Ignacio
López-Calvo
University of
California, Merced
For a published copy of this introduction, click here
Critical
Insights: Contemporary Latin American Fiction.
Ed. Ignacio López-Calvo. Salem Press, 2017. XVII-XXX
In an interview with Javier Rodríguez Marcos, Peruvian
Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, after providing some exceptions,
describes today’s Latin American literature as “less engaged and more
self-absorbed.”1 Valerie
Miles, founder of the Spanish edition of Granta
Magazine, shares the same assessment about the newer generations of Latin
American authors: “The ideas about politics are not so obvious in their writing
as they were in the writers of the boom: politics becomes something more
intimate that comes out from the daily life with the partner, children… not
from the state” (n.p.). The reason for this depoliticization, in
Vargas Llosa’s view, is the evolution toward democracy in the region. Today,
following worldwide trends, younger generations of writers tend to reject the
political engagement that, for decades, was a staple among Boom and post-Boom
writers.2 Instead, Vargas Llosa adds, younger Latin American writers
are more inclined to write autofiction: “A mixture of fantasy and autobiography
in which the author becomes a character.”3 Indeed, perhaps even more
than previous generations, these authors resort to their own life, identity, or
reading experiences as a source of inspiration to create their characters. As
Puerto Rican author Mayra
Santos-Febres explains, in the autofiction genre writers assume that “‘truth’ is always
slippery and objectivity is inevitably subjective. The logic, coherence, and
beauty of a literary text are more important than political correction,
shyness, or loyalty to family.”4
This
rejection of “committed” art has to be understood within the context of the
Cold War cultural interventions and tensions between political art and
non-political academic aestheticism. The institutionalization of aesthetic
modernism in the United States during the 1940s and the endorsement of “pure
art” in Latin America, which were meant to counter rigid Soviet programmatic
realism depicting class struggle, also have to be understood within the context
of the Cold War, as Jean Franco has posited:
But
the continent was also a battlefield of another kind as both the United States
and the Soviet Union carried on cover activities to influence the hearts and
minds of Latin Americans. Thus abstract universalism and freedom were values
disseminated by CIA-funded journals against the universal teleology of
revolution, behind which lurked the Soviet national project. . . . In the
United States itself the turn from public art to abstract expressionism, from a
politicized avant-garde to a depoliticized avant-garde art, from realist to
experimental writing . . . was based on claims of artistic autonomy. (2)
In other words, for some critics the new attitude of
young generations of Latin American writers is reminiscent of the dictum of
anti-Communist Cold War politics spoused by the United States.
Going back to Rodríguez Marcos’s
interview with Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian author also points out significant
thematic changes. For example, the archetypical figure of the Latin American
dictator, which became the protagonist of key novels of the Latin American
cannon, such as Miguel Ángel Asturias’s El señor
presidente (The President, 1946),
Alejo Carpentier’s El recurso del método
(Reasons of State, 1973), Augusto Roa
Bastos’s Yo, el supremo (I, the Supreme, 1973), Gabriel García Márquez’s El otoño del Patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975), Tomás Eloy Martínez’s La novela de Perón (1986) and Mario Vargas Llosa’s La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat, 2000),
has ceased to be so prominent, also because of democratic changes in Latin
America. Vargas Llosa wonders whether today’s replacement for the character of
the Latin American dictator is the drug trafficker: “It is possible that
violent and corrupt power has passed from the dictator to the drug baron.”5
Yet, he argues that the widespread presence of political corruption and drug
dealers in Latin America, which has been translated into political, social and
cultural influence, has yet to produce a key novel on the topic. In any case,
several Latin American writers have adhered to the so-called narcoliterature, a
type of narrative subgenre exploring the ultra-violent socioeconomic, cultural,
and political phenomenon of drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, including
Mexican Élmer Mendoza, who has been considered the father of narcoliterature, with
novels such as Un
asesino solitario (A
Lone Murderer, 1999), El
amante de Janis Joplin (Janis Joplin’s Lover, 2008; winner of the José Fuentes Mares National Prize for
Literature), Balas de plata (Silver Bullets, 2008), and La prueba del
ácido (Acid Test, 2010).6 As will be seen, Laura J. Torres-Rodríguez, in her chapter, questions, as other critics
have done, the ethics of this type of genre when she states: “To read the present violence, we need ways
of writing that do not spectacularize violence without analyzing it—like
narconarratives—.”
