Cornelia Vlad
“Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Latin America and the Fascination of the Short Story
Abstract: Latin America defines its essential identity at the intersection between Reason and Myth, where the sacred, magical element retrieved within the Indo-Afro-Hispanic roots is joined by the realist element inherited from the Renaissance tradition. The roots of the short story blend with the ones of mythology and are found in the pre-Columbus cultures. This legendary material is recorded initially in chronicles or compilations, later adapted into collections of stories, further refined, and ultimately reinterpreted by the works of contemporary writers. It is magic realism that re-establishes the importance of this discourse of differentiation and imposes it globally, within the process of perfecting the European tradition. The so-called “Boom” period, characterized by the explosion of the novel (Márquez, Llosa, Fuentes) was prepared by several essential short story collections like Borges’ Ficciones or Cortázar’s Bestiario. Also, all the accomplished novelists of this period wrote short stories and were preoccupied to elucidate the mechanism of prose writing and the function of storytelling. The “Boom” phenomenon coincides with an international awakening of interest in women’s voices, which will further increase in the last decades of the twentieth century (Isabel Allende, Luisa Valenzuela, Elena Poniatovska). The “Post-Boom” generation is considered to be a “local” representative of postmodernism, and introduces a new type of literature that is primarily characterized by accessibility. The postmodernist short story features a variety of styles: parody, introspection, grotesque, or fantasy, and determines literary criticism to elaborate new strategies of its interpretation. The “mini-short story”, defined as a sub-category of the contemporary South American short story, becomes the image of a nonconformist attitude toward the orthodox construction of the traditional story.
Keywords: Latin American Short Story; Magic Realism; Feminism; “Boom and “Post-Boom” prose fiction.
„América, antes de ser descubierta, ya había sido inventada en el sueño de una búsqueda utópica, en la necesidad europea de encontrar un „ la bás”, una isla feliz, una ciudad de oro. […] Eternamente dual, la cultura latinoamericana propone sus imágenes conflictivas como verdaderas absolutas.”[1]
Carlos Fuentes
Throughout history, this complex territory full of contradictions, where the most varied aspects of a paradoxical reality are entwined, has impregnated its inhabitants with the need to define their essential identity. While 20th century Western thought utilized, often abusively, the scientific, empirical approach to reality (to the detriment of the analogue, sapient approach) and thus enhanced the transfer of the sacred realm of epiphany toward the subconscious and its consolidation inside non-actualized mythological forms, the fictional worlds proposed by the works of Latin American writers reactivate precisely those magic-mythic ways of knowledge and launch the possibility of recuperating the shattered Whole.
The series of historical coincidences that has existed serves to explain, in part, the blissful cohabitation of Reason and Myth[2] on this territory. The sacred, magical element retrieved within the Indo-Afro-Hispanic roots through a process of “transculturación narrativa,” as described by Angel Rama[3], is joined by the realist element inherited from the Renaissance tradition, which flourished in the 17th century. This latter inheritance permits the awareness of these defining features that belong to the cultural phenomenon known as mestizaje.[4]
The roots of the South American “cuento”[5] blend with the ones of mythology and are to be found in the pre-Columbus cultures: the Maya narrative (tzolkan), the Inca storytelling (huahuaricuni), and the Aztec oral tradition (tlatolli).
While Christianity was still in the very early stages, Central America invented its calendar and its writing, organized its gods in a unique mythology, and created an oral literature to be discovered later on in codices and documents. A thousand years later, when the Spanish arrived, they encountered an elaborate indigenous pantheon which, despite the constant threat of the Catholic Church, managed to survive in the collective memory along with old narratives. Some of the European newcomers studied the languages of the indigenous populations patiently and passionately, in order to grasp them and to ultimately rewrite in nahuatl, maya, or the Inca runa-simi the millenary tradition of the predecessors.
The Myth of the Five Suns (Los Cincos Soles), Chilam Balam, or the memorable sacred book of the Maya-quiche Indians (Popol Vuh), all develop epic, lyrical, philosophical, and historical themes that are also present in the art of the great European and Asian civilizations: the Greek, the Hebrew, the Scandinavian, or the Hindu. Love, death, life, the singular character of certain daily acts all open limitless paths of exploration and ultimately benefit literature.
