Richard Gwyn

Poems for staying at home (Day 18)

  Today we have a short and apposite poem from Beatriz Vignoli. I have no idea which hotel is referred to by the four asterisks, but the poem always makes me think of the Hotel Castelar in Buenos… Read More

River Crossing

So, we were just on Santa Fe (the main thoroughfare connecting Palermo to the centre of Buenos Aires) trying to hail a taxi, when these young people, on the way back from a night out – or rather,… Read More

Faded passport

When I check in for my flight to Santiago at Buenos Aires aeroparque, the young woman at the Aerolineas Argentinas desk, who I assume must be new to the job, stares long and hard at the cover of… Read More

Medialunas

For any visitor to Buenos Aires, the first thing to address is the breakfast medialunas issue.  These delightful creations (like croissants, but sweeter and more doughy) are placed in front of you, or find a way of leaping… Read More

The War of the Idiots

    The War of the Idiots by Beatriz Vignoli (Argentina)   We dynamited the bridge before ever crossing it, the lovely bridge that we built.   The bridge over the river of forgetfulness, it was.   Now… Read More

A Vagabond

The gentleman depicted here is a vagabond, from the Latin vagari, to wander. In English the term has almost disappeared in its original sense, although a quick internet search identifies the popularity of the term to help sell… Read More

Forgetting Chatwin

Day five of the Wales Writers Chain tour of Argentina and Chile. We began in Buenos Aires on Monday, at the Spanish Cultural Centre, where Mererid Hopwood and I gave lectures on, respectively, the Welsh and English literary… Read More

The ‘very special place of love’: Roberto Bolaño, V.S. Naipaul, and sodomy.

  A new addition to the mass of Bolaño miscellanea being published in English appears on the New York Review of Books blog. In an entertaining essay, Scholars of Sodom, Bolaño takes a delightful swipe at V.S. Naipaul’s… Read More

Of Nooteboom, Jünger, Céline, and assorted literary gossip

I can confess without shame that occasionally I am persuaded to buy a book on the strength of the cover, and it was certainly a factor in selecting Cees Nooteboom’s collection of stories, published by the superb Maclehose… Read More

Borges and I

The idea that we contain a double, or a secret other, is a strangely pervasive one, and has fascinated writers from different traditions and in distinct genres. Among those who have famously approached the topic are Robert Louis… Read More

J.M. Coetzee in Buenos Aires

Coetzee came to Buenos Aires to deliver the final reading of the festival last night. I am not really authorized to write at length about Coetzee, having only read two of his novels, which I found admirable, and… Read More

Villa Miseria

  In immaculate contrast to yesterday’s trip to the rarefied air of Villa Ocampo, today I visited a slum (or a Villa Miseria) to the south of the city in the barrio of Barracas 21/24. It is an… Read More