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"¡Auxilio!¡Qué el ventarrón se arrebata a mi!"

   De "Extravagancias de 1834", litografía de

Buenos Aires. Summer of 1835. Along with the heat, flies, and the pestilence from the garbage pits, a ship with members of an eccentric religious order arrives. A group of high society women from the capital are bored and decide to throw a party for the elite. These are years of political conflicts, poverty, tyranny, and assassinations throughout the Republic. Reality, a truth stained with blood and curses, will end the young protagonist’s fantasies.

WHILE SHE SLEEPS

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Edward Gorey. La pareja abominable

Includes a dozen fantastic stories characterized by a certain irreverent tone, themes and plots in little accord with the politically correct attitude now in vogue: Ordinary and marginal characters in uncommon or truly irreverent situations. Apparently normal worlds which in their deepest selves conceal subtle maladjustments or extreme perversions. All this under the neutral, impassive gaze of an author who specializes in creating strange and uneasy atmospheres.

MAN IN THE TOWER

 

In these stories the author presents different ways of perceiving reality, memories or dreams by way of numerous varied focuses, ranging from suffering, melancholy, ingenuousness, or fear. Failure, illness, pain and death are constants in these stories in which the ruthless, incomprehensible world of adults is observed through the eyes of a child.

 

In accordance with the tradition of the story form, Romero, disagreeing with reality, attempts to modify it—rather, to transgress it. Without stridencies, leaning more toward the ludico than the metaphysical. His intentions are not to interpret or create parallel realities, or total visions like those of a Borges, for example. The only thing he intends is to play a little with its severe, established boundaries, its boring order and implacable chronologies. An honest game of sport, utilizing the same elements of cotidian reality. But changing their places, as if mocking them, to see what happens.

Daniel Moyano