Book Notes: Cornamenta by Horacio Castellanos Moya

Horacio Castellanos Moya is El Salvador’s Balzac. He is writing a multi-novel saga where he traces the lives of the Aragón family members from 1940s to our times. If you thought that nobody wrote any longer like Trollope or Balzac, you are wrong. Castellanos Moya has created a rich and complicated literary world where each new novel adds a new piece to the puzzle of the familiar characters.

The preceding two novels in the Aragón saga, Moronga and A Tamed Man, were absolute masterpieces. They were set in 2010s, and show what mass migration and neoliberalism have done to Salvadorans. They are hilarious but also extremely dark. Outstanding and devastating literary feats.

With the new book in the series titled Cornamenta, Castellanos Moya steps back in time but also in intensity. The novel describes the closing days in the life of Clemen Aragón, the father of the Tamed Man Erasmo. It is set in 1972, and the historical backdrop is quaint and not extremely interesting for anybody but the most hardcore fans of the series. Clemen is as comically horny as his son, the protagonist of several of the Aragón novels. You get some useful background and meet a few of the familiar characters (Vikingo is one of them). But I found it hard to connect with the novel because after the heights of artistic mastery Castellanos Moya had reached in Moronga and A Tamed Man, this novel was a letdown.

Please don’t get me wrong. Castellanos Moya is one level extra beyond any of the most talented authors you can think of. His not-so-great book is still a masterpiece that other writers could only dream of writing. But I was hoping for something at the level of Moronga and A Tamed Man, and I definitely didn’t get that in Cornamenta.