A third change in literary
tastes, according to Vargas Llosa, is the rejection of the total novel that
became a trademark among Boom writers. Indeed, Ignacio Padilla, in the Crack
manifesto, declares: “No one writes novels any more, or rather, no one writes
total novels. But, I wonder, novels for whom? Total for whom.”7 The
Nobel Prize laureate wonders whether this skepticism toward the “great novel”
(à la Honoré
de Balzac)
responds to a lack of literary ambition. Instead, he explains, recent
generations of Latin American writers have withdrawn into a more intimate and
private world, similar to Franz
Kafka’s
writing, which they find more authentic. Indeed, as Alberto Fuguet and
Sergio Gómez suggest, “the great theme of Latin American identity (who are
we?) gave way to the theme of personal identity.”8 This new intimate
approach perhaps explains that fact that, with a few exceptions, such as
Bolaño’s novels Los detectives salvajes
(The Savage Detectives, 1998) and 2666 (2004), recent Latin American
novels tend to be considerably shorter than those typically published by Boom
authors. As Will Corral points out, “today the novelistic emphases are on
concision, easy wit, fairly straight narrative flow, vernacular insights, a
continuing discovery of new masters, and even bittersweet perspectives on
emotions and moods” (12). In any case, Bolivian Liliana Colanzi has questioned
this idea of ambition presented by Vargas Llosa: “But why that obsession with having the
theme define how ambitious a work is? They also called Rubén Darío and the Modernistas afeminate because they
talked about swans and kings. Perhaps the ambition may be to shake up
sensitivity. The form is as political as the themes.”9 Equally
rebelling against the only surviving forefather of the Boom, Peruvian Jennifer
Thorndike argues that the intimate is political “because it investigates the
structure of what we are and the labels imposed on us: woman, white, Peruvian…
There are novels that are supposed to be dealing with the great themes, but do
nothing more than following the official history of the great themes.
Literature must always question things.”10 Likewise, Carlos Fonseca,
born in Costa Rica and raised in Puerto Rico, wonders “whether ambition doesn’t
mean globalization: ‘2666 would be
the global novel today because it is built not in the classic way, but through
points of intensity that, like Ciudad Juárez, could seem peripheral.”11
Vargas Llosa’s reflection on the evolution of
Latin American literature over the last three decades continues by pointing out
that the admiration for Argentine master Jorge Luis Borges that characterized
his generation continues today, but now one must also add the influence of
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Furthermore, reflecting Latin American reality,
the Latin American novel has become more urban. Vargas Llosa points out that in
contrast with indigenista literature,
which began during the 1930s in Peru with writers such as José María Arguedas
and was commonly set in the countryside, nowadays peasants are drawn to large
cities where they can often find better living standards. Likewise, feminist
advances in the region have also been reflected in its literature, according to
Vargas Llosa. It is telling, for example, that half of the twenty Latin
American authors born in the 1980s invited to the Guadalajara’s Feria
Internacional del Libro (FIL) in 2016 were women (as are half of the writers
chosen by the critics in this book). Yet persistent challenges remain, as
reflected in the hundreds of femicides and disappearances in Ciudad Juárez,
Mexico, famously portraid in Bolaño’s
monumental 2666. Chilean “ochentera”
Paulina Flores, for example, has cited the widespread femicides in Latin
America as one of her main concerns: “The indifference with which we see the
assassination of women is worrysome.”12 This concern is also
reflected in Argentine Selva Almada’s chronicle collection Chicas muertas (Dead Girls, 2014).
