Bustos Domecq made his first appearance as F. Bustos, the pseudonym under which Borges, in 1933, published his first fictional story, now known as "Hombre de laesquina rosada", but originally titled "Hombre de las orillas", Francisco Bustos being the name of "one forefather's forefather". He changed his first initial and acquired a second surname as Borges and Bioy Casares later used the pseudonym "H. Bustos Domecq" for some of their lighter works. According to Borges, Bustos was the name of one of his great-grandfathers, while Domecq was the name of one of Bioy's great-grandfathers.
Works
H. Bustos Domecq was the original credited author of the parodic detective stories in Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi, 1942 and Dos fantasías memorables, 1946. Bustos was also the alleged author of Crónicas de Bustos Domecq, 1967,, and Nuevos Cuentos de Bustos Domecq, even though the authors' actual names were featured on the covers of both books. Under another pseudonym, "Benito Suárez Lynch", Borges and Bioy published the parodic mystery Un modelo para la muerte in 1946, featuring the characters of the Isidro Parodi stories. The pair also did some collaborations without the use of the pseudonym, notably two movie scripts from 1955: Los orilleros and El paraíso de los creyentes. Both dealt with the exacerbated sense of manhood among the compadritos in the slums of Buenos Aires circa 1900. The Bustos Domecq materials provided comic relief for cultivated Latin Americans, but also, famously, conveyed a subtle yet unambiguous pro-allied message in the 1942 edition of Parodi – which was not a surprise for people who knew the authors but was, nevertheless, a contrarian statement given the state of Argentine politics at the time. Note: The Isidro Parodi appears as Isidoro in some editions.
Influence
According to Emir Rodríguez Monegal in his April 1968article "Nota sobre Biorges", when Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges collaborated under the pseudonyms H. Bustos Domecq or B. Suárez Lynch, the results seemed written by a new personality, more than the sum of its parts, which he dubbed "Biorges" and considered in his own right as "one of the most important Argentine prose writers of his time", for having influenced writers such as Leopoldo Marechal, or Julio Cortázar's use of fictional language and slang in his masterpiece Hopscotch.
