Supreme Round 2

I find Bastos comments on writing and authors very intriguing. With his ambiguities between "he", and the ever-mentioned "I", it is obvious he is not only discussing the Dictator, but also himself as an author. While we have talked about this in class, to me it seems as though Bastos is struggling with his choice to write, verifying it in his own mind, a stream of consciousness. Is he not the Supreme himself?

Bastos also seems to struggle with the idea of writing for a more historic sense. "Two hundred years later, the witnesses of those stories are no longer alive. Two hundred years younger, readers do not know if they are fables, true stories, pretended truths. The same thing will come to pass with us. We too will pass for real-unreal beings." pg 66. This book was published and copyrighted very recently, but did we not just have that struggle with what was written of Facundo mas o menos 150 years ago? We struggle to imagine what is falsified, what is truth, admist all of the jargon in that book. I find this interesting to read these thought patterns of Bastos. While I mentioned last week that this book is much more personable from the first person perspective of the Dictator and Patino, from continuing on it is also much more personable to Bastos. Sarmiento fought to tell us his ideas and conclusions then relating them to "facts" or anecdotes; Bastos easily describes his inner thoughts with obviously fictional accounts. I find myself noting things down that Bastos writes, sentences in transition, string of consciousness, but are outlooks onto life, memory and human activity that seem more raw than fiction usually allows.