An Absurdist's Exile in Buenos Aires: Witold Gombrowicz's Argentine Years

Outsider Everywhere: Witold Gombrowicz in Argentina, by Mercedes Halfon, translated by Rahul Bery, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 152 pages, $18.95

In 1937, at the tender and messianic age of 33, the Polish author Witold Gombrowicz published his first and most famous novel, Ferdydurke. Starting with its nonsensical title, never explained in the text, Ferdydurke declares war on what its highly opinionated narrator calls "maturity."

The 30-year-old protagonist, Joey, finds himself kidnapped by a teacher and taken back to school, where he joins his fellows in games of puerile verbal brinkmanship. (One student cries, "We must redouble our energies, and go on using the choicest obscenities we know!") When Joey is sent to live with a progressive urban family, the novel's middle section veers into disturbing erotic hijinks, as Joey spends much time peering through a keyhole at the teenage daughter, and the book becomes a send-up of the liberal intelligentsia, with the family's bien-pensant parents all too eager to seem sophisticated about their vulnerable daughter's budding sexuality. In the novel's final third, Joey accompanies a gay classmate to the Polish countryside to find a "farmhand" to consort with, only to be taken in by upper-class relatives. … [Subscribe to continue reading]