Books, publishers | profile

On the back of the two books I just read by Ardediciones – it’s always a joy when new projects emerge in these dark times – it says: “Ardediciones is the publishing house of the Writing Arts graduates of the National University of the Arts. The publishing house exists for the love of writing.” This last sentence, which may seem cheesy and naive, is nevertheless crucial: without the love of writing, which could easily be rephrased as the love of reading, there is nothing left, or rather, only the market remains as the only horizon of our time. It is true that in the name of this love there are books written that do not prove it, just as there are readers who sometimes seem to be neither. But it doesn’t matter that love, with all its risks, is the password to an imagined community: the community of those of us who still believe that a book can change our lives.

Well, from the Arde editions I read Música by Daniel Delfino, who, I found out, died unexpectedly a few weeks ago, very shortly after the publication of the book, his first book. In the musical stories there is a decision not to resolve the plot in a classical way, a decision that is always welcome. The city, the neighborhoods, the streets with their recognizable names, the routes, the beaches, the bars, the surroundings of the houses take on a very important weight in each story. They are not mere references or decorations, but they shape the plot, interact with the characters and influence the plot, which is always open. The other book is Don’t get so close to the Edge by Lucrecia Labarthe, also a story book that begins with a beautiful quote from César Vallejo. I was particularly struck by “La china,” a story that begins with the receipt of a dismissal telegram and moves to a sexual confession in a world of lower-class women. There is a universe there to explore – perhaps in future books by Labarthe – an imaginary scene that is almost absent from the current Argentine narrative, i.e. the middle class.

Now let’s move on to the opposite point, not to a new publisher, but to another that is celebrating its 25th anniversary, almost a lifetime: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, obviously a Uruguayan publisher. Stamps with a huge catalog on many subjects (narrative, economics, history, dictionaries, etc.), of this sea (or rather, river) of books there are many in my library, starting with those of Juan José Morosoli, a Uruguayan author almost unknown on this side of the coast until a few years ago when one of those overrated independent publishers in Buenos Aires published a great anthology of his works. Morosoli’s world is made up of workers, bricklayers and gauchos who make immobility a way of life in the world. They express their dissatisfaction with the times negatively, taciturnly and anonymously. Misunderstood – as has often happened – Morosoli (1899-1957) may seem like a moral writer. Nothing like that. Instead of thinking as a rural author, it is fairer to imagine Morosoli in a constellation – like a shelf in a personal library – consisting of silence à la Beckett, a taste for losers à la Robert Walser and the best tradition of Uruguayan unrest, from Onetti to Levrero.

Ediciones de la Banda Oriental also published Graciliano Ramos, but I already wrote about this edition in the same place a few weeks ago.