“El hallazgo de la moderna fuente y la sonrisa de la antigua vertiente”: Juan José Saer, Santa Fe, 1957

“I’m Afraid I’ve Got Involved With a Nut”:New Faulkner Letters Lise Jaillant (bio) When I was working in the Random House archives at Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New York, I discovered a series of letters exchanged among William Faulkner, his editor Robert Haas, and a young aspiring writer James Culpepper. These letters can be found in a box labeled “General Correspondence; Col-Daz,” among rejection letters sent by Random House to aspiring writers. The correspondence of Faulkner, Haas, and Culpepper in the Random House archives is completed by a small cache of letters held in the Brodsky collection at Southeast Missouri State University. I have been able to identify a total of twenty-six letters, dated from January 6 to September 24, 1949.1 An exhaustive search of all relevant sources shows that nobody has ever commented on or published these letters. In the late 1940s, Culpepper attempted to secure Faulkner’s patronage in order to sell his own writings to Random House. Culpepper had a very high opinion of his work and was determined to become a literary star. However, he was well aware that the rise to fame would not be easy; not only did he live in Atlanta, Georgia, far from the literary centers of the East Coast, but he was [End Page 98] also unemployed and under pressure from his wife and family to start making a living. In several of his letters, Culpepper reminded Faulkner that fame does not happen magically. When Faulkner himself was a young writer, he had been helped by the more experienced Sherwood Anderson. Culpepper stopped at nothing to make sure that Faulkner got his message; he went to Faulkner’s home unannounced and posed as a journalist, he repeatedly threatened to visit again if Faulkner failed to help him, and he also wrote to Estelle Faulkner to ask for assistance. At this point, Faulkner started to worry for the safety of his wife and daughter, and he reluctantly agreed to help Culpepper with the publication of his novel. In a letter to Haas, however, Faulkner explained that he was being blackmailed by Culpepper and discouraged Random House from publishing the manuscript. A form letter of rejection was subsequently sent to Culpepper, who reacted angrily. On March 8, 1949, he wrote: “If I were the wife of some great writer, or his sister, or his drinking companion, or if I drank champagne in New Yirk (sic) with the literary crowd in some Fifth Avenue apartment—it would be different: anyone down here knows that.”2 It is difficult to evaluate Culpepper’s claim to literary talent. His manuscript is not in the archive for Random House returned it to the author. There is evidence that the publisher never ordered a reader’s report. We know only two things about Culpepper’s first novel: its length (210 pages) and its title: Jack Shall Have Jill (a line from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Culpepper eventually decided to write a second novel. In September, he told Haas that he was going to stay for some time in Oxford, Mississippi.3 With this letter, all traces of Culpepper disappear from our view. Of course, Faulkner had many reasons to dismiss an intrusive and bothersome young man such as James Culpepper. But his general indifference to aspiring writers deserves closer scrutiny. Drawing on previously unknown archival documents, my article highlights Faulkner’s refusal to follow the example of his own mentor, Sherwood Anderson, in helping young writers get published and noticed. Convinced that all good writers were eventually published, he showed no interest in the “have-nots” of the literary world. My central argument is that Faulkner’s dealings with would-be authors such as Culpepper exemplify his postwar image as a self-made writer who kept away from literary groups. The strange case of James Culpepper should therefore be read in the context of the Cold War at a time when Faulkner celebrated the ideology of individualism and rejected any kind of literary communities. [End Page 99] My article is complementary to Lawrence Schwartz’s study of the Faulkner revival of the late 1940s. Schwartz suggests that...

