Borges recommended Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Guiraldes, calling it a national epic of Uruguay, one that captured the true gaucho spirit. Going through all of Borges's picks would be the work of a lifetime but I pushed Guiraldes to the front of the queue since there's a romance to the gaucho ethos that appeals strongly.
The story starts a child in a backwater town being caught up in admiration for a mysterious, highly competent man who is passing through and I thought I knew where this was going. I thought I'd seen this already, that this was going to be Shane (written ten years later) or Kim (written twenty-five years before). Fortunately, I was wrong. While those are charming in their own way, Don Segundo Sombra transcends character piece to also encompass an ethos and a land. The admiration is fully deserved though the execution is not as impressive (could also be a translation issue).
There is a lot I could talk about here. The townie/transient divide is amazing. The interlude on the crab flats touches the sublime and remains one of the most striking images I've read in recent memory. The character of Don Segundo as being both bound on the wheel of fortune and beyond it. But what I want to emphasize is its rare plot arc - spoilers ahead. Until the very end of the novel (and I was disappointed that the end should undermine what I was quite enjoying), the author was very determined not to revisit old plot hooks. There are effectively no reoccurring characters or locations. Scenes that other authors would use as narrative setup or foreshadowing simply pass by here as individual slice of life events. This extends an aura of reality to the proceedings. It adds an intensity and a freedom in the way that free fall has both - you don't know where the character will end up but you know they're not going back. With so much of modern literature determined to unearth the hidden connections between things, it is refreshing to read a work completely devoid of that conceit. The protagonist grows and lives and makes friendships and none of it is undermined by not playing into some grand narrative. He is allowed the freedom of the gaucho, with all its dignity and its isolation.
Short read; worth it.
