The Writer Seeking Vengeance: Blognovelism and Its

Relationship with Literary Critics

Daniel Escandell Montiel
Abstract
Digital literature creates new ways of dialogue between the writer and the readers,
both common readers and those who see themselves as the chosen ones: the
literary critics. A case in point is that of the Argentinean writer Hernn Casciari,
who wrote the blognovel Ms respeto que soy tu madre. This new way of creating
a story within the field of digital literature soon made an impact among Spanish
literary critics, especially on one nicknamed Borjamari, in his very own blog. From
his weblog Borjamari published an article about the abovementioned blognovel
and its then unknown author. He harshly criticised the authors work, and tried to
uncover the masquerade. Casciari took revenge of his not-so-correct asseverations
and accusations about the not yet revealed real writer of the blognovel: the critic
became a character in his story, being portrayed as a homosexual embalmer or,
more specifically, as a beautician in a funeral parlour who displays signs of mental
illness, thereby spoofing the literary critic, specialized in weblogs. In this paper, we
take this example as the starting point to study the approach of the writer in his
personal revenge against this critic in the context of the digital world and revenge,
therefore analysing this new relationship among writers, readers and critics in a
three-way charade between blogs into the cyberspace.
Key Words: Hernn Casciari, blognovel, blogfiction, literary critics, Ms respeto
que soy tu madre.
*****
The relationships established between writers and literary critics have been
characterized, as in any other artistic expression, by the disagreements which have
arisen between the creative front (without forgetting the difference of opinion
among writers themselves) and those who are professional critics, especially as
literary criticism gained importance in the industrialization of the literary market.
As a consequence of the negative criticism, or of those critiques perceived as
negative, authors have employed those resources available to get their own back
for what they did not like, usually focusing on the critic himself, more than on his
discourse. Of course, the writers main tool has been his pen, canalized by means
of new literary works or the written press, given the high number of authors who
are also journalists or the journalists who pretend to be men of letters. Although the
transcendence of the confrontation between author and critic is made more obvious
in other cultural industries, literature is not oblivious to these circumstances and,
even if they may be more popular in the theatre world, poets and novelists have
Best Served Cold: Studies on Revenge. Eds. Sheila C. Bibb & D. Escandell.
Oxford: ID-Press, 2010. 127-135.
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128
also had much to say against their critics, whether they belonged to their own
profession, or they were professional critics, with confrontations and oppositions
that were either ignored or magnified by the studies of the history of literature.
The exchange of rude words or demonstrations of wit derived from these
circumstances proves of no interest in most cases, despite illustrious examples such
as the dialectic scuffle between Quevedo and Gngora in the Spanish Golden Age.
It is not common that the disagreements trespass in such a palpable way the
borders of narrative fiction and permeate the authors creative work, as the
traditional publishing systems are slow and there is not the chance for a real
dialogue. However, the shift towards digital literary publishing on the Internet and
the quick dissemination of the work by means of this kind of edition is providing
new relevance to the response (or, what is the same thing, the revenge) of the
author who uses his pen -the keyboard- to oppose what literary critics have said.
In this paper we will subsequently study those measures taken by the
Argentinean (though living in Spain) blognovelist Hernn Casciari so as to respond
to negative -and moreover unfounded and wrong- criticism written about his work
Diary of a Fat Woman [Diario de una mujer gorda],
1
which won the Best of Blogs
2005 award granted by Deutsche Welle, and which was edited as a book under the
title Show me more respect, I am your mother [Ms respeto que soy tu madre]. In
order to do so, we will first establish the conceptual limits of the blognovel which
are essential to understand the criticism that this work received and how Casciari
achieved his revenge.
According to the existing tendency in Spanish literature and to the conception
of the very same authors in their own works,
2
a blognovel is understood to be a
novelized narration structuralized as a weblog, written in the first person, and
whose plot unfolds in real time, that is, in sequential time, determined by the real
world in which there is no turning back. The protagonist of the novel is the owner
and author of the blog, behind whom is the writer, who embodies at all times the
role of the abovementioned protagonist, assuming his existence and granting the
character a life outside the novel, which implies that he has to interact with the
readers through the comments on the site.
The writer is then the protagonist, personifying the role as would an actor in a
process of assimilation which transforms the main character in an avatar.
3
There is,
hence, a strong hoax component in the narration and creation of the protagonist so
as to deceive the reading public, always masking the writer: to hide his identity,
and to convince the public that what they are reading is actually being written by
an anonymous blogger, just as any else, are some of the main artistic objectives of
the blognovel, which we cannot and must not confuse with the serial novels
published in blogs.
