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Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

La parodia en la nueva novela hispanoamericana (1960-1985) by Elbieta SkodowskaReview by: Brian EvensonWorld Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 1, Russian Literature at a Crossroads (Winter, 1993), p.161Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40148908.

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SPANISH:ANTHOLOGY 161themselves, the thrust of Artalejo'sdefinition is wellworth considering.After a summaryof the conceptsof Volksgeistnd theVolkerpsychologiehat grows in part out of it, Artalejodeals thoughtfullywith the ideas on national identitypresentedbyJose Ortega yGasset,Miguelde Unamuno,OctavioPaz,and others, including, appropriately, orgeManach, with his tendency to deal with the Cubanmentalityon the basis of the choteo,he habit of mockingauthority n all its forms.Havingconsidered Unamuno'sbelief that literature s the most authentic mirror of thespirit,she then proceedsto search for clues to the Cubanidentityin the prose fiction of CiriloVillaverde,CarlosLoveira,and Antonio Benitez Rojo.In the case of Villa-verde, she notes that his novels suggest an analogybetween the situation of Cuba'swomen, its slaves,andthe nationitself,eachunder the dominationof an unjustpower. She notes that, in his fiction,women and slavesare victims of externalagents, and all, with greaterorlesser consciousnessof their acts, practicedissimulationas their norm of conduct. Since this is an accurateassessmentof the situation n Cuba,she says, inauthen-ticitybecomes a chronic evil constitutive of the Cubannational identity.Artalejofinds that in the twentieth century the newforms of dissimulationare personalismon politics andcorruption n publicadministration,along with a grow-ing skepticismon the part of the general public aboutanything nvolvingcollectivity.Therefore the Revolutionof 1959maybe seen as an antidote to rampant ndividu-alism. Nevertheless, the twin vices of Cuba's pastnamely, foreign domination and inauthenticity haveremained as strong as ever. The author points out thatBenitezRojo's tories ament what he views as a weaken-ing of the Cuban spirit on account of the Revolution'ssuppressionof Afro-Cuban ustoms,especiallyreligiousrites, which for many constitute a major part of theCubanidentity.

La mascara el maranon enders a valuableservice n itsanalysisof three importantCuban writers whose workssuggesta greatdeal withregardto the nature of Cuba'snational dentity.Some willno doubt object strenuouslyto Artalejo's onclusions; his is inevitable.At best, theywill be forcedto make further advances n the investiga-tion of this important topic. William L. SiemensHoughton College

Elzbieta Skk>dowska. La parodia en la nueva novela hispa-noamericana(1960-1985). Philadelphia. Benjamins.1991. xix + 219 pages. $24.95.La parodia en la nueva novela hispanoamericana s anoverviewof five varietiesof parody,as displayedintwenty-five novels over twenty-five years of SpanishAmerican iterature,crammedrather too tightly into alongish monograph. Despite this, ElzbietaSklodowska'sstudyis ambitiousand astute,savvy n its use of contem-porary theory (American rends more than Hispanic).Laparodia horoughlycharts textual parody, exploringtheoreticalmodels defined by LindaHutcheon, MikhailBakhtin, MargaretRose, and the Russian formalists,among others. Skk>dowskaxplores novels by both ca-

nonical Spanish American authors such as GuillermoCabreraInfante and Isabel Allende and noncanonicalauthors such as Francine Masiello.The ambitiousnessof Sklodowska'smonographis notalwaysa strength. Her broad range leaves no time foradequatediscussionof the novels. With a twenty-three-page introduction and forty-fourpages of concludingmaterials (notes), Sklodowska has only 152 pages todiscussher specific ypesof parody,and after she setsupher theoretical terms, this leaves only three or fourpages per novel. Several works such as Mempo Giar-dinelli'sLuna caliente eceive little more than a page ofengaged discussion. The treatments of other works,particularly Reinaldo Arenas's Mundo alucinante andPaco Ignacio Taibo's De paso, are longer and moreilluminating.Even these discussions,however, do littlemore than open the door to whatcould be an intensive,interestingexplorationof the role of parody in specificnovels. Each of her five chapters on specific types ofparody (parody and history, total parody, parody asrenovation,parodyand the detectivenovel, parodyandfeminism)could be a monographin itself. Sklodowska'smonograph reads as an outline for a longer book or aseries of books. Lo que esperamos haber demostradoen nuestro comentario de 25 novelas es el caracterpolisemicode la parodiay la presenciano incidentaldela parodicidaden estos textos, says Sklodowska. Shedoes a finejob showing the varietyof parody,but doesnot spend sufficient time with each of her many novelsto show the ramificationsof parody within the text, toshow how parody is essential rather than incidental.The languageof the book is clear,easyfor the nonna-tivereaderof Spanishto understand.Indeed, the vocab-ularyis such that often one feels one is reading Englishratherthan Spanish.A critiquewhich deals witha litera-ture in its original tongue but is writtenby a nonnativeand publishedon foreignsoil,LaparodiaakesAmericancriticalpracticeand transposes t into Spanish,makes itstrange.Thus the study sometimesreads as a parodyofAmericancritical texts. Sklodowskadoes provide a use-ful though unfilled outline of how parody operates inSpanishAmerican iterature. Her chartingof parodyismore inclusive than that of other critics writing onrecent Latin American literature, and it preparesground for subsequentcritics.Though limited, the bookremainsa suggestivesurveyof recent SpanishAmericannovels,providinga basicunderstandingof parodyand aglimpse at its possibilities n SpanishAmerican fiction.Brian Evenson

University of Washington

AnthologyAntologiadel cuentoboliviano.2d ed. Armando SorianoBadani,ed. La Paz/ Cochabamba,Bol. Los AmigosdelLibro. 1991. 426 pages.

Withthe possibleexception of the modernist Ricar-doJaimesFreyre(1868-1933), Bolivianshaveyet totastesuccess n the internationalliteraryarena,and evenJaimes Freyrefailed to earn majorauthor statusuntilhe moved to Buenos Aires. Not surprisingly, literaryhistories and anthologies rarely give Bolivian writers

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