Will H. Corral is Chair of Foreign Languages at Sacramento State University. His Theory's Empire (Columbia UP, 2005), co-authored with Daphne Patai, was chosen Book of the Year (Criticism) by London's Times Literary Supplement. In July 2006 he published El error del acierto (contra ciertos dogmas latinoamericanistas). He is coordinating the critical edition of Augusto Monterroso's complete works for UNESCO. |
How to cite this article: Corral, Will H. "An English-Language View of the History Of Latin American Fiction". Dissidences. Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. On line. Internet: 15/09/06 (http://www.dissidences/ CorralSwanson.html) |
| " When Swanson mentions that Abel Posse was born in 1936 (the same year as Vargas Llosa) as one aspect that makes the linking of the new historical novel to the Post-Boom problematic, one is also reminded of an Argentine author born in 1937 he never mentions, the late Juan José Saer " |
| "Since Henríquez Ureña’s seminal Literary Currents in Hispanic America (1945), or Enrique Anderson Imbert’s ambitious but flawed Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (1954, 1974), no single author has produced similarly comprehensive works in terms of conceptualization, and English-language Latin Americanism is not exclusively responsible for that deficiency." |
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There was a time in the literary history of works written in Spanish when interpretation was
basically split in two: the mainly philological tradition of Spanish scholars, and the American
scholars trained by other Anglo-Saxons in similar traditions. Within that world the few
British interpreters were considered serious purveyors of other ingrained traditions. Latin
Americans were known if and only when they studied Spanish literature. Subsequently the
New Criticism came into prominence, different types of Latin American exiles came to the
United States and populated the rest of the world, and Spanish and Portuguese departments
grew. Then Theory arrived, as did pressures to publish, the onslaught of presses (vanity or
otherwise), and an abundance of English-only criticism in the purportedly democratic and
pluralistic sphere that grew from those developments. Ideally, Spanish-language criticism
would have had some parity with English-language interpretations. It does not, and one
wonders what would have happened if critics like Angel Rama and Antonio Cornejo Polar
had given in to pressures, however subtle, to write their seminal works in English. Within
that context a set of patterns characterizes many recent English-language books about the
history of contemporary Latin American fiction. Those paradigms point to a clear disregard
of the literary history of the Americas that takes place south of an ever-porous border, and a
catering to the United States market. It is counterproductive to ask “Why not?” Further,
apprehension about retribution, cowardice about writing what you really want to say, and no
small doses of cynicism all come together, and may also be uppermost in the minds of
younger scholars afraid of losing a recommendation or invitations.
Philip Swanson, author of Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction does not have to be
concerned about those types of United States academic comeuppances. Yet, the subtitle of
his most recent book could not be more accurate, and among other virtues it is invigorating
that he does not do theory (121-2) for theory’s sake, get lost in jargon, or latch on to “hot
topics,” all part of the pressures to conform of the last fifteen years. As an interlocutor,
Swanson is very effective. He is also aware (118-24) of disputable issues, even though one of
his conclusions –“But perhaps the most striking feature of the critical trends outlined above
is their meta-critical quality. They often involve little literary criticism as such, but, in so far
as they do deal with literature, tend to dwell instead on the relationship of literature to
culture, institutions, theory and professional debates” (124)— makes one wonder why he
ultimately adds to that state of affairs. It is precisely dealing with those debates (rethinking
the boom and its politics, theory and post-structuralism, “Latin Americanist” criticism,
history, women and sexuality) that would have allowed Swanson to come up with better
analyses, no matter how short or introductory, and to go beyond updating views he has
expressed in earlier publications.
Latin American Fiction is actually a gloss of familiar terrain in the history of Latin American
narrative, with some illustrative interpretative moments, such as the sixth chapter on
“Hispanic American Fiction of the United States.” That next-to-last chapter (104-116) is not
definitive, due to the contaminated nature of the fiction with which it deals, and mainly
because of the epistemic conundrum implicit in defining “Hispanic” as strictly Mexican
American, “Puerto Rican Americans” [sic], and “Cuban and Dominican Americans.” The
fact is that many writers of Central and South American background who publish in English
have added much to the unambiguous fusion Swanson posits. He states as much when
speaking about Allende and Valenzuela (97-98), and later mentioning “Yet Valenzuela and
Allende are not really considered anything other than Latin American writers, writing for a
wider Spanish-speaking audience and not specifically for a North American market” (105).
He exacerbates the issue when, discussing “Some Writers of the 1980s and 1990s” (111-17),
he clusters Rosario Ferré (“a Puerto Rican who is usually thought of as a Latin American
writer, sometimes associated with the Post-Boom”[111]) with non-bilingual writers. The
latter, Hijuelos, Cisneros, Castillo, García, Alvarez, the late Anzaldúa and others among
them, have not written, cannot, or do not want to write directly in Spanish. Beyond his
associating Ferré with those writers, a conceptually uneven collection like Se habla español.
Voces latinas en USA (2000) could have provided ample room for Swanson to parse the
selling of purportedly subaltern “Latinicity.”
