The Library of Augusto Monterroso

Posted bydantelianocuenta9 July, 2025

Posted inArticles Tags:Dante Liano, Monterroso

Entering a writer's library is like rummaging through the toolbox of a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a sculptor. Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, garlopa, chisel, drill, sandpaper, square and tape measure to work wood (oak, pine, walnut) with nails, screws, glue, varnish and lacquer, that concentrated universe where all the possibilities of manufacture and artefact reside. Only that in the extended world of bookcases, leaning against the wall as if they were going to fall, or as if they were going to tear down that wall, those other tools of the trade are lined up, nails and paper screws enclosed between the cardboard or leather spines. It would be an unbearable banality to say: "Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are", because you read everything, regardless of interests and hobbies, obsessions and manias, obligations and duties. Despite everything, going through the books a writer has collected throughout their life can provide clues or coincidences, perhaps clarifications that help better enjoy their books.

Unless he is a travelling writer, one of those that Dr. Arévalo portrayed in his time: "Each country, a library." All this comes to mind by reading Fragments of the Treasure Map, a beautiful title for a very special book. It was written by Leticia Sánchez Ruiz, a writer from Oviedo, after touring the library that Augusto Monterroso donated to the University of Oviedo. We are before a journey full of devotion and reverence, or, as the epigraph best recites: "with love, admiration and deep gratitude". A curiosity: the author never met this admired author in person. He was about to meet him, he confesses, at the presentation of a volume in Salamanca. Only that he arrived late, when the event was over: it was the occasion when he was closest to Monterroso. In a way, the book is a way of establishing an implied, tacit, virtual relationship.

It all likely began with the awarding of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature to Augusto Monterroso in the year 2000. That award was the most important one received by the Guatemalan author. His stay in Oviedo will have been very pleasant, and Monterroso will have been very well impressed. When he died in 2003, he left a legacy of volumes and manuscripts of great value. His wife, the writer Bárbara Jacobs, decided, in 2008, to donate most of these books to the University of Oviedo. These works travelled from the Chimalistac neighbourhood in Mexico City to Madrid by air. From Madrid, several trucks loaded the five tons of the legacy, and they were deposited in the Library of the El Milán Campus. There, in a vast wing of the enclosure, various shelves treasure years and years of shopping, reading, searching, entertainment, reflection, everything that an author's library implies.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz leads us through a singular reading, the reading of several readings, especially those that Monterroso made, and only the title of a work would serve to make inferences. There are also annotated books that indicate Monterroso's preferences, and there are manuscripts, letters, and photographs. Not for nothing, Sánchez Ruiz calls his adventure "fragments of the treasure map", a quote that implies an evaluation. At the beginning, he relates that, once, that treasure ran the risk of dissolving into nothingness, as Tito relates in the story How I managed to get rid of five hundred books. That narrative contains a kind of joke, because the author says that one day, he decided to dismantle his collection of books. However, shortly after starting, he regretted it. The anecdote is invented, but it serves to exercise the sarcasm of the Guatemalan author. As far as is known, he never got rid of any book, but rather accumulated copies throughout his life.

Fragments tiptoe through the orderly shelves, which, despite this concert, form a labyrinth of symbols and signs, ready to be interpreted. The path between the volumes serves the author to weave a portrait of Tito Monterroso, which mixes biography, literary anecdotes and textual quotations, and tries to make that painting as faithful as possible to the original. One of the most interesting parts is found in the notes that Titus wrote on the pages of his favourite readings. It begins with a quote from Steiner: There are two types of people, those who read with a pencil in their hand and those who do not. "There's nothing quite as fascinating as the marginal notes of great writers," he says. Tito Monterroso was reading with a pencil in his hand. His stroke is shy, not very emphatic. Sánchez points out that the characteristic of Tito's annotations is that, rather than commenting, he corrects. Who knows if that is the result of his first job in Mexico, proofreader at the Séneca publishing house. In any case, create a personal code: an X for translation errors; a question mark, like a raised eyebrow, in the face of the wrong or the incomprehensible; a bracket for what pleases him; a six-pointed star for the exceptional, and for phrases that mention flies, one of the Guatemalan author's strange obsessions.

