Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Between the Self and the Void: Essays in Honor of Severo Sarduy by
Alicia Rivero-Potter
Review by: William L. Siemens
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 72, No. 3, Hebrew Literature in the 1990s (Summer,
1998), pp. 589-590
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40154063
Accessed: 16-06-2020 15:07 UTC

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 SPANISH: FOREIGN CRITICISM 589

tutions of high art are questioned, the legendary

perhaps most mythical
importantly, a fertile imagination capable of
quality of Venice is debunked (the narrator seems
yielding always
the most effective word or phrase.
to be slogging through the filthy muck of The overflowing
volume's diversity, while disavowing the conformity
repeatedly
canals) , and the pretensions of art criticism attributed to Spanish women's fiction, creates
are mercilessly
mocked. Prada's fluent writing carries all simultaneously
this off with a potpourri
a that resists facile summation.
Let it suffice
certain agreeable best-selling panache, although the to say that all the stories are esthetically
great-
est profundity the reader is left with is thepleasing, that most
trivialization of them are unmistakably posttransi-
for
the modern Spaniard, in the guise of thetional if not toof
professor sayart
postmodern, and that all but two of
history, of the master narratives of Europeanthemculture.
("El encuentro" by Garcia Morales and "El abuelo"
David William Foster by Rosa Montero) in one sense or another foreground
Arizona State University the feminine. Lunati, when describing her selection
process, fails to mention this focus per se. Moreover - and
she notes this in her introduction - numerous Spanish
Anthology women writers have long disclaimed a specific feminine
focus in their work. Here, nevertheless, by virtue of the
characters and situations, women's concerns and the fem-
Rainy Days / Dias de lluvia: Short Stories by Contemporary
inine voice are ever present. Indisputably, Rainy Days is a
Spanish Women Writers. Montserrat Lunati, ed. Marilyn My- collection of stories about women, one that makes for en-
erscough, tr. Warminster, Wilts., Eng. Aris 8c Phillips
joyable reading while offering insight into recent trends
(David Brown, distr.). 1997. vi + 253 pages. $49.95 ($22
in Spanish women's short fiction.
paper). ISBN 0-85668-635-2.
Kay Pntchett
University of Arkansas
Montserrat Lunati, a professor of Spanish literature
and cinema at the University of Wales, has edited
Rainy Days / Dias de lluvia, a bilingual collection of twelve
stories by Spanish women authors of the posttransition
period. In selecting the stories, Lunati makes variety her
main criterion and chooses titles that illustrate the stylistic
and thematic eclecticism of Spanish women's story-writ-
ing. Her volume also represents the cultural diversity of
Spain by featuring authors from different regions, Like-
wise, it includes well-established authors such as Rosa
Montero and Cristina Fernandez Cubas, along with sever-
al new writers with only one book each to their credit.
Lunati introduces her anthology with a discussion of
the short story as a genre and then turns to issues specific
to women authors in post-Franco Spain. Giving emphasis
to their use of a "wide range of narrative strategies," which
she considers the earmark of women's writing, she first
distinguishes a variety of approaches to voice, tone, struc-
ture, character, and plot, and then parenthetically lists
the stories which illustrate each approach. She also under-
scores the thematic diversity of the stories, ranging from
enigmatic tales to realistic portrayals of quotidian life. She
does not, however, analyze the selections individually or
attempt to predispose her audience to a particular inter-
pretation. Still, after reading the stories, readers may want
to refer to the introduction in order to compare LunatiForeign's Criticism
observations with their own impressions. Also to her cred-
it, Lunati prefaces each story with an extensive note on
the author as well as a meticulously assembled bibliogra- Between the Self and the Void: Essays in Honor ofSevero Sarduy.
phy of critical works. Alicia Rivero-Potter, ed. Boulder, Co. Society of Spanish
and Spanish-American Studies, University of Colorado.
The difficult task of translating the stories falls to Mari-
lyn Myerscough, of whom little mention is made except 1998. 136 pages. $36. ISBN 0-89295-089-7.
for her name, cited on the title page, and her contribu-
tion, acknowledged by the editor, who briefly opines that In his contribution to Between the Self and the Void,
she "translated the stories with her usual care." Anyone in- Oscar Montero states that "in his final writings, Sar-
terested in checking the English against the Spanish - and duy fears that the humor and parody of his works may
this is readily done since the texts are printed on oppositehave been superficially read as mere camp. . . . Camp, in
pages - will find that Myerscough has indeed taken excep- its popular definition as recycled bad taste, passes through
tional care and has produced a highly literary yet equiva- Sarduy' s writings as a sort of leitmotif, a relatively minor
lent version of the stories. She demonstrates not onlyone a at that." To that very accurate observation, Rene Pri-
thorough knowledge of Spanish with an enviable under- eto adds, "Back in 1973 ... it was far too early to under-
standing of slang and regional expressions, but also, and stand the import of Sarduy's symbolism because we didn't