The cast that Swanson has chosen is canonical in many ways, and not new. After all it has
been more than 35 years since “Latino” literature grew out of political urgency, when the
earliest examples were aesthetically raw. Yet, perhaps Swanson is right in seeing Anzaldúa’
s writing as “fiction,” for as he says: “Whether this sort of thing [sic] is to the taste of those
who enjoy reading the likes of Hijuelos, Cisneros, Alvarez or Ferré is a matter of opinion”
(116-17). That type of noncommittal (“ambiguity” is a privileged term for Swanson) yet
dismissive discernment is common in this book, and not a measured examination of
Anzaldúa’s true worth and historical role for the continental Latin American public who, it
must be said, are not at all familiar with her work. More gravely, the uninitiated, purportedly
the virtual public for this book, will not come out with more than a precursory examination of
texts and the worthy polemics they have engendered.
The previous (fifth) chapter and the seventh on “Culture Wars: Ways of Reading Latin
American Fiction” are preceded by fairly conventional overviews that will not disappoint the
authors included in the extensive and generally helpful chapter notes (127-37) and in the
reference bibliography entitled “Further Reading” (138-41). Truth be said, this is also the
impression projected by the three articles on Spanish American narrative that cover the
periods 1810-1920, 1920-1970, and since 1970, collected in the Cambridge Companion to
Modern Latin American Culture, ed. John King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004). The articles in that collection show scant awareness of revisionist reading, or, for the
most recent period, new authors or works, and one can only attribute those conditions to the
“reader” genre. It should be pointed out that, like most handbooks of this type, Latin
American Fiction centers on Spanish American texts.
Yet, Swanson is authoritative when speaking about Brazilian fiction, and decidedly strong on
Machado de Assis (17-19). But it is this early in the book that its greatest problem begins: the
complacency that can result from limiting references to one’s formation and the authorities
one has always used. In the Machado discussion, Swanson privileges British views, a
recourse that can be fine in and of itself, as work by John King, Gerald Martin, and the early
Jean Franco shows. When that preference, to which Swanson has every right, is seen in the
light of statements like “… but never helped create a really strong trend for urban or
provincial Realism or Naturalism in the European tradition” (15), the interpretive conclusion
is an enigma at best. Further, stating that regionalism “(though underdeveloped in
comparison to, say, north-western Europe” (24), not analyzing any solid Brazilian study on
Machado (128, n7), and merely declaring that “concern has been expressed about the
imposition of European patterns of literary history on an entirely different cultural context in
a way that has promoted limited, questionable or even false literary histories” (118), make the
quandary evident: Swanson’s attempt at objectivity and catholicity reveals a sense of
obligation to a reduced set of European authorities, making the sources predictable and
insufficient for understanding how native interpreters think.
Nevertheless “Beginnings: Narrative and the Challenge of New Nations,” is a fair first
chapter that begins by noticing that “Many developments in Latin American writing are a
function of an essentially literary history” (3, his emphasis). Swanson appreciates, knows,
and possibly prefers the literary, but seems to force himself to express those views obliquely.
His judgments are thus encumbered by a specific critical context and a selectivity of
interpretation and national literatures (mainly Argentine in this chapter) that beget an
ultimately conformist approach, too respectful of by now questionable siftings, such as the
value of rigid nineteenth-century foundational fictions. In this chapter there are no intuitive,
unconscious, seat-of-the-pants judgments, nor the opposite: better-informed choices. Thus,
after speaking about the conjunction of costumbrista and realist narratives Swanson
concludes that they were not “great novels and they have received scant critical attention so
far” (15). The overflow of Spanish-language critical writings on nineteenth-century narrative
and non-fiction disproves that assumption. The second chapter, “National Narratives:
Regional and Continental Identities” centers on the conceptual ambiguities of the “novels of
the land,” and correctly centers on Quiroga as the key transitional figure that provides what
Swanson calls “glimpses of the modern.” This is a fine chapter, and the only missing piece
in the puzzle the critic is trying to decipher is the relevance to the present canon of what
literary historian Juan Marinello called tres novelas ejemplares (La vorágine, Don Segundo
Sombra, and Doña Bárbara), all published in the twenties, against the grain of incipient
vanguards. As Swanson avers, narrational ambiguity toward the modern “may suggest that
the realist model is more subtle than later generations would appreciate” (29).
Because Swanson is progressing chronologically the third chapter, “The Rise of the New
Narrative” is disquieting. By referring to “the so-called New Novel or New Narrative” (37)
he replicates a generic view that is still an ambiguous template for many literary historians:
the fact is that clustering the new novel and narrative actually does not allow for persuasive
distinctions among practices that are similar, but have totally different roots. By relegating
those roots to a footnote (41, n6), and immediately and too briefly analyzing “Avant-garde
tendencies” in well-known precursors, Swanson does not offer anything new. He slights or
ignores, for example, a considerable number of “total novels” from the twenties and thirties,
the development of the short novel during those decades, or, say, the relationship that
Felisberto Hernández’s fixation with dolls may have with Darío, Arreola, Piñera, and Ferré.
When Swanson, speaking about Macedonio Fernández, states that “[This] is remarkably
similar (in tone at least) to the most radical territory of the nueva narrativa” (42) the
comparison and chronology puts the cart before the horse.