Monterroso points out, in Henry  James's Notebook, the paragraphs in which the American complains about the excessive social life, which leaves him no time for writing, as it reflects, says Sánchez, something that Tito himself reflected on in the text Agenda de un escritor. In another book, Flaubert's Parrot, by Julian Barnes, Monterroso underlines the statement: "Flaubert did not have a very exact idea of what Emma Bovary's eyes were like." This leads him to seek, in the text, the verification of such an observation, and underlines the parts in which the protagonist's eyes appear: "her black eyes seemed blacker"; "black in the shadow and from a dark blue to full light"; "although they were brown, they looked black." This ambiguity would seem strange in an author who spent a week in search of the mot juste, but the doubt dissolves when one thinks that indeterminacy is one of the keys to literature. Monterroso also underlines the books of Borges and Cortázar, and one might think that the underlines, then, are exclamation marks, in the best sense of the term.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz points out, as an almost metaliterary curiosity, that in Tito's library are the works of Arturo Monterroso and Porfirio Barba Jacob. He declares, with a certain astonishment, that Arturo Monterroso exists and that he is a Guatemalan writer. I can confirm that intuition: Arturo not only exists in reality, but he is an excellent writer, greatly admired by the countless students of his captivating literary workshops. His works are nothing like Tito's, and that is very good, because it removes suspicions and exploitation of literary coincidences. De Barba Jacob indicates the almost coincidence with the name of Bárbara Jacobs, Monterroso's wife. He completes the information by saying that Titus knew Barba Jacob, because he frequented his parents' house, and that Titus admired him very much. There is much more. Porfirio Barba Jacob was a Colombian modernist who settled in Guatemala, was schooled there, was a friend and enemy of Rafael Arévalo Martínez, and deserved a biography written by Fernando Vallejo. Titus was right when he kept his books. Fragments of a Treasure Map contains much more information, and reading it reveals to us the world of Monterrosian and incites us to what would be the main activity: reading Tito's work, or, what is almost the same, rereading it, because it is prose to be enjoyed over and over again.

 

 

La biblioteca de Tito

 

Entrar en la biblioteca de un escritor asemeja a hurgar de escondidas en el bolsón de instrumentos de un carpintero, de un herrero, de un escultor. Destornilladores, martillos, serrucho, garlopa, formón, taladro, lija, escuadra y cinta métrica para trabajar madera (roble, pino, nogal) con clavos, tornillos, pegamento, barniz y laca, ese universo concentrado en donde residen todas las posibilidades de manufactura y artefacto. Solo que en el extendido mundo de las libreras, apoyadas en la pared como si se fueran a caer, o como si fueran a derribar ese muro, se alinean esas otras herramientas del oficio, clavos y tornillos de papel encerrados entre los lomos de cartón o piel. Sería una banalidad insoportable enunciar: “Dime qué lees y te diré quién eres”, porque se lee de todo, independientemente de los intereses y aficiones, de las obsesiones y manías, de las obligaciones y deberes. A pesar de todo, recorrer los libros que un escritor ha coleccionado en su vida puede proporcionar pistas o coincidencias, quizá esclarecimientos para gozar mejor la lectura de sus libros. A menos que sea un escritor viajero, de esos que el doctor Arévalo retrató en su tiempo: “Cada país, una biblioteca”.

Todo esto viene a cuento por la lectura de Fragmentos del mapa del tesoro, hermoso título para un libro muy especial. Lo escribió Leticia Sánchez Ruiz, escritora ovetense, luego de recorrer la biblioteca que Augusto Monterroso donó a la Universidad de Oviedo. Nos hallamos delante de un itinerario lleno de devoción y reverencia, o, como mejor recita el epígrafe: “con amor, admiración y profundo agradecimiento”. Una curiosidad: la autora nunca conoció en persona a ese autor tan admirado. Estuvo a punto de conocerlo, confiesa, en la presentación de un volumen en Salamanca. Solo que llegó tarde, cuando el acto había terminado: fue la ocasión en que estuvo más cerca de Monterroso. De alguna manera, el libro es una manera de establecer una relación sobreentendida, tácita, virtual.

