Word: erdosain
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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...been unimaginably weird. True, the trappings of proletarian fiction are all roughly in place-lowlife taverns, brothels and urban rot: "The setting sun lit up the most revolting inner recesses of the sloping street." But the anti-hero who stumbles through this landscape is a perversely comic invention. Remo Erdosain collects bills for a sugar company and engages in petty embezzlement. He also writhes in noisy anguish at a world that can ignore his true genius. "Didn't they call me crazy," he asks an acquaintance, "because I said they should set up shops to dry-clean...
...employer tells Erdosain that he must repay the money he has stolen or face jail, and his wife informs him that she is running off with another man. He luxuriates in grief raised to a higher power: "If he had had the strength, he would have thrown himself down a well...
...Instead, Erdosain joins a mysterious figure called the Astrologer in a plot to take over the world. It goes something like this: Give the masses a new religious symbol to believe in ("harness the madman power") and then exploit their zeal to create wealth, in this case by mining gold in a remote area of Argentina. The Astrologer explains: "See? We'll lure the workers in with false promises and whip them to death if they won't work." Erdosain feels flattered to be included among the brains of this organization. His invention of a copper-plated rose...
Despite his ineptitudes, Erdosain is astute enough to sense that "on a deeper level than consciousness and thought, there's a whole other life, more powerful and vast." The Seven Madmen staked Arlt's claim to a terrain that others, including Borges and Garcia Marquez, continue to explore. -By Paul Gray
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