Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature Volume 2

By Emir Rodríguez Monegal

Book Overview

Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature Volume 2 This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394733665
• ISBN13: 9780394733661
• Release Date: June 1977
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 488 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Volume 2: Worthwhile

This anthology was published in 1977 by Rodríguez Monegal, a noted literary critic and scholar of Latin American literature, as well as editor of an influential literary magazine during the Latin American "boom" of the 1960s. He himself helped launch the careers of Cabrera Infante, Puig and Sarduy, besides promoting writers such as García Márquez, Fuentes and Vargas Llosa. His anthology is one of the earliest comprehensive ones in English compiled by someone actually from the region; later ones included González Echevarría's Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories (1997) and Fuentes' Vintage Book of Latin American Stories (1998). The anthology covered the period from the 1920s to the early 70s, focusing especially on the 1950s and 60s. It differed from others read for the region in including many excerpts from novels and much poetry, rather than mainly short stories; the poetry comprised about a third of the book. A substantial amount of background information on the authors was also included, amounting to about 15% of the book. There were 14 excerpts from novels, 11 short stories and 115 poems, by 65 authors from 11 nations. In prose, Argentina, Brazil and Cuba were the best-represented countries. In poetry, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Peru. The excerpts from novels were written or published in the 1920s: Mario de Andrade (Macunaíma); the 1940s: Carpentier (The War of Time) and Asturias (El Señor Presidente); the 1950s: Guimarães Rosa (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands); the 1960s: Sabato (On Heroes and Tombs), Lispector (The Passion According to G. H.), Donoso (This Sunday), Vargas Llosa (The Green House), Lezama Lima (Paradiso), Sarduy (Cuba with a Song), Cabrera Infante (Three Trapped Tigers) and Arenas (Hallucinations); and the 1970s: Piñon (House of Passion), Puig (The Buenos Aires Affair) and Sáinz (The Princess of the Iron Palace). The poetry included older poets (Huidobro, Vallejo, Neruda, Gorostiza, Guillén, the two de Andrades -- Mario and Oswald -- Drummond de Andrade and Bandeira) and later ones such as Girri, Padilla and Cardenal. The book didn't include authors such as Carmen Lyra, Arlt, Pinera, Roa Bastos, Arreola or Monterroso. As with many anthologies for this region before the mid-1980s, only a few female authors were selected: Lispector, Piñon, and the poets Idea Vilareño from Uruguay and Blanca Varela from Peru. The introduction mentioned numerous connections to the Parisian avant-garde of many poets and prose writers who came of age in the decades before WWII (Borges, Asturias, Carpentier, the poets Huidobro, Vallejo, Moro, Neruda and Paz), while making clear that they avoided mere imitation of European models and effectively integrated into their work either pre-Columbian themes and motifs or the cosmopolitan attitudes of contemporary Latin America. I found the book very enlightening in terms of the detailed background supplied for the literature, written from firsthand knowledge. For many of t