The writer from Jujuy Alejandro Carrizo will present a new work tomorrow, “The Last Ones.” It will be at 8 p.m. at the “Héctor Tizón” Cultural Center (Hipólito Yrigoyen corner Junín). Those who will speak about this work are Ana Lía Miranda and Alberto Alabí. It is a work about bohemians and artists in the lead era of the ’80s.
The writer and linguist, Alberto Alabí, wrote about this book, titling his article as “‘The last ones’, or the death of the gpt chat”, and he says:
Political geography of Tucumán in the eighties, or cultural profile of Tucumán in the late seventies, or explanation of the fear of northern families. The death of gpt chat is also doing well. But it’s called “The Last Ones,” and this suits it much better. I say this because Alejandro Carrizo writes from the giant destructions of the North with anchorage in Tucumán. To put it in railway language, there is a convoy of cabooses in the novel, because it is a railway province, but also a sugar province and also a painter and a theatremaker, very theatrical.
Today that splendor lies almost in ruins. There is no pain or complaint for what has been lost, although everything carries that melancholy of what remains in the background, what is further behind; the last. And the heroes here are not brave, nor even courageous; On stage they do act like heroes, but frankly they are not; The thing is that, of course, they are actors, all of them: actants, readers and writer. We all act in something, says Alejandro. I really like this innovation from Carrizo. Those who listened to Kloner understand this well. Millennials will not even buy the novel nor will they read it on loan.
Carrizo knows it well, but he doesn’t worry. He knows that the long lyrics of the printed novel are also already lost. He said that there are no antiheroes or villains. All the characters take solace in what they have lost and happily accept their tremendous fate. Here is one of the charms of the novel. We like them for that naturally submundane condition; so that none of its minimal tragedies lead us to compassion. He makes us enjoy the Tucuman underworld and even the monster, Coso or Familiar – who acts as the central interlocutor in the novel – is charming to us.
The way you draw your literary people is strange. Some real actants are more developed, but others only outlined. Paco, el Loro, Linares, Armando de Oliva and others appear by resonance. I think this is the greatest virtue of Carrizo’s writing; because the reader feels the vibrations of Loro Quiroga or the journalistic stars of La Gaceta: Elsinger, Hynes O’Connor, floating like nameless ghosts. Without them being there, they are all there, the old ones, like the one from “Cartas a mi Ñaña” but also Bebe Álvarez, Rojas Paz and Casacci. The tangueros Lelo, Correa, but also Palito and La Bomba. They are never named, but there they are. That is why I declare that this is a novel of pure resonances. It is beautiful to see all the characters threatened with suffering, but happy to savor their misfortune. They are all last in this literary innovation by Alejandro Carrizo. The last revolutionaries, the last radio drama actors, the last sugar mill workers, the last prostitutes, the last drunks, the tangueros and the bohemians of the Bajo; There is no redemption for the latter who will not be, nor do they want to be, the first. Carrizo uses an aesthetic maneuver that delights. The main actor, who is a guy in front of a mirror, chats with a well-known monster in the sugar mills. But he is a very good-natured confidant, this Familiar. He enters into aesthetic and stylistic discussions with the owner of the flesh-and-blood face on this side of the mirror and they appear absolutely friendly.
When we read any fragment of the text, our lips are always on the verge of a smile. There is nothing in Carrizo that does not have an ironic, sarcastic or humorous reference. But in the end, a pain; always a melancholic pain. And this regret is a kind of soft hill from which the writer makes us look at a world that has departed, along with parents, teachers, friends and loves.
That is the stamp of this beautiful novel… Carrizo is not afraid of anything. Come and see the brave stories that this book brings, which is a tribute to all the art of the NOA.