The characters I or self is, therefore, absolutely domineering in this kind of
narrative in detriment of the authors I or self; the latter is only revealed -and only
if the author wishes to do so- when the narration is over. There have been cases in
Daniel Escandell Montiel
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129
which clever readers have managed to uncover the writers identity: this has as a
consequence blognovels being aborted or continuing with the open complicity of
its readers, who, once they have unveiled the mystery, have decided to continue
playing the narrative game in open and public collaboration with the author.
However, this creates a new narrative game in which the public/reader assumes an
active role in which he fights against the author/avatar to take off his mask,
something considered legitimate by many blognovelists. Nevertheless, this causes
many mistakes, failed attempts to uncover its real authorship, and, of course, critics
have not remained indifferent to this tendency.
Although digital literary criticism continues to focus, above all, on works edited
in a traditional fashion, despising the digital medium of which they themselves
took pride as they chose to write online, they are paying an increasing attention to
the digital narrative in its different forms and genres. In the same way, if the
popularity of blogs has opened the way for the creation of specific literary forms
and for a greater dissemination of amateur authors (or at least anonymous ones)
due to the open digital field, it is also true that it has increased the diffusion of
amateur or anonymous critics without the support, nor the pressure, of big
corporations, as happens in the media.
We still do not know who was hiding under the pseudonym of Borjamari, but
between the year 2003 and 2007 he was actively devoted to literary criticism
through his blog Borjamari: Only personal opinions [Borjamari: Slo opiniones
personales].
4
Casciari defined his work as a critic in the following terms: His
characteristics were long headings, texts with literary pretensions, and blue stars
(from one to five) which graded the works.
5
However, his opposition to this critic
did not end there for, as Cascari himself admitted, the homonymous character in
his blognovel was a parody of that same critic to whom he attributes, at least, a
great audience.
6
In any case, Borjamari published several reviews related to Casciaris work,
even when it was still not known -though it was clearly sensed- that it was a work
of fiction by a writer and not by an anonymous middle-aged Argentinean blogger,
called Mirta Bertotti, who was in charge of a dysfunctional family with a
homophobic and rude husband, a homosexual older child, a teenage daughter who
earns money using her webcam to perform peep-shows online, a younger child
whose greatest success in life is to create what he considers sculptures with his
faeces, and a father-in-law who is a recurrent drug-user.
Borjamaris main article -after several references in his blog to Cascaris work-
makes reference to the fact that the visit statistics have been erased of the site (the
statistics were represented as a home-delivery pizza business in the context of the
narration) and tries to unveil the storys real authorship. He believes that the
disappearance of the statistics responds to the fact that these have started to
decrease to less than one thousand a day (the true reason behind the existence of
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130
this soap-opera),
7
which has started to worry some of the members of its ever-
diminishing fan club.
8
Of course, there exists a space for pure literary criticism:
9
They are not happy with just boring us with endless repetitions of
foreseeable stories that have lost their original freshness, he also
has to bare-facedly plagiarise others so as to try to be funny and
because of the lack of his own ideas.
10
However, we can sense that what bothers Casciari the most about Borjamaris
criticism is that he asserts that:
Its a bad business for the advertising agency that is behind the
whole thing and that prepared everything looking forward to the
appearance of a novel based on the characters of the blog. Not
even the recurrent advertising forced to fit in yonkis or el
rellano
11
seems to be working this time.
12
As the literary author detaches himself from the blognovel so the avatar
character assumes the role of both narrator and protagonist, there was not an open
exchange between Casciari and Borjamari, but, as we have mentioned before, the
former achieved his revenge by introducing the latter in his novel, to the great
affront of the portrayed critic.
In chapter 89, entitled A dinner that went on for too long [Una cena
demasiado larga], dated November 27
th
2003
13
, the protagonists homosexual son
invites his new love, Borjamari, who works as a makeup artist in a funeral parlour,
to have dinner and eat some pizzas, as the family business is a pizza restaurant. It is
at that moment when his own criticism is ridiculed in the strange conversation that
unfolds over dinner; the conversation arriving, through the humour that permeates
the story, to an ontological discussion on pizza itself:
-So you didnt like the pizza, honey? say I, slightly
disillusioned.
-Taking into account that all of you pretend to own a pizza
restaurant in Argentina when you are in fact an advertising
agency which is trying to impose a novel on the Spanish
publishing market, I must admit that, at least, you have prepared
the food yourselves.
-Oh, my little Borja, what the devil are you saying? said Nacho,
who I have the impression is little by little falling out of love.
-Fatty, come with me to the pantry for a sec- Zacarias told
Borja- cos Ive got a little present for you. Lets go, come on
Daniel Escandell Montiel
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131
-Zacarias, stay where you are I order my husband, because you
can tell when he wants to bite the people that annoy him
-Come on, lady, -said Borja, giving me a funny look-, tell the
truth: you are not Mirta Bertotti, you are a group of Catalonian
authors and these walls are false, everything is a set, everything
is false! Why did you remove the statistics the week you sold
less than a thousand pizzas a day? You are all obsessed with me,
everything is false, it is a Catalonian advertising agency!
