ultimately respects and adheres to the "poetic decorum" of narrative sequence.

Donald Revell, in "The Desperate Buck and Wing: James Tate and the Failure of
Ritual," argues that Tate s poetic courage in the face ofhis own verbal rendering of
life's losses is his most remarkable virtue. And Lee Upton, in what may be the best
essay in the book, "The Master of the Masterless: James Tate and the Pleasures of
Error," argues thatTate's poetic celebration of error, failure, confusion, and defeat
redefines and reestablished truth, success, wisdom, and hope.
The inclusion of a comprehensive, authoritative chronology ofTate's life and work
could have contributed to the usefulness ofthe volume. Recurring emphases emerge
from the essays—the "prosiness" of Tate's "poetry"; Tate's apparent inclination to
frustrate, defy, or even molest his readers; critics' need to pin down and delimit Tate's
super-protean poetic personae; the persistent critical privileging ofTate's first book.
The Lost Pilot, over his three decades of subsequent work—that merit reiteration;
and Henry, in his "Preface," could have made an attempt to synthesize the essays of
his contributors. That said, the essays and previously published reviews Henry has
selected for On James Tate offer useful, thoughtful, intelligent approaches to Tate's
recalcitrant, illusive, invidious writing.
Henry's On James Tate is a sometimes provocative and generally illuminating
collection that deserves to be read and studied. Those determined to understand
how Tate's poetry succeeds should read this book. Those fortunate enough to be
compelled by Tate's poetry should read this book. ^

Ileana C. Zdndegui. The Postmodem Poetic Narrative of Cuban Writer

Reinaldo Arenas. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2004. l46p.
PATRICIA CATOIRA
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY-BOZEMAN

Since his well-publicized suicide in New York in 1990, Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas
(1943-1990) has become one ofthe most prominent figures ofthe Cuban exile liter-
ary canon. Most studies about the author inevitably have discussed the influence on
his works ofhis hardships in Cuba as a persecuted homosexual and censored author.
Arenas left his country in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift and setded in New York
after a brief stay in Miami. The author's resentment towards Fidel Castro's policies
made him a well-known political figure in the Cuban exile community in the United
States, many times clouding his achievements as a writer. Ileana C. Z^ndegui met
Arenas while attending a course given by the author in 1986 at Florida International
University on the topic of Cuban literature. Her The Postmodem Poetic Narrative
of Cuban Writer Reinaldo Arenas points out the influence of the writer's life on his

FALL 2005 « ROCKY MOUNTAfN REVIEW ^ 135

texts but successfully escapes the politics ofthe Miami Cuban exile community and
offers a deeper analysis of Arenas' narrative discourse.
Zendegui's major achievement in her study is her theory of "lo real espantoso"
(the hideotis unreal) to explain the guiding light in Arenas' narrative. She successfully
counterpoints "lo irreal espantoso" to the well-known Latin American concept of
"lo real maravilloso" (the marvelous real), mostly developed by Cuban writer Alejo
Carpentier (1904-1980). Whereas "lo real maravilloso" refers to the existence of
amazing happenings in ordinary life in Latin America such as the existence of ancient
civilizations along with urban settings, Z^ndegui's "lo irreal espantoso" considers
those occurrences as horrific. The reality in Latin America, consequendy, does not
cause amazement but fright. Z^ndegui argues that Arenas breaks with the Utopian
and mythical constructions ofthe Latin American Boom movement ofthe 1960s,
which had among its main figures Alejo Carpentier and Colombian Gabriel Carcfa
Marquez. Instead of adopting a foreign gaze and a discourse of exploration and dis-
covery ofthe Americas, Arenas acknowledges the cruel reality ofthe continent and
looks for the marvelous and the magical in writing and the imagination. Z^ndegui
contends that Arenas deconstructs his hideous reality through a poetics that allows
him to create a second reality in which each individual is free of external authority.
For Arenas, the critic concludes, the marvelous is the poetic reality of the individual,
a subjective space created in the act of writing, while the "real" reality surrounding
him is frightening.
Zdndegui's study is written in Spanish and divided in four chapters, each analyz-
ing two works: Chapter 1, The Palace ofthe White Skunks (1999) and "The Parade
Begins" (1981); Chapter 2, ^rf«w, the Brightest Star {\9M) and El Central: A Sugar
Mill{l98l); Chapter 3, Farewell to the Sea (1982) and The Color of Summer {1999);
!u:\dCh!iptei4,SingingFromtheWellil99\)indTheAssaultil99l).A\lofthewoTks
discussed are novels except for the short story "The Parade Begins" and the long
poem El Central: A Sugar Mill. The titles of each chapter reflect the progression of
Z^ndegui's theory of "lo irreal espantoso" in Arenas' works: Chapter 1, Suspicion of
Terror; Chapter 2, Between Terror and Unreality; Chapter 3, Literary Inclemency:
Self vs. Power; and Chapter 4, Toward a Terrifying Unreal. The exposition of argu-
ments and works is clear and coherent. She integrates other thinkers' analyses (i.e.,
Jean-Patil Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jean Braudillard, and Roland Barthes) in her
disctission without allowing them to distract or take over her own arguments.
All the works ofArenas' so-called pentagony {Singing From the Well, The Palace of
White Skunks, Farewell to the Sea, The Color ofSummer, and The Assault) cover the
coming of age of a character, whose identity changes a little in each of the novels
but maintains a consistent role of author/witness, from the eve of the revolution

