Locos

Locos: A Comedy of Gestures is the first novel of Spanish-born American writer Felipe Alfau (1902–1999), written in 1928 published in 1936. The metafictional novel remained out of print until the 1988 when it was reprinted by Dalkey Archive Press; its positive reception then led to the publication of Alfau's second novel Chromos in 1990, which he had written in 1948.

Background

Felipe Alfau was born and grew up in Spain. In 1916, the 14-year-old Alfau moved with his family to New York. He had ambitions to become a music conductor and wrote music criticism for El Diario La Prensa. By the late 1920s he had a wife and daughter and hoped to support them with his writing;^[1] he wrote Locos about 1928,^[2] and in 1929 he had a children's book Old Tales from Spain published. He had considerable difficulty finding a publisher for Locos.^[1]

Publication, reception, and legacy

Farrar & Rinehart first published the book in 1936; Alfau received $250 for the manuscript. The edition was priced $2.50 and was the first in an intended series of signed editions sold by subscription.^[1] The book had a positive critical reception, including a review by writer Mary McCarthy, and quickly disappeared. The book then stayed out of print until Dalkey Archive Press reprinted it in 1988.^[2]

Alfau's techniques are seen as anticipating those in the works of later-generation postmodern writers such as Barth, Calvino, Nabokov, and Pynchon.^[3]

The idea of characters taking on a life independent from their author's intention reappears in Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew (1979) and Desmond MacNamara's The Book of Intrusions (1994).^[4]

A chapter appeared in the 2011 Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.^[5]

References

Works cited