Maybe Luisa Valenzuela is not, as her American publishers allege, "one of Argentina's foremost writers and journalists," but if she is even close to that, Buenos Aires is no place for anyone to point his cultural telescope at in hopes of seeing anything new. "Strange Things Happen Here," which attempts nothing if not being up-to-date, is a collection of very short stories and an interminable short novel: "One more person dead in the city. It's getting to be a vice." "If we want to blame somebody, let's blame ourselves for being alive in this part of the world in these times." "I suppose I could ask them to stop munching celery at three in the morning, but that doesn't seem right. What with the price of celery these days." Even the height of banality for "these days" talk: "So many things are confused now that the abnormal is...