Paperweights: the chronicles of César Vallejo and two other recommended readings for the week

Selection and edition: Mariana Rodríguez, Yaneth Sucasaca, Rodrigo Vera

Chronicles

Pages: 132

Publisher: House of Peruvian Literature

That Vallejo is an inexhaustible poet is a fact that there is no doubt about. But that really novel and interesting approaches to his work can be found is not always true. This is one of them, luckily, since it consists of a compilation of his chronicles related to scientific and technological advances, an area in which the author of “The Black Heralds” was always interested. The compilation is made up of texts that have appeared in various publications (including El Comercio).

There are several aspects of Vallejo’s work to highlight in these chronicles: his curiosity and attraction to detail, a reporter imprint far removed from the journalistic conventions of the time, a writing in permanent search for the right word and the neologisms of the topics. that he dealt with (and that, as those in charge of the selection point out, also served as input for the transgressor “Trilce”).

In this sense, the 26 articles gathered in this volume delve into disparate issues –and from sometimes unusual angles– such as medicine (“the case of surgeons who ‘operated’ on fat women to better model their shapes”, he writes), genetics (“now comes the revenge of the monkeys”) or the cinema (as when he laments the appearance of sound films: “even the cinema, so willingly called silent art, is a source of insufferable noise”) . The auguries of him keep errors and ingenuousness, of course, but they are the consequences of a bold author, iconoclastic and in the most futuristic way of him.

Author: Christian Reynoso

Test

Pages: 282

Publisher: Ricardo Palma University

Last year, Puno researcher Christian Reynoso published a very attractive book entitled “Transits and Returns”, which rescued from oblivion the comics of Demetrio Peralta (1910-1971), also an artist from Puno, younger brother of the avant-garde Arturo Peralta (better known as Gamaliel Churata), but an elusive figure within any tradition in which he might have been inscribed or linked.

Now, a few months after said publication, Reynoso expands his research with this larger volume, which includes the other facets of Peralta: his illustrations, woodcuts, oil paintings, and even the tiles that served him as a means of subsistence for almost 30 years. . The set, assembled from a variety of scattered sources, gives us the complete puzzle of an extremely interesting and unfairly ignored artist to date. A work built in silence, but that shows a coherent identity, to which he added his interest in raising awareness about the social difficulties of some vulnerable groups in our country.

As the author points out in the introductory text of the work, far from this being a conclusive study, it opens the door for further investigation of an elusive character, who remains a mystery to be discovered.

Author: Fernando Ampuero

Childish

Pages: 58

Publisher: Planeta Junior

The sad journey of Run Run, the little fox that became the center of attention for having been mistaken for a dog in Comas, is transferred to a children’s story thanks to the pen of Fernando Ampuero and the illustrations of Camila Gómez. With its landscape layout, the book not only lends itself to a narrative that allows the unfolding of the actions throughout, but in a certain way also refers us to the television format that for several weeks bombarded us with the images of the search for Run Run.

But, in addition, the work complies with avoiding the merely anecdotal to focus on the issues that really matter: the already mentioned coverage of the news, sensational and coarse; the cruelty of society, which contrasts with the innocence of a child who sees in Run Run practically the same; the drama of captivity to which the animal ends up condemned, almost like a lesser evil. It may be a story without a happy ending, but it alerts us to what we have been doing wrong. It never hurts a dose of reality like this.