Es probable que todo haya comenzado con la asignación del Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras a Augusto Monterroso, en el año 2000. Ese premio fue el más importante recibido por el autor guatemalteco. Su estancia en Oviedo habrá sido muy agradable y Monterroso habrá quedado muy bien impresionado. Cuando murió, en 2003, dejó un legado de volúmenes y manuscritos de gran valor. Su esposa, la escritora Bárbara Jacobs decidió, en 2008, donar la mayor parte de esos libros a la Universidad de Oviedo. Esas obras viajaron del barrio de Chimalistac, en la Ciudad de México, a Madrid, por vía aérea. De Madrid, varios camiones cargaron las cinco toneladas del legado y fueron depositados en la Biblioteca del Campus de El Milán. Allí, en una vasta ala del recinto, diversos estantes atesoran años y años de compras, de lecturas, de búsquedas, de entretenimiento, de reflexión, de todo aquello que implica la biblioteca de un autor.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz nos conduce por una lectura singular, la lectura de varias lecturas, sobre todo, las que Monterroso realizó, y solo el título de una obra serviría para hacer inferencias. Hay, además, libros anotados que nos indican las preferencias de Monterroso y hay manuscritos, cartas, fotografías. No por nada, Sánchez Ruiz denomina a su aventura “fragmentos del mapa del tesoro”, una cita que implica una evaluación. Al principio, relata que, alguna vez, ese tesoro corrió el riesgo de disolverse en la nada, según relata Tito en el cuento Cómo logré deshacerme de quinientos libros. Esa narración contiene una especie de broma, pues el autor dice que, un buen día, decidió desbaratar su colección de libros. Sin embargo, poco tiempo después de empezar, se arrepintió. La anécdota es inventada, pero sirve para ejercitar el sarcasmo del autor guatemalteco. Que se sepa, nunca se deshizo de ningún libro, sino más bien acumuló ejemplares a lo largo de su vida.

Fragmentos recorre, de puntillas, los estantes ordenados, que, no obstante ese concierto, forman un laberinto de símbolos y signos, listos para ser interpretados. El camino entre los rimeros de volúmenes sirve a la autora para tejer un retrato de Tito Monterroso, que mezcla biografía, anécdotas literarias y citas textuales, y trata de que esa pintura sea lo más fiel posible al original. Una de las partes más interesantes se encuentra en las anotaciones que Tito escribió en las páginas de sus lecturas favoritas.

Inicia con una cita de Steiner: hay dos tipos de personas, las que leen con un lápiz en la mano y las que no. “No hay nada tan fascinante como las notas marginales de los grandes escritores”, dice. Obviamente, Tito Monterroso leía con un lápiz en la mano. Su trazo es tímido, poco enfático. Sánchez señala que la característica de las anotaciones de Tito consiste en que más que comentar, corrige. Quién sabe si ese es el resultado de su primer trabajo en México, corrector de pruebas en la editorial Séneca. De todas formas, crea un código personal: una equis para los errores de traducción; un signo de interrogación, como una ceja levantada, ante lo erróneo o lo incomprensible; un corchete para lo que le agrada; una estrella de seis puntas para lo excepcional, y para las frases que mencionan a las moscas, una de las extrañas obsesiones del autor guatemalteco.

Monterroso señala, en Cuaderno de notas, de Henry James, los párrafos en los que el norteamericano se queja de la excesiva vida social, que no le deja tiempo para la escritura, en cuanto refleja, dice Sánchez, algo que el mismo Tito reflexionaba en el texto Agenda de un escritor. En otro libro, El loro de Flaubert, de Julian Barnes, Monterroso subraya la afirmación: “Flaubert no tenía una idea muy exacta de cómo eran los ojos de Emma Bovary”. Esto lo lleva a buscar, en el texto, la comprobación de tal observación, y subraya las partes en las que aparecen los ojos de la protagonista: “sus ojos negros parecían más negros”; “negros en la sombra y de un azul oscuro a plena luz”; “aunque eran pardos parecían negros”. Parecería extraña esta ambigüedad en un autor que se pasaba una semana a la búsqueda de la mot juste, mas la duda se disuelve cuando se piensa que la indeterminación es una de las claves de la literatura. Monterroso también subraya los libros de Borges y de Cortázar y uno podría pensar que los subrayados, entonces, son signos de admiración, en el mejor sentido del término.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz señala, como una curiosidad casi metaliteraria, que en la biblioteca de Tito se encuentran las obras de Arturo Monterroso y de Porfirio Barba Jacob. Declara, con un cierto asombro, que Arturo Monterroso existe realmente y que se trata de un escritor guatemalteco. Puedo confirmar esa intuición: Arturo no solo existe en la realidad, sino que es un excelente escritor, muy admirado por los innumerables alumnos de sus cautivadores talleres literarios. Sus obras no se parecen en nada a las de Tito, y eso está muy bien, porque aleja sospechas y aprovechamientos de literarias casualidades. De Barba Jacob indica la casi coincidencia con el nombre de Bárbara Jacobs, la esposa de Monterroso. Completa la información diciendo que Tito conoció a Barba Jacob, porque este frecuentaba la casa de sus padres, y que Tito lo admiraba mucho. Hay mucho más. Porfirio Barba Jacob fue un modernista colombiano que se estableció en Guatemala, hizo escuela allí, fue amigo y enemigo de Rafael Arévalo Martínez, y mereció una biografía escrita por Fernando Vallejo. Tenía razón Tito cuando guardaba sus libros. Fragmentos de un mapa del tesoro contiene mucha más información, y su lectura nos revela el mundo monterrosiano y nos incita a lo que sería la actividad principal: leer la obra de Tito, o, lo que es casi lo mismo, releerla, porque es prosa para degustar una y otra vez.

