Roberto Arlt, "The Seven Madmen".

I've just completed a book by an obscure Argentinian named Roberto Arlt, entitled the Seven Madmen. The story concerns a group of down-and-out eccentrics who plot to form a secret society which will eventually throw the nation into chaos. It was written in the 1920's, as Argentina was coming into its own as a world economic power. Immigrants streamed into the country from all over Europe, for the promise of cheap land on which to make their fortunes. Many of them ended up destitute in the coastal urban gloom of Buenos Aires. This is Arlt's milieu. His writing is choppy, but its depictions of scrappy, insane and desperate characters was diverting. Arlt is said to be a precursor for authors as diverse as William Burroughs, Irvine Welsh and Iceberg Slim- none of which I would list among my favorite authors.

What did particularly fascinate me was this book's strange concoction of half-baked philosophies, and descriptions of a seedy underworld that existed in a foreign place. I know very little about Argentina, then or now, but merely on the merits of it being a document of a specific time and place... I probably wouldn't hesitate to read the follow-up to The Seven Madmen. The Flamethrowers apparently picks up where this one left off... tracing the further adventures of the conspirators who appear in Arlt's world.

It is certainly a ragtag bunch of ne'er-do-wells that inhabits The Seven Madmen. We meet Erdosian, a meek Walter Mitty who dreams of gaining the resources to create his inventions... like custom-colored pets and copper-plated roses. There's the "Melancholy Thug"- a mathematics professor-cum-pimp, with his rough cynicism and intimate knowledge of brothels. The Thug's expected to work out a budget for the construction of a whorehouse, which is optimistically expected to fund the secret society's revolutionary activities. That enterprise is expected to be supplemented by the efforts of the "Gold Prospector", who has fantastic tales of a backcountry stream that flows with the most precious of metals.

When it comes to adding a touch of legitimacy, "The Major" is called upon. He's an Army officer, who claims to be a mere sergeant, but has the inside dope on the type of support that can be rallied among the discontented military forces of the country. Every society needs it's talking head, and "The Astrologer" is the ringleader and master theorist of this plot... his expertise is in lies, and the ability to use them to surround himself with these zany visionaries. He's not beyond combining disparate threads of utopian and dystopian logic, from sources as diverse as Nietschze, Marx, and Mussolini. Finally, the musle of the outfit is provided (in part) by a shady figure named "The Man who Saw the Midwife". His role is a shadowy one, known only to the Astrologer. We do know he has something to do with dispatching enemies.

There are several other peripheral characters adding extra color to the plot, but it is ultimately the story of Erdosain and the torments he encounters as life shits upon him. What mad visions may come when we become at long-last irrevocably disillusioned with life? There seems to be some truth in the implication that hellfire has so much fuel that rages beyond control- so much so that it singes the periphery of our everyday exixtence. Meet the gamblers, whores, pimps, petty thieves, extortionists, cuckolds, and brutish louts that people Arlt's universe.