Late Book Culture in Argentina [Paperback]

Modern literary culture depended on the medium of the print book. Today, with the advent of digital technologies, it is far from apparent that print is, or should be, the vehicle of choice for contemporary writers. Print has been placed in relief, as the book becomes a site of experimentation with new platforms for writing. Among Latin American countries, none has been as crucial player in the world of print as Argentina. Argentine presses were the channel for many of the great modern literary experiments in Latin America. As such, it comes as no surprise that today, when those same presses have been gobbled up by transnational media conglomerates and digital technologies abound, Argentine writers would be attentive to the shifting media of literature.Late Book Culture in Argentinachronicles that shift. Epplin offers readings of some of the most innovative Argentine writers and collective projects of recent years: Osvaldo Lamborghini, C?sar Aira, the cardboard publishing house Elo?sa Cartonera, the poetry project Estaci?n Pringles, Sergio Chejfec, and Pablo Katchadjian. This corpus provides a lens through which to understand the numerous experiments with literary formats in Argentina today. These experiments take on a number of forms-digital, artisanal, and collective-and they provide the ferment for some of Argentina's most audacious contemporary literature. As such they deserve critical attention and theoretical examination.

From the very first pages, Epplin fights against the tendency to view literary production as coterminous with the book. He has accumulated a set of stimulating and compelling examples of literature, of which have in common the problematization or the outright rejection of the book-object as the neutral form in which literary content is disseminated. ... Epplins study presents a deep, engaged interpretation of one particular local manifestation of late book culture ... Epplins monograph will be of interest to students and scholars ols$