More than the Sum of its Parts: Borges, Bioy Casares and the Phenomenon of the Séptimo Círculo Collection

Abstract

Crime fiction has long been at the very heart of Argentine literature. Critics such as Lafforgue claim that no other genre has so strongly underpinned the system of Argentine literary fiction throughout the twentieth century (1997, 1). As early as the mid-1910s popular collections following the model of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American dime novel began to flourish in Argentina. While periodicals such as La Novela Semanal, El Cuento Ilustrado and La Novela Universitaria started featuring detective tales at regular intervals (mainly modelled after juvenile publications in the style of US imports Nick Carter and Buffalo Bill), it was not until the mid-1940s that the genre was transformed in terms of popularity and, most importantly, prestige (Lafforgue and Rivera 1996, 17–19; Miranda 2013, 87–97). This chapter investigates the ways in which the Séptimo Círculo collection, initially edited by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, radically altered the genre’s literary esteem.