Some of these changes pointed out by Vargas
Llosa, including the increased preoccupation with the self and the tendency to
be less politically involved or less openly Leftist, were already evident with
the creation of the McOndo literary movement in 1996, which embraced popular
culture (often mixing high culture with American pop culture), mass media, as
well as urban and suburban life, thus presenting a more globalized vision of
contemporary Latin America. Although the McOndo and Crack literary movements have
sometimes been dismissed by critics as mere self-promotion or collective
self-identification gimmicks or the typical Oedipal struggle against previous
generations of writers, I still think it is worth revisiting their proclaims
and manifestos, as they do echo a increasing change of paradigm in Latin
American fiction.
Chilean writers Alberto Fuguet and Sergio
Gómez, inspired by the success of their Cuentos con Walkman (Short Stories with Walkman, 1993), a
Chilean short-story anthology, decided to publish McCondo (1996) in Barcelona, an anthology of seventeen urban short
stories by Latin American and Spanish men born after 1959. In the introduction,
they embrace pop culture: “For us, the Chapulín Colorado, Ricky Martin, Selena,
Julio Iglesias, and soap operas are as Latin American as candomblé and
vallenato.”13 The anthology’s title makes a pun with the names of
the fast-food chain McDonald’s and
Macintosh computers—symbols of globalization and Americanization,
and its book cover already announced “There is no
Magical Realism here, there is virtual reality.”14
The editors sought to counterbalance this mode of narration, which, in their
view, exoticized, caricaturized, and essentialized Latin America, as well as
what they saw as the tropicalized, rural, and backward vision of Latin America sometimes
presented by Boom authors, as noticeable, for example, in the description of
the fictional town of Macondo in Colombian Nobel Prize Laureate Gabriel García
Márquez’s masterpiece Cien años de
soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude,
1967) or in the “banana republics” depicted on the novels of the dictator. In
Fuguet and Gómez’s own words: “it is not possible to accept reductionist
essentialisms, and believe that here everyone wears a sombrero and lives on
trees.”15 Instead, the McOndo writers preferred more realistic
narratives depicting urban life, globalization, consumerism, as well as the
economic and class disparities in Latin America: “To sell a rural continent
when, in reality, it is urban (in spite of the fact that its overpopulated
cities are chaotic and do not work) seems an aberration to us, easy and
immoral.”16 This urban turn has a predecessor in the Mexican
literary movement La Onda, which, during the second half of the 1960s also
rejected pastoral representations of Mexico and chose more realistic and urban
representations of city life, popular culture, and modernization.17 Their irreverent, urban literature was
considered countercultural by some critics. The La Onda writers indirectly
opposed PRI governmental politics and often resorted to a realistic, sometimes
coarse language to challenge tradition by addressing taboo topics, including
sexuality, drugs, rock and roll, and the Vietnam War.
McOndo writers (besides Fuguet and Gómez, the
most prominent ones are Bolivian Edmundo Paz Soldán, Puerto Rican Giannina
Braschi, Chilean Pía Barros, Cuban Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Colombian Jorge
Franco, and Chilean Hernán Rivera Letelier) also challenged the expectations
that international publishers and critics had from Latin American writers: a
magical realist mode, cultural self-exoticization, and the portrayal of
regional economic underdevelopment. Instead, they protest: “Our country, McOndo,
is bigger, overpopulated and full of pollution, with freeways, subway, cable tv,
and slums. In McOndo there are McDonald’s, Mac computers and condominiums,
besides five-star hotels built with laundered money and gigantic shopping
malls.”18
The McOndo literary movement has often been
associated with “La generación del crack”
or The Crack Generation (Jorge Volpi, Ignacio Padilla, Eloy Urroz, Pedro Ángel
Palou, and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda), which emerged in the Mexico City of the
mid-1990s and published their
Manifiesto Crack (Crack Manifesto; also in 1996
and one month before McOndo),
along with five novels: Pedro Ángel Palou’s Memoria de los días, Eloy Urroz’s Las Rémoras, Ricardo Chávez Castañeda’s La conspiración idiota, Ignacio Padilla’s Si volviesen sus majestades, and Jorge
Volpi El temperamento melancólico.
