The Magic Formula

I suspect Coelho in The Alchemist has discovered the (not so) secret formula for writing an "international bestselling phenomenon", which I will summarize as follows: combine a bit of simplified neuro-linguistic reprogramming psychology (learn positive thinking) with a drop of Westernized Buddhism (live in the now). Add the promise of instant happiness and shameless wealth (the American dream/ protestant work ethic) and voila, a guaranteed place on the New York Times bestseller list. Also, if the author is so inclined, work said elements into a fictional form (the non-fiction self-help market is saturated), preferably of the children's fable variety. This will allow a prospective publisher a fourfold expansion of its target readership, marketing the product to both children (as a new Little Prince) and adults (as a new Candide) as well as to literature and self-help consumers. Essential to this marketing strategy is the literature = prestige equation, according to which consumers who normally wouldn't be caught dead in the pop psych section of Chapters are initiated into the self-help genre and regular consumers of the latter are encouraged to feel they are consuming 'serious' literature. That the author come form an exotic sounding third-world country is also advantageous. This will lend credibility to the essentially American belief that instant happiness is possible. Its a win-win-win formula for all involved.

crepuscular shipwreks of love

Reading Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada reminded me of my first love. Like the 2o year old Chilean poet, I too was filled with youthful ardour, romantic sentiment and desire to be a creative artist. Unlike the 2o year old Chilean poet, the muses ignored me entirely. Attempting to express my love in verse, I composed a shockingly bad sonnet, filled with impressive words whose meanings I only dimly understood and cliched metaphors which horrify me when I think of them now. Its one virtue was that it strictly conformed to Shakespearean (or was it Spencerian?) formal conventions, but only after much excruciating effort. Years later, I found my love poem ripped and crumpled at the bottom of a box in my (then former) lover's closet. Had I any talent, I would have been better to follow Neruda's example of simple language (Este es un puerto./ Aqui te amo.) and clear metaphors (eres como una nube). Here sea, twilight and solitude inspire verses of a love at once erotic (Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava), obsessive (eres mia...estas presa), unsure of itself (Amame...No me abandones) and most keenly felt in absence (Me gustas cuando callas poerque estas como ausente).

Cumanda: nationalism and false reconciliation

I admire Mera's attempt to use literature as a way of reconciling two cultures made hostile by the Conquest. Any sincere attempt to understand the other is to me commendable. However, there are (perhaps epistemological) limitations to such attempts and recognizing them is perhaps the surest sign of respect of the other's singularity. The reconciliation enacted in Cumanda--expressed most clearly in the scene where Padre Domingo and Tongana/Tubon forgive each other--fails for two reasons: 1) it does not respect the singularity of the other, and 2) its sincerity is compromised by nationalism. The discourse with which Mera chooses to represent otherness is that of noble savagery, a fantasy created by a French philosophe (Rousseau) disabused by the 'civilized' pursuits of aristocratic salons. The reactionary or dark side of Rousseau's ideas, and a romantic movement characterized by anti-enlightenment irrationality to which they contributed, has been underlined by many scholars, most notably Habermas. The only way Mera is able to bridge the gap between americano and criollo is by representing the former within the morally suspect European ideology of romanticism and an archetype that is more a reflection of a bored Frenchman's imagination than it is of American reality as it really is. Secondly, Mera's attempt to project a literary reconciliation of the two cultures seems compromised by his nationalist politics. Is he really interested in understanding his indigenous countrymen (the condition sine qua non of any reconciliation, literary or otherwise) or is Cumanda more a contribution to the project of pacifying a Nacion imposed by criollos and created to serve their interests?

Eva Luna or the art of kitsch

More than once did I say to myself on reading Eva Luna this is trash, I can't believe I'm reading this, it just gets worse and worse. Yet upon reflection I'm not so sure the novel is as trashy as it seems. As was mentioned in class, the novel exploits from the first chapter almost every possible stereotype the gringo associates with Latin America. Yet the fact that they are so obvious suggests that Allende is consciously manipulating them in a way that playfully brings to light their arbitrary nature. Does this compulsively entertaining fluff also betray a critical element, one that elaborates a pastiche of stereotypes in order to diffuse them? As was also mentioned in class, Eva Luna does possess certain formal qualities characteristic of modernist (highbrow) novels. The independent narratives whose progressive rapprochement drives the novel forward contrasts the staticism of the individual chapters or sections, which have a cuento-like quality in that they stand alone as narrative units in a way similar to the individual episodes of a telenovela. The use of two narrative voices--first person in the case of Eva Luna, third in that of Rolf Carle--could also be considered a clever modernist device, though I found this inconsistant and annoying. The semanic contrast between romantic and political registers is another axis on which the novel is structured. That both end inconclusively points to a anti-ideological postmodernism that favours open-ended resolutions. By conjoining modernist technique with kitch material, the novel seems to subvert the distinction between high and low brow, another aim of postmodernism. That it was published in 1989, when pomo was at its height, would also suggest an afiliation with this movement.