He is right in agreeing with the view (Donald Shaw’s) that La vida breve may be the first
novel of the boom, and that Arlt, Onetti, Bombal, and others honed the representation of the
urban and the existential. But considering the Ecuadorian Humberto Salvador’s En la
ciudad he perdido una novela…(1929), or his compatriot Pablo Palacio’s short novels and
stories from the early twenties would have allowed Swanson to go a long way toward revising
the history of the boom’s precursors. One does not have to deny the sheer force of the new
narrative in order to put its founding tenets in perspective. Predictably, in the rest of the
chapter Borges and magical realism vis-à-vis lo real maravilloso are put forth as examples of
the questioning of literariness. Unpredictably, and accurately, Asturias and Arguedas’
novels are employed to explain a successful coupling of literature and politics. Finally, El
Señor Presidente and Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo exemplify for Swanson the new narrative’s
fragmentary representation of the crisis of modernity, although there will be wide
disagreement with his binary view that “the New Narrative is inescapably characterized by
a tension between Europe and Latin America, North and South, the universal and the
specific, the existential and the political” (54).
The fourth chapter, devoted to “The Boom,” is the most unsettled, and not necessarily
because of any inherent fault in Swanson’s reasoning. As bandied about as it is, the Boom is
still a major literary sport, and too much action goes on in the interpreters’ minds.
Naturally, Swanson did not have access to Marco and Gracia’s massive and seminal
La llegada de los bárbaros. La recepción de la literatura hispanoamericana en España, 1960-
1981 or to Burgos’s Los escritores y la creación en Hispanoamérica, compilations from 2004
and subsequent critical collections that provide ample evidence of all the work to be done on
the Boom. Yet, this chapter includes some of Swanson’s best pages (66-76, on Fuentes,
Vargas Llosa, and García Márquez), and if he starts his discussion of “The Big Four” with
an insufficient evaluation of the late Cabrera Infante and Cortázar (62-66), he is tough on the
Argentine. His view that “Rayuela, now seems trapped in a semi-hippy, jazz-fuelled, sixties
time warp. Its main import was probably that it managed to encapsulate the literary
aesthetic of the Boom” (66) actually coincides with readings of that novel forty years later by
some new Argentine novelists and critics.
But the Boom writers did not intend to speak to their countrymen, flatter those in authority
or match their novelistic lexicon to the background of anyone in particular, so all
disagreements with them or their works are going to sound like catechisms or incantations.
The section of this chapter devoted to “Other Writers of the Boom” makes some good points
about Onetti, Sabato, Carpentier, Arguedas, and particularly about the recently deceased
Roa Bastos. But even within the reduced scope of this introduction that section does not jell
with the last one, devoted to Donoso’s El obsceno pájaro de la noche as “The Last Novel of
the Boom?” That Swanson actually makes a better case for Yo el Supremo (79) as the last
Boom novel is a contradiction that shows how trying to be too careful with politics is
detrimental to an all-encompassing argumentation. This chapter, read in conjunction with
the one that follows it, could leave the impression that the most canonical boom writers
simply stopped publishing anything worth reading, and although Swanson is particularly
sharp in assessing the lasting value of Vargas Llosa and the withering excellence of Fuentes,
the concentration on major figures is simply too restricting.
“After the Boom” is the topic covered in the fifth chapter, and is excellent in its corrective
stance rather than on any predictions or categorical views of a period that is still in flux.
Swanson is sure and succinct in stating that “Defining the Post-Boom thus becomes a
matter of political choice as much as one of literary history, and its perception and use of
manipulation as a term become as important as any sense of its underlying literary-historical
validity” (83). His belief that the Boom was “a finite burst of commercial activity” (84) is
tempered by the fact that Seix Barral is once again at the forefront of the new narrative.
Although it is not competing fully with publishing houses like Anagrama or Alfaguara, Seix
Barral’s publication of Palabra de América (2004) —an incomplete manifesto centered on
the new narrative and its authors— has thrown a wrench into the already creaking market
machine built for the latest narrative, one that is not very different from the one constructed
for the previous boom.
The subsection “Change and established writers” is rather weak because of its
incompleteness, when Swanson insists on presenting Donoso as “a perfect illustration of the
Post-Boom as being not simply a rejection of the Boom” (91). To many readers Swanson will
overestimate the value of Donoso’s novels and of their interpreters (122), especially in terms
of the relation he establishes between the Chilean’s work and theory. It is precisely at such
times that one misses the attention to works like Donoso’s Artículos de incierta necesidad
(1998!), to the revealing Afterword included in the Chilean (1997) edition of El obsceno pájaro
de la noche, and to next-to-last novels like Donde van a morir los elefantes (1995) and
Conjeturas sobre la memoria de mi tribu (1996). These texts are certainly part of what
Swanson presents as the transitional work of established boom writers (90), and their
connection to El jardín de al lado (1981, rev.1996) could not be keener. In fact, much would
have been revealed about many novelists’ mind set by recurring to their extensive essayistic
works. By the same token, out of Donoso’s relationship with the novel alone, a more
consistent and thus ultimately more powerful interpretation could profitably have been
produced.
Still within the fifth chapter, Swanson is elegant when dealing with the academic
politicization of testimonio, the “new historical novel” and anything allied to them (95-97).
