Vigilia Fuga

This book consists of two short novels/novellas by Argentine author Enrique Anderson Imbert. The first, Vigilia (Vigil), is narrated by Beltran, the teenage son of immigrant parents. The story chronicles his adventures with his small band of friends, his romantic longings for a neighborhood girl, his struggles over identity and politics, and his literary ambitions. The novel in some ways feels like a cross between Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Arlt's The Mad Toy, with the sensitive young man trying to find his voice while navigating daily street life in Argentina. It's an intriguing premise, which sometimes pays off, such as a section where Beltran laments how dull his friends are and how he wishes they'd partake of the sort of witty repartee one might find in an Oscar Wilde play. The contrast between the funny, vulgar conversation of his friends, and the contrived-sounding dialog Beltran imagines is pretty comic. However, Beltran often feels too stuck in his own head, and by the end I had lost much interest in his musings and obsessions, which occupy much of the narrative. There's also an odd twist near the end of the novel. It seems to come out of nowhere, ending the novel on a rather perplexing note. This story, published in 1934, was Anderson Imbert's first novel, which may account for its sometimes frustrating aspects.

The second novel, Fuga (Fugue), covers some of the same thematic ground as Vigilia, though more compellingly. In this story, the protagonist is, Miguel Sullivan, a young man of Irish descent who moves from Tucuman to Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a journalist at a left-wing newspaper. Somewhat unsatisfied with the work he is producing, he enrolls in classes at the university to further his understanding of the world. At the university, Miguel meets two people who will have a strong impact on him. The story covers some of the same thematic ground as Vigilia–realism vs. fantasy in art, the finding of a literary voice, romantic passion–but also brings in some interesting Gothic themes, such as the doppelgänger and the ghostly lover, to liven things up a little. While I had to force myself to finish Vigilia, once I got into Fuga, I found it very fascinating.