Collection of interviews from The Paris Review with ten authors
addressing many subjects but a single overarching theme: What does
it mean to be a Latin American writer? "I despise the term 'Latin
America,' " declares Cuban novelist and essayist Guillermo Cabrera
Infante. "Better call us Mongrelia. We are mongrels, a messy mix of
white, black, and Indian." For Colombian Gabriel Garc'a Marquez, it
means to be a descendant of the Cuban Revolution, which, having
"turned into an article of consumption," ignited interest in a
literature hitherto ignored both abroad and at home. "What was
really sad," Garc'a Marquez adds, "is that cultural colonialism is
so bad in Latin America that it was impossible to convince the
Latin Americans themselves that their own novels were good until
people outside told them they were." Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis
Borges finds the question uninteresting. "For about the last seven
years," he remarks in an interview from 1966, "I've been doing my
best to know something of Old English and Old Norse. Consequently,
that's a long way off in time and space from the Argentine, from
Argentine writers, no?" Chilean poet Pablo Neruda dances around the
matter, and a couple of dozen others, with a dazzling mix of
erudition and Stalinist sophistry, while exiled Argentine novelist
Manuel Puig makes a case for the writer as a citizen of a private
world. Other stars take a turn in these pages, with Octavio Paz,
Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa weighing in to throw out
gossipy tidbits, offer advice to young writers, and speak to
favorite causes. Curiously, only one woman is represented:
Argentine journalist and novelist Luisa Valenzuela holds her own
just fine, but one wonders at the omission of, for example, Isabel
Allende and Laura Esquivel. A worthy entry in the long list of
Paris Review interview volumes, of considerable interest to
students of world literature and creative writing. (Kirkus Reviews)
The fourth book in the Modern Library’s Paris Review Writers at Work series, Latin American Writers at Work is a thundering collection of interviews with some of the most important and acclaimed Latin American writers of our time. These fascinating conversations were compiled from the annals of The Paris Review and include a new, lyrical Introduction by Nobel Prize–winning author Derek Walcott.
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