«The order of chance. Guillermo de Torre among the Borges”, by Domingo Ródenas de Moya ★★★★
Guillermo de Torre, among the avant-garde and his brother-in-law Borges
We are faced with a notable biographical study of a literary critic who became a key reference for the literary and artistic avant-garde.
By Toni Montesinos
This past July, the Renacimiento publishing house published “European avant-garde literatures”, a classic of literary studies, which Guillermo de Torre published in 1925 and which was essential for interpreting the aesthetics of the early 20th century. The text was expanded with a second edition in 1965, six years before De Torre died in Buenos Aires (he had been born in Madrid, in 1900), decades after becoming a capital figure in the Spanish avant-garde, especially , since he met Vicente Huidobro in 1918 and became familiar with creationism, although they later became involved in an intellectual controversy.
De Torre was also deeply interested in ultraism and the plastic arts of his time, and even in 1920 he was one of the signatories of a collective automatic poem sent by Jorge Luis Borges to Tristan Tzara. He was the author of the collection of poems “Hélices”, which included illustrations by Norah Borges and, finally, he strengthened strong ties with both Spanish and Latin American writers. And this is now proven thanks to Domingo Ródenas de Moya, professor at the Pompeu Fabra University. Specifically, in “The Order of Chance” he studies Torre’s relationship with the Borges brothers, since, in fact, he married the painter Norah, while he co-founded the Losada publishing house in Argentina.
Republic and vanguard
Ródenas wisely addresses the relationship of the couple “Torre and Borges, Borges and Torre, youthful accomplices and political brothers,” and reconstructs a truly fascinating journey between two continents forced to become brothers, perhaps through the medium of literature. In parallel, the reader will delve into the time of the Republic and the Franco dictatorship and, above all, into the atmosphere of avant-garde and artistic daring, which are synonymous with innovation. Thus, the iconoclast De Torre “belonged to a disappeared world, that Madrid that Alfonso Reyes remembered as an Athens at the foot of the mountains”, being admired by the literary cream on both shores of the Atlantic as soon as he published his mythical book.
▲The best
That provides unpublished documents and testimonies that serve to vindicate this author
▼ The worst
Nothing to reproach, it is a great work for those interested in the avant-garde or Borges
«The Claws of the Eagle», Karin Smirnoff ★★★
Lisbeth Salander falls into the clutches of “woke” culture
The techno-geek created by Karin Smirnoff becomes this new police intrigue mixed with numerous scientific information
By Lluís Fernández
After David Legercrantz’s second trilogy was completed, the seventh installment of “Millenium” was commissioned by Karin Smirnoff. In that second, the author of “The Turing Enigma” knew how to balance police intrigue with scientific information, also promoting the geeky character of Lisbeth as a new icon of the “techno-thriller.” A character with Asperger’s syndrome, increasingly darker, who ended up dominating the womanizing journalist Michael Blomkvist, who became an assistant to the researcher.
In “The Claws of the Eagle,” Smirnoff humanizes the techno-geek Lisbeth Salander. “Millenium” is a podcast and its star, Michael Blomkvist, has lost his research skills.
Some changes that its author has made for the sake of the “woke” consensus: feminism and evil ecofachas who try to impose the New World Order.
With Karin the soap opera reaches its culmination: secret sects, domestic abuse, exacerbated melodramas and icing on the cake of feminist lesbian warriors, in imitation of the fantasies of “Kill Bill”, with epic fights included. As for the prose of the book, although with ups and downs, it straightens out when the action requires it. Then it falls into more familiar stretches where progressive ideology prevails over racism and domestic violence. Far behind is the world of Stieg Larson and his trilogy in which his greatest genius was the creation of the punk Lisbeth Salander.
▲The best
The absolute prominence of the techno-geek turned into an urban amazon
▼ The worst
The “woke” ideology that the author addresses with some changes and mainstream feminism
«Love in France», J.-MG Le Clézio ★★★★
Le Clézio, against abuse and rejection of the youngest
The new book by the French author, although his “homeland” is Mauritius, is an excellent portrait of what it is like to be a teenager outside the West
By Toni Montesinos
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize for being, as the members of the jury defined him, the “writer of rupture, poetic adventure and ecstatic sensitivity; an explorer of humanity inside and outside the dominant civilization. And the fact is that, with its fifty books marked by the foreignness that has permeated his life – “Travelling, you can hear the noise of the world better,” he said when receiving the award -, Le Clézio represents the curious and sensitive author of many cultures. to social problems.
He was born in Nice in 1940 but has always said that his homeland is the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, alluding to the fact that it was the place where his family originates and whose nationality he holds, along with the French. And there is set the first story of “Love in France” (translation by María Teresa Gallego Urrutia and Amaya García Gallego), titled “Anverso”, about a girl who escapes from her home, afraid that a bad guy will abuse her. sexually, and the vicissitudes he will encounter as he encounters people who are either undesirable or hospitable.
Likewise, the author’s time in Africa and Mexico – where he lived for twelve years – made him interested in indigenous cultures, to the point of considering himself a nomad and seeing languages and nationalities from a mestizo perspective. This can be seen in this collection of eight stories, with a mix of native languages and a common link: suffering, but also the capacity for resistance and survival of the youngest in extreme circumstances of slavery, rape or misery.
Exploitation and calamities
This is the case of “Camino de luz”, in which a pregnant teenager, along with a disabled boy, manages to escape from a child exploitation camp, an aberration conceived by the Marxist “revolutionaries” of Peru. This Hispanic American imprint is also evident in another story titled “La pichancha”, also with youthful protagonists who suffer calamities on the border between Mexico and the United States. All with a literary force that manages to put before us, with verisimilitude, the most disastrous reality of the most vulnerable.
▲The best
The book shows the author’s ability to describe places in a dense and synthetic way.
▼ The worst
The first story, about a girl forced to run away who ends up in a boarding school, has topical overtones
«From the eye of the hurricane», Marina Sanmartín ★★★★
Guadalupe Nettel takes us into her supernatural world
The Mexican writer addresses the place in which we live from her perspective and through stories that are more real than imaginary.
By Diego Gándara
The world according to Guadalupe Nettel is disturbing. It is the same as always, or so it seems, but through its gaze it appears different, sometimes supernatural: an orb whose substance, like the roots of those trees that communicate and nourish each other and end up configuring a forest , is somewhere else. The characters in the eight stories that make up this new book by the Mexican writer and finalist for the 2005 Herralde Novel Prize with “The Guest” know it. Or they have, at least, that awareness of the world, because behind the events, or in the events themselves, they perceive another reality that is also expressed. And not necessarily with words, since it is a reality that is more real than imaginary and that, for them, for the characters, is delicately ineffable.
From the girl who, while accompanying a friend whose mother is in a hospital, discovers that among those admitted is an uncle of hers, erased from the family memory for something that is not talked about, to the woman who senses that the fury contained in his family and his children can set the world on fire or the girl who climbed the araucaria tree in her garden and who, with the passing of the years, begins to feel part of a robust and ancient ancestor, these characters, far from From feeling misplaced, they find their own space in an unusual territory, like those wandering albatrosses in the story that gives the book its title and who end up beyond their natural habitat.
▲The best
The author’s ability to delve into the depths of these men and women
▼ The worst
Except for some distractions in one of the stories, overall it is an exquisite work
2023-09-16 05:34:23
#Books #week #Lisbeth #Salanders #wokism #vindication #youth