In the 1930s, Italian children residing abroad had access to a fascist magazine specifically tailored for them, Il Tamburino. Its existence demonstrates that the regime considered these children to be potentially significant actors, and particularly so when it came to the expansion of Fascism beyond the Italian peninsula. Despite the growing interest in the history of fascist imperialism, the ways in which children experienced and connected with the fascist regime from abroad remain an overlooked topic. Through the study of hundreds of children’s letters published by Il Tamburino, this article investigates the relationship between the imperial fascist discourses that positioned Italian children abroad as a central element in the regime’s expansionist ambitions and the responses of children to this campaign. The analysis of children’s correspondence reveals, first, that the manifestations of adherence to the regime were presented mainly through young writers’ displays of physical and emotional control. Second, that the experiences of children at school and summer camps, as well as their interactions with food, uniforms, and toys, contributed to the formation of a sense of fascist Italianness from below anchored in intimate, vernacular, and material elements. Third, the exchange among readers and editors fostered a sense of transnational community by facilitating the identification of shared experiences and emotions across diverse geographical locations. The children often depicted the magazine as a paternal figure caring for an extended family scattered across the world. Fourth, that this supposedly homogeneous and harmonious transnational community contained, however, disparities and tensions among its members that were the result of fascism’s internal dynamics. During the 1930s, Italian children residing abroad had access to a fascist magazine specifically tailored for them, Il Tamburino. Within its pages, children could have found fictional narratives portraying courageous boys assisting Italian military personnel in overcoming adversaries in colonial settings or depicting Italian pilots traversing the Atlantic Ocean in their sturdy aircraft. They could also read accounts written by other young expatriates who had traveled to Italy to attend summer camps organized by the regime. Engaged readers even had the opportunity to become magazine correspondents. Those entrusted with this task were responsible for providing updates on their respective educational institutions and fellow students. In urban Italian communities worldwide, including those in cities as different as Buenos Aires, Cairo, and London, the magazine disseminated information about Fascist Italy and extended invitations to its readership to contribute to Italy’s imperial project.

The 1960s were a crucial decade for museum building in Mexico. The key year was 1964, the end of Adolfo López Mateos's presidential term, since it saw the inauguration of the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Anahuacalli, the Museo de la Ciudad de México, and the most spectacular of all: the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's masterpiece and one of the country's primary tourist attractions. The 1960s also witnessed how Carlos Fuentes, a young writer who had published his first novel in 1958, continued to produce his canonical works at a staggering pace. In what follows, the dialogue between Fuentes's early fiction and the Museo Nacional de Antropología, two of the jewels of Mexican high modernism (always a dialogue with nationalism), not only invites a rereading of their most obvious features—namely, the luminous tension between their structures and their meticulous attention to detail—but also, from the distance of half a century (especially from the vantage point of the PRI's return to power), reveals a series of hitherto unexamined gaps and silences that merit critical attention.

Action and seduction

El trabajo se articula alrededor de las trayectorias de los exiliados españoles Francisco Ayala y José Medina Echavarrí­a en el periodo 1939-1949 en Latinoamérica, a fin de mostrar el papel que jugaron en la incorporación y/o relectura de algunos autores fundamentales de la tradición sociológica germánica y anglosajona, en particular de Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, Ferdinand Tí¶nnies y John Dewey. Siguiendo los intercambios de los sociólogos españoles, uno en México y otro en Buenos Aires, se destacan las continuidades de una relación a la distancia, así­ como el rol y las apuestas de ambos en la edición de libros y circulación dentro de los espacios académico-intelectuales, el campo editorial y cultural. Se observa, asimismo, una red vincular de correspondencias, aclimatación e incorporación de preocupaciones intelectuales y polí­ticas, de productos y proyectos de los sociólogos que va conformando un corredor entre México y Buenos Aires, y, a su vez, este se ramifica de acuerdo a los espacios y agentes con que uno y otro se relacionan. Entonces, desde estos trazos de las trayectorias intelectuales y su red vincular, se aborda el aporte de estos dos exiliados españoles en el proceso de renovación disciplinar de la sociologí­a en la región.

The article analyses the intellectual sociabilities and the trajectories of some of the most outstanding figures of this spheres in the Buenos Aires of the turn of the XIX to XX century. The main purpose is to think about the impact of the profound economic, social, political and cultural changes that affect the Argentina in this period, between them the professionalisation of the intellectual activities, over the central role that, until then, had played the traditional high society in the cultural field. The article hypothesis is that these mutations decreased that role, and, therefore, to belong to the traditional elite might be a relevant capital but not a crucial one to obtain success or prestige in the cultural field.

