LYNCH, BENITO

born June 25, 1885, Buenos Aires, Arg. died Dec. 23, 1951, La Plata Argentine novelist and short-story writer whose tales of Argentine country life examined in a simple and direct style the psychology of ordinary persons at everyday activities. Lynch thus brought a new realism to the tradition of the gaucho novel, a genre that portrays the people of the South American grasslands. Of Irish ancestry, Lynch lived as a boy on a cattle ranch in the province of Buenos Aires, gaining an intimate knowledge of the rural life that he later used as the subject for most of his writings. His first important novel, Los caranchos de la Florida (1916; The Vultures of La Florida), deals with the conflict between a father, master of a cattle ranch, and his son, who has returned after study in Europe. Lynch diverged from the usual dramatic or sensational myth of the gaucho. His simple, ironic approach is displayed in Raquela (1918) and in the novel generally considered his best, El ingls de los gesos (1924; The Englishman of the Bones), a tragic story of love between a young English anthropologist and a gaucho girl. Lynch also wrote several collections of short stories.