The absence of written texts among the Incas solidifies their oral tradition, as the spoken narrative continues to this day to be the most cherished by the members of this collectivity. Thus, it is not surprising that the raconteur of Llosa’s El Hablador roamed from tribe to tribe, instituting in each case a ceremonial of storytelling. At the same time, Márquez confesses that he writes “using the oral storytelling techniques of his grandmother,” as he attempts to define magic realism as a way of expressing his own cultural context.[6]
Men of this space embrace the spoken word; they love stories, communicate, recreate, or invent them. As parts of this cycle, tales gain more color and power within enriched versions. Initially recorded by Spanish, mestizos, or Indian chronicles – such as Garcilaso de la Vega’s compilations, Comentarios Reales – the legendary material generates infinite narrative modalities, which eventually morph into the fundamental ingredient of Latin American literature.
From the simple adaptation of legends into collections of stories (José Maria Arguedas), to the much more refined reinterpretation of cosmologies (Miguel Ángel Asturias, Hombres de maíz), or to the presence of African folklore within the narratives of several authors in Cuba (Lydia Cabrera, Cuentos negros), Brazil, or Puerto Rico, a specifically Indo-American modality of expression becomes crystallized. Beginning with the 20th century, Latin America starts to express its universe by using the revealing instrument of its magical reality.
Concepts like magic realism, syncretism, transculturalization, or hybridization, categories such as the myth (Asturias) or the archetype (Carpentier), they all shape a discourse of differentiation. As early as 1930, Andres Bello’s pronouncements underline the desire for cultural emancipation based on rejecting “cultured” Europe in favor of a “primitive” America: “Tiempo es que dejes ya la culta Europa que tu nativa rustiquez desama, y dirijas el vuelo a donde te abre el mundo de Colón su grande escena… do viste aún su primitivo traje la tierra.”[7] While at the outset such differentiation (nativismo, negrismo, indigenismo, mundonovismo – the New World regionalism) belongs to the “wonderment of the place,” soon after it is labeled as provincial by the cosmopolitans of the avangarde movement. Ultimately, it is magic realism that reestablishes the importance of this differentiation and imposes it globally, within the process of perfecting the European tradition.[8]
Consequently, Latin America becomes the focal point of the 60s, during the so-called “Boom”[9], characterized by the explosion of the novel (Fuentes, Llosa, Cortázar, Márquez, Carpentier, Asturias, etc.) and by such essential works as Borges’ Ficciones (1944), Cortázar’s Bestiario (1951), or Juan Rulfo’s El llano en llamas (1953). The novels belonging to this period seem to respond to the need for “difference,” not as an escape to an exotic space, but as an alternative vision often entitled “magic realism.”[10]
The aspiration toward the total novel flourishes along with the new fictional universes proposed by the creations of this moment, while the contract-like bond between writer and reader becomes a major preoccupation. Fuentes’ La Muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Cortazar’s Rayuela (1963), Llosa’s La Casa Verde (1965), and most importantly Cien Años de Soledad (1967) by Márquez are classic landmarks of the modern novel. It is critical to stress that all of these authors also wrote short stories: Fuentes as early as 1950; Llosa building “a veritable laboratory of creation” in Los Jefes (1959), a short story collection that preceded his novels, and also using his fiction, essays, or interviews to elucidate the mechanisms of prose writing and the functions of storytelling; Cortázar, whose stories emphasize a new rhetoric of the genre, outlined obsessively in his non-fiction writings; Márquez, with his Macondo (“Latin America’s microcosm”), the place inaugurated yet unnamed in some of the author’s earliest short-length prose, a location that serves to underline the unity of his entire creation.
