Dyed Dogs

By Paul Gray

THE SEVEN MADMEN by Roberto Arlt; translated by Naomi

Lindstrom; Godine; 272 pages; $14.95

It has taken a while for this novel to find its way into English. The Seven Madmen was first published in Argentina in 1929. Its author, Roberto Arlt (1900-42), was a disheveled Buenos Aires journalist who defiantly disregarded the rules of Spanish grammar and the finer sensibilities of critics. They in turn hooted at his work, which included four novels, two collections of stories and eight plays. The author once mordantly mimicked the typical response of his detractors: "Mr. Roberto Arlt keeps on in the same old rut: realism in the worst possible taste."

If anyone ever actually believed that this novel was realistic, then life in the Argentine capital must once have been unimaginably weird. True, the trappings of proletarian fiction are all roughly in place--lowlife taverns, brothels and urban rot: "The setting sun lit up the most revolting inner recesses of the sloping street." But the anti-hero who stumbles through this landscape is a perversely comic invention. Remo Erdosain collects bills for a sugar company and engages in petty embezzlement. He also writhes in noisy anguish at a world that can ignore his true genius. "Didn't they call me crazy," he asks an acquaintance, "because I said they should set up shops to dry-clean and dye dogs and metallize shirt cuffs?" One day, everything gets even worse.

His employer tells Erdosain that he must repay the money he has stolen or face jail, and his wife informs him that she is running off with another man. He luxuriates in grief raised to a higher power: "If he had had the strength, he would have thrown himself down a well."

Instead, Erdosain joins a mysterious figure called the Astrologer in a plot to take over the world. It goes something like this: Give the masses a new religious symbol to believe in ("harness the madman power") and then exploit their zeal to create wealth, in this case by mining gold in a remote area of Argentina. The Astrologer explains: "See? We'll lure the workers in with false promises and whip them to death if they won't work." Erdosain feels flattered to be included among the brains of this organization. His invention of a copper-plated rose, once perfected and put into production, will provide capital for the fledgling revolution, as will the string of bordellos the Astrologer plans to establish. Anticipating power, Erdosain dreams himself in a chamber at the bottom of the sea: "On the other side of the porthole, one-eyed sharks were swimming about, vile humored because of their piles ... Now all the fish in the sea were one-eyed, and he was the Emperor of the City of One-Eyed Fish."

Such surrealistic touches, largely unappreciated during his lifetime, now mark Arlt as an entertaining pioneer in the new world of South American fiction.

Despite his ineptitudes, Erdosain is astute enough to sense that "on a deeper level than consciousness and thought, there's a whole other life, more powerful and vast." The Seven Madmen staked Arlt's claim to a terrain that others, including Borges and Garcia Marquez, continue to explore. --By Paul Gray