Volpi: The Future of Latin American Fiction

Three Percent, a website based out of the University of Rochester dedicated to the dissemination of translation, recently posted the translation of a speech from Mexican author Jorge Volpi on the state of Latin American literature. The speech was broken down into five parts and serialized over the course of a week. Volpi addresses the works of some of the sacred cows of the Latin American tradition (Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges), highlights some of the up-and-coming stars of contemporary fiction (Roberto Bolaño, Santiago Roncagliolo, Edmundo Paz-Soldán), and looks to some who are not as well known but hopeuflly will be in the near future (Yuri Herrera, Élmer Mendoza, Martín Solares).

As a side note, Volpi’s comments on 2666 echo Sarah Pollack’s outstanding article in the most recent edition of Comparative Literature (Summer 2009).To date, this is the best article that has been written on Bolaño’s reception in the United States.

Here are the links to Three Percent. Many thanks to them for their work! Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

 

Rivera Garza: Premio Sor Juana 2009

Se anunció recientemente que la FIL le ha otorgado a Cristina Rivera Garza el Premio Sor Juana por su thriller policíaco, La muerte me da. Aquí va la nota.

Sánchez Prado: Naciones intelectuales

Recién aparece en los estantes digitales más conocidos el nuevo libro de Ignacio Sánchez Prado, profesor de Washington University en St. Louis. Leí la tesis doctoral de la que surge este libro y les aseguro que vale la pena una cuidadosa lectura.

Aquí va el resumen de la editorial: “En Naciones intelectuales, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado explora los procesos y obras que sentaron las bases de una nueva modernidad literaria en la estela de la Revolución Mexicana. Enfocándose en un periodo que va de la firma de la Constitución de 1917 al deceso de Alfonso Reyes en 1959, Sánchez Prado centra su análisis en la forma en que cuatro elementos de la práctica cultural mexicana—la noción de literatura, la figura del intelectual, la creación de instituciones académicas y la definición de identidad nacional—emergieron a partir de distintos debates sostenidos por las figuras más importantes del periodo. A través de una apropiación de la noción de “campo literario” de Pierre Bourdieu, el libro analiza varios momentos clave, controversias e intervenciones culturales, las cuáles condujeron en última instancia la transformación del diverso espectro estético creado por la Revolución en un sistema literario altamente institucional. El trabajo de Sánchez Prado confronta un amplio conjunto de escritores, incluyendo Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Cuesta, Manuel Maples Arce, Ramón López Velarde, Francisco Monterde, José Gaos, los filósofos del Hiperión y Octavio Paz. Como resultado, este libro ofrece una cartografía de las instituciones literarias mexicanas de un rango sin precedentes, que permitirá a lectores, estudiantes y académicos comprender la construcción de la literatura mexicana moderna de manera clara, rigurosa y sistemática.”

También un blurb del Sebastiaan Faber: “Analizando y reconstruyendo de forma cuidadosa la evolución del contexto institucional de la vida intelectual mexicana del siglo XX, el autor de Naciones intelectuales realiza una importante revisión de varios momentos claves en su historia intelectual y literaria, empezando con las vanguardias … Entre otras cosas, este brillante ensayo constituye un esfuerzo poderoso por arrancar de una vez por todas algunos de los paradigmas, mitos y tópicos más persistentes en la representación de la identidad e historia intelectual mexicanas, en círculos eruditos tanto como populares.”

Crosthwaite, “Where have you gone, Juan Escutia”

Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, narrador tijuanense, publicó su nueva novela Aparta de mí este caliz hace un par de meses. No la he leído, pero mi compadre Nacho me la trae de México ahora. Será interesante ver qué vuelta le da a la novela de Vicente Leñero, El evangelio según Lucas Gavilán. Mientras espero la llegada de la novela, vuelvo a leer sus cuentos.

Para quienes no conozcan sus colecciones Instrucciones para cruzar la frontera (2002), No quiero escribir, no quiero (1993), Mujeres con traje de baño caminan solitarias por las playas de su llanto (1990), y Marcela y el rey al fin juntos (1988), valen la pena. Lo que en primera instancia me atrajo a sus obras fue su desgarbado interés en la música. Pueblan las páginas de estos cuantos referencias al rock and roll que desde joven escucho (Clapton, Santana, los Beatles, Los Platters) y algunas rolas mexicanas que he adquirido posteriormente. Pero hoy leí “Where have you gone, Juan Escutia” de Marcela y el rey sobre tres gringos militares que cruzan la frontera en busca de sexo y alcohol. Qué cuento! Está, desde luego, la música. Pero está también una refinada re-escritura de la invasión norteamericana de 1846. Crosthwaite se pregunta que habría pasado si Winfield Scott, jefe del ejército invasor, “hubiera entrado por estos rumbos… por la frontera más visitada” en vez de arribar a la capital por Veracruz. Es un cuento genial y, si tienes oportunidad de encontrar el libro — son escasas las copias que existen (sólo se editaron 1000 ejemplares) y valen su peso en oro maciso — les recomiendo todo el volumen.

