The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life

Los diarios de Emilio Renzi #3

by Ricardo Piglia

Sixty years in the making and the capstone of a monumental literary career, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life is the final volume of the autobiographical trilogy from the author who is considered Borges’ heir and the vanguard of the Post-Boom generation of Latin American literature.

How could we define a perfect day? Maybe it would be better to say: how could I narrate a perfect day?

Is that why I write a diary? To capture—or reread—one of those days of unexpected happiness?

The final installment of Ricardo Piglia’s lifelong compilation of journals completes the seemingly impossible project of documenting the entire life of a writer. A Day in the Life picks up the thread of Piglia’s life in the 1980s until his death from ALS in 2017. Emilio Renzi, Piglia’s literary alter ego, navigates the tumultuous ups and downs of a post-Peronist Argentina filled with political unrest, economic instability, and a burgeoning literary scene ready to make its mark on the rest of the world and escape the shadows of legendary authors Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Arlt.

Genres: Fiction

402 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Ricardo Piglia was an Argentine author, critic, and scholar best known for introducing hard-boiled fiction to the Argentine public.
Born in Adrogué, Piglia was raised in Mar del Plata. He studied history in 1961-1962 at the National University of La Plata.
Ricardo Piglia published his first collection of fiction in 1967, La invasión. He worked in various publishing houses in Buenos Aires and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well-known authors of crime fiction including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis and Horace McCoy. A fan of American literature, he was also influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, as well as by European authors Franz Kafka and Robert Musil.
Piglia's fiction includes several collections of short stories as well as highly allusive crime novels, among them Respiración artificial (1980, trans. Artificial Respiration), La ciudad ausente (1992, trans. The Absent City), and Blanco nocturno (2010, trans. Nocturnal Target). His criticism has been collected in Criticism and Fiction (1986), Brief Forms (1999) and The Last Reader (2005).
Piglia resided for a number of years in the United States. He taught Latin American literature at Harvard as well as Princeton University, where he was Walter S. Carpenter Professor of Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain from 2001 to 2011. After retirement he returned with his wife to Argentina.
In 2013 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; he died of the disease on January 6, 2017, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During his lifetime Piglia received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Rómulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005), Premio Planeta (1997), and the Casa de las Américas Prize (1967). In 2013 he won Chile's Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Narrative Award, and in 2014 he won the Diamond Konex Award as the best writer of the decade in Argentina. In 2015 Piglia won the Prix Formentor.
On January 4, 2018, his memory was honored in New York City at "Modos infinitos de narrar: Homenaje a Ricardo Piglia," an event at which academics discussed the impact of his work on Latin American literature and intellectual history and his legacy as a literary critic and scholar.

Reviews

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the last volume of the diaries Piglia kept through his whole life. For him, those diaries were more than some jottings. Effectively they proved him his existence and its meaning, who he was. He claimed he did not remember anything that was not in his diaries. These records even cost him a few relationships, the fact he acknowledged again in the same diaries. He’s never hidden them. And sometimes, his girlfriends would even write in them and correct his memories. But it seems he always wanted to publish them at the end.

This final volume consists of three parts. The first part corresponds to the dark period of the history Argentina for the period from 1976 to 1982 when it was governed by the military and many people being made “disappeared” or murdered by the regime. At the same time, Piglia was working on his novel “The Artificial Respiration”. This part is the most difficult to read. It is very dry. I could feel how afraid he was and how he struggled what to put on the paper and what to leave out. He was also quite depressed and preoccupied by his novel which did not always go smooth. As a result, in spite of a few insightful passages on the theory of literature or philosophy, this part is a bleak and repetitive read. But it definitely conveys the atmosphere. This is the passage from the first pages when he arrived back from the US at the beginning of this period:

“The worst past is the sinister feeling of normalcy; the buses travel in their loops, the people go to the movies, they sit down at bars, leave there offices, go to restaurants, laugh, make jokes, and everything appears to go on as before, but you can hear sirens and there are armed police going past at top speed un unmarked cars.”

