Argentine fiction writer Hebe Uhart (1936-2018) focused much of her later output on a short form she called the “crónica.” Uhart’s crónicas are fact and not fiction, but they’re literary and personal in style, making them cousins of journalism and memoir and siblings of the short story (a form in which she excelled).

We often associate truth with a clinical tone, but Uhart had no patience for such orthodoxy. Her crónicas were long on style but packed with serious reporting and empathy. She socialized, investigated, and listened, drawing whatever she could from the people she met. She dug out their perceptions and perspectives and then gave us the fruits of her research in the voice of a master scribe.

A Question of Belonging collects 24 of these crónicas, along with three uncharacteristically autobiographical essays. The book might be shelved with travel writing, but anyone approaching it from that angle is apt to find it richer than expected. These 27 short works, taken as a group, have more literature in them than most novels. Uhart’s tone can shift from amusing to poignant and comic to tragic all within the same piece, and all delivered with the kind of charming understatement that disguises how hard a writer is working.

Uhart was equally good at finding a story and figuring out how to write it; it’s difficult to pinpoint whether reportage or facility with language was her greatest strength. Her work slyly blends the amiable with the substantial, and the combination of breezy accessibility and a knack for ferreting out local culture makes her crónicas as addictive as street food:

“Since radiance bewitches, women want to be radiant, which is why they wear gold T-shirts, carry gold purses, and keep gold in their imagination. Gold evokes dreams, just like the fur capes they sometimes wear with their wedding dresses. In this case, it’s a dream of snow.”

Her typical method was to travel to a place — usually a small town in South America — where she’d never been. She relied on various insiders to guide her toward knowledgeable locals, but these recommendations often failed to pan out, forcing her to fall back on her instincts. She would then install herself at a coffeeshop, a bookstore, or another convivial high-traffic area, where she could meet people and suss out her next move. Occasionally, despite all her preparation and savvy, the fix would be in and nobody would talk to her. At this point, the circled-wagons phenomenon would become the story.

Her system was flexible enough to adapt to whatever she found. A blur of loud and colorful activity could crowd her persona out of a narrative, but time spent in a slower community meant we’d get a crónica about her search for key details. Sometimes, the hunt itself could generate drama; it’s exciting to watch her rush to catch up to some interesting person before they disappear into the night or the sweltering afternoon.

When she came to investigate a local tradition of craftmaking or farming or cuisine, she often found folks less than eager to talk about it. Other times, they claimed ignorance, indicating with a bit of peevishness that she was wasting their time. Much of the fun of reading these crónicas, then, comes from the suspense that builds while we wonder how — or whether — she’ll manage to get the story.

Many crónicas have her sipping coffee in a café after a lot of dust and fuss and watching the story come to her. Once it did, her telling of it could be cinematic:

“Everything in Rio is colorful and over the top. The streets are full of people, full of disparate activities and noise. It’s clear that the noise doesn’t bother Cariocas because they have happily imported a device that heightens the intensity of sounds, to hear better and louder. Rio is a choral tune that plays a little bit of everything.”

Reading these crónicas is like listening to string quartets by Haydn or Mozart. There’s a basic formula, yes, but each piece has twists and turns all its own. It’s a treat to be reminded that a prolific artist with such an established system can nonetheless be surprising.

Karl Straub is a writer and music educator. He writes about music, books, film, television, and sociology at karlstraub.substack.com.

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