FL 380: An Archaeology of the "Boom":
Modern Latin American Prose Fiction
General Introduction #2
Notes on Donoso's The Boom...A Personal History:
On the regional nature of the Spanish American novel prior to 1960:
Before 1960 it was very uncommon to hear laymen speak of the "contemporary
Spanish American novel": there were Uruguayan, Ecuadorian, Mexican
or Venezuelan novels. (. . .) The novelist in the Spanish American countries
wrote for his parish: about the problems of his parish and in the language
of his parish, addressing himself to the number and level of his readers
-quite different, certainly, in Paraguay than in Argentina, in Mexico than
in Ecuador- which his parish was able to offer him, without much hope of
anything else. (10-11)
On the different non-Hispanic influences in current Latin American
fiction:
On the other hand, today's Spanish American novel was from the very beginning
a mestizaje, a crossbreeding, a disregarding of the Hispanic American tradition
(as much disregard for what was Hispanic [+Spain] as for what was American
[-Spain]) and draws itself almost totally from other literary sources,
because without a whimper, our orphaned sensibility let itself be infected
by the North Americans, the French, the English, and the Italians, all
of whom seemed to us more "ours," much more "our own"
that a Gallegos (Doña Bárbara) or a Güiraldes
(Don Segundo Sombra) for example, or a Baroja [Spanish novelist
(1872- 1956)]. (14)
On the pernicious effect of the regionalista / criollista canon
and the prescriptions of social realism:
A novel was considered good if it loyally reproduced those autochthonous
concerns, all that which specifically makes us different -which separates
us- from other areas and other countries of the continent: a type of foolproof,
chauvinistic machismo. (. . .) the only true criterion of excellence is
the precision required to depict what is inherently ours, the verifiable
verisimilitude that tends to transform a novel into a faithful document
portraying or capturing a segment of univocal reality. (15)
In addition to being unmistakably ours, as the criollistas wanted,
the novel should be, above all else, "important," "serious,"
an instrument which would be directly useful to social progress. (. . .)
Formal experimentation was prohibited. The architecture of the novel and
its language were to be simple, flat, colorless, sober, and poor. (. .
.) The fantastic and the personal elements, the strange and marginal writers,
those who "abused" the language or the form, were exiled by these
criteria, which reigned for so many years that the magnitude and the potential
of the novel were sadly impoverished. (16-17)
The first phase of the Boom:
1) A novel: Carlos Fuentes's La región más transparente
(Where the Air Is Clear [1958])
2) A momentous event : The Congress of Intellectuals at the University
of Concepción, Chile (1962).
3) A personality: Carlos Fuentes
4) A socio-political phenomenon: The Cuban Revolution
A year before the Congress of Intellectuals in Concepción,
a novel called Where the Air Is Clear by Fuentes had fallen into
my hands. As I read it, literature took on another dimension. . . (37)
The theme which was repeated and repeated and which clearly predominated
[at the Congress of Intellectuals] was the common complaint that as Latin
Americans we knew European and North American literature perfectly, in
addition to our own national literatures, but that isolated by a lack of
means and by the egotism and myopia of the publishing houses and the very
methods of book distribution, we were almost completely ignorant of literature
from other countries on the continent. (33)
Looking, as always, at the phenomenon from my personal point of
view, I see the Mexican Carlos Fuentes as the first active and conscious
agent of the internationalization of the Spanish American novel of the
1960s. (37)
Not only because of the literary stimulus of his first novels, but
also because of his generosity in the form of admiration and help, Carlos
Fuentes has been one of the precipitating agents of the Boom. For better
or for worse, his name goes on being linked with it as much for his reality
as for the legend of his Mafia and his cohorts. (53)
In this sense, the most important thing that Carlos Fuentes told
me during the trip to Concepción was that after the Cuban Revolution
he agreed to speak publicly only of politics, never of literature; that
in Latin America the two were inseparable ant that now Latin America could
only look toward Cuba. (. . .) the entire Congress of Intellectuals. .
. was strongly politicized as a result of his presence. (. . .) I think
that this faith and political unanimity -or near unanimity- was then, and
continued to be until the Padilla case exploded in 1971, one of the major
factors in the internationalization of the Latin American novel, unifying
outlooks and goals, providing an ideological structure to which one could
be more or less close -seldom totally opposed- and for a time giving the
feeling of a continental cohesion. (49)
A second stage in the making of the Boom: Mario Vargas Llosa:
Mario Vargas Llosa embodies the second phase of the Boom: the great
explosion was produced in 1964, when, still a twenty-four-year-old, he
received the Biblioteca Breve Prize from the Barcelonese publishing house
of Seix Barral. (. . .) La ciudad y los perros (The Time of the
Hero [1963]) caused the whole continent to talk. Perhaps it would not
be too risky to offer the opinion that its success was in part due to the
fame and "maneuverings" of Carlos Fuentes, who had fertilized
the land so that the thing could take root. (61)
A third stage in the making of the Boom: Gabriel García Márquez:
From my point of view, the third phase -an perhaps the definitive
moment of the Latin American Boom- occurs with the publication of One
Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez
(. . . ) One edition untiringly follows another: one speaks in terms of
millions of copies. (62)
The Boom and its critics:
Among the ill intentioned criticisms levied against the authors
of the Boom. such as that
1) "they lead lazy lives of luxury" (55),
2) "that they are fed exclusively on a diet which consists
of "martinis toasting to the health of the Fellinis" (63),
3) that "they are fashionable" (64), etc., a few stand
out:
a) the preponderance of exile in the group (Fuentes, García
Márquez, Cortázar, Donoso, Carpentier, Vargas Llosa, Puig,
etc.) and
b) the existence of literary friendships between them, that is,
the myth of the literary Mafia.
