Mutual Impressions
Writers from the Americas Reading One Another
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
It is commonly assumed that the United States and Latin America, culturally so different, move artistically to very different rhythms. Also common is the assumption that, with rare exception, the literary figures on one side of the global North/South divide have had little interest in the work of their counterparts. With Mutual Impressions Ilan Stavans dispels these notions by showing how solid the bridges between writers and across borders have been, at least since the early days of this century, and how crucial they are likely to become as we enter the next millennium.
Divided into symmetrical halves—South reading North and North reading South—the book presents essays by leading novelists, poets, and other writers that focus on the work of another literary figure from across the divide. Borges, for example, finds in Hawthorne the perfect precursor to his own interest in allegories; Katherine Anne Porter examines José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi as a rascal whose picaresque views of life in The Itching Parrot served to launch the Latin American novel; Cortázar’s study of the plots and style of Poe shows an affinity that left an indelible mark on the Argentine’s short fiction; Susan Sontag views Machado de Assis as the ultimate mirror, a proto–postmodernist.
With other essays by Thomas Pynchon, William H. Gass, John Updike, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, John Barth, Robert Coover, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Grace Paley, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Mark Strand, among others, Mutual Impressions offers a remarkable view of the connections that comprise a literary tradition of the Americas. It is a book that will surprise and enliven its readers as it informs and awakens in them a sense of wonder.Contributors. John Barth, José Bianco, Robert Bly, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Hiber Conteris, Robert Coover, Julio Cortázar, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Waldo Frank, Carlos Fuentes, William H. Gass, Nicolás Guillén, William Kennedy, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, José Martí, Pablo Neruda, Victoria Ocampo, Juan Carlos Onetti, Grace Paley, Octavio Paz, Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Pynchon, Kenneth Rexroth, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Barbara Probst Solomon, Susan Sontag, Ilan Stavans, Mark Strand, John Updike, Pedro Henríque Ureña, Derek Walcott, Paul West
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This exquisite collection of literary criticism, assembled by Stavans (Growing Up Latino, etc.), offers beautifully rendered pieces by and about the most distinguished writers from the Americas. Perhaps more importantly, Stavans has shrewdly--and originally--arranged these essays as a dialogue between English-speaking North and Latin America, so that the book as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the first grouping of 19 essays--all of which are translated from Spanish--we cover ground ranging from Derek Walcott's assessment of V.S. Naipaul ("Victims are now as articulate as their oppressors") to Hiber Conteris's appreciation of Raymond Chandler (" a moderate set of virtues and weaknesses that are commonly found in human beings"). In the next 15 essays, North American writers such as John Updike, John Barth and Grace Paley pay respects to their literary "neighbors," including Teresa de la Parra, Pablo Neruda and Ernesto Sabato. The absence of female viewpoints in the first section is not an editorial oversight, but rather an indication of the deep cultural barriers to women's expression in many areas of Latin America. North American readers may be struck by their ignorance about the tradition of Latin American writers: some names are familiar but many are not. Perhaps in anticipation of this fact, many of the North American writers here spend more time educating their readers about their subjects than their South American colleagues do. Overall, the work of Jorge Luis Borges is perhaps the strongest presence across both sets of writers. He appears as both focus and influential figure in many subtly, imaginatively intellectual and gently philosophical writings.
