Short stories from a Uruguayan who spent much of his life in Argentina, dying of prostate cancer in 1937. He wrote plays and poems and at least one novel as well as short stories. This collection shows that he was influenced by Edgar Allen Poe; in turn he would go on the influence Jorge Luis Borges, although the style he demonstrates in this early collection is very much his own.
The tales range from derivative horror to hugely original stories told about very poor people in the jungle and from the PoV of animals.
One of my favourite stories, Sunstroke, is told from the perspective of a five pet dogs of a farmer. They see the man's doppelganger in the fields and realise that Death has come for the farmer, and they bark furiously, and the Doppelganger wanders off in the direction of a horse. It's a delightful tale with a pack of loyal mutts. And the next story, Barbed Wire, has horses escaping from a field and having a chat with cows about their fearless bull. Another story, Little Jaguar, also features a dog (another fox terrier), considering his scavenging life in the face of a drought: it could be a metaphor for the life of a human on the poverty line. Another of his stories, The Exploited, considers just such a person: a man who builds up a debt in port, being taken for a ride by women and barmen, and then has to work almost as an indentured slave to repay his boss. And the final tale, Meningitis and Its Shadow, which is perhaps a metaphor for the attachment between a therapist and their client, tells of an engineer recruited to dance attendance night after night on an aristocratic girl on her sick-bed since it is only his presence that can soothe the fever caused by her meningitis.
A fascinating and original collection published by Will Dady at Renard Press who seems to be making a habit of unearthing forgotten classics.
Selected quotes:
- “When a man lusts after a beautiful body he doesn't let opera glasses get in the way.” (Isolde’s Demise)
- “On moonlit nights, the grave digger walks amongst the Tombs with particularly rigid steps.” (Artificial Hell)
- “The honeymoon gave her the shivers.” (The Feather Pillow)
- “Footsteps echoed throughout the house, as if years of neglect had refined its resonance.” (The Feather Pillow)
- “The only thing a labourer really owns is his brutal capacity for squandering.” (The Exploited, Los Mensu)
- “There has been no time of greater joy for Maria and me than that which our aunt afforded us, with her death.” (Our First Cigarette)
No comments:
Post a Comment