These heterogeneous group of Mexican writers born around 1968 also advocated
for realist literature away from the Magical Realist literary conventions that
characterized the commercial writings of García Márquez’s Post-Boom epigones,
opting instead for a multiplicity of voices as well as complexity of plots and
styles that challenged the active reader. In the late Ignacio Padilla’s words,
the Crack movement responds to “weariness from the fact that the great Latin
American literature and the questionable Magical Realism may have become, for
our literature, tragic magicism.”19 These young authors, most of
whom had begun their careers in literary workshops, typically went away from
Mexican settings and issues, opting instead for international geographical
frameworks. As Padilla explains,
dislocation in these Crack novels will not
be, after all, but a remedy against a crazy and dislocated reality, the outcome
of a world taken by mass media to an end of the century that, in terms of times
and places, is shattered, broken as a result of an excess of ligaments. . . .
What the Crack novels are looking for is managing to create stores whose
chronotope, in Bakhtinian terms, is zero: the no place and no time, all the
times and places, and none of them.”20
Incidentally, this attempt to locate the
plots in a no time and a no place has been pursued by Peruvian-Mexican author
Mario Bellatin in El jardín de la señora Murakami (Ms. Murakami’s
Garden, 2000) and other works. Crack novels were also characterized by their
pessimistic and, coinciding with the end of the century, even apocalyptic
overtones, full of despair and broken ideals.
Regarding newer generations of
writers (I am aware of the limited critical use of the concept of literary
generations), some critics have talked about the Ochenteros, that is, those
Latin American writers born in the 1980s, such as Mexicans Óscar Guillermo Solano, Ave Barrera, Pedro Acuña and Joel Flores; Guatemalan Arnaldo
Gálvez Suárez; Nicaraguan José Adiak Montoya; Costa Rican-Puerto Rican Carlos Fonseca; Cuban Carlos Manuel
Álvarez; Venezuelan Enza García
Arreaza; Peruvian Jennifer
Thorndike; Bolivian Liliana Colanzi; Ecuadorian Marcela Rivanedeira; Chileans Paulina Flores, Camila Gutiérrez, and Francisco Ovando; Brazilians Carol Bensimon and Carol
Rodrigues; Uruguayan Damián
González Bertolino; and Argentines Mauro
Libertella and Camila Fabbri, all of them invited to Guadalajara’s Feria
Internacional del Libro in 2016.
Among the many topics one can
read in their fiction, some of the most prominents ones are marginality,
violence and crime (as evident in Joel Flores’s novel Nunca más su nombre [Never again her name]), apocalyptic visions (Francisco Ovando’s Acerca de Suárez [About Suárez]), the effects of neoliberalism, as
well as stories dealing with borders and migration, such as those by Yuri
Herrera. Other commonalities are the hybridization of literary genres and their
tendency to look beyond the national, opting instead for transnational
worldviews. Other topics that are also recurrent are the persistence of memory, the
recollection of Jewish family histories and of life under dictatorship (also
evident in the works of authors born in the 1970s, such as Peruvian Santiago
Rocagliolo’s 2014 La pena máxima [The
Maximum Penalty] and Mexican Patricio
Pron’s 2014 Nosotros caminamos en sueños [We Walk in Dream]).
Along these lines, mass culture is no longer
a theme, according to Mexican Ave Barrera, but part of their education.