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590 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

have all the pieces of the puzzle which Family) and endingnovels
subsequent with the untranslated La Cruz de San
provided." This volume of highly insightful Andres (St. Andrew's
essays onCross;
the 1994). Besides the ten essays,
works of Severo Sarduy, who died ofthe volume
AIDS incontains
June the offollowing: a clear, concise, and
1993, consists largely of an expansion of amenable
thoseintroduction;
statements. some thirty pages of very readable
What appeared to many of us at first notes to the essays;
as Sarduy' an up-to-date selected bibliography; a
s partic-
ularly chaotic expression of the Cuban two-page conclusion; style
neobaroque and a chronology that inexplicably
is now being decoded as a rather profound silences Cela's late-in-lifeto
attempt divorce of Maria del Rosario
make sense of life, modern science, and the nature of Conde Picavea for a much younger woman.
writing. In her contribution, editor Alicia Rivero-Potter re- Besides La familia de Pascual Duarte and La cruz de San
calls that "Sarduy told the Ulloas in an interview that his Andres, the eight remaining essays examine Pabellon de re-
goal was to render Visible el sustrato metaforico del dis- poso (1944; Eng. Rest Home), La colmena (1951; Eng. The
curso cientifico.' . . . Vemos que su tejido es puramenteHive), Mrs. Caldwell habla con su hijo (1953; Eng. Mrs. Cald-
metaforico, que utilza figuras retoricas con la misma in-well Speaks to Her Son), San Camilo 1936 (1969), Oficio de
tensidad y con la misma ingenuidad que el discurso de laTinieblas 5 (Service of Darkness 5; 1973), Mazurka para dos
ficcion." This comes as a jarring statement in an age inmuertos (1983; Eng. Mazurka for Two Dead Men), Cristo ver-
which reductionist theories still predominate in manysus Arizona (Christ versus Arizona; 1988), and El asesinato
quarters. delperdedor (The Murder of the Loser; 1994). Interestingly,
Furthermore, as Gustavo Guerrero points out, the loss the style of each essay reflects the style of the particular
of religious faith and scientific foundations leads directlynovel under consideration. It is as if Charlebois had so
to the loss of faith in the power of the word: "'Things areassimilated the esthetics of Cela's novels that the essay on
not anymore, and language does not say they are any-Oficio de Tinieblas 5, for example, is much more challeng-
more,' affirms Kafka. This is the starting point of Sarduy'sing reading than the one on La familia de Pascual Duarte.
work." This is why he presents the void as his starting By the time I read the essay on El asesinato del perdedor, I
point, not in the sense of nothingness and meaningless-was beginning to wonder if the protagonists of this novel,
ness but more in terms of a generative principle, as in theor perhaps Cela himself, had ever heard of Prozac.
Eastern religions. Notwithstanding the editor's preface which proclaims
Consequently, in Malva Filer's expression, Sarduy's that the UMELL series is for undergraduate and graduate
"characters are a 'way of appearing,' or a 'style,' and thestudents as well as nonacademic readers, the ten essays
display of their 'style' in appropriate surroundings consti-that constitute Understanding Cela are definitely not for the
tutes, for him, the 'events' in the novel." Rene Prieto general reading public. The South Carolina series is not
notes that Sarduy's characters tend to fall apart, and that an easy reader a la Twayne's World Authors Series. The
this is expressive of the author's growing sense of theten essays in Charlebois's book sound like reworked chap-
fragility of life as he became aware of the fact that he wasters from a dissertation or articles extracted from an aca-
dying of AIDS. Leonor and Justo Ulloa point out that "the demic literary journal. While none of this detracts from
semiology of illness is intensified in Colibri" and show howthe value of this book on Spain's most celebrated and
the carnivalesque layer which is the most visible in hismost decorated living writer, the editors should realize
works since Cobra in 1972 turns out to have been spreadthat no one book can be all things to all readers. State-
over "a stratum of death and decay." Through it all, an-ments such as the following, referring to Mazurka para dos
other important point has been an attempt to provide an muertos, probably would sound alien even to readers of the
adequate expression of homosexuality for the field of New York Times Book Review: "Strung together by a protean,
Spanish American literature. extradiegetic narrator whose voice is intertwined with
This slim volume demonstrates that criticism on Sarduy those of others, the dialogic segments that surface as a re-
has come a long way from the superficiality that character- sult of the oral point of departure manifest themselves in
the rhythmic, strategically plotted, yet spontaneously de-
ized it at first. While the reader might wish that some writ-
ers would get beyond what we might call critspeak and ex-contextualized, conversations/dialogues that serve as
guideposts for the entire discourse." And this is not an iso-
press their ideas a bit more clearly, Between the Self and the
Void is an indispensable volume for anyone interested in lated example.
what Severo Sarduy was really attempting to say. Rather than a primer, Understanding Camilo Jose Cela is a
William L. Siemens well-researched work bubbling with fresh insights for
Santa Barbara, Ca. those who already understand both Cela and, especially,
the esthetics of the nueva novela.
David Ross Gerling
Sam Houston State University
Lucile C. Charlebois. Understanding Camilo Jose Cela. Co-
lumbia. University of South Carolina Press. 1998. xvi + 187
pages. $29.95. ISBN 1-57003-151-7.
John C. Wilcox. Women Poets of Spain, 1860-1990: Toward a
Gynocentric Vision. Urbana. University of Illinois Press.
Understanding Camilo Jose Cela by Lucile C. Charlebois
1997. xix + 366 pages. $49.95 ($19.95 paper). ISBN 0-252-
is part of the series Understanding Modern Euro-
06559-X.
pean and Latin American Literature published by the
University of South Carolina Press. The body of the work
consists of ten erudite essays, each one devoted to a differ- Students are often the catalyst for research, and
ent novel by the Nobel laureate, beginning with Lafamilia Women Poets of Spain proves the value of such an im-
de Pascual Duarte (1940; Eng. Pascual Duarte and His petus. In reply, John C. Wilcox presents a focused discus-

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