I think it is very indicative how the majority of the ordinary people feel when something extraordinary brutal happens to their surroundings. Looking for the visible changes one cannot find them straightaway. Respectively, one does not know how to react, what is the best thing to do while this surrounding disaster seem so far not affecting one directly. And this is the most disorienting and indeed sinister feeling.

The second part is a day in life - a narrative summarising 24 hours from his ordinary day somewhere in the mid 90s. It is more stylised and elaborated text, moving in its sincerity, but maybe a little too detailed.

And the last and my favourite part in this book is a few days from his last years. He finishes teaching in Princeton and moves back to Argentina. These pages are less cryptic. I can see how he treasures every minute of his life; finds the beauty and the mystery around him. He also thinks about some general cultural tendencies. For example I find this apt:

“Social narrative shifted from the novel into film and after film, into. The series, and now it is moving from these series to Facebook and Twitter and inline networks. What grows old and loses currency ends up becoming loose and free: when the audience of the 19th century novel moved towards film, the works of Joyce, Musil and Proust became possible. When film is supplanted as a massive medium by television, the cineasts from Cahiers du Cinema rescue the old artisans of Hollywood’s great artists; now that television is starting to be replaced massively by the Web, series are being valued as an art form. Soon, with the advancing of new technologies, blogs and ancient emails and text messages will be exhibited in the museums. What logic is this? Only what expires and falls “behind” becomes artistic.”

Piglia has never given up on his diary, almost to the end. And the book ends on the very poignant, heart-breaking but philosophical note. Many writers would never want their private notes being published. But the others make a special literature out of their diaries. This is a beautiful example.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Un diario se escribe para decir que no se puede escribir. Lo dice Kafka, es típico en él. Lo divertido es que se escriben muchas páginas para describir el tema"
 
Ya he finalizado la tercera entrega de los Diarios de Piglia, perdón, de los Diarios de Emilio Renzi, su alter ego. Bastante buena la serie. A su vez esta entrega se divide en tres partes también, siendo la primera la más ortodoxa de lo que se entiende por un diario.
 
"Un escritor no habla de su propia obra, no puede decir nada sobre ella, pero la experiencia de su trabajo creativo le da una perspectiva única para hablar de la literatura que hacen los otros"
 
Esta cita es una de las cuestiones que más me llama la atención de estos Diarios y otras autobiografías de grandes escritores: la tremenda lucidez con que analizan un libro del tipo que sea (hay que tener en cuenta que estos grandes, a su vez son grandes lectores), apenas hablan de sus libros, debiendo ser leídos en su integridad para adivinar sus motivaciones, como decía Chirbes en sus Diarios que he leído recientemente, pero toman en sus manos un libro del tipo que sea y formulan un diagnóstico infalible. Eso es lo que pretendemos muchos de los que andamos por aquí, tener el criterio suficiente para ir haciendo mejores selecciones de lecturas y cada vez confundirte menos en las elecciones que hacemos, al menos yo.
 
"Las novelas y los poemas no los subraya cuando lee (E. Renzi), a lo sumo anota con letra microscópica, en la última hoja del libro, en la página en blanco, el número de página que indica así su voluntad de volver a leer ese momento del relato o del poema". Me ha pillado Piglia, ese soy yo como lector, con el matiz de que también pongo una barra donde empieza el párrafo que me interesa y otra pequeña barra donde finaliza.
 
El segundo libro “Un día en la vida” y la mezcla que hace de toda la vida de una persona en el conjunto de 24 horas, es creo lo mejor del libro, lo más novedoso, ese intento por aglutinar un día de la forma más uniforme posible en que se haya comportado el protagonista de la autobiografía a lo largo de los años, moviéndose libremente en el tiempo y espacio. Esa división de un día por horas, un poco al estilo Ulises de Joyce, con varios enfoques y narradores, etc. Vale la pena.
 
La tercera parte se centra en la parte final de Piglia, su estancia como catedrático con plaza en Princeton, situaciones puntuales o de la etapa final de la vida del autor. Aquí ya ha cambiado sustancialmente su estatus y posición económica. En esta parte me chirría la presencia de la pareja de Renzi, Carola, con detalles de esta un tanto snobs con viajes ridículos a N. Delhi, o a N. York, por motivaciones de lo más peregrinas y absurdas:
 
“Carola se ha quedado en Filadelfia, espera seguir a Los Angeles y luego a Tokio. Viaja sin equipaje. `Solamente voy a llevar mi máquina de fotos y las píldoras para dormir´ dice”. No confundir que no me guste la persona o el personaje, con la escritura y la sinceridad del autor, que sí me gusta, que conste.
 