Regarding the theme of violence, the Peruvian Jennifer Thorndike ponders: “I
don’t know if it comes from video games and being exposed to violence, but ours
is a very explicit and crude literature. Things are intense, violent, as if
there were a need to constantly strike the reader.”21
A commonality for many of these
writers is that, even though it is still considered prestigious to be published
by large Spanish publishing house, many have opted instead for submitting their
book manuscripts to independent Latin American small presses, many of which are
flourishing thanks to the new editing, publishing, and commercialization
technologies. According to Amir Valle, in Latin America “more than 60 percent
of literary works are published by these independent publishers, who provide
more accessible prices.”22 New open-access platforms have also
contributed to the wider dissemination of new Latin American literary works.
After all, as Argentine born in Mexico Mauro Libertella claims, “Our parents
had the Cuban Revolution; we, the digital revolution. . . . The Internet
arrived to us when we were fifteen years old and left our analogical childhood
encapsuled, that’s why we write about it with a certain nostalgia.”23
This development has perhaps influenced the blurring of lines between high and
popular culture, as many of these writers express their love for Faulkner or
Bolaño, as well as for video games.
Overall, the vibrant plurality of Latin American literature is today
unquestionable. And as happened with Crack authors, younger generations of multifacetic
writers are also opting for international themes and geographical frameworks
beyond their native countries. Part of
the reason for this transnational outlook—beyond the nation and the so-called
“national literatures” that, according to Bolaño, are inexistent—is that many
of them do not live in the country where they were born. From their particular
speaking positions in the Global South or the countries where they emigrated,
these writers react in their own personal ways to issues often related with
today’s globalization and neoliberalism, the political philosophy often
associated with it. But, no longer overwhelmed by censorship, exile or
political oppression, like their predecessors, they often do so by focusing on
the personal, on quotidian life, rather than engaging in total novels responding
to ethical goals. A recently increased interest in the translation into English
of young Latin American authors, such as the Chilean Alejandro Zambra, among
many others, promises a wider dissemination of these writers’ works worldwide. Likewise,
the abundance of small presses all over Latin America, despite their challenges
with distribution, has also open the door for the appearance of new voices. And
as Melissa Fitch explains in her chapter, new media such as Twitter, Tumblr,
and blogs provide wider readerships and experimental venues for authors willing
to take risks. The future indeed looks bright for many of these authors.
Notes
1. “Menos
comprometidas y más ensimismadas” (Rodríguez Marcos “Una literatura” n.p.).
2. Among many
others, some of the Post-Boom writers listed by Donald L. Shaw are the
Chileans Antonio Skármeta, Isabel Allende, and Ariel Dorfman; the Mexicans
Elena Poniatowska, José Agustín, Gustavo Sainz, José Emilio Pacheco, and Jorge
Aguilar Mora; the Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sánchez; the Argentines Mempo Giardinelli,
Luisa Valenzuela, Ricardo Piglia, Manuel Puig, Juan José Saer, and Eduardo
Gudiño Kiefer; the Cubans Reinaldo Arenas and Miguel Barnet; the Colombian
Óscar Collazos and Rafael Humberto Moreno Durán; the Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez
(12).
3. “Una
mezcla de fantasía y autobiografía en la que el autor se convierte en
personaje” (Rodríguez Marcos “Una
literatura” n.p.).
4. “‘La
verdad’ es siempre resbaladiza, y la objetividad inevitablemente subjetiva. En
este género, la lógica, la coherencia y la belleza de un relato pasan antes que
la corrección política, pudor o la lealtad familiar” (“Con A” n.p.).
5. “Es
posible que el poder corrupto y violento haya pasado del dictador al narco”
(Rodríguez Marcos “Una literatura”
n.p.).
