BOOKS
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admirable, but reducing tha t conception to the writer's conflic t with
"middlebrow" prejudices in popula r reviewers is o nly to continue the
confinement o f analysis to literary culture, while a lso diminishing the
ro le o f po litica l ideas.
CUSHING STROUT
WRITING CUBAN HISTORY
VIEW OF DAWN IN THE TROPICS.
By
Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Translated by Suzanne
J
ill Levine. Harper & Row. $8.95.
No t a ll co llec tio ns o f tales make a book. Mos t o f the time,
each piece refuses to ha rmonize with the o thers, func tion s only within
its own limits, seems pushed into uncomfortable p roximity with its
neighbo rs. Generally, the only justifica tion o f tha t type o f book, if any,
is the implicit or explicit reference to an ex terna l unity (author,
subj ec t, style). T hi s is no t the case with
View of Dawn in the Tropics.
And ye t, the book took strange pa ths before it was put toge ther.
T he same title belonged fi rs t to a nove l which won the 1964
Biblioteca Breve prize in Spa in (previously given to Ma rio Vargas
L1osa's first novel,
The T ime of the H ero).
But it was then a tota lly
different book which fo llowed certa in fi ctiona l cha racters, united by a
common pursuit of the exc itement of night life, while, a t the same
time, it presented in sho rt, powerful vignettes, ano ther cas t o f charac–
ters: those se t to change Cuban soc iety by means o f a vio lent revolution.
The title sugges ted a t leas t o ne thing : a panoramic view o f a privileged
moment o f Cuba n rea lity (or histo ry). In the tropical dawn , it was
possible to recognize the dawn o f a different history.
In the three years which lapsed be tween the prize a nd the ac tua l
publica tio n o f the novel, Ca brera Infa nte rewro te it. Bas ically, he added
a few cha pters here and there, but hi s major piece of surgery was the
excision o f a ll the vignettes. The historica l dimension added to the
