It says a lot about Arlt's art that I actually thought this crew of misfits was gonna pull off gassing the Argentine army and setting up their dictatorship--instead, as it all falls apart because of the bugs in their respective heads, we get a front-row seat to the new bugs that fallapart spawns. And Arlt being a wizard with fearsome urban-industrial landscapes, human brooding and its insalubrious effects, and scenic choreography (which is to say, form, content, action), it's riveting (one must credit the translator, Larry Riley, too), even if this is largely a wrapping of ends and in that sense only, a slightly junior adjunct to The Seven Madmen (shorter too, and of course, it was only funding matters that led them to be published separately in the first place). Wow though, yikes. ( )

The conclusion of the story that Arlt began with Los Siete Locos, as events come to their (perhaps) inevitable conclusion. Even more dark and disturbing than the first book. At the heart of it are two individuals:

Remo Erdosain seems to be under an existential despair of titan proportions, what we nowadays would call depression or perhapsocial alienation. He's a wannabe inventor, obsessed with gas warfare and turning roses into metal. In his despair and obsession he falls under the sway of:

El Astrologo (The Astrologer) is a fascinatingly 20th-century figure, a Jim Jones/Osama bin Laden/Vladimir Lenin sort of figure, fascinated by the Ku Klux Klan, planning the violent overthrow of the government. With his cynical and Machiavellian nature, he makes the perfect puppet master for the fallen circles in which he moves.

The other figures from Locos, Haffner, Barsut, Ergueta, Hipolita--losers, criminals, outcasts--also return and get to play their various roles before the drama unfolds completely. ( )