''Locos: A Comedy of Gestures'' is the first novel of Spanish-born American writer

Felipe Alfau Felipe Alfau (24 August 1902 – 18 February 1999) was a Spanish-born American novelist and poet. Most of his works were written in English. Biography Born in Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It ...

(1902–1999), written in 1928 and published in 1936. The

metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...

al novel remained out of print until 1988 when it was reprinted by

Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...

; its positive reception then led to the publication of Alfau's second novel '' Chromos'' in 1990, which he had written in 1948.

Synopsis

The book consists of eight independent but interrelated short stories that the author states can be read in any order. In the introduction, Alfau thanks his characters "for their anarchic collaboration"—in the stories the characters and narrator often interact.

# "Identity" # "A Character" # "The Beggar" # "Fingerprints" # "The Wallet" # "Chinelato" #: I "The Ogre" #: II "The Black Mandarin" #: III "Tia Mariquita" # "The Necrophil" # "A Romance of Dogs" #: I "Students" #: II "Spring"

Background

was born and grew up in Spain. In 1916, the 14-year-old Alfau moved with his family to New York. He had ambitions to become a music conductor and wrote music criticism for ''

El Diario La Prensa ''El Diario Nueva York'' is the largest and the oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States. Published by ImpreMedia, the paper covers local, national and international news with an emphasis on Latin America, as well as human-i ...

''. By the late 1920s he had a wife and daughter and hoped to support them with his writing; he wrote ''Locos'' about 1928, and in 1929 he had a children's book ''Old Tales from Spain'' published. He had considerable difficulty finding a publisher for ''Locos''.

Publication and reception

Farrar & Rinehart first published the book in 1936; Alfau received $250 for the manuscript. The edition was priced $2.50 and was the first in an intended series of signed editions sold by subscription. The book had a positive critical reception, including a review by writer Mary McCarthy, and quickly disappeared. The book then stayed out of print until editor Steven Moore introduced it to

, which reprinted it in 1988 with an afterword by McCarthy. Alfau said he was "bemused" with the attention the book received late in his life, but remarked it would have interested him more if it had come when he was younger. Comics writer

Harvey Pekar Harvey Lawrence Pekar (; October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical ''American Splendor'' comic series. In 2003, the series inspired ...

wrote a one-page comic strip entitled "Felipe Alfau" (1993), illustrated by

Joe Sacco Joe Sacco (; born October 2, 1960) is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is credited as the first artist to practice rigorous, investigative journalism using the comics form, also referred to as comics journalism. His groundbrea ...

, in which he recounts discovering a first-edition copy of ''Locos''; in the original draft of the script he compares the work to those of O'Brien, Queneau, and

Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his no ...

Legacy

Alfau's techniques are seen as anticipating those in the works of later-generation

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

writers such as Barth, Calvino, Nabokov, Pynchon, O'Brien, and Borges. McCarthy described the attraction of the book to her as "the modernist novel as detective story", and later compared it to Nabokov's ''

Pale Fire ''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic co ...

'' (1962). Comparable works that preceded Alfau's include Pirandello's play ''

Six Characters in Search of an Author ''Six Characters in Search of an Author'' ( ) is an Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921. An absurdist metatheatric play about the relationship among authors, their characters, and theatre practitioners, it p ...

'' (1921) and works by Unamuno in the mid-1920s. The idea of characters taking on a life independent from their author's intention reappears in Gilbert Sorrentino's '' Mulligan Stew'' (1979) and Desmond MacNamara's ''The Book of Intrusions'' (1994). A chapter appeared in the 2011 ''Norton Anthology of Latino Literature''.

References

Works cited

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