Exile is another of the legendary elements which the Latin American
critics seldom pardon, and by condemning the writers for "living away
from national problems," they are accusing them of a rootless cosmopolitanism.
(65)
Such "friendships" -sometimes called a "Mafia"
by those who feel themselves excluded- are often thrown into the faces
of the present day novelists who are accused of blowing each other's horns,
of writing about each other, of maintaining a type of united front of admiration
tolerating neither criticism nor examination. (66)
The motives for exile may be numerous and varied, from easily formulated
political reasons to the most ambiguous causes that might force them to
flee the ghosts suffocating and drowning them in their own countries. In
any case, it cannot be denied that exile, cosmopolitanism, internationalization,
all more or less connected, have shaped a very considerable part of the
Latin American narrative of the 1960s. (68)
Other elements in the making of the Boom:
1) Self promotion between the writers themselves,
2) the impact of the Biblioteca Breve Prize (Seix Barral
Press, Barcelona) awarded to five Latin American writers throughout the
1960s,
3) the awakening of an eager reading public, and
4) the adverse reaction of a segment of the critics of the various
Latin American cultural establishments.
Since the Biblioteca Breve Prize was in these years the only
prize with authentic literary prestige in the Spanish-speaking world, the
public lent its ears. And along with the listening, there arose an enemy
courier service of chasquis [Inca word for messenger or courier]
who decisively influenced the Boom at its zenith: certain speakers travelled
throughout the continent accusing the new novelists of living in exile,
far from the problems of their countries, in a luxurious, sybaritic limbo
abroad. (. . .) these critics did the writers the signal favor of organizing
them for the first time into that unity called the Boom; and, having been
installed on a polemical plane, the Boom transcended the purely literary
to become, more or less, gossip in the street. (91)
A tentative and light hearted listing of the members of the Boom:
I.The "kernel"
A.Julio Cortázar - Argentina
B.José Donoso - Chile [my inclusion]
C.Carlos Fuentes - México
D.Gabriel García Márquez - Colombia
E.Mario Vargas Llosa - Perú
II.The "proto-Boom" annexed older writers connected by
literary affinities to the "kernel":
A.Jorge Luis Borges - Argentina
B.Alejo Carpentier - Cuba
C.José Lezama Lima - Cuba
D.Juan Carlos Onetti - Uruguay
E.Juan Rulfo - México
III.Two self-excluded possible members of the "kernel"
A.Ernesto Sábato - Argentina
B.Guillermo Cabrera Infante - Cuba
IV.The large group of writers a little below the main body of the
Boom:
A.Augusto Roa Bastos - Paraguay
B.Manuel Puig - Argentina
C.Salvador Garmendia - Venezuela
D.David Viñas - Argentina
E.Carlos Martinez Moreno - Uruguay
F.Mario Benedetti - Uruguay
G.Vicente Leñero - México
H.Rosario Castellanos - México
I.Jorge Edwards - Chile
J.Enrique Lafourcade - Chile
K.Augusto Monterroso - Guatemala
L.Joge Ibargüengoitia - México
M.Adriano González León - Venezuela
N.Pedro Juan Soto - Puerto Rico [my inclusion]
O.Elena Garro - México [my inclusion]
V.The "junior Boom", belonging to a younger generation:
A.José Emilio Pacheco - México
B.Gustavo Sáinz - México
C.Alfredo Bryce Echenique - Perú
D.Sergio Pitol - México
E.Luis Rafael Sánchez - Puerto Rico [my inclusion]
F.Cristina Peri Rossi - Uruguay [my inclusion]
G.Isabel Allende - Chile [my inclusion]
H.Reinaldo Arenas - Cuba [my inclusion]
A set of characteristics discernible in many of the novels of the
Boom:
I.The use of complex narrative structures requires an active reader
capable of organizing the narrative matter by her/himself.
II.The development of linguistic experimentation from:
A.the pursuit of a cultural identity that creates its own realitywithin
the novel (ie. the Macondian universe in One Hundred Years of Solitude).
B.to the baroque displays of writers like Carpentier, Lezama Lima,
andothers.
III.The insistence on the writer's right to create his/her own fictional
reality.
A.Frequently the problem of literary Creation is dealt with as a
theme, that is, the tendency towards metafiction.
IV. Historical/Social novels abound: ( ie. The Lost Steps,
Pedro Páramo, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Time
of The Hero, etc.)
V.The exploration of immediate reality to caricaturesque or grotesque
extremes.
A.Humor makes its debut in Latin American fiction.
VI.Existential themes are still dealt with, ignoring though, psychological
analysis, and often pursuing mythical or allegorical formulations (ie.
Pedro Páramo, Hopscotch, etc.)
VII.Rejection of bourgeois -middle class- morality, certain conventional
social mores, and even the customary way of perceiving reality (rationalism).
VIII.Rejection of dominant cultural contexts and models, especially
in younger novelists such as Manuel Puig, Reinaldo Arenas, Luis Rafael
Sánchez, etc.
IX.A tendency to unify different genres: poetry and narrative, music
and narrative, film and narrative.
X. Segmentation and fragmentation of narrative structures (ie. Hopscotch,
The Kiss of the Spider Woman, etc.)
XI.The incorporation of popular culture and mass produced cultural
artifacts in theme and/or form.
XII.A tendency to re-sacralize art, that is, a turn towards elitism.