H. Bustos Domecq (Honorio Bustos Domecq) is a pseudonym used for several collaborative works by the Argentine writers

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

and

Adolfo Bioy Casares Adolfo Bioy Casares (; 15 September 1914 – 8 March 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fa ...

Origin

Bustos Domecq made his first appearance as F. (Francisco) Bustos, the pseudonym under which Borges, in 1933, published his first fictional story, now known as "Hombre de la esquina rosada", ("Man from the Pink Corner") but originally titled "Hombre de las orillas" ("Man from the Slums" or more literally "Man from the Outskirts"), Francisco Bustos being the name of "one forefather's forefather". He changed his first initial and acquired a second surname (which in Argentina connotes either "old money" or simply, as in the rest of

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

, a maternal last name) as Borges and Bioy Casares later used the pseudonym "H. Bustos Domecq" for some of their lighter works. According to Borges, Bustos was the name of one of his great-grandfathers, while Domecq was the name of one of Bioy's great-grandfathers.

Works

H. Bustos Domecq was the original credited author of the parodic detective stories in ''Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi'', 1942 (translated 1981 as ''Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi'') and ''Dos fantasías memorables'', 1946 (''Two memorable fancies''). Bustos was also the alleged author of ''Crónicas de Bustos Domecq'', 1967, (translated by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni as ''Chronicles of Bustos Domecq'' (1976)), and ''Nuevos Cuentos de Bustos Domecq'' (1977), even though the authors' actual names were featured on the covers of both books. Under another pseudonym, "Benito Suárez Lynch" (both surnames were taken from the authors' illustrious ancestors), Borges and Bioy published the parodic mystery ''Un modelo para la muerte'' (''A model for death'') in 1946, featuring the characters of the Isidro Parodi stories. The pair also did some collaborations without the use of the pseudonym, notably two movie scripts from 1955: ''Los orilleros'' (''Slum-dwellers'') and ''El paraíso de los creyentes'' (The Paradise of Believers). Both dealt with the exacerbated sense of manhood among the ''compadritos'' in the slums of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

circa 1900. The Bustos Domecq materials provided comic relief for cultivated Latin Americans, but also, famously, conveyed a subtle yet unambiguous pro-allied message in the 1942 edition of ''Parodi'' – which was not a surprise for people who knew the authors but was, nevertheless, a contrarian statement given the state of Argentine politics at the time. Note: The Isidro Parodi appears as ''Isidoro'' in some editions.

Influence

According to

Emir Rodríguez Monegal Emir Rodríguez Monegal (28 July 1921 – 14 November 1985), born in Uruguay, was a scholar, literary critic, and editor of Latin American literature. From 1969 to 1985, Rodríguez Monegal was professor of Latin American contemporary literatur ...

in his April 1968 article "Nota sobre Biorges", when

and

collaborated under the pseudonyms H. Bustos Domecq or B. Suárez Lynch, the results seemed written by a new personality, more than the sum of its parts, which he dubbed "Biorges" and considered in his own right as "one of the most important Argentine prose writers of his time", for having influenced writers such as

Leopoldo Marechal Leopoldo Marechal (June 11, 1900 – June 26, 1970) was one of the most important Argentine writers of the twentieth century. Biographical notes Born in Buenos Aires into a family of French and Spanish descent, Marechal became a primary sch ...

(an otherwise anti-Borgesian), or Julio Cortázar's use of fictional language and slang in his masterpiece ''

Hopscotch Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object, called a lagger, into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces and retrieve the object. It is a ch ...

''.

References

; Sources consulted ; Endnotes {{DEFAULTSORT:Bustos Domecq, Honorio Argentine male writers Collective pseudonyms Jorge Luis Borges Fictional characters introduced in 1933