JULIO ARIZA

SPANISH FAVORITE BOOK TO TEACH How I Became a Nun, by César Aira MUST-READ BOOK IN YOUR FIELD The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel), by Macedonio Fernandez FAVORITE PLEASURE READS El baile de las locas byCopi The Buenos Aires Affair, by Manuel Puig The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Miles de anos, by Juan Jose Becerra Diaries, by Franz Kafka Proust & Signs, by Gilles Deleuze How I Became a Nun, by Cesar Aira El aire, by Sergio Chejfec Sade/Fourier/Loyola, by Roland Barthes Urban Voodoo, by Edgardo Cozarinsky MOST RECENTLY READ Lata peinada, by Ricardo Zelarayan "From the very first page of Aira's 'autobiographical' novel, students understand that, literally and literarily, everything is possible in a story." "The Museum of Eterna'sNovel is one of the greatest works of fiction ever written in any language. The Museum is an experimental novel about love, politics and fiction. Fernandez's aesthetic ideas have had a great impact on Argentine literature. Jorge Luis Borges explains: 'I imitated him, to the point of transcription, to the point of devoted and impassioned plagiarism. I felt: Macedonio is metaphysics, is literature. Whoever preceded him might shine in history, but they were all rough drafts of Macedonio, imperfect previous versions.'"