Short stories
La señorita Etcétera
Not translated into English
Arqueles Vela · 1922
Synopsis
A short, fragmentary narrative in which the narrator believes he recognises everywhere a woman he has seen, or thought he saw, and who changes face, place and condition with each encounter. He pursues her through the modern city, its trams, its cars, its trains, its lights and its music, never knowing whether she is the same woman. The plot matters less than the succession of images and metaphors, and both time and the characters' identity remain blurred.
Context
The text appears on 14 December 1922 in La Novela Semanal, the free supplement of El Universal Ilustrado edited by Carlos Noriega Hope, who asks in his preface whether it is a novel, a short narrative or a poetic chronicle; drawings by Guillermo Castillo accompany it. The author reworked it and included it in El café de nadie, published in Xalapa by the Estridentista publisher Horizonte in 1926. El Colegio de México issued a facsimile in 2020.
Who it is for
A novela corta of a few dozen pages, without a continuous plot, to be read in one sitting; no French or English translation found.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first narrative work of the Spanish American avant-garde and as the first significant text by its author.
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