His argumentation is clear when he writes, most correctly, about the “tortuous and
sometimes barely penetrable style” of windbag writers like Piglia, Eltit, and others. He is
also exact and perhaps too careful when he asserts “Indeed entry to the international market
(be that the literary market or the peculiar economy of the modern university) in some sense
depended on a critical muddying of the waters between political referentiality and
experimental play” (97). What he does not discuss fully is that, in fact, platitude-dependent
writers have some significance only among a few self-anointed “progressive” critics living in
the United States, many of whom have established a parasitic self-fashioning with those
writers. Related to that development, when Swanson mentions that Abel Posse was born in
1936 (the same year as Vargas Llosa) as one aspect that makes the linking of the new
historical novel to the Post-Boom problematic, one is also reminded of an Argentine author
born in 1937 he never mentions, the late Juan José Saer. Saer’s El entenado (1984) is a
masterly novel of language, the post-colonial, new historical, parodic, and intertextual in
nature, yet understudied.
Saer was also, at least since the early seventies, a novelist whose penetrating, popular, and
lucid essays bear comparison with those of Vargas Llosa. Toward the end of this chapter
Swanson tries to make a case for Isabel Allende’s narrative and her “readability.” If that
connection works one wonders why progressive women critics have not embraced the
Chilean. The very last section of this fifth chapter, “Recent directions: McOndo and Crack”
is the least strong, in terms of the author’s expressed desire to provide “an account of
mainstream tendencies” (2). Even if this 2005 book was sent to the publishers one or two
years before, it is surprising not to see any discussion or even mention of the late Roberto
Bolaño, whose Los detectives salvajes (1998) and subsequent novels and short stories (some
posthumous) have surely made him and his work the true inheritors and inquisitors of the
new narrative. Bolaño is conceptually and in achievement far superior to any writers of the
“McOndo” and “Crack” self-anointed generations Swanson peruses (exception made of
Volpi, whose work he treats well).
The problem with literary history and the discussion of various canons (the larger contextual
areas covered by Latin American Fiction), is not a matter of being more perceptive than
others but of staying with problems longer. Swanson observes intricacies only infrequently.
But given that there are plenty of similar books in the market, and that many written in
Spanish may be equally reductionist, the option of a fuller treatment is obvious and
preferable. It may seem provocative that a clearly written study like Latin American Fiction,
which draws attention to its brevity, can elicit lengthy discussions. Well, one has to think
about the problems pointed out, and about the crucial question that Swanson’s book does
not press home: are the texts he discusses merely representative or worth reading in terms
of what he leaves out? Related to this possibility are the issues of what books such as this
contribute to our field, and whether it is better to just let them proliferate and not say
anything that would upset academic “decorum,” editorial boards, or expose beginning
professors to low-stake power plays.
Such silence would relegate constructive criticism to individualistic conversations that add
little to furthering knowledge, or become damaging gossip. Countering such eventualities
must be a goal of Latin American Fiction or books similar to it. Frank Kermode has
expressed that interpretative quandary thus: “Of course it isn’t easy to be aware of one’s own
bias, but the reward promised is great: newness. Again, the fact is that it is our job to create
that newness” (37-38). We must make any canon we build answer our prejudices and
others’ criteria, and in not responding to those challenges Latin American Fiction actually
becomes an exemplary volume, or a warning, and thus deserves all the attention one can
give it. The pressure to quote the right scholars, to touch the right buttons and not ruffle any
feathers have ways of exposing us to self-consciousness rather than criticism, an imposition
that has become offensive itself. Further, too-careful approaches come across more as pre-
emptive strikes against possible criticism from purported authorities than as a carefully
considered analysis.
In that regard Latin American Fiction is to be commended for its lack of sycophancy and for
not hosting a partisan version of literary history. It may seem somewhat counterintuitive,
and often uncomfortable, but having a truly critical and direct Latin Americanist culture that
encourages scholars to unload all their ideas without feeling threatened is vital to everything
our field shares and must do. This is one way to make our subject lucid and urgent for
students or a larger audience and preferable to presenting different facts or interpretive
possibilities in a cursory manner. There is no personal animus in my view, or a sentimental
conviction of what Latin Americanism was or should be. In that regard, and to his great
credit, Swanson is careful to not overwhelm his readers by quoting or acknowledging just
about anyone who has written about a particular topic; a prevalent practice among some
Latin Americanists, who thereby have avoided truly critical reviews of their work.
One should also recognize that Swanson provides a narrative arc without a grand thesis,
despite the fact that a larger plan would have helped him avoid some of the flaws that have
been mentioned. He is also not pretentious, avoids piffle, and does relay some dependable
knowledge of specific authors and the novel genre. As an introduction to fiction the marrow
of his discussions is literature, and he rightly does not feel the need to “negotiate” at length
with other fields. His partiality is refreshing, and it certainly separates Latin American
Fiction from the pseudo-political, cultural and subaltern studies purveyors who never really
knew the literature that now allows them to fictionalize its technocracies for their charges.
This last approach is also a way to avoid the now too common problem of presenting Latin
Americanism as an agglomeration of indiscipline in various semi-disciplines. Ultimately,
Swanson has written his own kind of book, and he cannot be asked to do otherwise. He
deserves to be judged by the goals he has set for himself and his own methods for achieving
them.
