Failed writer

The second book we receive from Roberto Arlt. It proves that the short story can still be a privileged field for the “profane illumination” of the unknown

George Steiner tells us that one day, at the Frankfurt station, ten minutes before the train departed, he saw a small white-covered volume in a bookstall. Unable to decipher the author's name (Arlt), he opened the book and, at random, read: “The Language North of Future”. He thus missed the train for his first encounter with Paul Celan.

Roberto Arlt (1900-1942), Argentine born in Buenos Aires, in the modest Flores neighborhood, is of that ilk. A failed inventor. A frequenter of prostitutes and all kinds of roughs. He is one of those responsible (or even the one responsible) for bringing to the Argentine literary salon hysteria, the exuberance of having so much to say, this possibility of men living inside the written language. Of “having hell inside”.

For those who are tired of poetic embroidery and prosaic good intentions, and who tirelessly wait for people who walk backwards, full of ideas that can only be shouted, to enter through the door of letters, this book of short stories is a buoy that, while not saving us from the inevitable drowning, keeps us afloat for a few more hours.

Adapted from here.