The “Boom” phenomenon initially brings forth a group of male writers, yet it coincides with an international awakening of interest for women’s voices. Should the reader approach the complexity of the Latin American space through the writings of the authors mentioned above, he or she would also grasp feminism’s potential for individual or collective acts upon reading the books of Isabel Allende. These volumes do not shine solely due to their humanist and militant tone, but mostly because of an extraordinary storytelling gift and the capacity to build an ample narrative that relates to current or past historical moments and constructs individual figures of the utmost authenticity.[11]
While Borges perfects a metaphysical fictional style defined by a series of hallucinating visions that trace the absurd in the human fate, while Cortázar embraces a surrealist realm which holds a precarious equilibrium between reason and the subconscious, Allende’s stories are anchored primarily in social and political realities. Cuentos de Eva Luna display not only a writer’s alter-ego. They also justify their author’s fame as “Latin America’s Secherezade.”
The Hispanic continent’s tradition of discourse has always related the literary “Voice”[12] to the RHAPSOD-POET, owner of the power of the Word, the individual with the ability to transmit ancestral stories, awaken hidden desires, and speak in the name of the dispossessed.
The last decades of the 20th century brought a radical change in this sense, as a powerful group of feminine writers consolidates. These authors proceed to investigate and reinterpret events such as the Mexican Revolution, the ideals of Law and Order that sustain the institutions of authority, and the restrictive patriarchal social conventions of their societies.
The writers’ voices[13] opt for adopting the marginal positions of the oppressed, as declared passionately by Elena Poniatowska: ” La literatura de las mujeres en América Latina es parte de la voz de los oprimidos. Lo creo tan profundamente que estoy dispuesta a convertirlo en leit-motif, en un ritornello, en ideología” [14]
The desire to formulate a Latin American theory that accurately reflects women’s subordinate condition in the private and public sphere, and foremost, the continent’s cultural diversity, becomes more evident. Within this context, the writings of Elena Poniatowska and Luisa Valenzuela are representative in terms of independent criticism. Poniatowska’s strategy is to use intertextuality in order to offer an alternative to the official discourse and to synthesize the voice of the oppressed. Valenzuela believes in the existence of a distinctly feminine form of expression, inadequately revealed and previously marginalized. Hers and Poniatowska’s elaborated poetics regarding the production of language (viewing language as the result of the conflict against the dominant force of patriarchal organization) are ultimately complemented by Cristina Peri Rossi. In this case, Rossi deliberately adopts a masculine narrative voice, striving to provoke the reader and to undermine gender prejudices.
Thus, the mid 70s mark a turning point in South American literature. A new generation, labeled “Post-Boom,” and viewed as an extension of a tendency that had existed as early as the outset of the Boom, starts to define itself to a certain extent in terms of what it rejects.[15] As mentioned, this trend had manifested itself before, was obscured and finally regained.
The shifting from the observation of reality to the creation of it, from mimesis to myth, typical to the Boom phenomenon, ceases to be a prominent trait. At the same time, the prose of probing and interrogation gives way to the so-called deliteraturization (“desliteraturización”) of the novel, defined by less sophisticated narratives that facilitate the reader’s identification with the events. The text is not as demanding anymore since its delivery is non-symbolic, with a familiar setting and obvious references to the popular culture of the moment. This new type of literature is primarily characterized by accessibility. There is renewed trust in the reader’s ability to observe and picture daily reality, as well as belief in the referential power of the language. According to Donald L. Shaw, the solid anchoring in the “here and now” seems to be the essential aspect of the Post-Boom phenomenon:
“The here and now of Latin America figures prominently as a theme- along with fictional treatments of the continent’s history designed to comment indirectly to here and now“.[16]
Increasingly, critical studies tend to emphasize that the Post-Boom, in some of its embodiments, can be considered a “local” (South American) form of postmodernism. Although postmodern theoreticians devote little attention to the study of the short story as a form, largely due to the fact that they do not operate with distinctions between genres and categories, their stipulations can also apply to this shorter-length literary type of expression. The postmodern short story is complex in form and content, featuring a variety of styles that includes parody, the introspective fiction, the grotesque, or fantasy.[17]
The establishment of an unconventional manner of writing, the elimination of the narrative element, or the expressive condensation that connects it in larger measures to the lyrical, determines literary criticism to reconsider traditional categories that serve to identify the short-story genre and even to elaborate new strategies of its interpretation.[18]
The greatest contribution in this direction is provided by specialized Latin American publications: El Cuento in Mexico, Puro Cuento in Argentina, Zona Franca in Venezuela, Hueso Humero in Peru, or the Cuban Casa de las Américas.
