From the National Library they reported that they will participate in the delivery of the distinction to Gusmán, which has already won among others Juan Gelman, Marcelo Cohen, Adolfo Colombres, Eduardo Romano and Alberto Szpunberg, the editor Leonora Djament, the writer and editor Luis Chitarroni and the journalist Silvina Friera.
Gusmán, whose novel “El frasquito”, published in 1973 and banned in 1977, was the beginning of a career that made them part of the canon of the country’s literature, upon learning of the distinction he revealed to Télam that he will donate all his originals to the National Library.
“My readings of Arlt and Borges, in that order, in my youth, and beyond, influenced me. Like a buoy and an anchor. The rest was my job,” he added.
Gusmán published more than ten fiction books, including “In the Heart of June” (Boris Vian Award, 1983), “Villa”, “El furrier” and “The House of the Hidden God”. He also made more autobiographical works such as “Virgilio’s Wheel” (1989) and eclectic essays such as “The Calculated Fiction”, “Epitaphs. The Right to Written Death” (2005), “Frankenstein’s Suitcase” (2018) and ” Crush” (2021).
In May 2022, he launched “Avellaneda profana”, which brings together his memories starting from his own childhood readings as far as the Corrientes street of his youth, with the Fausto and Martín Fierro bookstores as an emblem.
In “Avellaneda profana”, published by Ampersand publishing house, Gusmán recovers a geography of his life, but also of his literature. Although in the first books such as “El frasquito” (1973), “Brillos” (1975) or “In the heart of June” (1983) there is no explicit reference to the place where the stories that the narrator tells and are told take place. , Avellaneda appears in 1989 with the turns of “The wheel of Virgilio”. References to real places break out there, but it is in the story “Tennessee” with which the volume “The Darkest of the River” begins where that locality is embodied more explicitly from the story that takes place in the Regatas club, on the edge of the Riachuelo . The text concludes precisely with a story entitled “El Regatas”.
“El Regatas” is transformed or continues in the novel “Tennessee”, which the director Mario Levin filmed under the name “Sotto Voce” and which includes a scene on the edge of the Riachuelo where Norma Pons, Lito Cruz and Martín Adjemián sing the tango “Intimates”, a scene that for the narrator meant a change in the way of presenting his stories: “There is a sadness in which the river is witness to that emptiness. A love that fills you with questions. Seeing the two actors already the actress telling the story, her voice coming out of her body, from the smile to the tears made them real to me. And from there I realized: I wanted my characters to be flesh and blood, “said Gusmán.
On the figure of the author and essayist, Carlos Bernatek, a writer as well as a literary adviser to the Library, reflected: “Luis Gusmán has built, far from the great splendors, a multiple and transcendent work for any reader who intends to approach the dynamics of the Argentine literature that goes from the ’70s to the present day”.
“Whether in fiction or essays, Gusmán has displayed his own aesthetic evolution, a restlessness that has led him not to park in any comfort. From his mythical beginnings with ‘El frasquito’, to his participation in fundamental magazines for critics – Literal, Site, Conjectural-, Gusmán’s work has not ceased to branch out, surpassing twenty books, which interrogate the tradition of the classics, erudition and the very sensitive experience of history itself,” he added.
In this sense, Bernatek asserted that “his books also reveal the network of his interlocutors, the real ones and the literary ones, an uninterrupted dialogue that continues, and far from accepting a nostalgic evocation, he continues to question us as readers.”
In this way, with this award created in 2013, the National Library honors the great creators of national letters in gratitude for the value of their contributions.
The entrance to the delivery of the distinction will be free and free.
Source: Ambito
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