Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Literature
One of Argentina's most influential pieces of classic literature is the epic poem by José
Hernández, Martín Fierro (1872). Not only did this story about a gaucho outlaw lay the
foundations of the Argentine gauchesco literary tradition but also it inspired the name of
the short-lived but important literary magazine of the 1920s that published avant-garde
works based on the 'art for art's sake' principle.
Julio Cortázar (1914-84) is an author well known to readers outside Argentina. He was
born in Belgium to Argentine parents, moved to Buenos Aires at age four and died in self-
imposed exile in Paris at the age of 70. His stories frequently plunge their characters out of
everyday life into surrealistic situations. One such story was adapted into the film Blow-Up
by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Cortázar's novel Hopscotch takes place simul-
taneously in Buenos Aires and Paris and requires the reader to first read the topic straight
through, then read it a second time, 'hopscotching' through the chapters in a prescribed but
nonlinear pattern for a completely different take on the story.
Another member of Borges' literary generation is Ernesto Sábato (1911-2011), whose
complex and uncompromising novels have been extremely influential on later Argentine
literature. The Tunnel (1948) is Sábato's engrossing existentialist novella of a porteño
painter so obsessed with his art that it distorts his relationship with everything and every-
one else.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-99) and Borges were close friends and occasional collabor-
ators. Bioy's sci-fi novella The Invention of Morel (1940) gave Alain Resnais the plot for
his classic film Last Year at Marienbad and also introduced the idea of the holodeck dec-
ades before Star Trek existed.
The contemporary, postboom generation of Argentine writers is more reality-based, of-
ten reflecting the influence of popular culture and directly confronting the political angles
of 1970s authoritarian Argentina. One of the most famous postboom Argentine writers is
Manuel Puig (1932-90), whose first love was cinema. Much of his writing consists solely
of dialogue, used to marvelous effect. Puig's novel The Buenos Aires Affair (1973) is a
page-turner delving into the relationship between murderer and victim (and artist and crit-
ic), presented as a deconstructed crime thriller. His most famous work is Kiss of the Spider
Woman (1976), a captivating story of a relationship that develops between two men inside
an Argentine prison; it was made into the 1985 Oscar-winning film starring William Hurt.
Being openly gay and critical of Perón did not help his job prospects in Argentina, so Puig
spent many years in exile.
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