The Author in the Office: Narrative Writing in Twentieth-Century Argentina and Uruguay (Monografías A)

245 Pages·2006·0.95 MB·English

by  P. R. Jordan

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Colección Támesis
SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 226
THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE
NARRATIVE WRITING IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ARGENTINA AND URUGUAY
Martel’s La bolsa (1891) initiates, and Dorfman’s Reader (1995)
concludes, a study of the white-collar citizens of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo in their daytime habitat: the office. The literary
background is the European literature of bureaucracy: Balzac, Galdós,
Gogol, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Kafka; the theoretical approach is
through the sociologists Max Weber and C. Wright Mills; the historical
context is the twentieth century: the decline of European power and the
ascendency of the USA; two world wars; the Wall Street crash;
communism and fascism. Through the eyes of Arlt, Benedetti,
Campodónico, Cortázar, De Castro, Denevi, Fernández, Marechal,
Mariani, Martínez Estrada, Onetti and Ricci, we observe life on the
two sides of the Plate, through the decades of the century. In the early
years the untroubled egalitarianism of BatllistaUruguay contrasts with
the insecurity of Radical Argentina. Later, Peronism emerges from
corruption – simultaneously promising, and threatening. Then
Argentina stumbles from crisis to crisis, while stagnant neo-Batllista
Uruguay pursues its bureaucratic routine. Neither country, apparently,
is going anywhere. In reality, however, they share a common destiny:
polarisation, repression and, eventually, military dictatorship. This is
the twentieth century, viewed by a bewildered, frequently anguished
participant: the person at the next desk.
PAULR. JORDANlectures in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the
University of Sheffield.
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PAUL R. JORDAN
THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE
NARRATIVE WRITING IN
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ARGENTINA AND URUGUAY
TAMESIS
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© Paul R. Jordan 2006
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Paul R. Jordan to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2006 by Tamesis, Woodbridge
ISBN 1 85566 126 8
Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by
Cambridge University Press
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements..............................................................................................vi
1 Introduction: Writing in and of the Era
of the Typewriter.............................................................................................1
2 Office Life in 1920s’Buenos Aires and Montevideo:
Visions of Purgatory.....................................................................................26
3 The 1930s: From Social Criticism to Creative Disillusion..........................56
4 Mario Benedetti: Uruguay, the Office Republic...........................................81
5 1940s’Argentina: From Alienation to Bureaucratic Nightmare.................126
6 Argentine Bureaucracy from the 1950s to the 1970s:
The Enemy within.......................................................................................165
7 Uruguay from the 1960s: Bureaucracies of the Absurd.............................195
8 Conclusion: Globalisation and the Writer-functionary...............................224
Select Bibliography...........................................................................................229
Index..................................................................................................................233
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge support from:
the International Congress of Americanists’ fund, administered by the
British Academy, for financing a research trip to Uruguay.
the Arts and Humanities Research Board, for subsidising a period of study
leave.
the University of Sheffield Research Fund, for assistance with publication.
I also thank friends and colleagues in Montevideo and Sheffield for their
helpful suggestions, and, in particular, Jean, for patiently and critically
reading draft chapters.
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1
Introduction: Writing in and of the
Era of the Typewriter
This study chronicles the lives of the white-collar workers of the capital cities
of two nations, Argentina and Uruguay, through the greater part of the
twentieth century: that is to say, during the post-pen, pre-informatic age.
In the office, it was the era of the filing cabinet, the rows of desks, the
mechanical adding machine and the telephone. Most importantly, in theoffice
itself, and in the narrative that reflects it, this was the era of the typewriter.
The present study has no pretensions as a work of social science (although
it draws on sociological and historical works), but rather is conceived as a
narrative of cultural history; moreover, it is one that emerges through the work
of a very particular group of people: creative writers who also experienced the
ordinary life of the office. Poised between the creative and the routine, our
writers reflect – and reflect on – the fundamental conflict between individual
autonomy and the need to survive within the system. For these people the
nature of that system is, obviously, broadly speaking bureaucratic.
Through the decades the writers respond in different ways to this
fundamental conflict. Some address specific economic and political
circumstances, while others internalise the bureaucratic present and extrapolate
it into a nightmarish future. On the other hand, some seem curiously untouched
by bureaucratic routine, but are more interested in, for example, the city; yet
others transform office routine into baroque extravagance. One of the
underlying realities that inform these varied responses is, of course, the duration
of service in an office, and the type of office: a working life processing files
inside a bank or a state bureaucracy self-evidently is very different from writing
newspaper articles or editing journals.
One of the most combative and acute writers in the River Plate in the
twentieth century was the Argentine Roberto Arlt (1900–42), who in the
prologue to his third novel, Los lanzallamas, launches a call to arms. Referring
to his fatigue after what were in fact creative hours at the typewriter, he
