One of the biggest sins of the Spanish average reader is the complete forget some of our traditional genres are submitted to while they give in to the literary fast food of the moment as if all that doesn't smell new and doesn't come wrapped in a brilliant cover newly printed didn't deserve their attention. And, however, the world of "minor" genres is filled with surprises to rediscover. One of these genres is humor books, that during the first half of the 20th century lived through a development in Spain from the hand of some names that, at least back then, achieved great popularity. Juan Pérez Zúñiga is one of those names and Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is doubtlessly a book unfairly ignored by current readers.
The novel —if it can be called a novel— is really a tour de force of todger humor; a sort of literary precedent of Dumb and dumber filled, fifty-fifty, with sparkling wit and with cheap jokes that aren't less effective 'cause they're cheap. Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is the real funny chronicle of a trip starred by Zúñiga himself and the illustrator of the book, the great Joaquín Xaudaró, who set off in search of a strange unknown animal species, the Trifinus melancolicus. Both protagonists, that are hardly on the verge of misery in Spain because of their scantily profitable literary activities, accept the order from an eccentric scientist willing to finance an ambitious biological expedition, and like this both of them travel around the world trying to figure out what kind of animal that mysterious Trifinus is. Which, of course, is only an excuse to mock all of the known civilizations resorting to hilarious clichés about races and nationalities in a rather little politically correct way (still today I giggle when I remember the chief of the African tribe decently dressed up, as a sign of refinement, in a sumptuous diaper).
Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is decidedly casual amusement deprived of ambitions, which confers it a dominating aura of irresponsible literary mischief. It's doubtlessly a delicious sign of the minor genre of intelligent stupidity, halfway among Mortadelo y Filemón's childlike pranks, the brothers Marx's hysterical Surrealism and Pedro Muñoz Seca's linguistic cleverness. As if the Monty Python had starred Around the world in eighty days or as if Homer Simpson had written En busca del doctor Livingstone, Pérez Zúñiga fashioned the most delirious travel book that I have had the chance to read. The writer from Madrid had doubtlessly humor in his blood and he gets his prose to seem to have been born funny in a completely natural way, something that is actually such a difficult effect to get.
Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is the perfect way of spending some good time out of touch with the sad reality, burying ourselves into a world where all of the individuals, from all of the countries and all of the cultures of the Earth, are invariably a herd of cretins.
An adorable gem of the national humorous literature.
The novel —if it can be called a novel— is really a tour de force of todger humor; a sort of literary precedent of Dumb and dumber filled, fifty-fifty, with sparkling wit and with cheap jokes that aren't less effective 'cause they're cheap. Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is the real funny chronicle of a trip starred by Zúñiga himself and the illustrator of the book, the great Joaquín Xaudaró, who set off in search of a strange unknown animal species, the Trifinus melancolicus. Both protagonists, that are hardly on the verge of misery in Spain because of their scantily profitable literary activities, accept the order from an eccentric scientist willing to finance an ambitious biological expedition, and like this both of them travel around the world trying to figure out what kind of animal that mysterious Trifinus is. Which, of course, is only an excuse to mock all of the known civilizations resorting to hilarious clichés about races and nationalities in a rather little politically correct way (still today I giggle when I remember the chief of the African tribe decently dressed up, as a sign of refinement, in a sumptuous diaper).
Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is decidedly casual amusement deprived of ambitions, which confers it a dominating aura of irresponsible literary mischief. It's doubtlessly a delicious sign of the minor genre of intelligent stupidity, halfway among Mortadelo y Filemón's childlike pranks, the brothers Marx's hysterical Surrealism and Pedro Muñoz Seca's linguistic cleverness. As if the Monty Python had starred Around the world in eighty days or as if Homer Simpson had written En busca del doctor Livingstone, Pérez Zúñiga fashioned the most delirious travel book that I have had the chance to read. The writer from Madrid had doubtlessly humor in his blood and he gets his prose to seem to have been born funny in a completely natural way, something that is actually such a difficult effect to get.
Viajes morrocotudos en busca del Trifinus melancolicus is the perfect way of spending some good time out of touch with the sad reality, burying ourselves into a world where all of the individuals, from all of the countries and all of the cultures of the Earth, are invariably a herd of cretins.
An adorable gem of the national humorous literature.
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