Analysis of the Novel "Extrañas" by Guillermo Arriaga - 2 Vagos Divagando #3
Charly Sarti and Felo Hernández Tovar freely discuss the latest novel by Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga, published this year by Alfaguara. Extrañas (Strange Women) is a true rarity in Arriaga's literary universe. Far from his usual urban stories depicting the everyday violence of Mexico City, Extrañas drags us through the misery and squalor of late 18th-century England, guided by a surgeon's apprentice obsessed with curing deformed people.
The story of Extrañas, besides being a veritable catalog of the most chilling cases of medical anomalies, poses profound ethical and moral challenges, while also connecting us to the work of great contemporary artists like Joel Peter Witkin and Gottfried Helnwein, to films like Tod Browning's Freaks and David Lynch's The Elephant Man and Eraserhead, as well as to the novels The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi and Perfume by Patrick Süskind. An intense and profound digression that invites debate. What do you think?
Chapters of this digression:
00:00 Introduction
02:35 Arriaga, screenwriter of "Amores Perros," "21 Grams," and Iñárritu's "Babel"
04:20 Medicine and surgery in the 18th century
06:35 The surgeon Ambroise Paré
07:30 Who is Guillermo Arriaga?
10:30 A Mexican telling a story in 18th-century England
11:00 Extrañas is much more than a historical novel
14:00 Guillermo Arriaga and his commitment to narrative
15:35 Is Extrañas connected to the rest of Arriaga's work?
18:30 The root of the story in Extrañas?
24:50 The Fascination with the Strange: Performance, Witkin, and Helnwein
27:10 A Synopsis of Strange Women
30:40 William Burton's Initiatory Journey
35:30 Vesalius and His Influence on Anatomy and Art
38:20 The Anatomist by Federico Andahazi
44:05 Perfume by Patrick Süskind
45:35 The Unique Style Arriaga Brings to Strange Women
47:50 A Novel Without Chapters and Almost Without Periods
48:50 The Connection with Joel Peter Witkin
53:50 More on Witkin's Aesthetics
57:00 Our Fascination with the Perverse
57:30 Freaks by Tod Browning
59:00 The Connection with the Cinema of David Lynch
1:06:00 The Greatness of Guillermo Arriaga
1:08:50 The Genius of the Character of Dr. Black and His Absinthe
1:13:30 When Felipe met Arriaga.
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