6. Many other narcoliteratura authors are the following:
the also Mexican Luis Humberto Crosthwaite’s Estrella
de la calle sexta (2000), Idos de la mente
(2001), Instrucciones para cruzar la frontera (2003), and Tijuana: Crimen y olvido (2010); Daniel Sada’s El lenguaje del juego (2012);
Alejandro Páez Varela’s Corazón
de Kaláshnikov (2009), El reino de las moscas
(2012), and Música para perros (2013); Orfa Alarcón’s Perra brava
(2010) and Bitch Doll (2013); Yuri Herrera’s Trabajos del reino
(2004); Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz’s Mezquite Road (1999); Jesús Alvarado’s Bajo
el disfraz (2003), Pablo Serrano’s Diario de un narcotraficante
(1967); Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda’s Contrabando (2008), Volver a Santa
Rosa (1996), Los ilegales (1979), El baile de los montañeses
(1982), Voces en el umbral (1983), Teatro del delito: La
fiera del Ajusco, Máscara contra cabellera, Manos
arriba (1985), Tina Modotti y otras obras de teatro (1986), Guerrero
Negro y Cierren las puertas (1988), La daga, más
teatro joven en México (1988), La banca. Doce a las doce (1989),
Armas blancas (trilogía: El abrecartas, La navaja y La
daga) (1990), Playa azul (1991), Cierren las puertas (1992), Sabor
de engaño (1992), Escenario del crimen, Guerrero negro y Fugitivo
(1999), Los ejecutivos (2003), and Creencias e increencias
(2006); Juan Pablo Villalobos’s Fiesta en la madriguera (2010); Eduardo
Antonio Parra’s Parábolas del silencio (2006), Nostalgia de la sombra
(2002), Nadie los vio salir (2001), and Tierra de nadie (1999);
Heriberto Yépez’s A.B.U.R.T.O.
(2005), Al otro lado (2008), and Made in Tijuana (2006); Óscar de
la Borbolla’s La vida de un muerto (1998); Sergio González Rodríguez’s El
hombre sin cabeza (2009), Huesos en el desierto (2006), and Campo
de Guerra (2014); and Bernardo Fernández’s Tiempo de alacranes (2005)
and Narcocuentos (2014); Gerardo Cornejo’s Juan Justino Judicial
(1996); Homero Aridjis’s La santa muerte (2003), Sicarios (2007),
and La zona del silencio (2002).
In
Colombia, where the term “Novela del sicariato” (Hitman Novel) is normally
preferred, many other narcoliteratura works, often dealing with the
picaresque-like adventures of sicarios (hitmen or hired assassins), have been
published and sometimes turned into films and television series, including
Fernando Vallejo’s La virgen de los sicarios (1994), Gustavo Bolívar
Moreno’s Sin tetas no hay paraíso (2007) and El Capo
(2009); Laura Restrepo’s El ángel descuidado (1997), Delirio
(2004), and Leopardo de sol (1993); Jorge Franco Ramos’s Mala noche
(1997), Rosario Tijeras (1999), Paraíso Travel (2001), Melodrama
(2006), Santa suerte (2010), and El mundo de afuera (2014); and
Arturo Alape’s Bogotazo: Memoria del olvido (1983), El Bogotazo: La
paz, la violencia. Testigos de excepción (1985), Ciudad Bolívar. La
hoguera de las ilusiones (1995), and Sangre ajena (2004).
The
Chilean Eduardo Pérez Arroyo has also published El lugar donde los pájaros
lloran (2015) and the Puerto Rican Gean Carlo Villegas, Osario de vivos
(2012) and Cuentos post retro (2009).
7. “Ya nadie escribe novelas, o
bien: ya nadie escribe novelas totales. Pero, me pregunto, ¿novelas para
quién?, ¿totales para quién?” (n.p.).
8. “El
gran tema de la identidad latinoamericana (¿quienes somos?) pareció dejar paso
al tema de la identidad personal (¿quién soy?)” (n.p.).
9. “Pero ¿por qué esa obsesión de
que sea el tema el que define la ambición de una obra? También a Rubén Darío y
a los modernistas los llamaron afeminados por hablar de cisnes y reyes. Tal vez
la ambición sea revolucionar la sensibilidad. La forma es tan política como los
temas” (Rodríguez Marcos “Ochenteros” n.p.).
