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José
Pablo Feinmann Argentina
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José Pablo
Feinmann was born in Buenos Aires in 1943, where he has always lived and where
he studied and taught philosophy at the University. He is the author of
numerous essays and novels, as well as plays and scripts that have been
successfully brought to the screen.
Whichever
genre Feinmann works in, his writing is always characterised by a concern with
contemporary issues: the relationship between current problems and history; the
tangled links between science and politics; or questions of individual and
collective guilt. Philosophy, for Feinmann, is a daily necessity, and his
approaches to thought have struck such a chord that he has been able to draw an
unusually wide audience: his courses are attended by hundreds of people, and
the prestigious newspaper Página/12, which published a series of weekly
supplements entitled La filosofia y el barro de la historia (“Philosophy
and the Mud of History”) in late 2006/early 2007, had to double the number of
instalments.
Now
this outstanding work is to be published by Planeta in Buenos Aires. Feinmann
takes his readers along on a philosophical journey through the past centuries,
from Descartes via Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, the
Frankfurter School and Sartre to Foucault's postmodernism. The great
Argentinean thinker Feinmann, who courts controversy in his occasional
television appearances, sets out to teach, and does so in a highly serious
manner. Yet he also aims to provide new, critical food for thought of his own.
For Feinmann, fiction
represents another, often more sublime way of approaching philosophical issues.
His novel, La sombra de Heidegger
(“Heidegger’s Shadow”) is the concluding volume in a trilogy which also
includes the novels La astucia de la
razón (“The Cunning of Reason”)
and La crítica de las armas (“The
Critique of Weapons”). The focus of La
sombra de Heidegger is the character Dieter Müller, a German professor and
a pupil of Heidegger who had always recognised his master’s intellectual
superiority. But unlike Heidegger – who was appointed Director of Heidelberg
University in 1933 with the support of the Nazi party – he went into exile in
Argentina after the war.
Built up into an involving
and tragic individual fate, this novel casts a critical light on the figure of
one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.
In
his prologue to Feinmann's book, Franco Volpi, the Italian translator of
Heidegger's Being and Time, writes: Great philosophy is dead? Long live
philosophy! It is time to return to it hand in hand with Feinmann, to breathe
new life into it. [...]
These
pages are by no means neutral: they leave us stronger or weaker, happier or
sadder, more certain or more uncertain – but never unchanged.
The latest novel Timote reconstructs the
kidnapping and murder of the Argentine general and former president Aramburu by
the Montoneros, a revolutionary Peronist organization. The event is described
graphically in all facets of its significance: as a milestone in Argentine
history, a clash of the generations and a dispute between the ideological camps
fighting over the person of Perón.
Timote is a small town in
the province of Buenos Aires where Aramburu was taken, which became a symbol
for the then beginning Argentine dictatorship. Feinmann deliberately
fictionalises the events, not letting them go uncommented as a reaction to the
dictatorship by the Montoneros, but embedding them within the personal
development of the young men and women involved. The characters’ thoughts,
Aramburu’s interrogation and the group’s communiqués form the matrix of ideas
that Feinmann weaves around the killing. He asks searching questions, looking
behind the superficial factors: who are the Montoneros, who claim to represent
the people? Who were Perón and his wife, who claimed to love the people? Who is
Aramburu, who claims to protect democracy? The answers the author finds are
many and varied.
Joe Carter, an LA detective
and contract killer, is forced by the mafia to take on a case: Carter en New
York. The big boss Gino Mastronardi wants to know who his wife Elizabeth
Anderson is cheating on him with. Even tough-as-nails Carter is surprised at
what he finds out: Mrs Anderson is having an affair with her husband's
mistress, a siren with long legs, red hair and a shapely body. The two of them
explain to Carter that they're deeply in love although that doesn't stop them
inviting him to a spot of fun and erotic games.
During his investigations,
Carter dives into the Broadway world of celebrities and wannabes, learning
about their dark sides and sexual obsessions but also seeing past the facades
to their modest talents, hypocrisy and maniac careerism. An attempt on his own
life suddenly reveals the links between politics, the mafia and the terror
reigning in the city since 9/11.
José Pablo Feinmann's Joe
Carter is the hero of a new series, a cynic and a morbid patriot blasting his
way through the world of glamour and showbiz, political intrigues and
criminality. He serves up a mean insult and he's quick to kill and all for the
sake of his country, which he sees under threat of destruction from Mexicans,
homosexuals, Jews and Islamist terrorists. Joe Carter, the saviour of the
American way of life, has only one motto: I did it my way.
Feinmann's sparkling and
razor-sharp analysis of US society and its idols pulls out all the satirical
stops. Even in this first instalment of a series starring the LA detective, as
announced by the author's publishers, the reader immediately realises: compared
to Joe Carter, Philip Marlowe is a mere shadow of a man.
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
Últimos días de la víctima, Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe 1979; Seix Barral
2006, 259 p.
filmed by Adolfo Aristarain
1982
France: Albin Michel 1991, Le
Livre de Poche 1993 ● Italy: Feltrinelli 1993
Ni el tiro del final, Buenos Aires: Pomaire 1981
France: Albin Michel 1996 ● Italy:
Giunti 1999
El ejército de ceniza, Buenos Aires: Alianza 1994.
France: Albin Michel 1992 ●
Italy: Giunti 1995
Los crímenes de van
Gogh, Buenos Aires: Planeta 1994, 306 p.
France:
Gallimard 1999 ● Germany: Kunstmann 2001 ● Italy: Marcos & Marcos 1998
El mandato, Buenos Aires: Norma 2000,
252 p.
La astucia de la razón, Buenos Aires: Norma 2001, 310 p.
El cadáver imposible, Buenos Aires: Norma 2003, 152 p.
Germany: Kunstmann 1997 ●Italy: Zanzibar 1993
La crítica de las armas, Buenos
Aires: Norma 2003, 375 p.
France: Bernard Pascuito ● Italy:
Baldini Castoldi Dalai 2005
La sombra de Heidegger, Buenos Aires: Seix Barral 2005, 197 p.
Brasil:
Planeta 2006 ● France: Bernard Pascuito ● Italy Neri Pozza 2007 ● Turkey: Dogan
Timote, Buenos Aires: Planeta 2009, 255 p.
Film rights sold, director:
Adolfo Aristarain
Carter en New York, Buenos
Aires: Planeta 2009, 234 p.
Essays:
Pasiones de Celuloide. Ensayos y variedades
sobre cine, Buenos Aires: Norma 2000, 403 p.
Escritos imprudentes. El Horizonte y el Abismo, Buenos Aires: Norma 2002, 583 p.
La sangre derramada. Ensayo sobre la
violencia política, Buenos
Aires: Seix Barral 2003, 378 p.
Escritos imprudentes II. América Latina y el imperio global, Buenos Aires: Norma 2005, 435 p.
El cine por asalto. Ensayo y variaciones, Buenos Aires: Seix Barral 2006, 292 p.
La filosofía y el barro de la historia, Buenos Aires: Página/12 2006-07, Planeta 2008, 797
p.
Play:
Sabor a Freud, Buenos
Aires: Norma 2002, 95 p.
Cuestiones con Ernest Che Guevara, Buenos Aires: 77 p.
Scripts:
Últimos días de la víctima
En retirada
Tango Bar
Play murder for me
Cuerpos perdido
Eva Perón.