Month: March 2009

Young Punks of Spanish Language Fiction

~ bythefirelight

El País had an article about three young authors recently. Naturally as with any article about young authours, there is the sense of we are here to over throw the past. They are not interested in Fuentes at all, in part because his 80th birthday with such fanfare. Fuentes is to these writers as Paz was to Bolaño.

Their writing sounds interesting to some degree. It is full of violence and possibly reflects a world that has seemed to get more violent recently. For the Mexican author it makes sense; the others I don’t know.

In the three [novels] in one way or another, you find violent characters. More perhaps in Busqued’s, thanks to the brutal Duarte who is an ex soldier, kidnapper, abuser, and obsessed with hardcore sex; but not less than the others. If no, there is el violent behavior of Isabel, the daughter of the protagonist of Morella’s work, a woman that has no doubts in mistreating and kidnapping her own father. Or Golo, protagonists of Maldonado’s work, the violent one, violent in its details, in its sex, in its relation with the world. Can one write these days without touching on the subject?

En las tres, de una u otra manera, se encuentran personajes violentos. Más quizás en la de Busqued, gracias al personaje brutal de Duarte, ex militar, secuestrador, abusador, obseso del sexo hardcore; pero no menos en las otras. Si no, ahí está el violento comportamiento de Isabel, la hija del protagonista de la obra de Morella, una mujer que no duda en maltratar y secuestrar a su propio padre. O Golo, absoluto protagonista en la de Maldonado, violento ena de Maldonado, violento en los detalles, en el sexo, en su relación con el mundo. ¿Se puede escribir hoy en día sin abordar el tema?

Self Absorption and American Writing

~ bythefirelight

The Pankaj Mishra has an article in the Guardian has an article about the influence of American writing of international authors. His basic premise is Americans are to self absorbed and only talk about things that Americans would be interested in. Unlike the writers from the the 19th century and the first half of the 20th who dealt with themes that others could relate to, Americans spend too much time navel gazing.

The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalization. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded. When I recently compiled a reading list of modern fiction for a very young aspiring writer in an Indian small town, I found myself excluding the best-known American novels on the grounds that their main preoccupations – angst and adultery in suburbs or university campuses, the sexual-spiritual torments of second-generation immigrants – would appear too abstract to a reader living in India’s poorest and most violent state. When he insisted on a separate recommendation of American fiction, the list I compiled leaned heavily towards novels of the late 19th and early 20th century.

While I understand his point, he does seem to be wanting social fiction, not necessarily social realism, but that fiction reflect the social conditions of a country. There is certainly a need and room for this kind of fiction, but it is a little limiting. I think his hopes for the future are perhaps a little misplaced.

However, the outlook for American literature seems brighter than at any time in recent decades. Just as the tragedy of the civil war expedited the maturing of American literature, and the Depression seared its lessons on a generation of writers, so the present crisis will likely incite a fresh re-evaluation of values, styles and genres. Out of widespread turmoil and confusion may come America’s greatest novels yet; and we will cherish them not because they evoke America’s glamorously singular modernity but because they describe a more universal human condition of public and unremitting conflict.

I’m not sure what he is looking for: more The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) or Christ in Concrete or For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’m more partial to Wright, Hurston and Faulkner and all would meet his criteria. However, his logic leads to a Christ in Concrete where the criticism is of the prevailing system is so overwrought the book becomes its own parody.

Americans should certainly look beyond their shores. I don’t think they have to prove anything any more, as they did in the early 19th century. I still remember being criticized for being to German because I had a couple long sentences in a story. But the solution isn’t just churning out social fiction only.