New Latin American Writers

Source: Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 8 (May, 1965),
pp. 3-8
Published by: American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3823924
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one-topic formula and hospitality to a wide range
of opinions offered an ideal forum for exploring
these questions.
The Editor of Dedalus, Dr. Stephen R. Grau-
bard, with Professors Wiesner and Kaysen, con-
vened in Cambridge on March i2th a Planning
Committee which included Professors Daniel Bell
and Hollis B. Chenery, Mr. James C. Downs, Jr.,
Professor J. K. Galbraith, Dr. John H. Hollomon,
Professors Gerald Holton, Walter A. Rosenblith
and Gerald Rosenthal, Mr. John H. Rubel, Dr.
James A. Shannon, Mr. Lewis Winnick and Pro-
fessors Robert C. Wood and Jerrold R. Zacharias.
In a day of exploratory discussions, the Committee
framed a tentative outline of the subjects to be
covered, and suggested names of authors qualified
to write essays on them for the projected Dedalus
issue which will, as presently planned, appear in
print in 966.

New Latin American Writers

The communication at the Stated Meeting on
April i4th, entitled Aspects of the Contemporary
Latin American Novel, was presented by Emir
Rodriguez-Monegal, Professor of Literature and
occupant of the Chair of English and North
American Letters at the Instituto de Profesores,
Montevideo, Uruguay. He is currently Visiting
Professor of Hispanic American and Comparative
Literature at Harvard.
In analyzing the work of the new novelists in
Latin America, he separated them into two
important groups which have, in recent years,
developed along divergent courses. The first
includes those who have shifted their attention to
the complexities of life in the teeming cities from
the traditional absorption in the rural scene; the
second group continues to concentrate on the
traditional subject matter but sees it with new
vision and reveals that vision with new techniques.
Both groups have explored and developed such
techniques as stream of consciousness, the use of
several dimensions of time, and the creation of
fantasies in terms of realism, building on the

