Uruguayan Writer Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964)

I have just begun reading Piano Stories by the late Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández. It is very clearly unlike anything else I have ever read. He was an author admired by Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar, and Francine Prose. According to Italo Calvino:

Hernández’s most typical stories are those that are centered on a rather complicated mise-en-scène, a spectacular ritual that unfolds within the depths of an elegant house: a flooded patio in which lighted candles float; a little theatre of dolls large as real women striking enigmatic poses; a dark gallery in which one is supposed to recognize by touch objects that elicit associations of images and thoughts.

His translator, Luis Harss, provides some rather odd biographical details:

He married four times; was a great eater and raconteur at literary soirees; had a passion for fat women; loved to improvise on the piano in the styles of various classical composers; once toured Argentina with his own trio, other times with a flamboyantly bearded impresario called Venus González. He preferred to write in shuttered rooms or basements; suffered a life-long emotional dependence on his mother; was haunted by morbid vanity and a sense of failure; became ill-humored and reactionary in middle age; and died of leukemia, his body so bloated it had to be removed through the window of the funeral home in a box as large as a piano.