The Seven Dishes of Rice Pudding

(September, 2011). While walking a month ago, during some downtime I had at the moment, I bought a book. While browsing around a small new and used bookstore, and digging through a box of used and budget books in the back, I started looking to see if any of them were worth it. That’s how, for only $3, I acquired this little book that is well worth reading: "The Seven Dishes of Rice Pudding and Other Talks" written by Lucio V. Mansilla.

This book is currently in the public domain and has been digitized and made available on many official websites. 

Actually, "The Seven Dishes of Rice Pudding" is just one of the stories that make up the book; the rest are other tales and some of them are excerpts from his masterpiece, "An Expedition to the Ranquel Indians".

The edition I found is a selection by Luis Franco (I don't know who he is or was; it's a 1961 edition), consisting of 150 pages with black-and-white illustrations. Eudeba Publishing House. Century and a Half Series. 1961.

The image corresponds to the book's cover, a color illustration by Carlos Alonso, which I didn't quite understand what it aims to reflect, mostly because the text selection offers broad possibilities of inspiration for portraiture.

The book is an easy, light, and engaging read. As I mentioned, some chapters are taken from his most important work, "An Expedition to the Ranquel Indians", so if you have already read it, you can skip them—chapters like "Corporal Gómez", "The White Indian", "Miguelito"—though it's good to reread them, especially if it's been a long time since you read that work. And if you haven't read it, it's a good idea to read them. The last five chapters are the ones that impacted me the most, especially "The Captive Women" and "Chañilao".

At the beginning, he writes a phrase in parentheses that I found very funny, which says: ("(The devil wouldn't think of it, but it occurred to Sarmiento to put a school in a park)")
I will leave a small excerpt of how the chapter called "The Expedition" begins.
For a long time now I had been mulling over the thought of going to the Inland.
My dealings with the Indians who came and went to Río Cuarto, on account of the peace negotiations that had been initiated, had awakened in me an unspeakable curiosity.
One must have gone through certain things, must have found oneself in certain positions, to understand with what vigor certain ideas take hold of certain men; to understand that a mission to the Ranquels can become for a man like me, moderately civilized, a desire as vehement as a secretaryship in the Paris embassy might be for any petty clerk.

Time, that great instrument of good and bad enterprises, whose course we would like to precipitate, anticipating events so that they devour or sink us, had already made me contract several relationships that I can call intimate.

Thus it begins, but the reader, without realizing it, is taken down a path with many surprises, moving one by one through very interesting topics, such as the role Carmen played, what happens to Linconao, the chief Ramón's brother, what a parliament is, an introduction to what an interpreter is (which he discusses further in another chapter), passing through various customs and/or beliefs such as the gualicho (curse/charm), among others, which invite re-reading due to how interesting they are.