The man of gold
Review: Heribert Mestres
This novel is a small wonder that fell into my hands by chance. From the first page, the ease with which the author presents the characters and describes the settings and situations is highly skilled.
The novel describes Venezuela and Caracas around 1925, the rural world and that of the capital, characters anchored in a century earlier in time, politicians and officials fighting for their daily livelihood, cheers staging their tales of the milkmaid aspiring to the fortune of others. , love and marriage as interests, etc. in a short life. And all this accompanied by a Spanish-American vocabulary of the time that is wonderful. To highlight the great knowledge that the author has of the environment he talks about and how well he develops and collects the situations that he poses.
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As a novelist, Blanco-Fombona takes his place among an earnest few in Spanish America, where the really modern novel has made but halting progress and we're only now is it beginning to show indications of a genuine, continuous, autochthonous product.
As early as his first full effort, Trovadores y troves, Caracas, 1899, that exquisite stylist and fine novelist Manuel Dia Rodriguez noted in Blanco-Fombona a current of sadness that ran through aU his works and added these significant words:
"The most immediate cause of his sadness is perhaps the lack of surroundings, among us, for an artist's soul." Even so, anno Domini 1920, has our own brilliant critic. Van Wyck Brooks, related Mark Twain's pessimism to such a lack in our nation.* Blanco-Fombona, however, is a born fighter, which the glorious creator of Huckleberry Finn was not, and hence he has steadily fought his environment, as he is doing to this day.
Among the foreign critics who have praised the fiction of Blanco-Fombona are Henri Barbusse (who as far back as the appearance of the Venezuelan's short stories in a French version, 1903, recognized the young man's gifts), — Jose Verissimo, the perspicacious Brazilian who was hardly noted for indulgence, — Gomez de Baquero, who writes such eminently readable things under the pseudonym Andrenio, — that huntsman of degeneration, Max Nordau
Author:Rufino Blanco-Fombona
As early as his first full effort, Trovadores y troves, Caracas, 1899, that exquisite stylist and fine novelist Manuel Dia Rodriguez noted in Blanco-Fombona a current of sadness that ran through aU his works and added these significant words:
"The most immediate cause of his sadness is perhaps the lack of surroundings, among us, for an artist's soul." Even so, anno Domini 1920, has our own brilliant critic. Van Wyck Brooks, related Mark Twain's pessimism to such a lack in our nation.* Blanco-Fombona, however, is a born fighter, which the glorious creator of Huckleberry Finn was not, and hence he has steadily fought his environment, as he is doing to this day.
Among the foreign critics who have praised the fiction of Blanco-Fombona are Henri Barbusse (who as far back as the appearance of the Venezuelan's short stories in a French version, 1903, recognized the young man's gifts), — Jose Verissimo, the perspicacious Brazilian who was hardly noted for indulgence, — Gomez de Baquero, who writes such eminently readable things under the pseudonym Andrenio, — that huntsman of degeneration, Max Nordau
Author:Rufino Blanco-Fombona
Publication Date:1920
Translation of El hombre de Oro) by Isaac Goldberg
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