 

 

The Fiery Spirits: Popular Protest, Parliament and the English Revolution by John Rees, Hardcover – 22 April 2025, Verso publication

 “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Tom Paine

“The sensible way to proceed — I think this is how Marx and Engels proceeded — is to develop a methodological view: historical materialism or dialectical materialism, whatever you want to call it. Then, you approach any material with that framework in mind, but you have to be able to go where the material leads you. Engels warned that you cannot start forcing the historical material into a ready-made format. I took that approach with my book. Of course, I had read a great deal of secondary material, but I wanted to go where the historical archives and contemporary material would take me. I did not wish to influence my work, nor did I intend to engage in debates with other Marxists or currents, in order to determine where history would go. After you have done that, you can demarcate it and illuminate it by — in a relatively minor way — dealing with other currents and approaches. What makes something Marxist is that it is the application of that method. “

John Rees

John Rees’s Fiery Spirits offers a new perspective on the English Revolution.  Fiery Spirits establishes Rees as the leading contemporary continuator of the Marxist tradition, initiated by Christopher Hill and Brian Manning in writing the history of the 17th-century English revolution.

The latest book complements both Rees’s PhD thesis and his The Leveller Revolution, as well as his most recent publication, Marxism and the English Revolution. Rees is a gifted historian, and his latest book is well-written and thoroughly researched. It neither downplays nor overplays the Fiery Spirits, presenting a relatively objective assessment of their role in the English Revolution.[1]

Like the great historian Christopher Hill, Rees is sensitive enough to his historical sources to detect the social currents that brought people of diverse social backgrounds into struggle against the king, and well-grounded enough in history to identify new and revolutionary ideas in the curious and archaic guise in which they appeared. The Fiery Spirits, who were some of the revolution's ideologues, ransacked the Bible and half-understood historical precedent to justify some theory that explained their actions.

Rees’s new perspective centres on a small group of highly influential MPs. These “fiery spirits” played a significant role in shaping the course of the English bourgeois revolution, which ultimately led to the establishment of an English republic. Through their radical parliamentarianism, combined with mass protest, these revolutionaries pushed the revolution forward to its conclusion.

Rees is careful not to elevate these Fiery Spirits above the role played by Oliver Cromwell, who was, after all, the leader of the English revolution. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky once wrote, “ Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century is, in this sense, immeasurably greater than many living dogs.”[2]

One of the main tasks Rees had was to rescue these “Fiery Spirits” from what E.P. Thompson once wrote was the “condensation of history”. They have been buried under a large number of dead dogs, and it is to Rees’s credit that he has rescued them. Henry Marten, Peter Wentworth, Alexander Rigby, and others deserve their place in history, and this work traces the radicalism of these Fiery Spirits in some cases back to the reign of Elizabeth I.

Dominic Alexander makes an interesting point in his review of Rees’s book: He writes, “In one sense, this partial continuity is evidence of how deeply the causative factors of the English Revolution were ingrained in the nation's history. The conflict was not, as many revisionist historians have tended to argue, a mere accidental product of contingent events and personalities. The Fiery Spirits is, however, not so much a riposte to that vein of argument as it is a response to a more interesting one about the autonomy of the political sphere in the unfolding of the Revolution. The long pre-history of the parliamentary opposition faction is one proof that even granting the relative independence of the political sphere, causation there also runs deep into the history of early modern England”.[3]

Rees’s book presents a relatively orthodox Marxist understanding of the English bourgeois revolution and its leading actors. It is therefore perhaps surprising how little Rees uses the work of Leon Trotsky; there is no direct quote of Trotsky in any of Rees’s latest books. For any Marxist, Trotsky should be the basic starting point for any analysis of revolutions and their actors.

