Urban chroniclers in modern Latin America

Viviane Mahieux

"An unstructured genre that blends high aesthetic standards with nonfiction commentary, the journalistic cronica, or chronicle, has played a vital role in Latin American urban life since the nineteenth century. Drawing on extensive archival research, Viviane Mahieux delivers new testimony on how chroniclers engaged with modernity in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo during the 1920s and 1930s, a time when avant-garde movements transformed writers' and readers' conceptions of literature. Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life examines the work of extraordinary raconteurs Salvador Novo, Cube Bonifant, Roberto Arlt, Alfonsina Storni, and Mrio de Andrade, restoring the original newspaper contexts in which their articles first emerged. Each of these writers guided their readers through a constantly changing cityscape and advised them on...