FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W1608727133> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W1608727133 endingPage "363" @default.
• W1608727133 startingPage "361" @default.
• W1608727133 abstract "Both of these books are generally well-written and interesting studies in the literature, politics, and history of Latin America. Though eclectic, they have a few unifying themes. Stavans is fascinated by borderlands of all kinds, from the contested territory between nations to the intersections between academic disciplines. A Mexican of Central European descent now teaching at Amherst College, Stavans is especially interested in the writings of people who live between two or more different cultures. Of greatest interest to historians are Stavans’s explorations of the frontier between literature and history.At their best, these books offer insightful new readings of the ways in which literature has shaped the history of Latin America, from the moment Columbus read Marco Polo to the years Gabriel García Márquez has spent as an informal advisor to Fidel Castro. Nevertheless, the essays that make up these books are uneven in quality and give annoyance as often as they give pleasure. Stavans is an intelligent and learned writer, but not a very careful one, and the many errors of fact and style found in these books combine with Stavans’s rash judgments and careless analyses to distract the reader from their merits.Art and Anger is a collection of essays mostly about literature and politics in Latin America. Some are intended to introduce lesser-known writers, such as Felipe Alfau, Ricardo Piglia, and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, to a North American audience. Others reassess the titans of Latin American letters, such as Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Recurring themes of these essays include translation, political mythology, sexual politics, and exile.Stavans introduces several of these themes in the first essay, “Letter to a German Friend,” in which Stavans reflects on his own family’s history in Central Europe and the reverberations of the Holocaust in his life. By presenting these reflections as an elegantly written letter, Stavans announces his interest in the ways literature can spin meaning from the stuff of oppression and exile.The subsequent essay explores the lives of Mario Vargas Llosa and Abimael Guzmán. Born in the same state in southern Peru, these two men followed opposed but parallel paths. One moved in the highest realms of cultural and political power, writing fine novels and running an ill-fated presidential campaign. The other scribbled fiery tracts and dragged his country into a quagmire of bloodshed as leader of the Shining Path guerilla army. Stavans weaves these two narratives together to form a portrait of a deeply divided Peru.Other essays in the book are less well controlled. Stavans’s essays on Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez rely more heavily on the rhetoric of praise and condemnation than on close reading and critical thought. In both essays, Stavans does sometimes show the subtlety his subjects deserve. His discussion of the influence of cinema on García Márquez’s fiction offers some fascinating insights on the Colombian writer’s penchant for vivid imagery and tightly controlled story lines. Stavans offers a similarly shrewd analysis of Paz’s vast ego, exploring the ways in which Paz often confused the movements of his own troubled soul with the political upheavals of the world at large.But in both these essays, empty praise and personal attacks distract from the main arguments. Stavans calls Paz a “renaissance homme de lettres” and a “cultural demigod” at one moment, then later accuses him of being a “dilettante” and a “marionette” of the PRI. In like fashion, Stavans opens the essay “The Master of Aracataca” by declaring that García Márquez “reinvented Latin America.” But he soon descends to repeating unflattering rumors about him and asserts without any supporting argument or quotation that one of García Márquez’s books is “too boring,” another “forgettable,” and a third “a showcase for his recent excesses.” One wonders if a few more revisions might have smoothed away the harsh rhetoric and highlighted the subtle judgment these two essays sometimes display.Imagining Columbus is a cultural history of “The Navigator” from his birth in Genoa to his vilification more than five hundred years later. This is a short book based on a personal selection of histories, novels, biographies, and poetry. Like Art and Anger, it is a mixed bag. Stavans is at his best when weaving together autobiography with discussion of the literature and traditions that shaped his point of view.He begins with a reminiscence on the fables his grandmother told him about the life of Columbus and moves on to show how not only his, but everyone’s, view of Columbus is colored by myth and politics. Washington Irving, author of a giant biography of Columbus, saw him as a link between the cultural achievements of the Old World and the republican hopes of the New. Simon Wiesenthal saw Columbus as a man in search of a homeland for the persecuted Jews of Iberia. Rubén Darío saw him as the author of five hundred years of Amerindian misery. “Who was Christopher Columbus?” Stavans asks. “The answer is in the eye of the beholder.”The problem with the book is that it has no unifying argument beyond the above-mentioned cliché. The lack of rhetorical structure often leads Stavans into tiresome plot summaries of obscure novels, and rather than analyzing the ideologies under examination, Stavans often simply repeats them. A chapter called “A New Era of Distant Neighbors” is typical in this regard. According to Stavans, the Pilgrims of New England, who dreamed of a New Israel governed by “the manners, law and reason of their forefathers,” were “motivated to work hard and make progress” and were “fortunate enough not to find a huge Indian empire ready to oppose them.” The Spaniards, by contrast, came “to destroy, to proselytize, to exploit, to rape, to kill”—which had the unfortunate result that “Hispanic Ameri-can civilization has been marked by violence, chaos and repression.” These are standard motifs of “The Black Legend,” and Stavans should present them in a more critical light than he does here.These are frustrating books, in large part because the topics Stavans has chosen are so interesting. The literatures of the Americas, the politics of sexuality, and the abiding power of myth in Latin American political life are all topics bound to fascinate students of Latin America for years to come. Stavans offers some tantalizing insights on the ways in which literary and historical narratives inform one another. But their glib tone and hasty execution leave the reader wishing these books had been written with greater care." @default.
• W1608727133 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W1608727133 creator A5021565204 @default.
• W1608727133 date "2003-05-01" @default.
• W1608727133 modified "2023-09-23" @default.
• W1608727133 title "Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the ImaginationImagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage" @default.
• W1608727133 doi "https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-83-2-361" @default.
• W1608727133 hasPublicationYear "2003" @default.
• W1608727133 type Work @default.
• W1608727133 sameAs 1608727133 @default.
• W1608727133 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W1608727133 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W1608727133 hasAuthorship W1608727133A5021565204 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C15744967 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C2779302386 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C77805123 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C124952713 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C142362112 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C15744967 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C17744445 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C199539241 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C2779302386 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C52119013 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C77805123 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C94625758 @default.
• W1608727133 hasConceptScore W1608727133C95457728 @default.
• W1608727133 hasIssue "2" @default.
• W1608727133 hasLocation W16087271331 @default.
• W1608727133 hasOpenAccess W1608727133 @default.
• W1608727133 hasPrimaryLocation W16087271331 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W163049555 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W1988753666 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W2062322610 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W2799613829 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W2870093766 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W2899084033 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W3171926175 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W4231774011 @default.
• W1608727133 hasRelatedWork W612963211 @default.
• W1608727133 hasVolume "83" @default.
• W1608727133 isParatext "false" @default.
• W1608727133 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W1608727133 magId "1608727133" @default.
• W1608727133 workType "article" @default.