EMIR RODGRGUEZ MONEGAL
51
the somewhat didactic realism of his latest works. Paradoxically that
influence returns Otero Silva to his own narrative beginnings, the world
which he had captured so poetically in
Casas muertas
(Dead Houses,
1955).
Enumerating all the books which, in some way, reflect the scope of
the Latin American new novel would be an endless task. One would have
to
point out, for example,
Un mundo para Julius
(A World for Julius,
1970), by Alfredo Bryce Echenique, who takes offfrom the fiction written
by his countryman and relative, Mario Vargas Llosa, and especially
Los
cachorros
(The Puppies, 1966), to portray with exasperating moroseness
and abuse of trivialities, that Hispano-American upper-middle-class
which the Chilean Jose Donoso had already captured in his first novels.
We should also talk about Fernando del Paso's
Jose Trigo
in which the
overwhelming enterprise of creating a linguistic summa of today's Mexico
ends up by sinking the book into trivality, despite the fact that some of
the episodes (the war of the Cristeros, the labor union fight at the railroad
station) have great distinction. We would have to talk about Augusto Roa
Bastos and Carlos Droguett, Salvador Garmendia and Norberto Fuentes,
Rene Marquez and Salvador Elizondo.
It is possible, though not completely certain, that the boom of Latin
American narrative has died and that its last echoes have completely
ceased. It is also almost certain that the new Latin American novel and
(above all) the new Latin American literature is not only alive but also
enjoys very good health . What we now need is to take advantage of the
relative silence of publicity agencies to listen better. To read and reread,
to look again at what we've seen, take distance, balance things out . That
is, to occupy ourselves with what matters. Only then will we be able to
decide if the sound and fury of the boom have left something more than a
sensation of emptiness. Only then will we be able
to
rescue the literature
of an entire continent from the irresponsible hands of propaganda, be it
commercial, professional, or (as it is now fashionable to claim) "ideologi–
cal." Let us begin the urgent task.
Translated
by
Suzanne
Jill Levine