Analyzing various moral, historical, or political problems of the late 20th century, the authors also warn about a crisis of language, which has determined many to experiment with fragmentation or with the austerity of narrative devices, often to the point of excess. The mini-cuento, recently defined as a sub-category of the contemporary South American short story, is the expression of a non-conformist attitude toward the orthodox construction of the traditional story. It requires a new type of reader, one capable to deviate from the simple tracking of the fable and from the necessity to have a clearly-defined structure. It is also up to this reader to establish correspondences within the framework of an associative type of discourse that is surprising to a large degree.
The fragmentary nature of contemporary culture leads some of the writers most receptive to this condition to acknowledge the force of narrative as a way to communicate. Consequently, they not only use daily language but, most importantly, the journalistic tone. Therefore, in many instances it is difficult to distinguish between story and chronicle, confession and fiction, or between literature and the demonstrative prose of specialized argumentation.
In their search for new modalities of expression, current postmodern writers and theoreticians investigate epistemologically the validity of the real and the authenticity of linear historical time. Since the plunge into virtual reality, the line dividing the real and the postmodern illusion has become almost invisible. In such a context, the inexhaustible and vast resources of the short story form, a category that Latin America has unceasingly favored, continue to answer the individual’s need to define his or her place in the Universe: ”Hay toda clase de historias. Algunas nacen a ser contadas, su sustancia es el lenguaje y antes de que alguien las ponga en palabras son apenas una emoción, un capricho de la mente, una imagen o una intangible reminiscencia. Otras vienen completas, como manzanas, y pueden repetirse hasta el infinito sin riesgo de alterar su sentido. Existen unas tomadas de la realidad y procesadas por la inspiración, mientras otras nacen de un instante de inspiración y se convierten en realidad a ser contadas.”[19]
[2] Gabriela Ricci Della Grisa signalizes in Realismo mágico y conciencia mítica en América Latina, (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1985, p. 41-43) a few elements which cooperate to emphasise the magical – metaphysical aspect of the Latin-American consciousness:
- Latin America, unlike Europe, doesn’t have a past as full of history, but does have one full of myths which allows the abolishment of the national frontiers in favour of a common destiny which leads to a vision of an utopian America, an original paradise, a mythical project born in the archetypal consciousness of human kind.
- The geographical position obliged it to move away from the Old World, a centre of history, and to search with disquietude the Centre it never had (a typical situation for marginal cultures as opposed to central ones). Literature turns into the main source of focus for these efforts because it can offer the aloofness in time or space and, putting the myth up to date, allows getting closer to the founding centre of existence, a quality leap which leads to movement away from the analytical or reflexive consciousness to Ontoconsciousness.
- The Spanish language (el castellano) plays an important part as the mirror-shape language for Amerindian languages, metaphorical and periphrastic languages, characterized more by emotional impulses rather than rational ones, where the causative connections are practically inexistent and where the relations between phrases are implicit, opening the way for a certain type of language known as one of symbols and not as a message, as a language of signs. It is in this way that the South American Spanish distinguishes from el castellano both in form and distinctive semantic tonalities which it gained.
- There is a series of feelings that are repeated periodically throughout history::
– The physical and metaphysical loneliness experienced by conquerors facing the infinity of the discovered land, facing the wild nature surrounding them, a loneliness which also reflects in the consciousness of those conquered. They both suffer the deprivation of the Mother Earth and the cosmic terror in front of the unknown. (For the natives, the appearance of the conqueror horse riding and armed could have been the synonym for a beast in possession of the sacred fire).
– The feeling of being uprooted, of instability easy to recognise later in the Creole’s idiosyncrasy or in the nostalgic restlessness of the immigrant.
– The delight and surprise at the sight of the exotic, incredible element, at the sight of the magical, unreal dimension which unfolds before the eyes, a feeling that will pass from one generation to another until it finds embodiment in forms which are suggestive from an aesthetic point of view in the contemporary literature.
[4] Mestizaje, or criollo refers to a mixed racial or cultural heritage which includes indigenous American influences.