En este video, Crosthwaite habla sobre Aparte de mí este caliz:

Palou’s “Morelos” and Other Recent Historical Novels

The upcoming centennial celebrations have launched a barrage of publications recently, some much better than others. Last night I finished Pedro Ángel Palou’s Morelos: Morir es nada and was fairly underwhelmed. It is the second of three historical novels that Palou has cranked out in the last three years.

His first outing, Zapata, appeared simultaneously with Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s mammoth Villa: una biografía narrativa. As a historical novel it did little to reimagine the Zapata myth. Instead, it was a fairly docile revitalization of the standard story. The most potentially transgressive moment of the book — when Zapata turned the tables on an hacendado with amorous intentions — fails to add anything new to our understanding of the character. If anything, it only strengthens wearied old notions of mexicanidad by literally following the Paz chingón/chingada dichotomy while simultaneously playing to populist notions of rebellion: Zapata literally sticks it to the man. Morelos follows suit, but in a more gratuitously hagiographic manner.

Whereas the first novel converts Zapata into the tragic hero of a corrido that inextricably leads to death (glorious though it may be), the second novel converts Morelos into the Christ figure that should have triumphed over the impious Spanish empire had it not been for the Judases who betrayed him. The narrator is Morelos’ nearly anonymous third mistress who writes a long missive about her lover’s valiant battles at the behest of a priest whom we later find out was directly involved in the Inquisitorial court that condemned Morelos to death. Jerónima’s constant references to the process of writing (each section begins with her telling “Vuestra Excelencia” how tired she is, what time of night it is, how low the candle is burned, how many hours she’s been writing) only reminds readers how long the author takes in getting to the point. Readers are subjected to excruciatingly minute details of every battle, every siege, and what was worst, every moment of 45-day trial that culminates with his assassination. As with Zapata, Morelos does little to invigorate this character for readers. And that may be its greatest flaw. History generally jumps from Hidalgo’s failed first attempt at independence to Iturbide’s successful, albeit problematic, establishment of an authentically Mexican government without much consideration for the mulatto general who carried out Hidalgo’s vision for nearly 5 years. That said, I am looking forward to reading the third installment, Cuautémoc, which I hear is much better.

In the meantime, a number of other books are out and worth looking into. Mauricio Tenorio Trillo, currently a professor of history at the University of Chicago, has recently published a volume called México y sus centenarios with Tusquets. It hit the stands last week and promises to be a fantastic read, as have his other books. Guillermo Zambrano just published a new novel about the U.S.-Mexico War of 1847 called México por asalto. It fits in with two others that have appeared in the last couple of years: Ignacio Solares’ La invasión and Francisco Martín Moreno’s México mutilado. Mónica Lavín just published a new novel on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Eduardo Antonio Parra’s Juárez: Un rostro de piedra is also out and available for purchase. This is, to my knowledge, Parra’s first incursion into historical fiction. He’s most well known for a couple of short story collections dealing with the border (Los límites de la noche and Tierra de nadie).

And, in a final note, the Mexican government has set up a website for the centennial celebrations that’s worth taking a look at. There are some nice interactive elements, films, pictures, and music.

José de la Colina y Joyce

Don José de la Colina, el que reconoció trazas joyceanas en un borrador de un cuento de Fernando del Paso antes de que éste hubiera leído el Ulises, publicó este blog sobre Bloomsday. El atinado comentario de Colina inicia un delicioso intercambio de comentarios al final que me interesa sobre todo porque atestigua el continuo interés que genera Dublineses, Un retrato del artista adolescente, Ulises y Finnegans Wake entre escritores y lectores mexicanos.

A Portrait of the Mexican Artist: Elizondo and Joyce

Conference paper read at the North American James Joyce conference in Buffalo, NY:

A Portrait of a Mexican Artist: Elizondo and Joyce

Brian L. Price – Wake Forest University

When Salvador Elizondo’s Teoría del infierno [Theory of Hell] appeared in bookstores, Mexican readers found, set against an unattractive rose matte background, the well-known photo of Joyce that typically adorns the cover of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. At first glance, this is an odd choice because Joyce only appears twice in the book: once explicitly in Elizondo’s brief yet insightful treatise on Ulysses and again implicitly in the next text, entitled “The First Page of Finnegans Wake.”[1] But what strikes me about the choice of this cover photo is that Elizondo places Joyce front and center in the presentation of his work. The gesture is simultaneously homage and appropriation. And the appropriated image is significant: he chooses the artist as a young man. Within Elizondo’s conception of art, Joyce plays a central role and is appropriated over and over as a literary object that promotes a specific vision of art.[2] Thus in this article, I will only deal with Joyce obliquely as a literary object that is used in the formation and promotion of another author’s literary project. Specifically I argue, as does David Damrosh in his book on world literature, that reading foreign authors consists of “an elliptical refraction of national literatures” and a process of translation wherein writing gains in import while, at the same time, it does not construct “a set canon of texts but a mode of reading.” Thus weltliterature becomes “a form of detached engagement with worlds beyond our own place and time” (281). It is precisely this concept of engagement that I want to apply to Elizondo’s reading of Joyce. I read Elizondo’s artistic development as a threefold interaction beginning with his early discovery of Joyce and emulation of Stephen’s aesthetics, his later critical engagement of Ulysses, and his exegetic translation of the first page of Finnegans Wake. Doing so will allow us then to make some broader comments about Joyce’s influence in Mexico and, hopefully, open a new line of inquiry into Elizondo’s work.

Herrera: Trabajos del reino

Corridos are by their very nature narrative forms. This does not, however, always translate to good narrative fiction, especially when authors attempt to transform corridos into novels or films. Pedro Ángel Palou’s Zapata falls under this category because, much to the discredit of Zapata’s memory, the corrido Palou writes reeks of populism that only supports extant national myths; it is writing at the service of traditional post-revolutionary ideology which, we should never forget, stemmed from a system that Zapata openly disagreed with and that ultimately murdered him. Other such attempts include Spanish novelist Arturo Pérez Reverte’s La reina del sur, a never-ending novel about a narco-pilot’s girlfriend who goes into exile in Spain, revolutionizes the drug trade across the Strait of Gibraltar, and becomes the most powerful cartel leader in the world upon exacting vengeance for her lover’s death in a gun-slinging scene that would make Ang Lee or Quentin Tarantino proud. Despite the aid of culiche author Élmer Mendoza, La reina del sur has two major problems: it reads like a tired Hollywood caricature of Mexico and, as with many of Pérez Reverte’s novels, artistry is subverted by flashy but fruitless action.

This is not to say, however, that there are not some really good corrido books out there. Mendoza’s own novel, Un asesino solitario, not only surpasses Pérez Reverte’s in every important aspect (readability, interest, coherence, poetics, etc.), but it also does so in about one-third the time. Plus it draws on Mexico’s great tradition of novelas negras like Rafael Bernal’s El complot mongol and recent history, most notably the 1994 assassination of Colosio. Likewise, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite’s Idos de la mente also translates the corrido well, following the ups and downs of a norteño band that seamlessly incorporates the corrido’s musicality into the text. In addition to these two upside examples, I’d like to throw one more on the pile, a book that I just read thanks to the recommendation of my good friend, José Ramón Ruisánchez: Yuri Herrera’s Trabajos del reino.

The plot is simple enough: a young musician is discovered by the local drug kingpin and brought under his protective wing as the kingdom’s minstrel. Within the walls of the Palace, the Artist becomes privy to courtly intrigues as courtesans vie for ascendancy. Unlike many narco novels and films, where drug trade and violence constitute the key moments of development, Trabajos del reino hinges on more subtle, less spectacular events. And, the novel is, as many great novels are, suggestive of hundreds of other untold stories. As the Artist meanders through town and the the court, he–and we by extension–glimpses other stories that may well make it into a corrido some day, like the young man who fakes his own kidnapping and calls his parents for ransom. They respond that he’s useless and offer to pay half the ransom to have him killed; he accepts the deal, uses the money to buy liquor and drugs, and then “fulfilled his part of the bargain.”

But what strikes me most about this novel is the role Herrera assigns to art in the construction and destruction of the drug cartel. He understands the power of fictional narratives, whether they be literary or musical or political, and teases out that relationship through the musician. The King brings the Artist on board presumably to garner popular support; the musician’s work is, as it has been for centuries, one part artistry and one part propaganda. When local radio stations refuse to play the Artist’s narcocorridos on the air because of governmental and social pressures against normalizing criminal behavior, the King responds that it doesn’t matter because they can move the songs clandestinely in the streets, “which is where we do all our business anyway.” Later, when the Artist pens a song that inadvertently demystifies the King, popular support wanes and an opportunity for overthrow presents itself. Instead of shoring up a kingdom built on bullets, loyalty, and influence, words bring it down.