Trotsky writes, “The English revolution of the seventeenth century, precisely because it was a great revolution shattering the nation to the bottom, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp transitions in the form of civil war. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, precisely because it was a profound revolution that shook the nation to its core, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp transitions in the form of civil war. Initially, the royal power, resting on the privileged classes or the upper echelons of these classes – the aristocrats and bishops – is opposed by the bourgeoisie and the circles of the squirearchy that are closely associated with it. The government of the bourgeoisie is the Presbyterian Parliament supported by the City of London.” [4]For Rees, this “dual Power began in the very early part of the 17^th century.

The hallmark of a good book is that even seasoned readers who have studied this period for ages can learn something new. Rees presents new material that highlights the extraordinary level of factionalism and revolt that preceded the outbreak of revolution. From an early period, the Fiery Spirits led this rebellion. As Alexander writes, “The connections between the activities of the radicals in the Commons and the popular movement became, as Rees shows, the key dynamic driving events in the years 1640-1. The fiery spirits were indeed a minority in the Commons. Still, the weight of popular support behind their moves, such as Henry Marten’s during the struggle over the attainder of the King’s chief advisor Earl Strafford, meant that, as in this instance, ‘the course of events proceeded on the path that Marten advocated, not that which Pym still trod’ (pp.163-4). Indeed, during this confrontation, which led to Strafford’s execution, Pym lost control of parliament. Popular mobilisations against Strafford made the difference; one MP wrote, ‘unless this Earl be sacrificed to public discontentment I see not what hopes we have of peace’ (p.165).[5]

The Great historian E. H Carr was fond of saying, "Study the historian before you begin to study the facts." This maxim should be applied to Rees. The Fiery Spirits is, without doubt, a significant addition to our understanding of the English bourgeois revolution. It contains new detailed research and reinterprets significant episodes and stages of events. Rees recalibrates our understanding of the revolution from a historical materialist standpoint. However, to what extent you could describe Rees as a revisionist is open to conjecture.

When I asked AI this question, its reply was “while John Rees engages with historical revisionism to some extent, his primary framework is that of Marxist historiography, which is distinct from the broader category of revisionist historians who challenge traditional interpretations.”  Not much help.

There is something Jesuitical about Rees’s ability to write history from a relatively orthodox Marxist perspective while retaining the political outlook of a pseudo-left. He appears to retain the ability to compartmentalise his mind and pursue a scientific Marxist approach to history, up to the point where his radical politics, to some extent, draw the line. He is perhaps aided by an approach that was further encouraged by the extreme specialisation of academic life, which enables him to concentrate on very narrow areas of history that never bring him into direct conflict with his political organisation, Counterfire, on political questions.

Speaking of which, in a previous article, I wrote this: “Rees was a member of the SWP before leaving to found the Counterfire group in 2010, as a significant split from the SWP. Counterfire specialises in providing a platform for the remnants and detritus of pseudo-left politics. The group is thoroughly convinced of the power and longevity of capitalism and is hostile to the working class and genuine socialism. Counterfire and Rees’s occasional use of Marxist phrases, and even rarer references to the Russian revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, are for the sole purpose of opposing the independent political mobilisation of the working class on a revolutionary and internationalist programme. Counterfire's self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” are bitterly opposed to the orthodox Marxism represented by the World Socialist Web Site, the Socialist Equality Parties, and the International Committee of the Fourth International. “[6]

While I do not personally subscribe to Rees’s political outlook, I can nonetheless recommend this book as highly as his previous work. Rees is a historian well worth reading, and it should be interesting to see what he is working on next. As Ann Talbot wrote about Hill which equally applies to Rees “A historian that stands head and shoulders above his detractors and his books deserve to be read and reread, and if with a critical eye, it should always be with the knowledge that his limitations and faults as much as his great historical insights and innovations are the product of his time. He may be bettered, but never dismissed, and only bettered by those who have studied him closely.[7]

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[1] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10465/1/HIS_thesis_Rees_Thesis_2014.pdf

[2] Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm

[3] https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-fiery-spirits-popular-protest-parliament-and-the-english-revolution-book-review/

[4] Chapter 11 of The History of the Russian Revolution (1931)

[5] https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-fiery-spirits-popular-protest-parliament-and-the-english-revolution-book-review/

[6] https://atrumpetofsedition.org/2024/09/18/marxism-and-the-english-revolution-john-rees-whalebone-press-2024-15-00/

[7] "These the times ... this the man": an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html