Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life

Chapter 4. The Chronicler as Streetwalker: Salvador Novo Performs Genre

It is a spiritual bother not to know any respectable author who has uttered an immortal sentence on bathing, because epigraphs give strength and authority to speeches just like the opportune quotation of a legal article often gives freedom to prisoners, if the defense does it with tact and the jury believes them. —Salvador Novo, “Bathing Motifs,” El Universal Ilustrado, May 1924 In “Bathing Motifs,” one of the first articles Salvador Novo published in the weekly magazine El Universal Ilustrado, the nineteen-year-old author dwells on the pleasures of bathing in the river or sea, discusses the urban experience of the public bath, and wittily teases his readers with the comforts of a bathtub of their own.1 He writes on an admittedly frivolous subject yet claims to desire the serious consideration that an epigraph from a literary figure might solicit. This tongue-in-cheek lament reveals a willful mismatch of registers, a witty play with cultural hierarchies that would quickly become a hallmark of Novo’s writing. With an epigraph, Novo could establish cultural allies and anchor his ideas within a broader debate, suggesting to his readers ways to approach the text they were about to discover. An epigraph might also serve a Chapter 4 The Chronicler as Streetwalker Salvador Novo Performs Genre Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America | 94 purely aesthetic purpose, as Julio Torri, a contemporary of Novo’s, once suggested: “[The epigraph] is a spiritual liberation from the ugliness and poverty of official literary forms, and it derives always from an almost musical impulse of the soul” (Ensayos, 17).2 But if Torri elevated the epigraph by grandiosely equating it to a superior expression of the soul, Novo pragmatically brought it back down to earth by comparing it to a legal article quoted to a jury. In fact, Novo would eventually subvert the epigraph even further, using his own previously published words as a frame for his newer texts and astutely turning toward himself when in need of a figure of authority to corroborate his thoughts.3 With this type of gesture, reminiscent of Mário de Andrade’s self-dedication in his ode to São Paulo, Hallucinated City (1922), Novo cut short the dialogue promised by an epigraph, replacing an expected deference with a display of self-sufficiency.4 Why should an author who mocks epigraphs claim to need one for an essay on bathing? “I think of how well my bathing motifs would look, if their dome were ornamented by a phrase from, let’s say, Shakespeare,” confesses the impertinent Novo (VE I, 41).5 His interest seemed purely decorative, but his aestheticism was not devoid of ulterior motives. A reference to Shakespeare indicated knowledge and status for a reading public educated enough to know this author’s name but perhaps not erudite enough to grasp the superficiality of the reference. No longer limited to elite literary circles, Mexico City’s growing print culture had made reading accessible to a middle-class public that was not fully versed in literature. Novo’s reflection on epigraphs pointed to the ease with which a writer, through a few well-placed quotations, could pass as an intellectual. It also permitted Novo to link himself with high culture at the same time as he mocked cultural hierarchies. The readers who leafed through the glossy pages of the Ilustrado in May 1924 and paused at “Bathing Motifs” were faced by a peculiar epigraph. Instead of a supposedly desirable quotation by Shakespeare, the sensual photograph of glamorous North American movie star Barbara La Marr, chatting on the telephone as she languidly reclines into a bubble bath, adorns the top of the page.6 The Ilustrado’s blurb reads: “Barbara La Marr, the exquisite artist has, with this photograph, inspired Salvador Novo to write this present article.” By replacing a respected literary figure with an attractive movie star in a risqué pose, the chronicler invited his readers to laugh at his unliterary source of inspiration. At the same time, in a calibrated gesture that enhanced his status as a public figure, Novo linked his public persona to the image of a female film star. Like this icon of cosmopolitan elegance, Novo seduced his audience through unconventional means: he flirted with his readers by creating a sensual and intimate atmosphere in his chronicles, all the while coyly keeping the distance needed to craft his own glamorous writing persona...