Me he sentido aludido en la parte final en que habla de las omisiones intencionadas de la historia por parte del escritor, y la famosa teoría Hemingway sobre el iceberg y la omisión de cuestiones que el lector no puede llegar a conocer, o bien la teoría de B. Brecht de omitirle al lector cuestiones que conoce, pero deberá él imaginar:
 
“El cuento de Walsh “Esa mujer” pertenece a esa categoría. Todos los lectores -argentinos- saben que la mujer a la que nunca se nombre es Eva Perón…lo que se sustrae es la historia”. 
Pues bien, en su día tuve un bonito debate con los amigos argentinos de este foro GR, ya que yo leí ese cuento desconociendo todo y le di una interpretación absolutamente distinta a la de los lectores argentinos, que conocían a quien se refería Walsh.
 
El resumen de la vida de Piglia en esta tercera etapa de madurez, ya jubilado en Princeton, y camino hacia la vejez (las últimas páginas y ese final es duro), lo enmarca magistralmente el autor en una cita junto con otros escritores implicados, a saber: Hemingway es su autor, creo que en su obra “Adiós a las armas”, aunque no cita la novela; luego F.S. Fitzgerald la considera una de las frases más sugerentes de la lengua inglesa (está traducida aquí, claro), y finalmente Piglia la usa para si mismo en esa etapa de la vida en que está de vuelta y mirando el fin:
 
“En otoño la guerra estaba todavía ahí, pero nosotros ya no íbamos hacia ella”.

[Bhaskar Thakuria · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Let us propose, then, as a starting point, that art is not cut from the real but from the spirit—and that there exists no form from the formless.” Pierre Francastel, La Figure et le Lieu. L’ordre visuel du Quattrocento.

The final installment of the great journals (which have been celebrated in our current times as a literary event worth celebrating!)lays ample testimony to the spirit and the driving sentiment of the writer, the complete writer- a life devoted to creative art, of literature for art's sake, and a career driven under the aegis of the literary realm spanning several decades. As the three volumes would suggest to you- taken as a whole they form the complete diary of a writing life, a receptacle for the perfection of one's writing craft. I can return to these diaries, and will do so for several decades into my own writing and reading life, and I feel that everytime I do so I will find something new and novel about writing, and literature in general, something Piglia's alter-ego Emilio Renzi would deign to discuss, analyze, dissect, and create in his own style as he indulges in his wonderful musings and lectures on literature and the essence of creative art. Piglia's fascination for writers and their individual quirks and finesses, the impact they had on his own writings, and the way they match with Ricardo Piglia's own diaries about his writings and publications, the impact on his literary life and his fellow writers is essential reading for our times.

Argentine Novel. Of course, the national character of the genre arises in the autobiography. The “portraits” of the people whom the author addresses and is familiar with begin to define a novelistic use of personal narrative. For example, Cabo Gómez in Mansilla’s work, the portraits in Sarmiento’s Facundo (the tracker, the evil Gaucho). One should also pay attention to the transcription of letters, personal or from others, to analyze their (semi-fictional) narrative function. Devote oneself to reading and filing all those biographies that are integrated into the personal account. Also tempted by autobiographies from The Man Without Qualities. A man whom nothing special or historically revealing happens to, but who writes about his life in order to bear witness to something, which is always explained in the book (for example, how he was saved from a shipwreck or how he witnessed a fantastic swarm of locusts on the plains at the end of the nineteenth century). A narrator need not be a writer.

