Towards a railroad grammar: Glaxo (2009) and Lumbre (2013) by Hernán Ronsino

Abstract

In this article, I work on the novels Glaxo (2009) and Lumbre (2013) by Hernán Ronsino. I observe certain mechanisms of rewriting the leitmotif of the railroads in Argentine literature, and its reconfigurations from foundational texts of the 19th century to Lumbre. From this starting point, I am interested in putting Ronsino's novels in dialogue with what I understand as an omnipresent discursive tradition in the Argentine context in relation to the railroads. Thus, I extensively analyze the concept of railroad in these texts from the proposals of María Pía López and Horacio González in the volume Vías argentinas. Ensayos sobre el ferrocarril (2010). There, they postulate the railroad as an always unresolved remainder, still latent in contemporary times, and as a discursive nucleus always named in relation to dissimilar country projects. Finally, I investigate what I call a "railroad grammar" present in Ronsino's texts. At the narrative level, this grammar generates the layout of multiple textual paths that are taking shape in front of the reader and that, from this perspective, seem to propose new paths and genealogies in the context of contemporary Argentine literature.