14
At this point, Borjamari experiences a psychotic outburst and starts to mess up
the whole house, turning everything upside down. This episode ends with the
whole family (which is dysfunctional but nevertheless organised when it comes to
tackling the undertaker) detaining the poor man. Borjamari is then placed, as we
will discover the following day, in the hands of a hypnotist who, by means of a
bribe from grandfather Bertotti, convinces him that he is a hen.
However, Casciaris revenge is not limited to a ridiculous and incoherent
discourse, or to the extreme situations that Borjamaris character experiences, but
moves beyond to the very portrait that is made of him. Besides his homosexuality,
special emphasis is placed on his work as a funerary makeup artist and on his
obvious mental instability. To all this we must add the fact that every character in
the blognovel is assigned a profile which appears as a pop-up window every time
we pass the mouse over its name on the body of the text. Borjamari is presented
with a picture of a fat, pale man with sunglasses and a receding hairline, together
with a description written by the protagonist/avatar, which states:
He is a [sic] very sensitive boy who owns the funeral parlour
From Post Mortem to Post Mortem. In general he speaks but
little and goes out frequently at night, like the vampires. Rumour
has it that he spends his life foretelling illnesses because they
need people to die in order to keep up the business. I always
greet him because he has a very self-sacrificing job, poor thing.
15
The Writer Seeking Vengeance
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132
Figure 1. Borjamaris profile in the blognovel
Casciaris revenge is successfully accomplished and is supported by the usual
readers comments. These readers know who hides behind Borjamaris portrait
and, at the same time, accept that the work is purely fictional but they nevertheless
desire to maintain the fictional pact established with the author and to continue
reading the adventures of the Bertotti family. It is for this reason that the revenge
takes place within the work in a chapter clearly conceived as metablognovelistic,
so as to satirise the accusations and critiques that appeared, transforming them in
the discourse of a mad, sinister and ridiculous man who ends up believing to be a
hen.
We can neither forget that the critics assessment of the authorship is wrong:
Casciari, though living in Barcelona, is actually Argentinean, and this blognovel
was conceived as a way to express his nostalgia for his country and is oriented
towards making some of his intimate friends laugh. Casciari said: Its a funny
little book, very dear to. Its about shared feelings, about nostalgia and loss.
16
However, its fame grew little by little, in some measure because of the good
diffusion of it that was made in virtual communities, and also because of the
creation of other parallel -though less popular- blognovels to advertise Casciaris.
An example of these blognovels would be Letizia Ortizs Diary [El diario de
Letizia Ortiz],
17
which took advantage of the appeal in Google of the then fiance
of the Spanish Prince. At that time, Casciari did not have the support of any
publishing house nor of any advertising companies.
The revenge is accomplished in the literary field, but with the immediacy
characteristic of the digital era by means of the three-directional dialogue between
the critic, public/audience (both of the critic and the criticised author) and the
Daniel Escandell Montiel
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133
author/avatar, which reaches its peak in the integration of Borjamari in the novel.
In Casciaris own narrative domains his discourse is deformed, highly ridiculous,
and reverts to insults or ignominies of a more childish kind, such as those
concerning his sexual preferences. Ridiculing and humiliating the critics
reflection, Casciari finds his satisfaction and catharsis through this purely literary,
but also online, revenge. It is the definite answer in a dialogue between author and
critic in which the strain between them has sprung both on a professional and a
personal level, and it is the man of letters who has employed the tools offered by
blognovelism to give the last stroke in this battle, as the ultimate response to what
had been said on his work -and himself.
Notes
1
http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com.
2
Casciari studies the main characteristics of blognovels in some of his papers, such
as El blog en la literatura. Un acercamiento estructural a la novela and La ficcin
on line. Un espectculo en directo, both of them in opposition to Arranz Lagos
paper Los tortuosos caminos de la blognovela; all of them are key works to
understand what a blognovel is. For further reading in this topic, see Chois paper
La literatura en el mundo virtual: los escritores y el blog en Amrica Latina or
Snchez-Mesas works, such as Las nuevas fronteras de la literatura: La narrativa
electrnica.
3
D Escandell, El escritor convertido en actor: El blogonovelista en su teatrillo.
Despalabros, Vol. 4, 2010, pp. S39-S44.
4
http://borjamari.blogspot.com.
5
H Casciari, Una cena demasiado larga in Ms respeto que soy tu madre, 27
November 2003, Viewed on 5 May 2010, http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com/cap/
000098.php.
6
ibid., <http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com/cap/000098.php>.
7
Borjamari, Nos cuentan que..., Borjamari. Slo opinones personales, November
2003, Viewed on 5 May 2010, http://borjamari.blogspot.com/2003/11/nos-cuentan-
que_20.html.