In the last installment before his death and departure Ricardo Piglia indulges in a variety of novel literary techniques that had been a part of his writing career. A diary- which he decides to maintain throughout life- becomes enveloped by the shadows of his literary heroes and especially to Sarmiento to which he is indebted and shades of Peronistic philosophy that was the prevailing situation in Argentine politics in the sixties and seventies, and especially with the dreaded Videla regime that led to the disappearance of writers like Rodolfo Walsh and Haroldo Conti whom he mentions avidly throughout his diaries. Here especially, in this last installment, he decides to invoke his alter-ego with the spirit of censure and commentary on the state of the Argentine novel.

Dying is hard; there’s something happening to me, it isn’t an illness, it’s a progressive state that alters my movements. This won’t work. It began in September of last year, I couldn’t fasten the buttons of a white shirt.

The fall comes, swift and unexpected, and the great Piglia soon started to have problems with his writing hand....

My right hand is heavy and uncooperative, but I can still write. When I can no longer… I feel as if a hive is growing inside my body, a hatchery. I want to be certain before I write it down. Scrupulous until the end.
I always wanted to be only the man who writes. I’ve taken refuge in my mind, in language, and in what is to come.

These diaries will remain an inspiring beacon in my reading and writing life for decades to come...

[Xavier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avui he acabat la trilogia dels “Diarios de Emilio Renzi” d’en Ricardo Piglia.
Estic encara corprès per aquestes més de 1000 pàgines que representen el conjunt de diaris.
No tinc cap dubte que acabo de llegir una de les joies literàries contemporànies en llengua espanyola i els millors diaris que conec escrits en aquesta llengua, propis d’un geni. Imprescindible !

[Everton Olinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Estupendo!

[Bert Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review-The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, Vol.3, A Day in the Life

Piglia’s Detour

In life we face one detour after the other. The best laid plans. Kaput. Over time we learn to tap dance, stay on our toes, maintaining flexibility one better navigates the ins and outs of the journey called life.

From the library I borrowed the last volume of Ricardo Piglia’s The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, A Day in the Life. Having developed an intense interest in Argentine literature a few years ago, when first published, I poured through the first two volumes: Formative Years and The Happy Years.

This last volume follows the writer as he lives through the dictatorships, Falkland Wars and ends his career with a 14 year long professorship at Princeton University. A man of varied interests his fiction tends toward detective stories while incorporating the culture and history of his country and peoples. His love of music within this volume is neatly illustrated by his lifelong friendship with the composer and pianist Gerardo Gandini best known as a member of Astor Piazzolla. A denizen of the many bookstores that line the streets of Buenos Aires and a familiarity with philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. A renowned expert on Borges and Roberto Arlt, he often writes, too, about Bertolt Brecht and Ernest Hemingway. How could one not be interested in such a man. To boot he has an eye for the women and writes of those few who held a special place in his life.

Nearing retirement from Princeton, Piglia develops a neurological disorder that his doctor, a “good-natured man” tells him he is suffering from “a rare ailment called ‘arborescent crystallization’ …accumulated fatigue and a slight neurological disturbance were causing him to experience little hallucinations”. Over time this progresses and finding himself insomniac, he wanders at odd hours the streets of Princeton, and when in Manhattan searches out odd films from a video store in Chelsea.

There he finds an obscure film noir, Detour, directed by one Edgar G. Ulmer which he describes as “a psychotic version of Kerouac’s On The Road…filmed in a week with almost no budget; long close-up shots of a car trip, conversations off-screen, lights in the night. It tells the story of a desperate man who goes hitchhiking and gets lost in the detours of the road... Everything he encounters by chance along the way is destructive and fatal.”

The diary is packed with such interesting sidebars:

“Iris is insistent in her critique of psychoanalysis. It’s consolation for the middle class, something that never amounts to anything more than going somewhere to complain. In the future they’ll laugh at us when they see what we wasted our money on.”
On writing, his lady friend Carola says, “for the first time in history, literature has more writers than readers.”

And of his friends and fellow writers who suffered through the dictatorship in Argentina: “he had cared for her, felt close to her, like so many comrades in life, injured, fallen in combat, hospitalized, high-quality losers battered by the gale-force wind of the times.”