3
powerful influencesof Joyce, Proust,Kafka,and
Faulkner.
Speakingfirst of the former group, he noted
that while in the last twenty-five years the life
of the individualin the greatcitieshasincreasingly
absorbedthe attention of many younger Latin
American novelists, it was the overpowering
geographyof the continent- the toweringAndes,
the Amazonianjungle, and the limitless pampas
- which had,in the worksof traditionalwritersof
earlier generations,dominatedthe relatively in-
significant and therefore generalized human
being. Similarly,the exploitationof workers in
the countryside had in the 192o's and '30's inspired
novels which were in effect social tracts. But
since 1940 industrialdevelopmentshave brought
greatshifts of populationfrom the country to the
city. Busy, modem Sio Paulo, for example, is un-
recognizableas the relatively quiet town of 20
years ago and Buenos Aires is today the largest
city in the Spanish-speakingworld. The old cities
of great traditionalpalaceshave been surrounded
by, on the one hand,skyscrapersand relatednew
buildingson the North Americanmodel and, on
the other,shantytowns where the people live near
theirwork.
The Peruvianwriter, Alegria,publishedin I941
his The World Is Wide and Alien, a now famous,
dramatic panorama of the exploitation of the
AndeanIndiansin the firstdecadeof this century.
But it markedthe end of the documentarytradi-
tion; importantnew Latin American writers of
variouscountrieshave since then concentratedon
the fermentof the mushroomingcities.
CarlosFuentes of Mexico, who wrote Where
the Air Is Clearin 1958when he was aboutthirty,
must be consideredthe first to shift to the new
genre. The novel describes, with a technique
closely relatedto Dos Passos',the many different
worlds of Mexico City from its slums to its nou-
veauxriches,and,underlyingthem all, the ancient
Americanpast. "A contemporaryBalzac- elec-
trically charged,"he has produced an excellent
picture of the new Latin American city.
The Argentine novelist, Julio Cortazar,now
4
fifty-one, moved to Paris in I952, not long after
Peroncameto power andis employedtheredoing
translationsfor UNESCO. Translatorof Poe and
the French surrealistsinto Spanish, he writes
highly imaginative allegories which succeed in
giving, despite their surrealisticcomplications,a
truer impressionof Buenos Aires than do more
realistic novels. The Winners (I960) describes
voyagerson a ship going they know not where;it
is a politicalallegory of Peron at the helm. Rayu-
ela (1963) - "hopscotch" - takes the reader from
squareto squareof an imaginaryworld built of
fragmentsof Paris,BuenosAires and Montevideo
and leads him eventuallyinto the country of the
mind.
MarioVargasLlosa, a young Peruviannovelist
now 29, lives in Paris becauseof recent political
unrestat homeandis employedby Radiodiffusion
Frangaise. He has a passion for the novels of
chivalry which Cervantes attacked. His 1963
novel The City and the Dogs is ostensiblyan ex-
ploration of life in a cadet-college on the out-
skirtsof Limapresentingby clever techniquesthe
clash of personalitiesand ideas in this closed so-
ciety. But the reader soon graspsthat the scope
of the book extendsbeyond the cadet-college,be-
yond Lima,beyond Peru, to symbolize the same
forces clashing in Latin America in general. At
the sametime, his gift for characterizationis not-
able; he manages to create individualswho are
simultaneously attractive and disgusting."
These three writers are representativeof many
of their compatriotsand others elsewhereon the
continent who are concentrating on the great
cities. Similarly, the new traditionalistsof the
second group, who employ inventive techniques
to expresstheir profound responseto the chang-
ing Latin American world of today, are to be
found in many countries. The following four
novelists may be taken as typifying to a certain
extent theirfellows in this variedcompany.
Living in Cuba now is Alejo Carpentier,who
though he was born in Franceand speaksSpanish
with a French accent, yet is, in fact, an important
Cuban novelist. His finest novel, which is en-
5
titled (in the English translation) Explosion in a
Cathedral ( 1963), recreates the early I9th century
revolutionary period in the Caribbean and in this
setting constructs a neo-romantic, Hugoesque
story of a Frenchman who comes to Cuba and be-
comes master of the slaves. He handles this remote,
yet very topical, even explosive, material with re-
markable assurance and with stylistic distinction.
Yet his deepest concern is the nature of time - its
unreality, its reversability, and its cyclical char-
acter-which he has explored, traveling from
present into past and back again, in his earlier
novel The Lost Steps (1953) and in his short
stories.
The most important novel published in this cen-
tury in Latin America is, in Professor Rodriguez-
Monegal'sview, The Devil to Pay in the Back-
lands (1956) by the Brazilian, Joao Guimaraes
Rosa. The author, now in his fifties, devoted ten
years of his life to writing this modern epic which
is the culmination of the genre. An ex-bandit,
turned rancher, recounts in a highly emotional,
Joycean stream of consciousness his memories of
the adventures, love and passion of his youth at the
turn of the 2oth century. The reader of this dif-
ficult long novel is, through the author's skill,
immersed in the emotional vagaries of the pro-
tagonist. Regarding the English version, the
speaker warned that the two translators have been
overly scrupulous in clarifying the text -" The
author worked ten years to make it Joycean and
now some nice Americans come along and explain
the novel away! "
A description of the related worlds of two
writers, the Uruguayan, Juan Carlos Onetti, and
the Mexican, Juan Rulfo, brought the communi-
cation to its end. Onetti, after writing his 1941
novel, No Man's Land, a surrealist exploration of
Buenos Aires, created his own imaginary Faulk-
neresque community, " Santa Maria," on the bank
of the River Plate and throughout two later novels,
The Shipyard (1961) (" a masterpiece of depres-
sion ") and The Body Snatcher (i964), developed
Snopes-like characters driven to the last ditch
without belief in God or man.
6
 The remarkable Mexican writer, Rulfo, is
bracketed with Onetti for his similar absorption
with destruction and decay. In his collection of
stories, The Plain in Flames (1953) and especially
in his sole novel, Pedro Paramo (1955), he com-
municates the terror of a people abandoned in an
utterly hostile and barbarous environment. But
by its disciplined tension and quiet mastery, con-
trasting with Onetti's restless and chaotic world;
Rulfo's work occupies a position of singular im-
portance in present-day Latin American litera-
ture.
The three novelists of the new cities, Fuentes,
Cortazar, and Vargas Llosa, with these other new
voices in different genres express the variety, the
vitality, and the remarkable sophistication of the
literature which is showing to the world the face
of a new Latin America.

Works Mentionedby ProfessorRodriguez-Mon-

egal:Originalsand Translations

Alegria, Ciro (Peru, b. 1909)

- EL MUNDOEs ANCHOY AJENO,Santiago, 1941
[Broadand Alien Is the World, New York,
Farrarand Rinehart, 1941]

Carpentier, Alejo (Cuba, b. 1904)

- Los Psos PERDIDOS,Mexico City, 1953
[The Lost Steps, New York, Knopf, 1956]
- EL SIGLODE LASLUCES,Mexico City, 1962
[Explosion in a Cathedral, Boston, Little
Brown, 1963]

Cortazar, Julio (Argentina, b. 1914)

- Los PREMIOS, Buenos Aires, 1960
[The Winners, New York, Pantheon, 1965]
- RAYUELA,Buenos Aires, 1963

Fuentes, Carlos (Mexico, b. 1928)

- LA REGIONMAS TRANSPARENTE, Mexico City,
1958
[ Where the Air Is Clear, New York, I. Obo-
lensky, 1960]
7
Guimaraes Rosa, Joao (Brazil, b. 1908)
- GRANDE SERTAO. VEREDAS,Rio de Janeiro,
I956
[The Devil to Pay in the Backlands,New
York, Knopf, I963]

Onetti, Juan Carlos (Uruguay, b. g909)

- TIERRADENADIE,Buenos Aires, 1941
- EL ASTILLERO,
Buenos Aires, 196 I
- JUNTACADAVERES,Buenos Aires, I964

Rulfo, Juan (Mexico, b. I918)

- EL LLANOEN LLAMAS, Mexico City, 1953
- PEDROPARAMO,Mexico
City, 1955
[Pedro Paramo, New York, Grove Press,
I959]

Vargas Llosa, Mario (Peru, b. circa I936)

- LA CIUDADY LOS PERROS,1963