Paperweight: “Los conchudos”, by Sofocleto, an irreverent x-ray of Peruvian impudence

Author: Sophocletus.

Pages: 174.

Publisher: Planet.

The commendable task of recovering the sharp literary work of Luis Felipe Angell (1926-2004), alias Sofocleto, began with the publication of “Los cojudos” in 2019. Now, finally, the second volume of the aptly named “Enciclopedia of human behavior”, which this time is in charge of another majority species in Peruvian demography: “The conchudos”.

That the subject is an inherent part of our idiosyncrasy does not mean that there are no reasons to discuss it. The healthy thing is that it is done from the extravagance and insolence, as to be at the height of the subjects analyzed. Because beyond any psychological or anthropological investigation that can be made of “conchudez”, what Sophocleto undertook was a satire that has the merit that (whether we like it or not) it makes any average Peruvian see himself reflected in greater or greater smaller measure.

Thus, the author goes from specific examples (conchudo is “the one who arrives at a wake and goes directly to suck” or “the one who is served because he has a condition for physical effort”) to much more intelligent meditations, even resorting to to historical references or organized genealogies. The best (or worst) of all is that his national radiography does not seem to have lost validity: “Peru is not a democracy – he writes –, but, rather, a sui generis monarchy; since each Peruvian acts, feels and disposes as if he were the king of the shell”. Here we are.

Author: Coco Martin.

Pages: 128.

Publisher: Arcadia.

It is, as its publishers describe it, “a book stuck in someone else’s head.” The first is a collection of poems entitled “Statelessness”, in which a versatile language stands out, resorting to some neologisms, specialized terms and certain surrealist symbolisms to configure a work about loneliness and isolation. Although the poetic voice at times is dispersed among different characters, a sore tone prevails, in which the writing itself seems to be an expiation mechanism. In her verses, Mártin recalls childhood and youth passages that seem to be the result of an intense psychoanalytic session, with all its fears, excesses and dark areas.

The second book, which is read by reversing the volume, is entitled “Pater” and is a kind of photographic dossier in which Mártin has experimented with his own photos and those of others. As he tells it in the introductory text, the author recovered a series of images captured by his godfather Jaime Rodríguez (a paternal and gravitating figure) and decided to record other shots that would work in parallel, like a mirror between the past and the present.

The enigmatic nature of the images, the difference in the texture of the recording, and its motivation not only to serve as an instrument of memory, but also of oblivion, together with the poems, round off a very suggestive diptych.

*The double book is presented this Thursday, May 5, at 7 pm, at Galeria Forum (Av. Larco 1150, Miraflores).