chiles sent over a link to a very interesting speech given by Jorge Volpi (posted over at Three Percent) on the topic of the future of Latin American Fiction. It makes for an interesting read, for Volpi’s take on “magical realism” and also because of the similarities between the Latin American context and our own. Here’s an excerpt:
In what role does this thesis leave us? Once again we appear as good savages, dominated by superstition and mystery, accustomed to coexisting with the supernatural, or, in the other extreme, as a primitive people who remain apathetic in the face of the very unusual. The social interpretation of the literature thus acquires an unsettling political shade: Latin American people are not distinguished by our fantasy, but by our resignation. A resignation of a murky Catholic origin that explains the conformism which turns us into docile subjects, cannon fodder, the successive victims of Colonialism, Imperialism, Communism, and Capitalism.
Here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.