Recensión de las obras: José Luis CANCELO GARCÍA, Santa Teresa y los Agustinos. El agustinismo de Santa Teresa y la defensa agustiniana del espíritu teresiano (=Mística y místicos), presentación de Maximiliano Herráiz García, OCD. Monte Carmelo, Burgos 2016, 208 pp., ilustraciones. (Recensión de Rafael Lazcano). Jesús GASCÓN BERNAL, El convento agustino extramuros de Madrigal de las Altas Torres (=Monografías de Arte y Arquitectura, 11). Diputación Provincial - Institución Gran Duque de Alva, Ávila 2015, 426 pp., ilustraciones y planos. (Recensión de Rafael lazcano). Hubert JEDIN, Girolamo Seripando. La sua vita e il suo pensiero nel fermento spirituale del XVI secolo, a cura di Giulio Colombi e Angelo Maria Vitale con un saggio bibliografico di Angelo Maria Vitale. Centro Culturale Agostiniano - Ed. Morcelliana, Roma-Brescia 2016, 2 vols., 1323 pp. (Recensión de Rafael Lazcano). Emiliano SÁNCHEZ PÉREZ, El convento de Santa Mónica de la Orden de San Agustín en Mendoza (=Historiogr´fica Agustiniana). Religión y Cultura - Miño y Dávila Editores, Buenos Aires 2015, 704 pp. (Recensión de Rafael Lazcano). Emiliano SÁNCHEZ PÉREZ, Regreso al África. La Orden de San Agustín en Ceuta, ilustraciones José Luis Gómez Barceló, Ciudad Autónoma de Ceuta - Consejería de Educación y Cultura - Archivo General de Ceuta, Ceuta 2016, 319 pp. ilustraciones. (Recensión de Rafael Lazcano).

Mexican Painting: Adapting To Capitalism

Campo intelectual y torre de marfil: acerca de cuatro cuentos de Enrique Serna

The article aims to illustrate the mutual dependencies and transfers between different segments of the cultural field and areas of civic or political activities, together with the function these changes fulfil in redrawing individual trajectories and then the balance of forces. The leading idea is that, in relation with the literary field, the intellectual field is most sensitive to political changes and functions as a regulatory and legitimizing space for writers’ everyday practices, via its power to produce the criteria for public recognition and thus for symbolic inclusion and exclusion. This casts a different look on the claims for creative autonomy within the cultural field and its multiple dependencies on media, politics, the civic and the academic field, and the understanding of the inner logic of these domains through the lens of their complex interrelationship.

El periodista y bibliófilo italiano Pedro de Angelis constituye un ejemplo emblemático de las relaciones privilegiadas que la prensa periódica y el campo intelectual han entablado con el poder político a lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo xix. Desde esta perspectiva, y atendiendo a las relaciones lógicas que pueden reconocerse entre el campo cultural y el poder político, el estudio examina la labor del letrado napolitano en el seno de la prensa periódica del Río de la Plata a lo largo del segundo cuarto de la centuria. La constante colaboración con las diversas administraciones —desde Rivadavia hasta Rosas— y las innumerables iniciativas llevadas a cabo en el campo del periodismo, de modo especial a través de las páginas de El Lucero y el Archivo Americano, confirman su función como propagador de saberes y legitimador de los discursos que en campo cultural enhebra el poder político. Su itinerario intelectual, desde su inicial colaboración con el proyecto rivadaviano de promoción cultural, hasta su vinculación estrecha con Rosas, para erigirse en propagandista y vocero del régimen, revelan una trayectoria moldeada en torno a constantes mutaciones, protecciones y reacomodamientos en su vínculo con el poder. Su labor en la prensa rioplatense, que reconoce un inmutable apego a los ámbitos del poder político, como intelectual y «escritor público», corrobora su papel como promotor y difusor de saberes, orientados a la legitimación del discurso del poder en la fase que se corresponde a los epígonos del neoclasicismo y los albores del romanticismo en el Plata.

