Gonzalo Rojas and Oscar Hahn represent two distinct tendencies in Chilean poetry which one could see from the late seventies onward. The 1973 coup which ushered in the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet had a very marked effect on Chilean literature, bifurcating it into two camps which each dealt discursively with the question of history [...]
Archive for the ‘Span505’ Category
Two Chilean Poets Post 1973
Posted in Span505 on November 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Fiebre” and Futility.
Posted in Span505 on March 25, 2008 | 2 Comments »
If there’s one saving grace to Marilyn Bobes’ novel “Fiebre de invierno” it’s that it deconstructs the idealized image of modern female sexuality which shows like “Sex and the City” propagate and provides a more verosimile representation of sex as both emotionally complex and anti-climactic (pardon the pun). This is of course every heterosexual woman’s deep dark [...]
Agosto y fuga
Posted in Span505 on March 18, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The book “Agosto y fuga” by Paloma Villegas is an enjoyable, though somewhat difficult read. Unlike many of the novels we have read in the course there is more emphasis on relationships and multiple perspectives rather than individual journeys and reflections. For this reason, the novel immediately reminded me of Claudia Piñeira’s book “Las viudas de los jueves”. Like [...]
Mirko Lauer and Prestige
Posted in Span505 on March 4, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Halfway through Mirko Lauer’s novel “Órbitas Tertulias” I find myself considering an incredible irony. In Camille’s blog she cites an interview in which Lauer describes his distaste for promotion and marketing novels. Allow me to ghost-cite a bit here “No soy de presentaciones ni de promover una novela. Una de las plagas de Egipto que [...]
Las viudas de los jueves and the suburban panopticon.
Posted in Span505 on February 28, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Claudia Piñero’s novel “Las viudas de los jueves” is fascinating precisely for its use of discrete space. The residents of Altos de la Cascada, a gated community 50 kilometers from Buenos Aires attempt to create a homogenous, controlled and sanitized utopia which encapsulates both the ideals and the anxieties of their middle-bourgeois social class. These two emotions: idealism and anxiety, play off [...]
El turno del escriba-same shit, different historical pile.
Posted in Span505 on February 12, 2008 | 3 Comments »
This week’s reading, El turno del escriba, by the argentine writers Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf puts a rather imaginitive turn on the “writing about writing” trend that has virally infected thousands of promising new books turning them into tepid treatises on navel gazing. As much as I despise writing about writing (its one of the few [...]
La hora azul: Good TV, so-so fiction
Posted in Span505 on February 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Alonso Cueto’s novel La hora azul like Bayly’s novel seems as though it was written for television. It’s structure seems quite episodic with rising and falling sequences of drama and action, pithy social commentary, sound-bite history and a plot more suitable to being doled out in 45 minute chapters, lacking the cohesion of good fiction. This text [...]
Jaime Bayly- Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Douchebag
Posted in Span505 on January 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The Premio Planeta is no small prize. Second only to the Nobel in terms of lucre, it offers a meaty 500,000 euros to the winner, usually an author of some renown, and a nice 120,000 to the runner up, generally an up-and-comer. It is undoubtedly one of the major literary prizes of the Spanish Speaking world and thus it wouldn’t be totally outrageous to consider the [...]
The Monty Burns Award for Achievement in the Field of Excellence
Posted in Span505 on January 21, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Reading James English’s book The Economy of Prestige just gave me an interesting idea for a paper topic. Has anyone ever done a comparative study of the various winners of a single literary prize? It would be interesting to examine how the winners compare in terms of meeting certain aesthetic or thematic criteria. Do the winners share common politics or aesthetics? [...]
Bordieu…..”Bordelle!”
Posted in Span505, tagged Span505 on January 14, 2008 | 8 Comments »
I just finished slogging my way through two meaty articles by Pierre Bordieu “The Market of Symbolic Goods” and “The Market For Symbolic Goods” (Yes, they are different, though somewhat the same). I’m still not exactly sure what I just read, I know they were words and I know they were in English…Theory is a Bitch Goddess….
The [...]