Since the Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña’s seminal Literary Currents in Hispanic
America (1945), or Enrique Anderson Imbert’s ambitious but flawed Historia de la literatura
hispanoamericana (1954, 1974), no single author has produced similarly comprehensive
works in terms of conceptualization, and English-language Latin Americanism is not
exclusively responsible for that deficiency. Some native critics have assembled forgotten
instances of Latin American literary history, but once those instances have been discovered
and respect bestowed we cannot excuse ourselves from further reappraisal. The purpose of
reading Latin American Fiction so closely is to communicate profitably with a view that is not
mine, and, by criticizing it, put in perspective opinions that would otherwise be given support
and legitimacy by the critical silence and attendant conjectures I have described above. In
sum, Swanson’s book is an emblem of negotiations that have yet to be addressed fully for
literary Latin Americanism, and I hope this reading will contribute to any truly revisionist
history of Spanish American literature that may be written during this century.
Works Cited
Kermode, Frank. Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon. Ed. Robert Alter.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Swanson, Philip. Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
basically split in two: the mainly philological tradition of Spanish scholars, and the American
scholars trained by other Anglo-Saxons in similar traditions. Within that world the few
British interpreters were considered serious purveyors of other ingrained traditions. Latin
Americans were known if and only when they studied Spanish literature. Subsequently the
New Criticism came into prominence, different types of Latin American exiles came to the
United States and populated the rest of the world, and Spanish and Portuguese departments
grew. Then Theory arrived, as did pressures to publish, the onslaught of presses (vanity or
otherwise), and an abundance of English-only criticism in the purportedly democratic and
pluralistic sphere that grew from those developments. Ideally, Spanish-language criticism
would have had some parity with English-language interpretations. It does not, and one
wonders what would have happened if critics like Angel Rama and Antonio Cornejo Polar
had given in to pressures, however subtle, to write their seminal works in English. Within
that context a set of patterns characterizes many recent English-language books about the
history of contemporary Latin American fiction. Those paradigms point to a clear disregard
of the literary history of the Americas that takes place south of an ever-porous border, and a
catering to the United States market. It is counterproductive to ask “Why not?” Further,
apprehension about retribution, cowardice about writing what you really want to say, and no
small doses of cynicism all come together, and may also be uppermost in the minds of
younger scholars afraid of losing a recommendation or invitations.
Philip Swanson, author of Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction does not have to be
concerned about those types of United States academic comeuppances. Yet, the subtitle of
his most recent book could not be more accurate, and among other virtues it is invigorating
that he does not do theory (121-2) for theory’s sake, get lost in jargon, or latch on to “hot
topics,” all part of the pressures to conform of the last fifteen years. As an interlocutor,
Swanson is very effective. He is also aware (118-24) of disputable issues, even though one of
his conclusions –“But perhaps the most striking feature of the critical trends outlined above
is their meta-critical quality. They often involve little literary criticism as such, but, in so far
as they do deal with literature, tend to dwell instead on the relationship of literature to
culture, institutions, theory and professional debates” (124)— makes one wonder why he
ultimately adds to that state of affairs. It is precisely dealing with those debates (rethinking
the boom and its politics, theory and post-structuralism, “Latin Americanist” criticism,
history, women and sexuality) that would have allowed Swanson to come up with better
analyses, no matter how short or introductory, and to go beyond updating views he has
expressed in earlier publications.
Latin American Fiction is actually a gloss of familiar terrain in the history of Latin American
narrative, with some illustrative interpretative moments, such as the sixth chapter on
“Hispanic American Fiction of the United States.” That next-to-last chapter (104-116) is not
definitive, due to the contaminated nature of the fiction with which it deals, and mainly
because of the epistemic conundrum implicit in defining “Hispanic” as strictly Mexican
American, “Puerto Rican Americans” [sic], and “Cuban and Dominican Americans.” The
fact is that many writers of Central and South American background who publish in English
have added much to the unambiguous fusion Swanson posits. He states as much when
speaking about Allende and Valenzuela (97-98), and later mentioning “Yet Valenzuela and
Allende are not really considered anything other than Latin American writers, writing for a
wider Spanish-speaking audience and not specifically for a North American market” (105).
He exacerbates the issue when, discussing “Some Writers of the 1980s and 1990s” (111-17),
he clusters Rosario Ferré (“a Puerto Rican who is usually thought of as a Latin American
writer, sometimes associated with the Post-Boom”[111]) with non-bilingual writers. The
latter, Hijuelos, Cisneros, Castillo, García, Alvarez, the late Anzaldúa and others among
them, have not written, cannot, or do not want to write directly in Spanish. Beyond his
associating Ferré with those writers, a conceptually uneven collection like Se habla español.
Voces latinas en USA (2000) could have provided ample room for Swanson to parse the
selling of purportedly subaltern “Latinicity.”
The cast that Swanson has chosen is canonical in many ways, and not new. After all it has
been more than 35 years since “Latino” literature grew out of political urgency, when the
earliest examples were aesthetically raw. Yet, perhaps Swanson is right in seeing Anzaldúa’
s writing as “fiction,” for as he says: “Whether this sort of thing [sic] is to the taste of those
who enjoy reading the likes of Hijuelos, Cisneros, Alvarez or Ferré is a matter of opinion”
(116-17). That type of noncommittal (“ambiguity” is a privileged term for Swanson) yet
dismissive discernment is common in this book, and not a measured examination of
Anzaldúa’s true worth and historical role for the continental Latin American public who, it
must be said, are not at all familiar with her work. More gravely, the uninitiated, purportedly
the virtual public for this book, will not come out with more than a precursory examination of
texts and the worthy polemics they have engendered.