And of his own efforts writing his diary: “After so many years of writing in these notebooks, I’ve started to ask myself which verb tense should be used to situate the events. A diary registers incidents as they are taking place; it doesn’t remember them or organize them narratively. It tends towards private language, toward idiolect. As a result, in reading a diary one encounters blocks of existence, always in the present, and only in reading is it possible to reconstruct the history that invisibly unfolds over the course of the years. Yet diaries aspire to story, and in that sense they’re written in order to be read (even if no one reads them).”

This last line highlights his humor and cynical side: “I’m always accused of being cold and distant…as if I were someone who doesn’t know how to express his emotions. Cynicism or rather irony, is the shield of oversensitive hearts.”

Ricardo Piglia, a witness and major participant of Argentine history, literature and culture finished these three volumes shortly before his death.

As a fan of Argentine literature and the art of diary, I am grateful for his efforts recording his life’s journey.

[Aldana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una trilogía imprescindible. Casi de lectura obligatoria para quienes nos interesa conocer más sobre el panorama cultural de los sesenta en adelante, un recorrido por los bares, los personajes, los debates de la época, donde la figura del intelectual recobra cierta —romantizada—importancia.

[H. M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Siempre quise ser sólo el hombre que escribe».

[Jorge Esquivel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante hasta el final. habría que releer más a Piglia. Yo por supuesto lo haré desde ya.

[Lucía Gracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una obsesión maravillosa por el registro, una pasión absurda por la escritura, una vida puesta ahí para ser leída. Increíble e interesante experimento, incluso en sus momentos de tedio. Un esbozo profundo de las fragilidades y contradicciones de una vida humana. Grande Piglia, gracias por dialogar con toda una cultura de lectores-escritores de distintas generaciones.

[Flor · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Me di cuenta de que hay un momento en que los sentimientos no se pueden expresar y que la gente, entonces, deja de contar y sencillamente llora".
El genio es invalidez, sí.

Si digo que Ricardo Piglia cambió mi vida estaría quedándome corta. Hizo mucho más, pero no lo puedo poner en palabras... es la emoción que quita el lenguaje.

[Saúl Alejandro Rosado Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Termina la trilogía de Piglia. Es un libro muy bien escrito, lleno de reflexiones sobre la vida, la lectura y el arte de escribir. Nostálgico e íntimo. Disfrute muchísimo.

[Karlina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lleno de reflexión y frases inteligentes
Lo amé

[Micaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

te amo viejo tarado cómo te vas a morir

[Lorenzo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decepcionante final de los diarios de Emilio Renzi. El primer libro de la serie me resultó muy interesante, en él bullía la efervescencia y la fuerza de la juventud. El segundo -ya lo comenté por aquí anteriormente- recogía el día a día de una persona con auténtica vocación de escritor por hacerse un hueco en el mundo literario de su pais y en el mundo, aunque los temas que trataba quizá no me interesaron tanto (las letras argentinas de los sesenta-setenta del siglo pasado). Este último libro me ha parecido el más flojo de todos, es posible que se deba a que ya conocía de qué iba a ir y que por tanto no me haya sorprendido en absoluto.
Quizá para los muy devotos de Piglia o para los conocedores de la historia de la literatura argentina resulte interesantísimo. Aunque me han resultado curiosas algunas reflexiones sobre películas más o menos recientes (Pulp fiction) y el modo en como la informática llegó a la vida de Renzi, he terminado un poco cansado de los coqueteos del autor con el alcohol y las anfetaminas, y de su visión ombliguista del mundo. La segunda parte del libro me ha resultado cargante, páginas y páginas sin un punto y aparte, reflexiones sobre temas de lo más intrascendente una detrás de otra. Entiendo que para estudiosos de Piglia deben ser oro molido, a mí me ha entrado una pereza terrible. He terminado el libro por derribo. De momento, me daré vacaciones por un tiempo de Piglia. Cuando vuelva -si es que lo hago-, intentaré que sea con algo suyo de ficción y en tercera persona. Renzi ha sido too much.

