Roberto Arlt, crime reporter

About the book:

Roberto Arlt, Crime Reporter depicts life in Argentine newspaper newsrooms during the 1930s, showing a work environment and a staff, mostly made up of renowned writers and poets, buzzling with creativity. It also recreates many crime news and articles written by Arlt -and other reporters-, as comics. Thus, the book constitutes an unconventional biography, based not only on the figure of Roberto Arlt, but also on his historical context, which enabled him to create a landmark work of 20th-century Argentine literature.

Excerpt:

Roberto Arlt, Crime Reporter is an account of the writer’s stint as a crime reporter for the Argentine newspaper Crítica, funded and edited by Natalio Botana. A young Arlt hones his writing skills in an office brimming with narrators, poets, and journalists, namely Raul and Enrique Gonzalez Tuñon, and Nicolas Olivari, among many others. This experience -along with his frequent visits to the underworld of late 1920s Buenos Aires- would inspire him to write, in bars and inns in his spare time, one of the most outstanding works of Argentine literature in the 20th century: The Seven Madmen (Los siete locos).


Translated by Jorge Rafael Abuchedid / Cecilia Della Croce