<i>La Obra Narrativa de David Viñas: La nueva inflexión de Prontuario y Claudia conversa</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: La Obra Narrativa de David Viñas: La nueva inflexión de Prontuario y Claudia conversa Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir Ángela Romero-Astvaldsson, La Obra Narrativa de David Viñas: La nueva infexión de Prontuario y Claudia conversa. Switzerland: Peter Lang. 2007. 300 pp. ISBN 978-3-03911-100-8. Ángela Romero-Astvaldsson did not take on an easy task when she set out to study Pronturario (1993) and Claudia conversa (1995) by the Argentine writer, critic and former professor David Viñas (born 1929). These were his two most recent novels at the time of her research (Viñas has since published Tartabul, in 2006). Romero-Astvaldsson proposes to demonstrate the change in form and content that were emerging in Viñas's always challenging narratives. She notes that despite Viñas's long career in creative writing and criticism, La Obra Narrativa de David Viñas is the first book-length study of his novels. The book is based in part on extensive interviews with the author in Buenos Aires in 1996 (12). Romero-Astvaldsson begins her book by focusing on the historical and political realities surrounding Viñas while he was growing up in Buenos Aires from 1945 to 1955, during the so-called classical Peronist era. Then she introduces Viñas's multifaceted narrative techniques, emphasizing the structural and thematic complexity of his work and drawing the reader's attention to his locally and internationally well-known criticism of political developments in Argentina. She elaborates on his active involvement within the porteño intellectual circles, and suggests that Viñas creates a multifaceted reality in his narrative because he is trying to present the complex, global vision of the groups he associated with. Viñas's participation in the literary bulletin Contorno, first published in 1953, was fundamental, she explains, because Viñas saw himself first and foremost as a social subject embedded in his immediate political reality. After dedicating the first two chapters to setting the stage, in both political and literary terms, Romero-Astvaldsson familiarizes her readers with Viñas's earlier literary accomplishments and practices and their context. In Chapter III, 'La narrativa Viñista' (1955–1995), although she perhaps dwells in too much detail on the role of other literary figures of the times (Borges, the O'Campo sisters and others), Romero-Astvaldsson succeeds in presenting an overview of the trends, tactics and turbulence that ruled Argentine intellectual activities up to and during the military rule from 1976–1983. Viñas's continuous fierce criticism of political developments, expressed in his narrative and in his essays, his exile to Mexico, and the tragic disappearance of his two children, all document his personal and profound distrust of his country's authorities. When Romero-Astvaldson turns her full attention to the study of Viñas's novels from the nineteen-nineties, she recognizes their possible limited distribution and she therefore briefly summarizes their content. She goes on to demonstrate their highly dense political components, their aim of reflecting Argentine reality at a given historical time, and their apparent criticism and questioning of then current state of affairs. In Pronturaio, she confirms, 'Buenos Aires is indisputably the essential sphere in Viñas' writing' (169). [End Page 266] The novel's essay-like presentation enhances its purpose and place within social criticism. The divide between art and social science is abolished; for Viñas, art cannot stand apart from the field of social and political commentary. Romero-Astvaldsson's textual analysis, as presented in Chapters IV, V and VI (108–236), focuses on various elements of narrative structure and thematic components, which are intertwined. Temporal dynamics are analysed in noticeable detail. This includes issues such as absence of linear narration, the exposure of different and fragmented realities, and chaotic use of present and past tenses. Inevitably, multiple narrative voices and the fragmented 'I' narrator is also a part of the author's analysis. Romero-Astvaldsson recognizes that Claudia conversa makes some break from the complexities existing in Viñas's former fiction, but she does not share his view that the novel is presented in a linear mode. A theme she...