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

La lectura y la escritura en movimiento muestran que no se puede leer ni se puede escribir. Como si el lenguaje que se hace texto muriese al ser escrito. La lectura entonces es siempre de cadáveres. Por eso insiste el Doppelgänger de Piglia -un doble gángster- en la muerte. Mucha idea de suicidio en Renzi. Mucho Sartre, mucho Arlt. El desdoblamiento Piglia-Renzi es una variante de muerte. Las repeticiones de temas y formas son muerte. Las drogas. La literatura. Muerte. La meditación sobre la técnica es muerte. Le lenguaje de todos modos sigue vivo. Escribir un punto, nada más que un punto lo detiene. Tranquiliza, pero mata. El policial. El cine. La política. Los diarios de Renzi son diarios de la muerte. El mismo Renzi lo dice cuando persevera en Kafka, Pavese, Nabokov, Sarmiento, Mansilla y tantos otros. El final sosegado de la enfermedad silenciosa es de una tristeza infinita.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro es magnífico. Habrá muchos que no le encuentren el mérito dado que se trata de un libro sin una verdadera trama y que es escrito en vinietas; pero es una obra maestra. Piglia, a través de anotaciones en su diario nos bosqueja con pincelazos rápidos toda una historia, todo un mundo en el que él vivió y el lector, a través de esos vistazos rápidos aparentemente desconectados, se forma una visión clara de lo que sucede y llega a identificarse con lo que está sucediendo. Genial. Al comenzar yo no sabía de que se trata de una trilogía y que el que leí era el último libro de ésta, pero no me hizo falta leer los primeros dos para disfrutar este. Por supuesto que leeré los otros dos.

[Cristóbal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que leí despacio, primero porque quería que dure, y después porque en determinado punto me cansó un poco.

Leer la cotidianeidad de Piglia es leer el día a día de un escritor, aunque parezca obvio. Casi todas las entradas del diario tienen que ver con su relación con la escritura, sus lecturas, y reflexiones acerca de ambas.
Lo que más me gustó fue haber leído en paralelo dos novelas suyas, sobre las que él habla en este diario, describiendo sus génesis, obstáculos y desarrollos. (En mi caso, Respiración artificial y prisión perpetua). Es muy interesante ver cómo cosas del diario aparecen en las novelas transformadas, trastocadas.

“Siempre quise ser solo el hombre que escribe” leemos en la última página. Pucha que escribiste, Ricardo querido. Aquí te seguiremos leyendo.

[Debora · Rating 3 out of 5]

“O homem que acredita na oportunidade - e a espera. A crença, isto é, a confiança, o crédito que alguém é capaz de dar ao outro, é o fundamento secreto disso que chamamos de amor, paixão; o desejo é outra coisa, é vivido no corpo, é imediato, sempre vivido no presente, não há nada a esperar porque tudo está dado aí”.

[Pablo Requena]

Impecable la manera en que se puede seguir la escritura de la mejor novela de la literatura argentina

[João Carvalho · Rating 5 out of 5]

ele era muito brabo

[Jonatan Frías · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luego de terminar los tres diarios de Emilio Renzi me queda la sensación de haber subido el Everest. Son una maravilla crítica, sensible, luminosa, inteligente.

[Alan Gonzáles · Rating 5 out of 5]

De la trilogía, la mejor parte, sin palabras, es excelente.

[car · Rating 5 out of 5]

devastada.

[Mario Amaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantástico cierre al proyecto dietario de Piglia. Este tercer tomo es, sin duda, el más experimental, aunque sea el más corto. Toma distintos aspectos o formas narrativos después de la mitad y ejerce una labor maravillosa en generar interrogantes sobre el lector, quien, atento, no solo tendrá que ser acusioso al leer algunas páginas sino, también, recurrir a la re-lectura. La labor de Piglia a lo largo de estos tres tomos es tal que se sale de estos diarios con el ímpetu de leer su obra. Como un todo, porque, claro, la verdadera forma de evaluar este proyecto es viendo los tres tomos como un solo libro, esta obra es maravillosa. Encapsula muchas aspectos importantes de la vida del escritor, sus manías por las formas y su compromiso experimental, algo que me nunca deja de maravillarme en Piglia. Unos diarios que son imprescindibles en los lectores de Piglia, que permiten adentrarse un paso más allá en su mente, su obra y su vida personal.

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Tercer y último tomo, que el autor dejó terminado antes de morir.