Responso
Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, Seix Barral, (Col. Biblioteca Breve), 1998. first edition. Paperback. 189p., wrps. Near Fine in Wraps. Item #1847
ISBN: 9507312196
In just over six hours, from the departure of the house of Concepción when it began to get dark until dawn the next day, Barrios will feel that the past, although recent, is irrevocable. How had things happened? and, even more, why had they happened? The progressive deterioration of the subject, the authoritarianism of the victim and the weight of conscience are delineating a character traversed by a deep precariousness: existence itself. All the nuclei of the writing of Juan José Saer were anticipated in this essential work of his production: the History of the country as a backdrop to tell the individual stories, the unstable relationship between time and space, memory and the obsessive description of the minimum to miss the reader's perception (a blink, a tinkle of the spoon stirring in the teacup). Responso, like those prayers that are made for the deceased, lets hear the lucid narrative voice of Saer, fundamental author in the canon of Argentine literature.
Price: $30.00