Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia

 

I'm gonna start by saying that reading this book felt like I was experiencing a fever dream and I don't think that I liked it. However, there are many elements of this book that I found to be rather interesting. One such thing is the reference to Dordo’s mental illness, “he rarely thought of anything else apart from drugs and the voices to which he paid secret attention…he heard voices, inside his head, between the plates of his skull, women addressing him, issuing commands” (52) as this creates a level of ambiguity in his character. I found it hard to separate whether it was the mental health issues that drove him to criminality or other societal factors. Nevertheless, whether Piglia meant to do it or not, adding this aspect to Dordo’s character highlights a very prominent problem in our society. This is the link between criminal activity and mental illness and how the institutions in our society that revolve around justice and medicine often fail to solve these problems opting instead for quicker and shorter-term solutions. Piglia offers these types of social commentary in many other areas of the book, most noticeably in the section in which the gunman burns the money they stole and throws it out the window. This scene serves to show the importance of money to our society as before this happened neighbours and passersby were watching the fight go down with a sort of strange fascination and anticipation. However, once the money was burned the onlookers quickly changed their attitude not triggered by the violence and subsequent destruction around them but by the act of money burning. “Burning innocent money is an act of cannibalism.’ If they had given away the money, if they had thrown it out of the window at the people gathered on the street…everything would have gone differently for them” (158). Perhaps this is why Piglia chose to add this detail to his novel despite it not being confirmed fact it gives a level of commentary and understanding to the reader of the bitter effects of poverty.

My question is despite his assertion in the epilogue that he committed to the truth and has“ always used original material in the account of the words and actions of its characters” (204). Why do you think Piglia chose to include the money-burning scene when it is not confirmed that it occurred?