[5] The word cuento derives from the latin computare- in Spanish contar, calcular. It initially had the meaning of writing down one by one or in groups, objects of the same type in order to know how many there are in an assemblage. Later on, another meaning was added: referir, decir in connection with the capacity to signalize a bigger or a smaller number of circumstances tied to something that happened or is assumed to have happened in the past. We can find contar with this meaning in the medieval epic poem El Cantar de Mío Cid, in El libro de los estados by Juan Manuel, and in other medieval texts or in the oral version of 1001 Nights. It seems that the term novela circulated in Spain before the term cuento. (See the translation of Decameron under the title Cien novelas- 1494). In 1540, in the collection Silva de varia lección, which contended texts about historical events, journeys, customs, mythology, superstitions, Pedro Mejía makes a hint to the word cuento when he refers to the Fish-Man. Starting with 1653, Juan de Timoneda, in his epistle to the reader, uses the meaning and delimitations which the term has today. Fifty years later, Sebastian Mey was publishing Fabulario con fabulas y cuentos diferentes, algunos nuevos y otros sacados de otros autores (Valencia, 1613), an ensemble of stories which makes the connection between the medieval story and the classic fable. All these ensembles prove that for the Renaissance world, the term cuento had meanings which overlapped with the apologue, the fable, the proverb, the parable, the legend, the short story – novela corta etc. Miguel de Cervantes used the terms cuento and novela without differentiating between them. This difference will be introduced later in Romanticism and Realism, and the first term (cuento) will have two subcategories: cuento literario and cuento popular. (after Abraham Arias- Laretta, El cuento indoamericano, Barcelona, Del Nuevo Mundo Library, 1978).
[6] Conversation with E. Gonzalez Bermejo, in Raymond L Williams, Gabriel García Márquez, Boston MA: Twayne Publishers, 1985, p. 79.
[8] Short story, as a literary genre, has its origin in romanticism. Latin America is not an exception in this sense. The beginning of the 19th century brings, through Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones peruanas (1872-1911), a first manifestation remarked within the occasional and picturesque “costumbrista” literature, a hybrid form, situated at the intersection between romantic short story and legend. A true poetics of short story becomes crystallized towards the end of the 19th century, primarily through the theoretic contribution (Decálogo del perfecto cuentista) of the first consecrated short story writer of South American literature: Horacio Quiroga (1828-1937). The phenomenon is also influenced by the apparition of certain literary currents such as modernism (Rubén Darío), naturalism, or by the Mexican Revolution of 1910 (José Revueltas , Juan Rulfo). The short story derived from criolist realism (characterized by a regionalist and narrow perspective) develops simultaneously. Starting with the 40’s, other new tendencies stand out. Examples are the fantastic short story, the psychological short story, etc., which will culminate with the apparition of Borges’s Ficciones collection (1944).
[9] In a thorough study dedicated to the “Post-Boom” phenomenon (The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction, Univ. of New York Press, 1998, p. 4), Donald L Shaw postulates the following characteristics for the previous period (”The Boom”) in the South-American literature:
1. The disappearance of the ”criolist” or ”earthly” novel with rural themes and the appearance of Asturias and Arguedas’s “neoindigenism”.
2. The disappearance of the ”compromised” formula and the appearance of the ”metaphysical” novel.
3. The tendency to subordinate the creative fantasy observation and to turn reality into myth.
4. The tendency to emphasise the ambiguous, irrational and mysterious aspects of reality and personality, sometimes reaching the absurd as a metaphor of human existence.
5. The lack of trust in the concept of love as an existential support, and underlining the incapacity to communicate and the loneliness of the human kind. The anti-romantic attitude.
6. The tendency to devaluate the concept of death in a world itself considered as infernal.
7. The riot against all the moral taboo forms, firstly those related to religious life and to sexual life. The parallel tendency to explore the darkness of our complicated secret life.
8. A greater use of erotic and humorous elements.
9. The tendency to abandon a linear, ordered, traditional narrative (and which reflects a world seen as more or less ordered and intelligible), in favour of one based on the spiritual evolution of the main character, or in favour of some experimental structures entirely in harmony with the complex characteristic of reality.
