chronicles of bustos domecq jorge luis borges

Borges and Bioy were prepared to publish the entire series there, but when word got out that Bustos Domecq was a pseudonym of two writers, their publication was suspended. The first of the stories, 'The Twelve Figures of the World,' appeared in 1942 in Victoria Ocampo's literary magazine Sur.

Since their irreverent and free-wheeling collaboration had suprisingly given birth to a 'third' author, whose broadly satirical style resembled neither that of Borges nor Bioy, they lifted two names from their respective family trees and christened him H. The authors characterized them with loving care, producing a gallery of pompous, posturing, vain, or pathetic Argentine social sterotypes, as absurd in their language as in their pretentions. In less than a year Borges and Bioy had composed six tales about Parodi, the taciturn barber from the south side of Buenos Aires who, owing to set of unfortunate circumstances, had been convicted of a murder he did not commit. Their consulting detective would be different: clients brought their problems for his consideration to cell 273 of the Las Heras Street Penitentiary. Crime fiction had had blind detectives, deaf detectives, crippled detectives, detectives who never left their armchair or their favorite tea shop. They wanted to come up with a new angle on the traditional gimmick of the 'limited' detective.

So, predictably, when they decided in 1941 to try writing a detective story together, the premise from the outset was a sort of joke. Finding in themselves a boundless capacity of parody and satire, they came to the discovery that humor and engaging absurdities are inherent in the most solemn of subjects. In the years that followed, their relationship developed one other fundamental characteristic as Bioy gradually to Borges' profoundly skeptical and ironic view of things. An immediate bond was established: their mutual passion for literature and for language. IT WAS IN 1931, at the suburban Buenos Aires villa of author-publisher Victoria Ocampo, that the 'established' Jorge Luis Borges, then 31, met the precocious Adolfo Bioy-Casares, an aspiring writer some 14 years his junior.

Chronicles of bustos domecq jorge luis borges