Moving forward, looking back: trains, literature, and the arts in the River Plate

Moving Forward, Looking Back: Trains, Literature, and the Arts in the River Plate by Sarah M. Misemer argues that the train is paradoxically an anachronistic and modern indicator of River Plate national identity when seen in the literature and film of the region. The train's connections with new concepts of time and space, as well as the rise of the industrial age, make it a symbol loaded with cultural meanings. This project traces the importance of the train as a market of key moments in Argentine and Uruguayan history from 1854 to the present (nation-building, neo-colonialism, modernization/industrilization, dictatorship, privatization, and debt crisis). Through textual, filmic, and historical accounts this study demonstrates that the train is not simply an icon of the nineteenth-century's Naturalist movement, but rather a powerful contemporary metaphor for authors and directors of the River Plate as they communicate/create collective memory and cultural values in a region mired in uneven spurts of modernization and progress.

Many critical shifts in concepts of time and society's consciousness of modernity were derived from the railway and World Standard Time in the nineteenth century. These innovations restructred the way people viewed the world and dealt with "public" and "private" time. The forward, projectile motion along a linear track mimicked the passage of public chronological time. Conversely, the train also invoked a private, nostalgic view of tim as the traveler was yanked from his/her traditional view of the space/time continuum via the train's velocity. Travelers observed the landscape "disappear" in their backward glance from the window---although the landscape and interior compartment's space remained stagnant. This optical illusion caused passengers to perceive the world in new ways. Thus, the train unveils a conflictive blend of nostalgia and progress in the River Plate, as these countries move forward, but look back.

Celebrated authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonsina Storni, Armonia Somers, Juan Carlos Onetti, Roberto Cossa, Eduardo Rovner, and Felisberto Hernandez, all feature the train prominently in their work and are included here. The previous lacuna in academic criticism on this topic is puzzling considering the persistence of authors in Argentina and Uruguay who continue to focus on the train. Misemer's work offers a beginning study of the underrepresented field of railway literature and film in the Hispanic world by some of the most influential authors and cinematographers of their time. Each chapter reveals how rail systems denote watershed moments in the region's development, and shows how these are transformed and transfixed in the River Plate's population's memories through fictional and visual renderings. This book is offered as a first step in acquainting rail aficionados and lovers of literature with the literary terrain of the Southern Cone through a multi-genre approach.