10. The abolishment of the concept of linear, chronological time.
11. The tendency to abandon the realistic plots of the traditional novel and replacing them with imaginary spaces.
12. The tendency to replace the omniscient narrator (3rd person narrative) with multiple or ambiguous narrators.
13. A more intense usage of symbolist elements.
[10] The terms ‘magic realism’, ‘magical realism’, and ‘marvelous realism’ contour a particular narrative mode starting with 1980. Maggie Ann Bowers in her work Magic (al) Realism (Rutledge, London and New York, 2005) establishes three stages in the history of magic(al) realism: the first one belongs to Germany of the year 1920, the second one is located in Central America (1940), and the third begins in 1955 in Latin America and is going on internationally even nowadays. The German critic of art Franz Roh is accredited with having introduced the term when analyzing a new form of post-expressionism in painting. The Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli (1870-1960) founded the magazine 900. Novecento in 1926, and applies Roh’s ideas to literature, which in his conception, has as purpose the creation of collective conscience by opening new magical and mythical perspectives on reality. Internationally consecrating the term coincides, though, with spreading Roh’s idea in Latin America. At first, his work is translated into Spanish (Fernando Vela) and published in Madrid by Revista de Occidente, a famous magazine in the Latin-American writers’ world, with the title Realismo mágico. Post-expresionismo: Problemas de la pintura européa más reciente. The contact with the new European cultural currents of two of the Latin-American literary universe representatives: Alejo Carpentier (Cuba) and Arturo Uslar-Pietri (Venezuela) located in Paris from 1920 to1930 is considered equally important. Apparently, the term was used for the first time in the Latin America literary circle by Arturo Uslar Pietri to refer to a type of narration that overcomes the realism, by adding a magical dimension “maravillosa”. Miguel Angel Asturias followed him while fascinated by the maya vision about the cosmos. Yet, the one who introduced the concept is Alejo Carpentier, in the introduction to El reino de este mundo (1949), exemplifying in Los pasos perdidos and associating it to the baroque in Lo baroco y lo real maravilloso (1982). His contribution brings an observation, used afterwards by other authors, regarding America’s role in preserving the universal literature through the infusion of a new vitality that comes from the indigenous element in a double sense: as spirit and scenery. Carpentier is credited with having defined a distinctive form of magical realism, specifically the lo real maravilloso or marvellous realism, which defines, in his vision, the unique, extraordinary character of Latin America, created by the mixture of races and cultures: mestizaje. The definition of the creative act offered by Carpentier as a “privileged revelation of the reality and unusual illumination of its unnoticed resources, perceived with a particular intensity by a certain exaltation of the spirit that brings it to a marginal state (revelación privilegiada de la realidad e iluminación inhabitual de sus inadvertidas riquezas, percibida con particular intensidad por cierta exaltación del espiritu que lo lleva a un estado límite”, 1949) accedes the concept of „merveilleux” proclaimed by André Breton in the Manifest of Surrealism from 1925 as it brings into discussion the concept of “surrealism” or “absolute reality as the moment that unites the two apparently contradictory states: the dream and the reality. In 1956, the Venezuelan writer Arturo Uslar –Pietri stated that the Creole literature has always had an archaic, primitive odor, not only because of a rigid stylizing, but especially due to the abundant magical elements that sustain the mythical and symbolic dimension, based on an intuitive vision. (Las nubes, Santiago de Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 1956, p. ). He considers magical realism as a continuation of the experimental writings that belong to the modernist avant-garde. The year 1955 introduces into the specialized critic a new term magical realism, through the study of Angel Flores Magical Realism in Spanish America Fiction, in which Jorge Luis Borges is considered the first magical realist writer, because he illustrates the best the theory according to which the magical realism is influenced by the European literature.
[11] Distinctive in the national literary scenery, which, before all has continued to be realistic, petrified into a structure that combines the biography and the social chronicle, Allende’s novel has been registered in the mythical space and in the cuento maravilloso that does not abandon the social, but moreover perceives it in a new shape. Allende’s magical realism is characterized as ”feminocentric supernaturalism” (Stephen M. Hart, Allende. Eva Luna & Cuentos de Eva Luna, Madrid, Ed.Grand & Cutler LTD, 2003), or ”magical feminism” (Patricia Hart, Narrative Magic in the Fiction of Isabel Allende, Associated Univ. Press Inc, 1989, p 29-30).
