The morning of April 8,
1963, on board the transatlantic cruise ship Federico C. in the port
of Buenos Aires, the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz was about to end
his intense, 24-year stay in South America. On deck of the boat that
would bring him back to Europe, before a group of young writers and
intellectuals, he shouted: “Boys, kill Borges!”.
So Gombrowicz shone a light on the specters that obscured the vision of all aspiring writers. Who can shrug off the image and commandments of our fathers lightly? Fortunately, for the past 25 or 30 years, Latin American writers have perpetrated a delightful parricide and paid for their daring by inventing a new literature with each new book.
To prove the point: Ricardo Piglia, Juan José Saer, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Cesar Aira, Rodrigo Fresán, Osvaldo Lamborghini (Argentina); Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia), Roberto Bolaño, Alberto Fuguet, Pedro Lemebel, Alejandro Zambra (Chile); Laura Restrepo, Fernando Vallejo, Santiago Gamboa, Mario Mendoza (Colombia); Mayra Montero, Daína Chaviano, Zoe Valdés, Pedro Juan Guitiérrez, Antonio Orlando Rodríguez (Cuba); Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala); Horacio Castellanos Moya, Roberto Quesada (Honduras); Cristina Rivera Garza, Juan Villoro, Mario Bellatin, Jorge Volpi, Alberto Ruy Sánchez (México); Iván Thays, Santiago Roncagliolo, Jorge Eduardo Benavides (Perú); Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico); Alberto Barrera Tyszka (Venezuela). Many of these writers have graced the stage at Miami Book Fair International in the last 25 years.
Nevertheless, an attentive reader will find in this list of authors coincidences and rejections, apologies and feuds. But nowhere any trace of magical realism. During what came to be known in the 1960s as the Latin American Boom, there was one figure who distorted the image of Spanish-language literature: Gabriel García Márquez. Of course, One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of those rare books that appears sui generis and instantly becomes a classic among classics. The only problem was that for years after its publication, publishers and to a large degree the public demanded that every book recount the adventures of Buendía family.
Apart from some obvious imitations and empty clones, Latin American literature today has overcome this cliché and now explores an urban identity that is alternately raw and cosmopolitan. Were Gombrowicz to set sail today, he might substitute García Márquez for Borges, shouting: “Boys, kill Gabo!”. Perfect, musical, aesthetic. Super groups of authors in the ´80s, ´90s, and early ´00s declared their independence from the rural villages of magical realism and claimed the city beneath the banners of McOndo (a play on the town of Macondo, where One Hundred Years of Solitude was set) or Crack (a hyperurban movement in México) or Bogotá 39.
The destination might be Mexico city, Lima, Buenos Aires, or Caracas, but the city is always the new literary heart of darkness. That might be the only local color that tints the territory of La Mancha, as Carlos Fuentes once called literature in Spanish. The terror takes the form of Campo Elías Delgado, Vietnam vet and serial killer responsible for 25 murders in contemporary Bogotá (Satanás. M. Mendoza) or a teenager showing off expensive American sneakers (made in Singapore) and a packing a .45 in search for a new client (La Virgen de los Sicarios, F. Vallejo). Or simply an embalmed cadaver who rattles one and all with unanswered prayers, enigmas, and threats (Santa Evita, T. Eloy Martínez). At times this terror is revealed in the sex heat amid a city´s refuse (Filthy Havana Trilogy, P.J. Guitierrez) or in brief, iconoclastic postcards (Insane Affinity: AIDS Chronicles, P. Lemebel).Ironically, these are all B-sides of a hallucinatory Macondo, born of the logic of magic realism´s worst nightmares.
We´ll say it: urban, yes, but also cosmopolitan. This narrative respectfully and elegantly turns its back on the indigenous novel, the rural novel. Some narrators desire to expand their territories and travel through time. We can read a novel by a Mexican author (such as Ignacio Padilla and his Tuscan Grotto) about the Himalayas and the search for Dante´s nine circles of hell, or a serial killer attacking elderly women in Paris (The Quest, J.J. Saer), or an odyssey undertaken by the new pariahs in the Age of Aquarius (The Ulysses Syndrome, S. Gamboa). And we shouldn´t leave out another Mexican author, a disciple of French thinker Roland Barthes, who created a mythical Morocco in the saga of the imaginary kingdom of Mogador (Names in the Air and The Secret Gardens of Mogador).
At the other extreme, we find the figure of the flâneur. Through his wandering and distant age, free of prejudice, we see the profundity of the human condition. As writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky (called by The Guardian “a fascinating and underappreciated author”) points out in his novel Nocturnal Maneuvers: “I´m and remain a flâneur. I´m a visitor, always passing through, lending myself to the scene as I please without surrendering myself”. Since walking is the same as reading, these urban tales are a way of rereading history. That´s where we can see explicitly the ideology of these new authors. Far from the pamphlets of any revolutionary yet not disillusioned, since this generation never believed in any political party or great leader. The only conviction is to aesthetics.
For this artistic vision there are many sources: crime fiction with a strong North American influence, journalistic chronicles and reportage, and, above all, the intelligent appropriation of multimedia in popular culture (TV, film, Internet). There are plenty of writers who fell no embarrassment whatsoever in admitting that they love writing for telenovelas or that they produce their work with the vertiginous rhythm of a sitcom. That´s the point: speed. At times the pace is so quick, the result seems to be fast fiction. That´s where speed leads: to seemingly frothy novels that are actually quite deep. A few examples include Pudor (Modesty, by R. Roncagliolo and made into a film by Tristán Ulloa), Palacio Quemado (Burnt Place, E. Paz Soldán), Mala Onda (Bad Vibe, A. Fuguet), Varamo (C. Aira), Malacara (Bad Face, G. Fadanelli). Other writers insert graphic images in their texts in the blogosphere: I. Thays and the unpredictable Moleskine.com and C. Rivera Garza´s novel as work in progress.
To talk of the last 25 years in Latin American literature is to confirm the existence of a new canon. This library includes Novels and Stories (O. Lamborghini), Artificial Respiration (R. Piglia), Santa Evita (T. Eloy Martínez), Savage Detectives and 2.666 (R. Bolaño), Beauty Shop (M. Bellatin), Our Lady of the Assassins (F. Vallejo), Before Night Falls (R. Arenas). While distinct from each other, these works could not have been written in any other era since they speak to the world their authors had the luck to inhabit. Nothing more and nothings less.
In the First Conference of Latin American Writer in Seville held in June 2003, Rodrigo Fresán invited his and subsequent generation to “pursue a Big Bang rather than a boom or a crack”. A cosmic cataclysm that would be both defining and definitive would disperse the stars so that each soars its own way. There is so much space in space. And, in that way, space is a like a black page, filled with light”.
Let there be light.
Vera
A premier program of The Miami Book Fair International: 25th Anniversary Commemorative Magazine 1984- 2008.
