Scarecrow & Other Anomalies Read Free

solidarity with the broken romances of married whale-shaped women and with the lotharios in their coats and tails who consume them, both their wombs and their purses.” There is the plight of whales in nature and of betrayed women in society united by a creative use of Argentine slang. There is further the strong suggestion that the abandoned women are pregnant, a suggestion reinforced by a line in the next paragraph referring to rats and abortions circulating through the subsoil. This is one example among many that could be cited.
     
    So maybe the scarecrow can be all things to all people, creating such a plethora of readings as to reach out and grab anyone, or to appeal to the mind that reads it in its own way, which might mean any way. Maybe Girondo produced a deconstructionist text before the evil thought of tearing apart great works entered the envious minds of pretentious critics, and at the same time created their worst nightmare, for they can hardly deconstruct a text that in the process of self-creation deconstructs itself. They need to find the supposed standard meaning of a work before they can attack it, ascribe false readings to it and then claim that it fails in its mission, but here “al alcance de todos” there is no standard meaning, unless it be one that scares birds. For this reason, I believe that Scarecrow may become a guardian angel for the distraught soul about to bite the cyanide capsule of literary criticism and an effective antidote for those who already writhe in the throes of deconstruction.
    In any event, you can judge for yourself, but only if you read the print edition, where the original text is presented on the left-hand pages facing the English, which appears on the right, so that you can make your own possible alternate readings as you follow Alter-Gilbert’s inspired rendition. Here you must take my word for it that Alter-Gilbert has kept his translation close to the original text, but occasionally was moved by its spirit to outpourings of unrestrained eloquence, such as do not spring from the tedium of mechanically following word for word.
     
    3. The Straw Man Objects
     
    But wait a minute, someone who has already read the work might object. There are standard themes here: life, love, suffering, death, identification with the universe. What’s so original? Yes, I would agree, there are standard themes, but from what angle? Is Scarecrow symbolic, satiric, ironic, lyrical, rhapsodic, paradoxical, absurd—or all of these things put together? Does it have an overarching theme, or even a logical sequence? Must you read it straight through from chapter 1 to 24, or can you proceed in any order you like? And are the chapters really chapters; do they necessarily belong to the same work? To what genre does the thing belong, can you tell me that? Can you spell out its message, or if you tried would you not so grossly mischaracterize the work as to prove yourself a philistine? To all of these questions the wise guy whom I have invented must throw up his hands. And so, I imagine, must real readers whom I have not invented, even though the work is meant to be within their reach.
    Girondo once drew up a manifesto for a magazine he helped found, called Martín Fierro after the freedom-loving gaucho of the pampas. It lays out a sort of program, but one of such broad expanses as to remind us that “everything is new under the sun if seen with up-to-date eyes and expressed with a contemporary accent.” The manifesto is included at the end of this volume, so that you may hold it up to Scarecrow and see whether Girondo’s masterpiece observes his own rules. For that matter, whether anyone followed his rules, or whether there were any rules to follow. Dozens, scores and possibly hundreds of Latin American writers have felt the influence of Girondo, which greatly invigorated the Argentine avant-garde through the magazine, but it was one that reinforced their individual abilities and left no