[12] Regarded as a category of the discourse, the term voice can be traced back in time, to the concept of “diegesis” which indicates the presence of a voice, of the narrator in opposition to the ”mimesis”, or the representation of the reality through the words and the actions of the characters. The contemporary study of narration associates the term “voice” with the “narrative instance” (Gerald Prince in A Dictionary of Naratology defines the voice as ”he set of signs characterizing the NARRATOR and, more generally, the NARRATING INSTANCE, and governing the relations between NARRATING and narrative text as well as between narrating and NARRATED”
[13] We use the term “voice” in Maria Teresa Medeiros-Lichem’ perception whom, in the study titled Reading the Feminine Voice In Latin American Women’s Fiction, (New York, 2002) suggests a reading model from a poststructuralist, dialogical perspective, having as its main instrument Bahtin’s theory. Thus, the term “voice” is a trans-individual expression of the cultural, social and political circumstances, and the “feminine voice” “the result of a dialogical interaction between the forces of patriarchy, the monological voice that has dominated within literature, and the submerge and silenced voices of the Other- of women or the marginalized- those previously excluded from the territory of the Word.” (p. 204).
[15] Acknowledging the quality improvement that the novel’s explosion creates during its period of glory, Alejo Carpentier is situated among the first who call for abandoning the technical innovation and returning to the concept of a more simplified fiction. (La novela hispanoamericana en vísperas de un nuevo siglo y otros ensayos, ed.II, Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1981, p. 25).
Almost during the same time with the affirmation of Carpentier’s belief as the necessity to re-orientate the novel towards a more popular and more social dimension, another novelist, considered by some critics as the most outstanding representative of the Pot-Boom period, Antonio Skarmeta, spoke, from his generation’s perspective, of some traits specific to this new period (1979): the stress upon unbounded exploration of eroticism, exuberance, impulsiveness, importance of the daily element, fantasy, and colloquial expression. The author’s final conclusion is significant for the new orientation: “The newest narrative is vocationally anti-pretentious, pragmatically anti-cultural, sensitive to the banal, and does more than reorganize the world…it is simply a presenter of the world.” (La narrativa más joven es vocacionalmente antipretenciosa, pragmaticamente anti-cultural, sensible a lo banal, y más que reordenadora del mundo… es simplemente presentadora de él) (Al fin y al cabo es su propia vida la cosa mas cercana que cada escritor tiene para echar mano, in Del cuerpo a las palabras: La narrativa de Antonio Skarmeta, Madrid, LAR, 1983, p.132-136)}
[17] There is even an ”anti-story”, as Mary Rohrberger mentions in Story to Anti-Story, Boston, Houghton, 1979.
[18] The new tendencies from the recent Mexican literature are actually the reflection of a more general phenomenon, which includes the whole South-American continent. As Margo Glantz underlines in her essay Onda y escritura en México: Jovenes de 20 a 33 from the volume with the same name (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1971), re-published in 1989 with the title La onda diez años despues: epitafio o revaloración?, along with the traits that delimitate La onda: the rebellious attitude of a generation, the insurrection against the writers that belonged to Boom, the interest for the urban, young culture “the uninhibited language” ( lenguaje desenfadado), the influence of pop music, “a new sense of humor” (un nuevo sentido al humo)r, anti-gravity (Antonio Skarmeta, for example introduces in the Chilean literature, parallel with Gustavo Sainz şi José Agustin in Mexico, a new type of hero, totally different from the one of the period of the Boom, the modern young man, with interest in sexuality, pop culture, sports, entertainment) another tendency is noticed, la escritura, emphasizing the form, the linguistic experiment. While the first was connected to the Boom phenomenon, the second could be situated more likely regarding its climax period and the postmodernist influence. The difference between these two tendencies might consist in the perspective on the language: instrument to observe the world, emphasizing its referential side, or the actual matter of the narration.