7 Hernán Benítez, mentioned earlier in this paragraph, introduced Conti to the literary criticism of another occupant of the Seminario Metropolitano Conciliar de Villa Devoto, Father Leonardo Castellani, a controversial nationalist philosopher and writer. (See Haroldo Conti, ‘Era nuestro adelantado’, Crisis 37 (May 1976), p.43.) Conti was abducted and disappeared on 5th May 1976, some thirty years after leaving the seminary and only days after his short note on Castellani appeared in the magazine Crisis. Two weeks after his disappearance, General Videla, who had led the military coup on 24th March 1976, invited four writers to have lunch with him, to give the impression that all was normal in a society gripped by fear, assassination, disappearance, censorship and arbitrary arrest. One of those invited was Father Castellani. The magazine Crisis, in its penultimate issue before being forced to cease publication and its editors escaping into exile, interviewed Castellani about the lunch, and he replied: ‘I tried at least to take advantage of the situation with the Christian concern that I carried in my heart. Someone had visited me days before, who, with tears in their eyes and plunged in desperation, had begged me to intercede on their behalf for the life of the writer Haroldo Conti. I knew nothing more than that he was a prestigious writer and had been a seminarist in his youth… I noted his name on a piece of paper and gave it to Videla, who took it from me respectfully and assured me that peace would return to the country soon.’ Padre Castellani, ‘Algo más que libros’, Crisis 39 (July 1976), p. 3.
8 Ibid, p. 156.
9 Haroldo Conti, handwritten note, La Rioja, June 1967, published in Crisis 16 (August 1974), p. 44.
10 In Argentina, the highly influential magazine Primera Plana would put certain boom writers on the front cover (primera plana) and do close readings of their work, often accompanied by interviews placing them en primer plano [in the foreground].
11 Quoted in Héctor Guyot, ‘Haroldo Conti y el río de la vida’, La Nación 17th October 2009.
12 Haroldo Conti, ‘Compartir las luchas del pueblo’, Crisis 16 (August 1974), p. 42.
13 Juan Carlos Martini, ibid, pp. 40–41.
14 Benasso, p. 152.
15 See note 10, above.
16 Ibid, p. 153.
17 Haroldo Conti, ‘La breve vida feliz de Mister Pa’, Crisis 15 (June 1974), p. 64.
18 Ibid, p. 67
19 In Benasso, pp. 157–8.
20 Ibid, pp. 158–9.
21 Ibid, p. 153.
22 See also the analysis by Aníbal Ford which helps inform this section: ‘Homo viator. El conflicto entre estrategias literarias y etnográficas en Sudeste de Haroldo Conti’, in Eduardo Romano, compilador, Haroldo Conti, alias Mascaró, alias la vida, Colihue: Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires, 2008, pp. 245–67.
Dear readers,
We rely on subscriptions from people like you to tell these other stories — the types of stories most publishers consider too risky to take on.
Our subscribers don’t just make the books physically happen. They also help us approach booksellers, because we can demonstrate that our books already have readers and fans. And they give us the security to publish in line with our values, which are collaborative, imaginative and ‘shamelessly literary’.
All of our subscribers:
receive a first-edition copy of each of the books they subscribe to
are thanked by name at the end of these books
are warmly invited to contribute to our plans and choice of future books
Become a subscriber, or give a subscription to a friend
Visit andotherstories.org/subscribe to become part of an alternative approach to publishing.
Subscriptions are:
£20 for two books per year
£35 for four books per year
£50 for six books per year
Other Ways to Get Involved
If you’d like to know about upcoming events and reading groups (our foreign-language reading groups help us choose books to publish, for example) you can:
join the mailing list at: andotherstories.org/join-us
follow us on Twitter: @andothertweets
join us on Facebook: facebook.com/AndOtherStoriesBooks
follow our blog: Ampersand
About the Authors
Haroldo Conti was born in the province of Buenos Aires in 1925. He studied at a Salesian school and a Jesuit seminary before graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires. In his professional life, Conti was variously employed as an actor, a bank clerk, a Latin teacher and a screenwriter.
After the publication of Southeaster in 1962, he went on to write three more novels as well as several short story collections. He is the recipient of a number of important literary prizes, including the Casa de las Américas Prize. Conti was arrested in his apartment after the military coup of 1976, and is currently included on the list of the permanently disappeared.
Jon Lindsay Miles lives and works in southern Spain, also publishing as Immigrant Press. The translation of Conti’s Southeaster (2013) followed a hybrid guide-novel of Úbeda (Along the Way. Walking in Úbeda, 2009) and a bilingual collection of mediated stories of migration (Desde las Américas a Jaén/From the Americas to Jaén, 2011). He pays for this life by teaching English conversation at an outpost of the University of Jaén.
John King is Emeritus Professor of Latin American Literature at Warwick University. His research focuses on the cinema and literature of Argentina and Mexico in particular, and he edited The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture (CUP, 2004), among other publications.