I 3 i « ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW m FALL 2005

to a dystopian future where men and women have been reduced to animals by a
tyrannical regime. The main character dies in the first four novels but is reborn in
the last one amid that animalized world. Despite the death of each main character
in thefivenovels, the endings are triumphant. The hero leaves his writings behind,
contesting the official story of an unnamed barbarian regime. The obvious parallel
to Arenas' Cuba leads many like Z^ndegui to view the author as writing the unof-
ficial narrative of Cuba's revolutionary regime.
In her discussion of El Central, Z^ndegui considers Arenas' poem a continuation
of Jos^ Marti's (1853-1895) El presidio politico (1871). Both texts were published
from exile, with a tone of consternation about the terrible political happenings on
the island, the last decades ofthe nineteenth century for Martf and the last half of
the twentieth century for Arenas. By presenting Arenas' poetics in the same light
as Martf, Cuba's most famous writer and national hero, Zdndegui subverts the
appropriation of Marti by the Cuban revolutionary government. Arenas' life and
works emerge as revolutionary as Marti's.
Z^ndegui, like many other critics in the field, calls Arenas one of the most
representative authors of Postmodernism in Latin America. He uses postmodern
techniques such as parody, polyphonic language, hybridity of genres, and the ero-
sion of boundaries between fiction and historiography and between the author and
narrator/characters. The postmodern sensibility allows Arenas to contest authority
at different levels. On the one hand, he can deconstruct his own reality in order to
create a new one, which in turn can be easily reformulated. On the other hand, the
writer challenges the traditional cultural policy of Socialist realism imposed by Cuba's
revolutionary regime. Socialist realism proposes an art that captures and propagates
the goals ofthe revolution (i.e., social equality and anti-imperialism) and is easy to
understand. The government marginalized writers who did not adhere to this norma-
tive aesthetic. Despite government persecution. Arenas kept writing against the grain
of Socialist realism while in Cuba and became, in Z^ndegui's words, a "postmodern
chronicle writer." His works use the author's society as a reference but then create a
world ofthe subjective. They present a grotesque and hostile reality on the island.
His characters' search for freedom ofi:en mirrors the act of writing. Z^ndegui sees
in writing the space where Arenas was able to find the unconditional freedom he so
much longed for. Z^ndegui argues that for Arenas creating other realities through a
subjective lens and the imagination was the only way in which an individual could
learn about himself and about his (cruel) reality. Writing in this way constitutes a
daring act that challenges authority and official discourses.
Zdndegui's The Postmodern Poetic Narrative of Cuban Writer Reinaldo Arenas of-
fers an important contribution to the study of Cuban exile writer Reinaldo Arenas.

FALL 2005 « ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 137

Her theory of "lo irreal espantoso" provides a refreshing analytical framework for
Arenas' works and, more significandy, offers a new approach to the study of Latin
American literature. ^

Gast6n R. Gordillo. Landscapes ofDevils: Tensions ofPlace and Memory

in the Argentinean Chaco. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 304p.
GRAHAM LYONS
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

In Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco,

Gast6n R. Gordillo articulates and contextualizes, in well-formed academic prose,
the memories and fears ofthe western Toba of Argentina's Gran Ghaco region. In
the process, he also presents a succinct and compelling account of historical and
economic struggles in northern Argentina. Peppering his analysis with "ambigui-
ties," "ambivalences," "contradictions," and "processes," Gordillo proceeds from the
premise that "places are produced in tension with other geographies and that these
tensions are made tangible though the spatialization of memory" (3). This premise
leads through a methodology Gordillo calls "the absolute spatialization of practice"
(4). While Gordillo's text bears the marks ofhis discipline—particularly its subject
matter, the lived experience of indigenous/colonized people—it is also profoundly
interdisciplinary, combining a vast range of critical approaches into a compelling and
cohesive model for understanding the complexities of cultural identity and place.
More than an ethnography of a people underrepresented in the academy. Landscapes
serves as a valuable intervention into the practice of critical analysis beyond and
beside the strictures of academic departmentalization.
Gordillo opens Landscapes v^iKh evocative epigraphs from Gramsci, Adorno, and
Lukacs, establishing his focus on the permutations of dialectical thinking, writing,
and producing. Each epigraph establishes a principle of methodology, rather than
espousing Marxist precepts. Indeed, in his conclusion, Gordillo characterizes his
approach as a "negative dialectic," since it focuses on tensions and contradictions
that "are not resolved and hence do not reach closure in a synthesis" (258). Op-
positions, in this sense, are productive in that they open the field of understanding
rather than close it down. As a point of departure, then, negative dialectics function
for Gordillo to prize open rejected approaches to uncover potentialities within—a
methodology rather than a politics.
For example, as a literary scholar by trade, I was gready intrigued by Gordillo's
exposition of Toba devil imagery as a metonym for the contradictions of space pro-

I 3 8 « ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW » FALL 200S