The previous (fifth) chapter and the seventh on “Culture Wars: Ways of Reading Latin
American Fiction” are preceded by fairly conventional overviews that will not disappoint the
authors included in the extensive and generally helpful chapter notes (127-37) and in the
reference bibliography entitled “Further Reading” (138-41). Truth be said, this is also the
impression projected by the three articles on Spanish American narrative that cover the
periods 1810-1920, 1920-1970, and since 1970, collected in the Cambridge Companion to
Modern Latin American Culture, ed. John King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004). The articles in that collection show scant awareness of revisionist reading, or, for the
most recent period, new authors or works, and one can only attribute those conditions to the
“reader” genre. It should be pointed out that, like most handbooks of this type, Latin
American Fiction centers on Spanish American texts.
Yet, Swanson is authoritative when speaking about Brazilian fiction, and decidedly strong on
Machado de Assis (17-19). But it is this early in the book that its greatest problem begins: the
complacency that can result from limiting references to one’s formation and the authorities
one has always used. In the Machado discussion, Swanson privileges British views, a
recourse that can be fine in and of itself, as work by John King, Gerald Martin, and the early
Jean Franco shows. When that preference, to which Swanson has every right, is seen in the
light of statements like “… but never helped create a really strong trend for urban or
provincial Realism or Naturalism in the European tradition” (15), the interpretive conclusion
is an enigma at best. Further, stating that regionalism “(though underdeveloped in
comparison to, say, north-western Europe” (24), not analyzing any solid Brazilian study on
Machado (128, n7), and merely declaring that “concern has been expressed about the
imposition of European patterns of literary history on an entirely different cultural context in
a way that has promoted limited, questionable or even false literary histories” (118), make the
quandary evident: Swanson’s attempt at objectivity and catholicity reveals a sense of
obligation to a reduced set of European authorities, making the sources predictable and
insufficient for understanding how native interpreters think.
Nevertheless “Beginnings: Narrative and the Challenge of New Nations,” is a fair first
chapter that begins by noticing that “Many developments in Latin American writing are a
function of an essentially literary history” (3, his emphasis). Swanson appreciates, knows,
and possibly prefers the literary, but seems to force himself to express those views obliquely.
His judgments are thus encumbered by a specific critical context and a selectivity of
interpretation and national literatures (mainly Argentine in this chapter) that beget an
ultimately conformist approach, too respectful of by now questionable siftings, such as the
value of rigid nineteenth-century foundational fictions. In this chapter there are no intuitive,
unconscious, seat-of-the-pants judgments, nor the opposite: better-informed choices. Thus,
after speaking about the conjunction of costumbrista and realist narratives Swanson
concludes that they were not “great novels and they have received scant critical attention so
far” (15). The overflow of Spanish-language critical writings on nineteenth-century narrative
and non-fiction disproves that assumption. The second chapter, “National Narratives:
Regional and Continental Identities” centers on the conceptual ambiguities of the “novels of
the land,” and correctly centers on Quiroga as the key transitional figure that provides what
Swanson calls “glimpses of the modern.” This is a fine chapter, and the only missing piece
in the puzzle the critic is trying to decipher is the relevance to the present canon of what
literary historian Juan Marinello called tres novelas ejemplares (La vorágine, Don Segundo
Sombra, and Doña Bárbara), all published in the twenties, against the grain of incipient
vanguards. As Swanson avers, narrational ambiguity toward the modern “may suggest that
the realist model is more subtle than later generations would appreciate” (29).
Because Swanson is progressing chronologically the third chapter, “The Rise of the New
Narrative” is disquieting. By referring to “the so-called New Novel or New Narrative” (37)
he replicates a generic view that is still an ambiguous template for many literary historians:
the fact is that clustering the new novel and narrative actually does not allow for persuasive
distinctions among practices that are similar, but have totally different roots. By relegating
those roots to a footnote (41, n6), and immediately and too briefly analyzing “Avant-garde
tendencies” in well-known precursors, Swanson does not offer anything new. He slights or
ignores, for example, a considerable number of “total novels” from the twenties and thirties,
the development of the short novel during those decades, or, say, the relationship that
Felisberto Hernández’s fixation with dolls may have with Darío, Arreola, Piñera, and Ferré.
When Swanson, speaking about Macedonio Fernández, states that “[This] is remarkably
similar (in tone at least) to the most radical territory of the nueva narrativa” (42) the
comparison and chronology puts the cart before the horse.
He is right in agreeing with the view (Donald Shaw’s) that La vida breve may be the first
novel of the boom, and that Arlt, Onetti, Bombal, and others honed the representation of the
urban and the existential. But considering the Ecuadorian Humberto Salvador’s En la
ciudad he perdido una novela…(1929), or his compatriot Pablo Palacio’s short novels and
stories from the early twenties would have allowed Swanson to go a long way toward revising
the history of the boom’s precursors. One does not have to deny the sheer force of the new
narrative in order to put its founding tenets in perspective. Predictably, in the rest of the
chapter Borges and magical realism vis-à-vis lo real maravilloso are put forth as examples of
the questioning of literariness. Unpredictably, and accurately, Asturias and Arguedas’
novels are employed to explain a successful coupling of literature and politics. Finally, El
Señor Presidente and Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo exemplify for Swanson the new narrative’s
fragmentary representation of the crisis of modernity, although there will be wide
disagreement with his binary view that “the New Narrative is inescapably characterized by
a tension between Europe and Latin America, North and South, the universal and the
specific, the existential and the political” (54).
