When butter pulled the roof ... The habit of some" decent people " Grandmothers often make up stories for his grandchildren. However, it was not that story, repeated my sister and me by Dona Ana María Sosa Davalos Romero about his uncle José Dávalos Isasmendi, the farmer who brought camels in one of his trips to the Old World, to people with that kind Colome Salta from his farm in the Valley Calchaquíes.
Dandyism, waste and extravagance in goods should limit itself to the exhibitionism of the "boorish"
(...) And yes, there was an opulent Argentina which encouraged companies to address some unlikely characters, never dreaming that in those whims or the best utopias, often playing all-out equity. Thus, in more than one occasion, fell fortunes resented other native and foreign ventures tempted to glassy idealistic background, as the failed colonization projects along the Black River and the province of Corrientes de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, convinced the writer Valencia inexhaustible and generous as it could be "Argentina and its greatness", as the title of his book that honored the country in the Centennial.
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course, while a few entrepreneurs exhibited their wealth, others, the least among the privileged class, blithely squandered with the slogan that the money saved is better spent.
Arturo Cancela and Pilar de Lusardi recalled today in a work can not be found: "Five dandies locals", as many fictional stocks including Anchorena Fabian Gomez, Count of Chestnut partying companion of King Alfonso XII of Spain.
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Dandyism, waste of goods and extravagance in a clear border with the self exhibitionism of the "boorish" concepts remitted here necessarily related. Although somewhat heterogeneous figures dandyism had met representatives as common characteristics: elegance, a fee of transgression and no expense spared to persevere in the condition of bon vivant, conscious or unconscious rivals nineteenth Duke of Osuna, whose risk and happiness captured the writer Antonio Marichalar, Marqués de Montesa . And they were dandies of the above Anchorena Gómez, Marcelo T. Alvear, Benjamin Roque-the "Payo" Roque, contertulio Ruben Dario, Antonio Demarchi Baron, a son of General Roca, Aaron Anchorena Castellanos-in-law of Enrique Larreta-Florencio Parravicini, conservative politician Benito Villanueva, in many respects the socialist Alfredo L. Palacios and Manuel Mujica Lainez , perhaps the last example.
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and the twentieth century, and with less aesthetic influence of Barbey D 'Aurevilly, biographer of Lord Brummell, that yielding to the influence of American millionaires snob lovers platinum Hollywood actresses, sports worries vanished when any feature of intellectual decadence became the classic dandy in "playboy".
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So accelerated by the First World War and its aftermath, little by little the phlegmatic English and French sarcasm adopted by our gallants from the oligarchy vaccine, moved to another style caught, good correlate of a strong currency and Europe required in crisis: the symbolized in the "dark-haired king of Paris and Argentine" tango. Prototype of "playboy", ie dandy "aggiornamiento" some mischievous, was Martin Max Unzué Alzaga Paul (1901-1982), better known by Macoco.
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In 1974, novelist and critic Juan Carlos Martini Real had published a "nouvelle" entitled to his nickname, which was banned for ten years and was annoyed enough with the inspirational, the "well child" once owner of the New York night club Morocco, on Park Avenue in the East River. The enfant terrible who studied in London and Paris - "Language is the only thing I've learned," he boasted, but he represented in his time in frivolity and old age, held in Buenos Aires department more functional than luxurious, located on the Peña street to 3100, was won, they say, for a nostalgic skepticism as Giacomo Casanova in the Count's castle in Bohemia Waldheim, giving him at times a touch of wisdom to worldly conversation.
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Now, aside from its literary value, is welcome to complex the jet set inconsequential vernacular reminding our ancient glories of Belle Epoque in a prototype wayward "creme" and "decent people" , the recent work of Roberto Alifano, poet, friend and collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges and director of the magazine Proa: "Pulling butter to the roof" (Proa Amerian Publishers), which concerns the adventures of Alzaga Unzué.
