in this period. Of course, Argentina was hardly alone among countries with conflicts between nationalist attitudes and socialist perceptions. One now distant event, the 1917 Russian Revolution, was then a prominent aspect of the political-cultural world. It was a turbulent time with massive strikes and social unrest, but the times also brought the construction of so many grand buildings that define the landscape of Buenos Aires.

The 1920s

Most of the book covers the 1920s. Alvear was president from 1922 – 1928, succeeded by Yrigoyen who would be overthrown by a military coup in 1930. Borges returned to Buenos Aires in 1921 after spending many formative years of his youth in Europe. He and others brought the avant garde movement from Europe to Buenos Aires.

During the 1920s a large number of small, literary journals flourished in Buenos Aires. On the pages of these publications were debated the cultural perspectives of the city. An appendix to Yrigoyen Entre Borges y Arlt provides a chronology of the important books, magazines, poems, plays, and essays published in Argentina between 1916 – 1930. More than forty literary magazines are listed for this period.

The writers

Of course, the book features chapters on Borges and Arlt. Other chapters cover writers such as Lugones, Girondo, Quiroga, Guiraldes, Baldomero Fernandez Moreno, and more. There is also a chapter devoted to “Florida and Boedo” literary rivalry (which deserves a blog post all of its own) and a chapter on women writers of the time such as Alfonsina Storni and Norah Lange.

There’s a lot in this book and I’ll probably be dipping back into it for some future blog postings. Another appendix also includes a summary of political events for the years covered, providing a nice overview of the period. I’m looking forward to other volumes in this series on 20th century Argentine literature.

A recent issue of Ñ had the usual end-of-year review of books published in 2006 with a list of recommended readings. Here’s the list of foreign books that Ñ recommended to its Argentine audience. I’m including the English title when I know it and the Spanish title for all works. The titles are listed in the order provided by Ñ:

Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Kafka on the Shore (Kafka en la orilla) by Haruki Murakami
The Black Book (El libro negro) by Orhan Pamuk
The Sweetest Dream (El sueño más dulce) by Doris Lessing
Jacobo el mutante by Mario Bellatin (Mexican-Peruvian writer, unavailable in English)
La pintora de la reina by Genevieve Chauvel (translated from the French; I don’t believe it’s available in English)
A Star Called Henry (Un héroe llamado Henry) by Roddy Doyle
La mesera ere nueva by Dominique Fabre (translated from the French, not available in English)
(El viento de la Luna) by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Spanish author, I don’t believe this title is available in English
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

I consider myself a very well read person but have only read five of those writers (Auster, Murakami, Pamuk, Lessing, and Ellis). I am familiar with Doyle but have never read anything by him. All the other writers are new to me. Of course, a limiting factor in what Ñ can recommend to its readers are only works that have been translated into Spanish. But, it’s nice to learn about some writers that are new to me. Lists like these help me realize how little I know about contemporary literature from non-English speaking countries. From the above list, my personal recommendation is Kafka on the Shore. Ok, yeah, Murakami is from Japan but he’s hugely popular in the U.S.

Argentine Novels

Here is the list of Argentine novels that Ñ recommends from 2006:

Tartabul by David Viñas
Punto final by Andres Rivera
Arte menor by Betina Gonzalez
Diario de la rabia by Hector Libertella
Sí, soy mala poeta pero… by Alberto Laiseca
La educatión de los sentidos by Miguel Vitagliano
El conquistador by Federico Andahazi
Bolivia construcciones by Bruno Morales
La batalla del calentamiento by Marcelo Figueras
Leer y escribir by Ariel Bermani

This issue of Ñ also includes dozens of more books by Argentine writers in various types of non-fiction as well as more fiction.

Ñ reports more than 16,000 titles being published in Argentina during the past year. Some of these works will find a reading public in other Spanish-speaking countries. Yet, that’s a lot of writers whom, mostly, will never find an audience outside of Argentina. I, for one, am quite impressed by the quality and quantity of publishing in Argentina. One of my blogging goals for the upcoming year is to examine more Argentine writers, helping a little to bring a tad more recognition to the many voices of this country. Considering the fact that few titles are translated into English these days, reading Spanish opens up an entirely new world of the imagination. These books are readings not just for Argentines, but for all of us.

I noticed that the 2007 edition of the Buenos Aires book fair already has its Web site up: Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires. It will run from April 16 to May 7.

I’m already excited.

Book production

Buried under the professional section of the site is a page about book production in Argentina. More than 21,000 titles were registered with Argentina agency of the ISBN during 2005, a 15% increase over 2004. Unfortunately, the stats don’t differentiate between new titles and reprints. So, it’s unclear exactly how many new titles are published.

By calculating the numbers on the book fair site, then the average print run for a book in Argentina was 3,520 in 2005. In reality, I suspect that most books receive even fewer printings here.

As for the type of books, 29% are fiction, 27% in the social sciences and the remainder in various non-fiction categories.

What about translations?

A footnote reveals that 4% of the titles were translated into Spanish from another language. So, I calculated that number to be 852 books for 2005. That strikes me as a very low number. Of those titles, 48% were from English, 13% from French, another 13% from Japanese, and around 4% each from German, Italian, and Portuguese. Oddly, 8% of the translated titles were indicated as being translated from Spanish. Huh? Perhaps it’s regional translations, making a book more suitable for readers in Buenos Aires than, say, Madrid. I don’t know.

It doesn’t mention how many of those translated titles are fiction and non-fiction. That would be interesting to know.

And, after just a bit more research, I found more statistics about book production in Argentina. I don’t have time to analyze those now but will post a summary later.

For most who pass along calle Suipacha, the plain, unassuming house next to Palacio Noel goes unnoticed. Thousands of houses and apartments in Buenos Aires posses more charming exteriors. Of course, as with many buildings in the city, you never know what is behind the facade. In this particular house, decades ago, many of the leading artistic figures of Buenos Aires partook in the dancing and drinking offered by their charismatic host, a monumental figure in Argentine literature, the poet Oliverio Girondo. Serving as hostess for these fortnightly soirées, while cultivating her reputation as a coquettish seductress, was his wife the writer Norah Lange.

Family wealth financed Girondo’s global journeys and bohemian, but comfortable, lifestyle. In the 1920s Girondo lived in Paris and Rome, traveling widely while amassing a vast collection of sculpture, paintings, and reportedly, one of the largest private collections of gold pre-Colombian artifacts. Returning for good to Buenos Aires in 1932, Girondo re-assumed his leadership of the literary avant-garde much to the annoyance of Jorge Luis Borges.

Always scandalous and seeking publicity, Girondo sought ways to shock the bourgeoisie. He promoted his most famous book Espantapajaros (Scarecrow) by hiring a horse-drawn funeral hearse to parade an effigy of a “learned man” along the streets of Buenos Aires. After the stunt the papier-mâché “scarecrow” resided in Girondo’s house. (I’ve heard that after Girondo’s death that the scarecrow ended up with the Museo de la Ciudad but I have no idea if it still exists).

Girondo is hardly known outside the realm of Spanish-language literary readers despite the fact that a Catholic university in Indiana has an extensive collection of his works. Girondo, if not for his life alone, is overdue for discovery by the rest of the world.