The fourth chapter, devoted to “The Boom,” is the most unsettled, and not necessarily
because of any inherent fault in Swanson’s reasoning. As bandied about as it is, the Boom is
still a major literary sport, and too much action goes on in the interpreters’ minds.
Naturally, Swanson did not have access to Marco and Gracia’s massive and seminal
La llegada de los bárbaros. La recepción de la literatura hispanoamericana en España, 1960-
1981 or to Burgos’s Los escritores y la creación en Hispanoamérica, compilations from 2004
and subsequent critical collections that provide ample evidence of all the work to be done on
the Boom. Yet, this chapter includes some of Swanson’s best pages (66-76, on Fuentes,
Vargas Llosa, and García Márquez), and if he starts his discussion of “The Big Four” with
an insufficient evaluation of the late Cabrera Infante and Cortázar (62-66), he is tough on the
Argentine. His view that “Rayuela, now seems trapped in a semi-hippy, jazz-fuelled, sixties
time warp. Its main import was probably that it managed to encapsulate the literary
aesthetic of the Boom” (66) actually coincides with readings of that novel forty years later by
some new Argentine novelists and critics.
But the Boom writers did not intend to speak to their countrymen, flatter those in authority
or match their novelistic lexicon to the background of anyone in particular, so all
disagreements with them or their works are going to sound like catechisms or incantations.
The section of this chapter devoted to “Other Writers of the Boom” makes some good points
about Onetti, Sabato, Carpentier, Arguedas, and particularly about the recently deceased
Roa Bastos. But even within the reduced scope of this introduction that section does not jell
with the last one, devoted to Donoso’s El obsceno pájaro de la noche as “The Last Novel of
the Boom?” That Swanson actually makes a better case for Yo el Supremo (79) as the last
Boom novel is a contradiction that shows how trying to be too careful with politics is
detrimental to an all-encompassing argumentation. This chapter, read in conjunction with
the one that follows it, could leave the impression that the most canonical boom writers
simply stopped publishing anything worth reading, and although Swanson is particularly
sharp in assessing the lasting value of Vargas Llosa and the withering excellence of Fuentes,
the concentration on major figures is simply too restricting.
“After the Boom” is the topic covered in the fifth chapter, and is excellent in its corrective
stance rather than on any predictions or categorical views of a period that is still in flux.
Swanson is sure and succinct in stating that “Defining the Post-Boom thus becomes a
matter of political choice as much as one of literary history, and its perception and use of
manipulation as a term become as important as any sense of its underlying literary-historical
validity” (83). His belief that the Boom was “a finite burst of commercial activity” (84) is
tempered by the fact that Seix Barral is once again at the forefront of the new narrative.
Although it is not competing fully with publishing houses like Anagrama or Alfaguara, Seix
Barral’s publication of Palabra de América (2004) —an incomplete manifesto centered on
the new narrative and its authors— has thrown a wrench into the already creaking market
machine built for the latest narrative, one that is not very different from the one constructed
for the previous boom.
The subsection “Change and established writers” is rather weak because of its
incompleteness, when Swanson insists on presenting Donoso as “a perfect illustration of the
Post-Boom as being not simply a rejection of the Boom” (91). To many readers Swanson will
overestimate the value of Donoso’s novels and of their interpreters (122), especially in terms
of the relation he establishes between the Chilean’s work and theory. It is precisely at such
times that one misses the attention to works like Donoso’s Artículos de incierta necesidad
(1998!), to the revealing Afterword included in the Chilean (1997) edition of El obsceno pájaro
de la noche, and to next-to-last novels like Donde van a morir los elefantes (1995) and
Conjeturas sobre la memoria de mi tribu (1996). These texts are certainly part of what
Swanson presents as the transitional work of established boom writers (90), and their
connection to El jardín de al lado (1981, rev.1996) could not be keener. In fact, much would
have been revealed about many novelists’ mind set by recurring to their extensive essayistic
works. By the same token, out of Donoso’s relationship with the novel alone, a more
consistent and thus ultimately more powerful interpretation could profitably have been
produced.
Still within the fifth chapter, Swanson is elegant when dealing with the academic
politicization of testimonio, the “new historical novel” and anything allied to them (95-97).
His argumentation is clear when he writes, most correctly, about the “tortuous and
sometimes barely penetrable style” of windbag writers like Piglia, Eltit, and others. He is
also exact and perhaps too careful when he asserts “Indeed entry to the international market
(be that the literary market or the peculiar economy of the modern university) in some sense
depended on a critical muddying of the waters between political referentiality and
experimental play” (97). What he does not discuss fully is that, in fact, platitude-dependent
writers have some significance only among a few self-anointed “progressive” critics living in
the United States, many of whom have established a parasitic self-fashioning with those
writers. Related to that development, when Swanson mentions that Abel Posse was born in
1936 (the same year as Vargas Llosa) as one aspect that makes the linking of the new
historical novel to the Post-Boom problematic, one is also reminded of an Argentine author
born in 1937 he never mentions, the late Juan José Saer. Saer’s El entenado (1984) is a
masterly novel of language, the post-colonial, new historical, parodic, and intertextual in
nature, yet understudied.
