“AN ORDINARY MAN”, FICTION’S SUBTERFUGES IN SAER’S THE SIXTY-FIVE YEARS OF WASHINGTON AND THE CLOUDS

Abstract

From the reading iconoclasm of Sor Teresita and the prevalence of her iterative drive to the combination of the invariant and the fluid that Verde and Verdecito take up from the Japanese haiku, The clouds (1997) reverses the sign of the aristofan parody: if the Greek theatrical comedy mocks the Socratic whims of the dilettantes, Saer undertakes a subtle exaltation of those discards of the western civilization model, true expatriates of the Platonic Republic. This caravan of apocryphal self-portraits linked to the avant-garde finds its myth of origin in that curious mixture of Juan L. Ortiz and Macedonio Fernández that Washington Noriega plays in The sixty-five years of Washington (1986), quintessence of the inorganic and fragmentary writer whose superior intelligence exempts him from the transited roads of publishing and general recognition. The narrative of Juan José Saer has wanted to stay precisely on that same paradox: that of the writer outside the tendencies and the market that seeks, nevertheless, to become visible.