544
PARTISAN REVIEW
to recognize Erik Erikson's adolescent rebel in the middle of an identity
crisis. Left by himself to find a path of life, he challenges those invisible
authorities to come forward and become that other who in otherness
defines him.
Latin American and Central European writers are also disrespectful
towards tradition, but theirs seems to be a loving disrespect. Where the
pastiche-maker seems to be haunted by fears of castration, the Latin
American and Central European writer regards his predecessors as natural
equals, with whom it is possible to have a lifelong dialogue. Two recent
col1ections of essays, one by Kundera
(The Art of the NoveD,
the other by
Fuentes
(Myself with Others),
clearly demonstrate how far from neurotic
the relationship between literary fathers and sons seems to be in that
other postmodernism. Yet reading these essays also makes one aware of
how different the political situations of Latin America and Central Eu–
rope are and how this influences art. Kundera would never have let go
of his artistic self, relieving the purely moralistic self, as Fuentes does in his
concluding essay on United States politics in Central America. Kundera's
essay on Central Europe is truly a piece of art, which wil1 survive long
after the last foreign soldier has left Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and East
Berlin, something one cannot, alas, say of Fuentes's tiresome harpings.
Straightening gray folds never produces black and white, in politics or in
art.
Coming in
Partisan R eview:
• Norman Mailer:
from
Harlot's Ghost
• Octavio
paz:
O n Modern Poetry
• Philippe Raynaud:
Feminism and the
Ancien Regime
• Robert Alter:
Vladimir Nabokov
• George Edwards:
Music and the Politics of Postmodernism
• Herbert Gold:
A Blazing Incident
• Rachel Hadas:
Visiting Schools
• Susan Dunn
and
Robert Dalzell:
Revolutionary Myths