Herrera’s style is crisp, clean, and lyrical. The novel’s marked norteño accent and humor are recognizable to anyone who has spent time along either side of the border. The anecdotes behind nicknames are fantastic; my personal favorite was for the bato dubbed Santo (because all the animals love him). In the end, the corrido this novel spins is not of great capos or bloody shootouts, but rather all the smaller, less glamorous jobs that underpin the world that makes the front page. Definitely a worthy read.

José Emilio Pacheco y la sangre derramada

La semana pasada José Emilio Pacheco (México DF, 1939) recibió el XVII Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana. A lo largo de 50 años de intensa producción artística, Pacheco ha ejercido todos los géneros literarios posibles con agilidad, inteligencia y destreza. Aquí señalo sólo un aspecto de esa oeuvre que siempre me ha llamado la atención como lector y como académico: la sangre derramada.

Mi primer encuentro con su obra marcó de algún modo permanente mi lectura posterior de sus obras porque siempre que hojeo sus página me encuentro ante un profeta que reclama la justicia para los vencidos, que aboga a favor de la misericordia y el amor fraternal. En Morirás lejos, periplo poético-narrativo en el que se traza una historia de la crueldad, del genocidio y de la resistencia, se contraponen la perspectiva macrocósmica que abarca siglos de historia judía y la visión intimista que no deja de reconocer que toda tragedia tiene un cariz humano.

…que nadie o casi nadie entre quienes morirán lejos de los lugares donde nacieron y han vivido admite la realidad del exterminio lo prueba la confusión babélica de objetos que se acumulan en el vagón y dificultan aun más el encontrar un sitio para sentarse;
muebles valijas bicicletas cajas de libros despertadores gramófonos instrumentos musicales cuadros retratos máquinas de coser lámparas ollas; cuando Alguien recuerda todo esto le duele en especial la presencia incongruente de los ositos de felpa las muñecas los cuadernos de dibujo los cochecitos a que se aferran sus dueños (87).

Luego me topé con versos que revelaban un afán parecido. En “Fin de siglo” Pacheco condena la violencia que caracteriza no sólo el siglo XX sino también los siglo anteriores–pensemos siquiera en la Inquisición– (“¿A nombre de qué puedo condenar a muerte / a otros por lo que son o piensan?”) para luego complicar este sentimiento de ultraje e indignación con la responsabilidad ética de enfrentar la maldad (“Pero ¿cómo dejar impunes / la tortura o el genocidio o el matar de hambre?”). Y no olvidemos el poema “Los vigesémicos”, en el que el poeta lamenta el lastre de las ideologías: “Cuánta sangre / la derramada en esta tierra. / Y todos / dijeron que mataban por el mañana: / el porvenir del azogue, la esperanza / que fluyó como arena entre los dedos. / [...] Bajo el nombre / del Bien / el Mal se impuso.” Desde luego, la misma corriente temática subraya sus cuentos. El que más vinculo con esta vertiente humanista es “El torturador”, cuento magno que se ahonda en el alma del verdugo, dejando a un lado la historia de la víctima, para mostrar así como lo hizo en Morirás lejos que todo ser humano cuenta con la capacidad innata de traicionar, herir y destruir.

Lo más probable es que esta lectura que hago de Pacheco sea reductiva y parcial. Pero a final de cuentas, todas las lecturas lo son. Si bien encajo al autor dentro de un limitado marco de referencia temática es porque él, junto con Carlos Monsiváis en el género cronístico, es quien se ha destacado mejor entre la filas mexicanas como la voz de la conciencia humanista. Porque siempre hay necesidad de quienes abogan tanto por los altos valores estéticos como por los altos valores humanos.

Maldonado: Temporada de caza para el león negro

This is Tryno Maldonado’s latest offering and the only way I can deal with it is in terms of comparisons. In the spirit of complete honesty, I must admit that I like all my benchmarks more than this novel. In some ways, Temporada reminds me of a VH1 “Behind the Music” episode–the story of an artist whose fame carries him to the height of success before beginning the long, downward spiral into self-destructive behavior–but without the upturn at the end. Same thing goes for Luis Humberto Crosthwaite’s Idos de la mente, except Crosthwaite’s book is more entertaining and there is a relatively happy, corrido-esque ending. If Maldonado was hoping for biting commentary about the vacuity of nouveau rich investors in Mexico’s plastic arts scene, he came up short of Álvaro Enrigue’s Muerte de un instalador, a novel that I’m only lukewarm about, but found more interesting and well-written. That said, Álvaro’s later books have been thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the read, especially Hipotermia. If, on the other hand, the goal was to satirize the artistic circles, Enrique Serna’s Miedo a los animales has more bite. On the upside, some of the supporting characters–Orlando and Nostalgic Zebra–are at least entertaining.