8
ibid., http://borjamari.blogspot.com/2003/11/nos-cuentan-que_20.html.
9
There is an obvious doubt about the authorship, as Borjamari uses indistinctly
they and he.
10
Ibid., http://borjamari.blogspot.com/2003/11/nos-cuentan-que_20.html.
11
Both of them are popular Spanish websites among youngster, with humour,
kinky content and weird stories: See both sites http://www.yonkis.com,
http://elrellano.com.
12
Ibid., http://borjamari.blogspot.com/2003/11/nos-cuentan-que_20.html.
13
Casciari, op. cit., http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com/cap/000098.php.
14
Ibid., http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com/cap/000098.php. Original Spanish text:
The Writer Seeking Vengeance
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134
- Entonces no te gust la pizza, nene? -digo yo, un poco desencantada.
- Teniendo en cuenta que todos vosotros fings tener una pizzera en Argentina,
cuando realidad sois una agencia de publicidad que est intentando imponer una
novela en el mercado editorial espaol, debo reconocer que por lo menos habis
preparado la comida vosotros mismos.
- Ay, Borjita, qu carajo ests diciendo? -dice el Nacho, que de a poco me parece
a m que se iba desenamorando.
-Gordo, ven un cacho al galponcito del fondo conmigo -le dice Zacaras al Borja-
que tengo un regalo para vos. Ven, dale...
-Zacaras, quedte quieto ah -le digo yo a mi marido, que se le nota cuando quiere
morder a la gente que le cae mal.
-Venga ya, mujer -dice el Borja mirndome muy raro-, diga la verdad: usted no es
Mirta Bertotti, es un conjunto de autores catalanes, y estas paredes son falsas, todo
es un decorado todo es falso! Por qu quit las estadsticas la semana que vendi
menos de mil pizzas al da? Todos vosotros estis obsesionados conmigo, todo
esto es falso, es una agencia de publicidad catalana!
15
Ibid., http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com/cap/000098.php. Original Spanish text:
Es un un [sic] chico muy sensible, que tiene la funeraria De Post Morten en Post
Mortem. Por lo general habla poco y sale mucho de noche, como los vampiros.
Segn las malas lenguas se pasa la vida prediciendo enfermedades, porque
necesitan que la gente se muera y as mantener el negocio. Yo siempre lo saludo
porque tiene un oficio sacrificado, pobre.
16
El exilio en clave de humor in Clarin.com, 13 November 2007, Viewed on 3
April 2010, http://clarin.com/diario/2007/11/13/conexions/t-01539095.htm.
17
http://letizia-ortiz.blogspot.com.
Bibliography
Arranz-Lago, D. F., Los tortuosos caminos de la blognovela. Literaturas del texto
al hipermedia. Romero Lpez, D. & Sanz-Cabrerizo, A. (eds), Anthropos, Madrid,
2008.
Borjamari, Nos cuentan que.... Borjamari: Slo opiniones personales. November
2003, Viewed on 5 May 2010, http://borjamari.blogspot.com/2003/11/nos-cue
ntan-que_20.html.
Casciari, H., Diario de una mujer gorda. 2003-2004, Viewed on 5 May 2010,
http://mujergorda.bitacoras.com.
, El blog en la literatura. Un acercamiento estructural a la blogonovela. Telos.
Cuadernos de comunicacin, tecnologa y sociedad, Vol. 65, 2005, pp. 95-97.
Daniel Escandell Montiel
__________________________________________________________________
135
, El diario de Letizia Ortiz. 2004, Viewed on 5 May 2010, <http.//letizia-
ortiz.blogspot.com>.
, La ficcin online. Un espectculo en directo. La blogosfera hispana:
pioneros de la comunicacin digital. Cerezo, M. (dir), France Telecom, Madrid,
2006, pp. 171-179.
, Ms respeto, que soy tu madre. Plaza & Jans DeBOLS!LLO, Barcelona,
2005.
Choi, Y., La literatura en el mundo virtual: los escritores y el blog en Amrica
Latina. Espculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios. Vol. 33, 2006, Viewed on 20
June 2009, http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero33/blogam.html.
El exilio en clave de humor. Clarin.com. 13 November 2007, Viewed on 3 April
2010 http://clarin.com/diario/2007/11/13/conexiones/t-01539095.htm.
Escandell Montiel, D., El escritor convertido en actor: El blogonovelista en su
teatrillo. Despalabros. Vol. 4, 2010, pp. S39-S44.
Snchez-Mesa Martnez, D., Las nuevas fronteras de la literatura: La narrativa
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Daniel Escandell Montiel is a Spanish teacher and Ph.D. Candidate at the
University of Salamanca. He is currently conducting research on digital narrative
and blognovelism in the Spanish literature. He is also a published playwright.