Cumandá (1)

Shouldn´t Cumandá be included in the reading list for the bad literature course? In my first blog for that course, I tried in vain to find an aesthetic criterion for judging a book bad and found that most of what I considered bad resulted from subjective taste. But now I think I have found one on reading Cumandá: literature that is explicitly didactic and propagandistic is bad literature! An artist who uses art as a tool with which to inculcate a set of values tends to make bad art. And Cumandá is bad art. Mera´s intention is political and as a consequence the creative worth of his work suffers. Take, for example, character development. There is none. Both Carlos Orozco and Cumanda are totally flat characters without any psychological depth whatsoever. Since Mera´s aim is to exalt the two constituent races of his Nación so as to suggest their possible reconciliation, he resorts to stereotyped idealizations of noble savagery and christian charity and abandons the hard creative task of developing the nuanced characters with flaws who evolve over time necessary for such a reconciliation to appear credible. As a reader I felt nothing towards these most unlikely of characters.

Why is Cumanda not only pale skinned but christian? What are Mera´s intentions in representing her as such? To make her more palatable to racist criollo readers perhaps? If this is foundational fiction, the nation is off to a bad start indeed.

span490 Eva Luna (1)

Lukas Carlé represents Hitler on micro level. Here we have another example of how family structures can reproduce themselves on the national level, most notably in countries where reactionaries control power.

I found the transformation of Rolf Carlé from son of a Austrian psychopath to South American golden boy hard to believe. Despite the fact that the war spared him much of his father´s tyranny, he nevertheless lived through significant childhood trauma (being forced by the Russians to bury gazed Jews, witnessing the incident preceding his brother´s exile and the hanging of father). His metamorphosis into a charming and cultured young man in the New World seems inconsistent with his Old World background. Allende will probably link his desire to denounce injustice in the form of documentary film to the expression of his rage against his father´s brutality, but this seems contrived. Will Eva Luna make a similar transformation, from orphaned street urchin into articulate militant?

Allende likely based la Colonia on the German towns in the Lakes District of Chile, where you can buy Kuchen and stay in B and B´s called Kleine Salzburg written in Gothic characters.

The worst (literary) book I've ever read (and why).

What first comes to mind is a clearly biased history of Chile I read while in that country that stressed the 'civilizing mission' of the traditional ruling elite from the establishment of the colony to the present. Yet I could not qualify this well-written book as bad soley on the basis of its (in my view) objectionable politics.

So perhaps being poorly written is the main criterion for bad literature. In that case a recent anthology of gay erotica I read would fit the bill. Most of its writing was amateurish and clichéd. Yet it did not intend to be anything other than titulating (which it was) and in this sense served its (non-literary) function. Another example of possibly bad literature I read is a short story an old roommate gave me to criticize. It was about a father-son fishing trip in Northern Ontario which imitated Hemingway's style to such a degree that I had a hard time taking it seriously. Yet am I justified in qualifying as bad an unpublished work by a young writer still struggling to find his voice? I have a snobish Argentine friend who considers Mario Benedetti's writing as "popular" and therefore bad. Yet I quite like him and find much of what he writes serious and well-written. I thought Kerouac's On the Road was crap when I read it, yet only last night did I discuss this beat classic with a UBC creative writing student who quoted by memory I line which, I must admit, had a certain bebop rhythmic quality and a definite coolness. I am thus hard pressed to name the worst literary work I've ever read--a right-wing history, some dirty gay fiction, a friend's attempt to emulate Papa Hemingway, "popular" prose by a well-known Uraguayan, the bible of the beats--it's all good.

La relación entre literatura y familia

Given that family determines self, it is no wonder that the former figures prominently in literature, which can be seen as an entreprise devoted to the understanding of the self. Reading fiction, theatre or poetry can thus function as a form of imaginative pyschotherapy in which the self is brought to light through identifaction with characters whose family life was perhaps similar to one's own. This bringing to light is especially significant when neurotic families determine disfunctional selves, since disfunctional selfhood so often plays itself out in a dynamic of repression in which the self is alientated from its authentic self. Literature can serve to bring the self back to itself. This homecoming is nevertheless incomplete since the identification of alienated selfhood with imaginative selfhood is necessarily vicarious and often only subconsciously perceived. When it is consciously perceived, it can only but provide the self with the ilumination necessary for its own emancipation. Literature can thus be seen as an instrument of freedom and as a middle term in the reconciliation of family and self.