10. “Porque investiga en la
estructura de lo que somos y de las etiquetas que se nos vienen encima: mujer,
blanca, peruana… Hay novelas que creen tratar los grandes temas y no hacen más
que seguir la historia oficial de los grandes temas. La literatura debe
cuestionar siempre” (Rodríguez Marcos “Ochenteros” n.p.).
11. “Si
ambición no significa hoy globalización: “2666 sería la novela global de
estos tiempos porque se construye no a la manera clásica sino mediante puntos
de intensidad que, como Ciudad Juárez, podrían parecer periféricos” (Rodríguez
Marcos “Ochenteros” n.p.).
12. “Es preocupante la indiferencia con la que vemos asesinar
a las mujeres” (Rodríguez Marcos “Ochenteros” n.p.).
13. “Para
nosotros, el Chapulín Colorado, Ricky Martin, Selena, Julio Iglesias y las
telenovelas (o culebrones) son tan latinoamericanas como el candombe o el
vallenato” (n.p.).
14. “Aquí
no hay realismo mágico, hay realismo virtual."
15. “No
es posible aceptar los esencialismos reduccionistas, y creer que aquií todo el
mundo anda con sombrero y vive en árboles” (n.p.).
16. “Vender
un continente rural cuando, la verdad de las cosas, es urbano (más allá que sus
sobrepobladas ciudades son un caos y no funcionen) nos parece aberrante, cómodo
e inmoral” (n.p.).
17. Among the members of La Onda
are the following authors: José Agustín, Gustavo Sainz, Parménides García
Saldaña, René Aivlés Fabila, Federico Arana, Héctor Manjarrez, Hugo Hiriart,
Margarita Dalto, and Armando Ramírez.
18. “Nuestro
país McOndo es más grande, sobrepoblado y lleno de contaminación, con
autopistas, metro, tv-cable y barriadas. En McOndo hay McDonald’s, computadores
Mac y condominios, amén de hoteles cinco estrellas construidos con dinero
lavado y malls gigantescos” (n.p).
19. “Cansancio
de que la gran literatura latinoamericana y el dudoso realismo mágico se
hayan convertido, para nuestras letras, en magiquismo trágico” (n.p.).
20. “La dislocación
en estas novelas del Crack no será a fin de cuentas sino remedo de
una realidad alocada y dislocada, producto de un mundo cuya
massmediatización lo lleva a un fin de siglo trunco en tiempos y lugares,
roto por exceso de ligamentos . . . lo que buscan las novelas del Crack es
lograr historias cuyo cronotopo, en términos bajtinianos, sea cero: el no lugar
y el no tiempo, todos los tiempos y lugares y ninguno” (n.p.).
21. “No sé si procede de los videojuegos y de la
exposición a la violencia, pero la nuestra es una literatura muy explícita, muy
cruda. Las cosas son intensas, violentas, como si
hubiera una necesidad de golpear al lector todo el rato" (Rodríguez Marcos “Ochenteros”
n.p.).
22. “En América Latina, por ejemplo,
más del 60 por ciento de las obras literarias que se publican, son editadas por
estos sellos independientes, que venden a precios más accesibles” (n.p.).
23. “Nuestros
padres tuvieron la revolución cubana; nosotros, la revolución digital. . . .
“Internet nos llegó con 15 años y dejó encapsulada nuestra infancia analógica,
por eso escribimos de ella con cierta nostalgia” (Rodríguez Marcos “Ochenteros”
n.p.).
Works
Cited
“Con A de América,
con B de... De afrodescendiente a
violencia. 30 autores latinoamericanos
definen el mapa de la
literatura de un continente diverso y mestizo.” El País.
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1 comentario:
Great article. My favourite is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Find an interview with Gabriel (imaginary) in http://stenote.blogspot.com/2014/09/an-interview-with-gabriel.html
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