From The Periphery To The Canon: The Literary Domination Of The Argentine Province

Puig, Aira, Martínez

Abstract

The article deals with the influence and presence of the author’s native province in the novels and short stories of canonical Argentine writers. After a general overview of the topic, our study is focused on three writers of different generations: Manuel Puig (1932–1990), César Aira (1949–) and Guillermo Martínez (1962–). By analyzing their works, reviewing their biographies, selecting interviews and records, exploring articles that deal with their oeuvre in the context of the present topic, and investigating a corpus that includes works related to their birthplace, we will show that provincial descent left a mark on the literary work of these three authors from the southernmost country of Latin America.
Using language as the instrument and the subject of his literary research, Puig innovatively relies on authentic Argentine speech, Aira embarks on a language experiment, while Martínez mathematically strips his prose, giving it an original tinge. All three of them convey events, emotions and characters (personalities) from their respective provinces into their literary work: Puig in touch with the popular culture, Aira in autobiographical vignettes and Martínez in anecdotal theorems. One of the common motifs of Puig and Aira is the figure of the mother: apart from the writers’ close relation to their mothers, and their significant role in the authors’ early childhood, in Manuel Puig’s (Rita, Boquitas) and César Aira’s (Monja, La Cena) works, the mother has another key feature: Manuel’s is a fan of Hollywood films, and César’s is a fan of the yellow press, and both of them carried that passion over into real life.
The third line of Argentine literature, Guillermo Martínez, seemingly distant from his older counterparts, actually continues on the same path, lead, in the case of three of them, by their national literary father, Borges. Each of Martínez’s stories is based on autobiographical elements (as evidenced by the articles published on his blog), and while in Puig and Aira’s work there is an obvious influence of the mother, it is Martínez’s father who had a particularly significant impact on his life and work.
The results obtained also point to the fact that many Argentinian writers from smaller communities were influenced by their home province and, due to the popular culture, technology, political circumstances and globalization, some of them have left their towns for metropolises (Puig, Martínez and Piglia), while others have left their homeland altogether (Cortázar, Walsh), or stayed within the local geographic framework (Sábato, Giardinelli, Aira).