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SS This copy has been deposited in the LibraryLXtm of^ This copy has been deposited in the Senate House Library, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. ‘Antonio Dal Masetto (1938-): a study of a writer’s craft and an exploration of his place on the Argentine literary map.’ Gwendolen Norah MacKeith University College London April 2007 81,736 words UMI Number: U592271 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592271 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed ’In my Craft or Sullen Art’ fromDeaths and Entrances (1946), Dylan Thomas (1914- 1953) Introduction CONTENTS Page Introduction 3 1) A revolutionary scene: two Argentine literary magazines - El escarabajo de oro (1959-74) and Eco Contemporaneo (1961-69) 36 2) Rayuela (1963) to Siete de Oro (1969): comparing Julio Cortazar’s cult novel to the first novel published by Antonio Dal Masetto of ‘la generation mufada’ 63 3) ‘La impronta Pavesiana’: an examination of the impact of the Italian Writer Cesare Pavese (1908 - 1950) on the work of Antonio Dal Masetto 93 4) Antonio Dal Masetto’s weekly column in Pagina/12 (1987 -): an enquiry 158 5) ‘La Gallega’ - A translation and a commentary on a fragment from Siete de oro 201 Conclusion 267 Bibliography 271 Appendix 289 Introduction 2 Introduction - Who is Antonio Dal Masetto? I became interested in the work of Antonio Dal Masetto through reading his weekly column in the Argentine newspaperPagina/12 when I lived in Buenos Aires for a period in 2002. These were short observational pieces about characters and situations in the city with a narrative perspective which seemed to denote an ‘outsider’. As an outsider myself, I found this voice inclusive and intriguing and also sometimes very funny. It struck me that the perceptions in this column were more profound than material I might have expected to appear in a daily broadsheet newspaper. The style of the writing appealed to me; this cool observational tone, a gentle humour, a simple prose and a certain implicit quality which reminded me of poetry. This was my initial subjective response. Antonio Dal Masetto was bom in 1938 in Intra, Italy, to a family of farm labourers. In 1950, at the age of twelve, he and his family emigrated to Argentina. For many Italians post-war Italy offered them few prospects while Argentina promised a more hopeful future. The family settled in Salto, in the province of Buenos Aires. In interviews Dal Masetto has talked about how difficult this transition was for him between countries, languages and cultures and he has described how he believes that this experience informed his identity as a writer. Dal Masetto leamt Spanish through reading books at his local library. He chose these books himself at random. He left school at a young age and did not go to university. Before becoming a full-time writer he worked as a painter Introduction 3 and decorator, a door-to-door salesman, a public servant and a journalist. This information is mentioned in the inside cover of almost all of Dal Masetto’s books and is obviously regarded as relevant to his profile as a writer. It places him socially and intellectually at the margins of a literary scene. Novelas Bildungsroman - Siete de oro (1969) and Fuego a discrecion (1983) Dal Masetto published his first collection of stories,Lacre, in 1964 which won a mention for the Casa de las Americas prize, Cuba. However, this collection has never been republished since its first edition in 1964.1 It was Dal Masetto’s first novel,Siete de oro of 1969 that was his literary debut. Siete de oro has a flavour of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1955), not in the sense of ‘spontaneous language’ (the language is in fact measured and restrained), but in the sense that this is an Argentine road trip which tells the story of a group of friends who have rejected traditional values and are experimenting with the excesses of freedom. They take a train from Buenos Aires to go and stay in a house by a lake in Barriloche where the dynamics of this group unfold. Altough the narrator is on the periphery to this drama, he is central to the narrative. This journey to the south becomes his internal exploration where scenes of the present are interspersed with memories. Some chapters are self-contained, detailed portraits of characters who are not integrated into the rest of the novel but seem to exist as separate stories. Chapter four, for example, describes the arrival to Buenos Aires of the narrator as a teenager and his relationship with the owner of a seedy pension, a middle-aged woman, Ta Gallega’. In chapter six the narrator encounters Raimundo, a compulsive liar who tells wildly imaginative stories and then confesses: ‘Me gusta inventar’ (p. 67). Chapter thirteen describes a trip to Brazil 1 Unfortunately, I have not been able to find access to this collection. Introduction 4 where the narrator and a friend sleep with a prostitute, Vanda. These cameos seem to reflect something of the narrator’s identity and are interspersed with the narration of a present in Barriloche. The narrator gets together with Eva, but this relationship becomes confused with a relationship of the past, with Bruna, who he is trying to forget. There is a near death of the child of Dardo and Luisa, Pedro. This shakes up the group, most particularly the narrator, from a state of apathy and indifference which characterises the tone of the novel. Miguel Briante describes the novel on the back cover of the 1991 edition as ‘mucho mas que un libro, es un mojon del tiempo: del arrebatado tiempo de los 60 y del desconcertado tiempo de estos dias en que vuelvan las mismas dudas y las mismas furias. Es un clima, un lugar donde la memoria descifra claves de lo que se perdio y de lo que aun no se ha perdido.’ Yet despite Briante’s claim that the novel captures the sixties in Argentina, there are few specific markers for a particular social context. In chapter ?, for example, the narrator arrives to Buenos Aires as a teenager and becomes swept up in a demonstration. We are told there are slogans, but not what they say, and nor is the narrator himself interested to find out. However, although the year of publication was 1969, we can infer that this scene could recall the workers’strikes of the late 50s, after the Revolucion Libertadora which overthrew Peron in 1956, or the student demonstrations of the early 1960s. In the year of its publication,Siete de oro would have also resonated with recent events at the time, in particular the civil uprising in Cordoba, ‘el Cordobazo’, in May 1969. As Briante intimates, the novel captured a restless generation who were questioning yet were unsure of what to believe in and what the future held. Introduction 5 Fuego a discretion came out in 1983 and included many of the same marginal characters of Siete de oro and the same disconnected narrative voice in search of meaning and identity. The novel opens ‘Aquel fue un verano como pocos. Me habia separado de otra mujer, me habia quedado sin lugar donde vivir y sin trabajo. Daba vueltas por las calles, soportaba el calor y la falta de objetivos, comia salteado, me encontraba con conocidos de otras epocas, me alentaba diciendome que no todos tienen la suerte de poder recomenzar desde cero.’ Set over seven days during a summer in Buenos Aires, the narrator goes between alcohol fuelled conversations with old friends and meetings with old lovers and new lovers.

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