nevertheless seems to draw his work towards the common white-collar
experience, that of his readers. He does so to challenge and give heart to his
readers; his message is that the machinery of everyday routine can be
harnessed to other ends: ‘El porvenir es triunfalmente nuestro. Nos lo hemos
ganado con sudor de tinta y rechinar de dientes, frente a la «Underwood», que
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2 THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE
golpeamos con manos fatigadas, hora tras hora, hora tras hora’ (1931,
unnumbered). Arlt’s defiant challenge, it seems to me, remains the central
issue: creativity or bureaucracy, conformity or autonomy. It is an issue of
profound implications indeed: it is the fundamental question of how individual
and society are related.
Throughout the century, world-wide, the specific question of artistic and
intellectual independence would arise time and again. Indeed, Arlt himself, an
independent writer of the left, was in 1932 involved in a clash with the
communist party, in the pages of the journal Bandera Roja.1However, in this
study we are not concerned primarily with bureaucratic control of the creative
writer, but rather with creative writers’concerns about human experience in a
bureaucratic environment, and specifically in twentieth-century Buenos Aires
and Montevideo.
In the River Plate literature of the office there are many references to
regimentation and alienation, as well as to interactions within the bureaucratic
hierarchy. Some works focus on economic conditions, such as the hours of
work, salaries and pensions of what are presumed to be typical individuals.
However, with the exception of Roberto Mariani’s early stories, there is rarely
any sense that these issues are subject to change – and they are certainly not
presented as negotiable. Generally speaking, the writers are aware of an
immediate national political context, which sometimes is perceived as part of
a global process – although this latter is seen as beyond national influence,
much less control. In the literature, therefore, the office tends to be either a
microcosm of national culture, or the setting for a study of the subjective
experience of the white-collar worker, or a combination of both.
The River Plate narrative of the office, as we shall see, generally reflects an
understanding of the world that is Weberian, binary, in which the white-collar
worker is subjugated and effectively powerless. However, other ways have
emerged of viewing the relations between the individual as worker and citizen,
and the institutions of business and state. Two influential recent thinkers in this
area have been Michel Foucault and his disciple, Nikolas Rose.2 Rose,
developing Foucault’s ideas about power and subjectivity, traces through the
twentieth century the various initiatives and experiments that have been devised
to create ever more complex, intrusive systems, whose objective is to manage
the morale and productivity of the workforce. The key factor in Rose’s analysis,
and in this he follows Foucault, is his rejection of the binary view, consisting of
the exercise of, and submission to, power. Instead he sees a complex, open
interaction – indeed, collaboration – involving specialised interest groups.
1 See: Jordan, 2000: 30–1.
2 The two relevant works are Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir(1975) and Nikolas
Rose, Governing the Soul. The shaping of the private self(1990).
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INTRODUCTION: THE ERA OF THE TYPEWRITER 3
One significant specialist group consists of what Foucault calls the expert-
intellectuals such as, for example, psychologists. Foucault argues that in the
twentieth century these various technical professionals have occupied the
territory that previously belonged to independent intellectuals, and particularly
writers, who played a critical-visionary interpretive role in society.
At this stage it must be reiterated that the present analysis is not based on
social science expertise, but rather its perspective on culture is primarily
informed by literary concerns. However, I would tentatively propose that
while the Foucault–Rose analysis may be directly applicable to Europe or
North America, this does not necessarily mean that always, in all respects, it
is applicable to River Plate cultures. In many senses these are dependent
cultures, a reality that can generate different structures from those of the
dominant area, and raise different issues.
While Argentina and Uruguay undoubtedly have had their quota of expert-
intellectuals in their institutions (these countries are renowned for their
large numbers of psychoanalysts, for example) it is not the case that the
independent – or politically engaged – writers and intellectuals have renounced
the role of interpreters and critics of their societies. This is the function that the
River Plate writers of the office fulfil – or try to fulfil. Of course, unlike the
expert-intellectuals they are rarely part of the decision-making establishment.
And yet, especially if the distribution of power is complex, such writers might
be considered a special category of expert-intellectuals, in that their reflections
derive from a unique kind of field work: direct experience.
Before considering the writings of Weber and Wright Mills, and placing the
River Plate literature of the office in relation to them, two general issues must
be addressed, relating to the scope and content of the literature considered in
this study. The first is the question of gender. Although the office in twentieth-
century Argentina and Uruguay was not an exclusively male workplace, the
literature has a predominantly masculine perspective. Certainly, there are
numerous examples of women playing important or minor roles, in the office
or outside it. However, women are never the main protagonists in the office.
Indeed, I have only discovered one case where women are considered
exclusively as workers, and separately from men: Martínez Estrada’s essay,
‘Gusto’, in La cabeza de Goliat(1947), a brief sketch of how low-paid female
employees such as clerks, typists and saleswomen spend their lunchtimes.
Neither has any text come to light, written by a woman, which deals directly
with bureaucracy and the office as workplace; the short play, La amansadora,
by Virginia Carreño, which is set in a ministry waiting room, comes closest.3
There are of course numerous works which, like La amansadora, share some
3 Carreño, 1995. The play’s date is uncertain, although not later than 1957, since it is
mentioned in Denevi, 1957.