[in El astillero. remarkable inventions of Onetti reach their maturity, the most compact radiance of defeat: the fleeting antihero Larsen and the imperishable, but never new, city of Santa Maria; that port city that could just as well be the ghost of Montevideo or Buenos Aires, which is close to the Argentine city of Rosario but does not belong to any country. Once again, in front of this pimp with mystical features -Larsen-, he is a scoundrel who is both sunk and saved; Faced with this city that does not exist in reality but is true, fictional but not a toy, we can be tempted to congratulate Onetti for presenting a stark piece of Latin America, without exoticism or wonders, without using impotence and erosion to export as a cheerful and salable folklore. But any inhabitant of Eastern Europe, from the 1930s or post-World War II, could find as many factors in common in this catastrophic city as a Latin American or a North American from a desolate city in the South. Larsen's ambition to win over a feeble-minded - or insane - woman is reminiscent of Isaac B. Singer's serial novel,Shosha , set in late 1930s Poland, and in Gathering Corpses Larsen has more than one point of contact with the Polish pimp Max who stars in Singer's novel Scoria . It is not continents or eras, or political ideas, that unite books or form literary generations, but rather an immaterial effluvium made up of distorted reflections of the human soul, which disturbs readers of any time and place.
OCLC:
(OCoLC)1651740
Locations:
PLAX964 -- Luther College - Preus Library (Decorah)
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