Obituary: Rodolfo Fogwill

Although it hasn’t been covered in the U.S. papers (at least to the best of my knowledge), Argentine author Rodolfo Fogwill passed away at the end of last month. He published a ton of stuff in Argentina—around 20 books—but only one—Malvinas Requiem—has been published in English translation. Typical situation, but this really blows. Malvinas Requiem is a really incredible book . . . Didn’t get much play here in the States (again, typical; again, really blows), but you can read my review of it here.

Anyway, the Guardian has a great piece on Fogwill written by Nick Caistor, who, along with Amanda Hopkinson, translated Los Pichiciegos into English. Whole obituary is worth checking out, but here are a few awesome highlights. (Which will likely make at least some of you want to read more about Fogwill):

Loud-mouthed, provocative, often downright rude, the writer Rodolfo Fogwill was a legendary figure in recent Argentinian literature. Fogwill, who has died aged 69, from pulmonary emphysema, probably exacerbated by his inveterate chain-smoking, quarrelled with everybody, was intolerant of any writing or behaviour that in his view smacked of political correctness or pretension, and yet wrote some of the most resonant short stories and novels in Argentina of the past 30 years.

The story surrounding the way he wrote one of his most important novels, Los Pichiciegos (1983), is typical. The book was a protest at the horror of the war fought between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas/Falkland islands in the South Atlantic, and at the stupidity of war in general. Fogwill claimed to have written the book in six days during June 1982, while the war was still going on, keeping himself going with vast amounts of cocaine and whisky. [. . .]

Born in Bernal, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Fogwill tried to convince me his surname was English, claiming he had ancestors in Fox Hill, in Sussex. An only child, he studied medicine and sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. He began teaching there, but fell foul of the military regime that took power in 1966. “I was sacked for being a communist, the worst insult imaginable for the Trotskyist I was at the time.”

This reversal took him into the world of advertising, where, he claimed, he made and lost several fortunes. His work again caused him problems during the military dictatorship at the end of the 1970s, when the authorities accused him of sending a subliminal message to a banned leftwing group in a TV commercial he had produced. The authorities closed his bank accounts and arrested him for “economic subversion”. Thrown into jail, he could not pay his debts, and so eventually was tried for fraud.

Which led him to become a writer! And a brilliant one at that.

His pronouncements on literature were always trenchant: “To write seems to me easier than trying to avoid the feeling of meaninglessness that not writing brings”; or “Literature doesn’t tell stories, but ways to tell stories”.

I can’t figure out why Malvinas Requiem isn’t listed on the Serpent’s Tail site . . . I think it’s still in print (came out like two years ago, so one would hope), and it’s definitely worth checking out.