Saer was also, at least since the early seventies, a novelist whose penetrating, popular, and
lucid essays bear comparison with those of Vargas Llosa. Toward the end of this chapter
Swanson tries to make a case for Isabel Allende’s narrative and her “readability.” If that
connection works one wonders why progressive women critics have not embraced the
Chilean. The very last section of this fifth chapter, “Recent directions: McOndo and Crack”
is the least strong, in terms of the author’s expressed desire to provide “an account of
mainstream tendencies” (2). Even if this 2005 book was sent to the publishers one or two
years before, it is surprising not to see any discussion or even mention of the late Roberto
Bolaño, whose Los detectives salvajes (1998) and subsequent novels and short stories (some
posthumous) have surely made him and his work the true inheritors and inquisitors of the
new narrative. Bolaño is conceptually and in achievement far superior to any writers of the
“McOndo” and “Crack” self-anointed generations Swanson peruses (exception made of
Volpi, whose work he treats well).
The problem with literary history and the discussion of various canons (the larger contextual
areas covered by Latin American Fiction), is not a matter of being more perceptive than
others but of staying with problems longer. Swanson observes intricacies only infrequently.
But given that there are plenty of similar books in the market, and that many written in
Spanish may be equally reductionist, the option of a fuller treatment is obvious and
preferable. It may seem provocative that a clearly written study like Latin American Fiction,
which draws attention to its brevity, can elicit lengthy discussions. Well, one has to think
about the problems pointed out, and about the crucial question that Swanson’s book does
not press home: are the texts he discusses merely representative or worth reading in terms
of what he leaves out? Related to this possibility are the issues of what books such as this
contribute to our field, and whether it is better to just let them proliferate and not say
anything that would upset academic “decorum,” editorial boards, or expose beginning
professors to low-stake power plays.
Such silence would relegate constructive criticism to individualistic conversations that add
little to furthering knowledge, or become damaging gossip. Countering such eventualities
must be a goal of Latin American Fiction or books similar to it. Frank Kermode has
expressed that interpretative quandary thus: “Of course it isn’t easy to be aware of one’s own
bias, but the reward promised is great: newness. Again, the fact is that it is our job to create
that newness” (37-38). We must make any canon we build answer our prejudices and
others’ criteria, and in not responding to those challenges Latin American Fiction actually
becomes an exemplary volume, or a warning, and thus deserves all the attention one can
give it. The pressure to quote the right scholars, to touch the right buttons and not ruffle any
feathers have ways of exposing us to self-consciousness rather than criticism, an imposition
that has become offensive itself. Further, too-careful approaches come across more as pre-
emptive strikes against possible criticism from purported authorities than as a carefully
considered analysis.
In that regard Latin American Fiction is to be commended for its lack of sycophancy and for
not hosting a partisan version of literary history. It may seem somewhat counterintuitive,
and often uncomfortable, but having a truly critical and direct Latin Americanist culture that
encourages scholars to unload all their ideas without feeling threatened is vital to everything
our field shares and must do. This is one way to make our subject lucid and urgent for
students or a larger audience and preferable to presenting different facts or interpretive
possibilities in a cursory manner. There is no personal animus in my view, or a sentimental
conviction of what Latin Americanism was or should be. In that regard, and to his great
credit, Swanson is careful to not overwhelm his readers by quoting or acknowledging just
about anyone who has written about a particular topic; a prevalent practice among some
Latin Americanists, who thereby have avoided truly critical reviews of their work.
One should also recognize that Swanson provides a narrative arc without a grand thesis,
despite the fact that a larger plan would have helped him avoid some of the flaws that have
been mentioned. He is also not pretentious, avoids piffle, and does relay some dependable
knowledge of specific authors and the novel genre. As an introduction to fiction the marrow
of his discussions is literature, and he rightly does not feel the need to “negotiate” at length
with other fields. His partiality is refreshing, and it certainly separates Latin American
Fiction from the pseudo-political, cultural and subaltern studies purveyors who never really
knew the literature that now allows them to fictionalize its technocracies for their charges.
This last approach is also a way to avoid the now too common problem of presenting Latin
Americanism as an agglomeration of indiscipline in various semi-disciplines. Ultimately,
Swanson has written his own kind of book, and he cannot be asked to do otherwise. He
deserves to be judged by the goals he has set for himself and his own methods for achieving
them.
Since the Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña’s seminal Literary Currents in Hispanic
America (1945), or Enrique Anderson Imbert’s ambitious but flawed Historia de la literatura
hispanoamericana (1954, 1974), no single author has produced similarly comprehensive
works in terms of conceptualization, and English-language Latin Americanism is not
exclusively responsible for that deficiency. Some native critics have assembled forgotten
instances of Latin American literary history, but once those instances have been discovered
and respect bestowed we cannot excuse ourselves from further reappraisal. The purpose of
reading Latin American Fiction so closely is to communicate profitably with a view that is not
mine, and, by criticizing it, put in perspective opinions that would otherwise be given support
and legitimacy by the critical silence and attendant conjectures I have described above. In
sum, Swanson’s book is an emblem of negotiations that have yet to be addressed fully for
literary Latin Americanism, and I hope this reading will contribute to any truly revisionist
history of Spanish American literature that may be written during this century.
Works Cited
Kermode, Frank. Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon. Ed. Robert Alter.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Swanson, Philip. Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
| Will H. Corral, California State University, Sacramento |
| n |
| An English-Language View of the History of Latin American Fiction |