Roberto Arlt : translation and the construction of genre

• Main Author: Miranda, María Carolina
• Published: University of Hull 2007
• Subjects: 868.6209; Drama
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.441681

[From the introduction]: Roberto Arlt is generally considered by critics the forerunner of the Latin American "boom". Arlt's innovative style reflects a fascination with the popular and a trenchant social realism fused with fantasy; his oeuvre is considered to have paved the way for later Latin American magic realism. Though distinguished names such as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar praised his work, still, Arlt has long been considered by lesser figures a marginal voice, a tragicomic commentator on life, an autodidact and journalist, a writer who could not even spell. Only fairly recently has his place in the Argentine canon been granted; elsewhere, Arltian scholars and critics regard Arlt's work as an incisive portrait of its epoch, a much deserved milestone that secured the author a literary place that his contemporaries tried to deny him.