nationalizations that introduced far-reaching state intervention into several sectors of the economy, including key parts of the finance, raw materials, manufacturing, and transport industries. Less remarked was the sharp increase in state investment and regulation in the cultural field, which was accompanied by a massive mobilization of cultural producers in the work of national reconstruction. In substance, culture was also nationalized. The process of nationalization took different forms in different parts of the cultural sector, and the purpose of this paper is to show how it took place in the intellectual field. It will show how leading writers accepted their national mission, and in so doing became conscious of their status as intellectuals, perhaps for the first time. In this sense it will argue that intellectuals were both nationalized and constituted as intellectuals in 1945.

From 1976 to 1983, a totalitarian régime ruled in Argentina. Its repressive policies had an peculiar effect on the Buenos Aires artistic field. This period was characterized by artists’ social interactions being reduced to small groups, an arbitrary selection criteria in official institutions and a homogenization of the types of artists and the aesthetics in circulation. After a return to democracy, a process of alteration took place in Buenos Aires’s cultural field, and gradually opened up this social space, allowing the entrance of other social actors. These newcomers brought their own symbolic universes. I will analyze the different groupings of artists located in Buenos Aires during the transition towards democracy. I will approach this process of transition from dictatorship to democracy by studying the process of emergence of the artists known as “the artists of the Rojas”, which implied an opposition to the leading groups of the time.

In this article Olha Viernik explores two articles of Marietta Shahinian. Marietta Shahinian was a Soviet writer, critic and translator. She has written articles about a group of writers named „Serapion's brothers”. Marietta Shahinian knew the writers of this group. She often attended the meetings of the literary group. She participated in these meetings. She listened to new works read by young writers. Marietta Shahinian tried to be objective in her articles. She wrote her first article in 1921. A critic wrote that the writers create realistic works. Marietta Shahinian wrote that „Serapion's brothers” and the formal school have nothing in common. Modern scholars do not think so. Olha Viernik writes that Lev Lunts had a great influence on formalists. Marietta Shahinian praised the novel of Mykolai Nikitin named „Kol”. She believed that this story was the best in Russian literature. This story was published only time in 1922. Then the novel was forbidden in Soviet Russia due to censorship. A year after it Mykolai Nikitin became not only a Soviet author but a Soviet patriot. He praised the Soviet government and Bolsheviks. Mykolai Nikitin never wrote about the personal tragedies of different people in a period of the revolution and civil war again. In 1923 Marietta Shahinian wrote her second article. She appreciated every writer of the group. „Serapion's brothers” have changed. Marietta Shahinian wrote about important events and style changes in the works of group. Mykhail Zoshchenko describes original satirical characters in his works. Veniamin Kavierin continued the work of Hoffmann. Lev Luntz continued the work of Schiller. Yelyzaveta Polonska wrote intelligent lyrics. Mykolai Tykhonov created original ballads. Olha Viernik finds that the articles of Marietta Shahinian are of great importance in the history of the literary group „Serapion's brothers”.

Resumen : A partir de la crisis del 2001 en Argentina, y específicamente en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, se han desarrollado diversos emprendimientos autogestionados vinculados a la producción de diseño, dando lugar a la participación de numerosos jóvenes en la estructura productiva. En este entramado se configuran los jóvenes diseñadores independientes, que combinan estrategias económicas productivas con producciones culturales artísticas, dando forma a objetos que portan una estética singular. Interesa conocer la modalidad de inserción de estos jóvenes diseñadores por su impacto en el campo cultural y en la propia cotidianidad, al interior de una cultura visual posmoderna, en la cual el diseño interviene los objetos brindándoles valor simbólico incorporado a la vida cotidiana. Además se busca comprender el modo en que esta práctica construye estilos de vida y configura identidades, apelando a consumos individualizados en torno a los bienes de diseño. Se presentarán en este trabajo las recientes conclusiones de la investigación realizada.