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non-fiction, biography or fictionalized story imaginary, no matter the genre, and if everything is true and told there is documented: the undeniable fact is the possibility that it happened. So knowledge is plausible Jorge Newbery youth, his subsequent flight Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, his intimacy with Carlos Gardel, the anecdotes with Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel and Francis Scott Fitzgerald, his business dealings with mobster Al Capone, society with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, her romances with great divas, his collaboration with the French Resistance in World War II hidden by champagne bubbles like that of Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" and tactics of contact man, which to have appealed to President Juan Peron after Evita's death, to be presented to Ginger Rogers, Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot fruitlessly.
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rescue the pages of the book is Macoco resilience to face with dignity the relative economic decline end, armed with the nostalgia of happier times: "I imagine that paradise is how was it when I was 25 years, " was one of his famous phrases you hear tell Lucas Padilla at a tearoom Azcuénaga and Avenida Las Heras.
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not surprising that carry out without dizzy wheel of fortune. From early childhood to be discovered around splendor and modesty, is not one but various attitudes of life: marked by the slogans of liberalism, agnosticism and relativism positivist many of the men of the family, ideological heirs Eighty-Generation at the other extreme religious piety of his mother, Angela Unzue. (In this regard, on page 35 is mentioned a social gathering with the presence of President Roque Sáenz Peña in which singer had the voice that Dona Angela and attended the "Cardinal Bishop Gregorio Romero" (Sic). Undoubtedly concerns Salta and Juarez Jose Gregorio Romero Babiano (1862-1919), Diocesan Bishop of Salta and Jujuy, legislator, chairman of the Senate, provisional governor of the province and a possible candidate for the dignity of Cardinal, as the paper said toward the end of the second decade of the twentieth century.
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Or maybe it's cousin, also prelate, the Bishop Gregorio Ignacio Entre Rios Romero (1860-1915), Bishop of Jasso, conventional constituent in 1898 and deputy national high performance, along with Ernesto Padilla Tucumán during the call "Battle of divorce" of 1902. By the way Argentina was the first Cardinal Archbishop Santiago Luis Copello, raised to the purple in 1935 by Pius XI.)
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Roberto Alifano, not for nothing is also a draftsman and painter, made a sketch of his character with thick strokes rather surely to find just a shadow in the final Macoco reminiscent, in both works in detail their happy times and carefree. It follows from the Belle Époque French and Americans during the Roaring Twenties and going here and there bringing out silhouettes that inhabited those worlds of luxury and waste.
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course everything has its cost, perhaps because these enviable environments to be spied on from the outside, "with the wide nose against the glass, after cooled mutilated soul and feeling, rightly shown a reluctant party to the intimate secrets and most of all there is a memorial of colorful anecdotes. It Chestertonian a paradox: the autobiography is the best way to relate to others.
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The book, in its cover a photograph of Alzaga Unzué shown in New York in 1923, with Louis Zborowski, A. Laveta and Clive Gallop, taking a joke as they took the life, the common passion auto-biography joined the "team" with Raul Riganti Bugatti and engineer Louis Bechereau. In 1922 he won the "raid" Montevideo, Punta del This and two years later as a companion wearing Alberto Rodriguez Larreta won the Grand Prix de Marseille, accounts for the diversified culture of Roberto Alifano and its conditions for creating frames and connect and resolve situations and different levels. Everything is expressed in a compelling prose, with long passages in dialogues, but without the change of voices and the author Macoco-reading difficult and contrary to the streamlines.
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If it is difficult to create a fictional character, to make real one and only famous for his histrionics, a being almost mythical, literary imagination requires, imagination and above all, as in this case, the warm sense of honor . Conditions that met in the pages of the book "Pulling butter to the roof, where the gerund of the title seems to tug at an impossible present, splendor and gestures spoiled yesterday.
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• Carlos Sosa María Romero, a lawyer and writer.
His latest book is "Lanterns opaque", (2010)
