De vlammenwerpers : roman

It says a lot about Arlt's art that I actually thought this crew of misfits was gonna pull off gassing the Argentine army and setting up their dictatorship--instead, as it all falls apart because of the bugs in their respective heads, we get a front-row seat to the new bugs that fallapart spawns.

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And Arlt being a wizard with fearsome urban-industrial landscapes, human brooding and its insalubrious effects, and scenic choreography (which is to say, form, content, action), it's riveting (one must credit the translator, Larry Riley, too), even if this is largely a wrapping of ends and in that sense only, a slightly junior adjunct to The Seven Madmen (shorter too, and of course, it was only funding matters that led them to be published separately in the first place). Wow though, yikes.

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