riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (09/02/83)
Glad to see that someone else likes Latin American fiction. I just read
"Cien an~os de soledad" a few months ago in an attempt to patch up my
Spanish, which had been devastated by a year in Europe. Now I understand
why Garcia Marquez got the Nobel prize! A few of my other favorite obras
latinoamericanas include:
Virtually anything by Jorge Luis Borges; his classic collection "Ficciones"
(available under the same title in English) is the best place to start
and ought to be of particular interest to hackers and Hofstaedter fans.
Another gem by Borges is "Otras inquisiciones", a collection of liter-
ary essays which, oddly enough, read an awful lot like his stories.
Novels by Manuel Puig, an Argentine who likes to play games with pop culture
and with his readers' minds. In his best book, "El beso de la mujer
aran~a" ("The Kiss of the Spider Woman"), the characters are two prison-
ers, a homosexual and a revolutionary, who pass the time telling each
other film plots.
"El llano en llamas" and "Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo, a Mexican bookkeeper
who turned out only two mysterious books, both somewhat surrealistic
looks at the misery of "the other Mexico".
The massive novels (which I must admit I haven't finished) and the short
stories of Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican who borrowed a lot from Dos
Passos. He has an ear for the language and the style of all sorts
of people which makes his portrayals of Mexican society particularly
biting. Also good is his play about the conquest, "Todos los gatos
son pardos."
Bourgeois short stories by an Uruguayan named Mario Benedetti which might be
at home in the pages of the "New Yorker".
That is enough to start with, I guess. Other writers who I haven't read enough
by include Jose Donoso ("El obsceno pajaro de la noche"), Alejo Carpentier,
and Julio Cortazar. That neglects, of course, all the great poets that Latin
America has produced, not to speak of Brazil (eu na~o falo portugues). Any
other favorites out there?
-- Prentiss Riddle
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
riddle@ut-sally.ARPA