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La parodia en la nueva novela hispanoamericana (1960-1985) by Elbieta Skodowska Review by: Brian Evenson World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 1, Russian Literature at a Crossroads (Winter, 1993), p. 161 Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40148908 . Accessed: 04/11/2013 11:51
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SPANISH:ANTHOLOGY
themselves, the thrust of Artalejo's definition is well worth considering. After a summaryof the concepts of Volksgeist and the that grows in part out of it, Artalejo Volkerpsychologie deals thoughtfully with the ideas on national identity presentedbyJose Ortegay Gasset,Miguelde Unamuno, OctavioPaz, and others, including, appropriately, Jorge Manach, with his tendency to deal with the Cuban the habit of mocking mentalityon the basis of the choteo, authorityin all its forms. Having considered Unamuno's belief that literatureis the most authentic mirror of the spirit,she then proceeds to searchfor clues to the Cuban identity in the prose fiction of Cirilo Villaverde, Carlos Loveira,and Antonio Benitez Rojo. In the case of Villaverde, she notes that his novels suggest an analogy between the situation of Cuba's women, its slaves, and the nation itself, each under the dominationof an unjust power. She notes that, in his fiction, women and slaves "are victimsof external agents, and all, with greater or lesser consciousnessof their acts, practice dissimulation as their norm of conduct." Since this is an accurate assessmentof the situationin Cuba, she says, "inauthenticity becomes a chronic evil constitutive of the Cuban national identity." Artalejofinds that in the twentieth century the new in politics and forms of dissimulation are personalismo corruptionin public administration,along with a growing skepticismon the part of the general public about Therefore the Revolution anythinginvolvingcollectivity. of 1959 may be seen as an antidote to rampantindividualism. Nevertheless, the twin vices of Cuba's past- have namely, foreign domination and inauthenticity remained as strong as ever. The author points out that Benitez Rojo'sstories lament what he views as a weakening of the Cuban spirit on account of the Revolution's suppressionof Afro-Cubancustoms, especiallyreligious rites, which for many constitute a major part of the Cuban identity. La mascara renders a valuableservicein its y el maranon analysisof three important Cuban writers whose works suggest a great deal with regard to the nature of Cuba's nationalidentity. Some will no doubt object strenuously to Artalejo'sconclusions;this is inevitable.At best, they will be forced to make further advancesin the investigation of this important topic.
William L. Siemens Houghton College

161

nonical Spanish American authors such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Isabel Allende and noncanonical authors such as Francine Masiello. The ambitiousnessof Sklodowska'smonograph is not always a strength. Her broad range leaves no time for adequate discussion of the novels. With a twenty-threepage introduction and forty-four pages of concluding materials (notes), Sklodowska has only 152 pages to discussher specifictypes of parody, and after she sets up her theoretical terms, this leaves only three or four pages per novel. Several works such as Mempo Giardinelli's Luna calientereceive little more than a page of engaged discussion. The treatments of other works, particularly Reinaldo Arenas's Mundo alucinanteand Paco Ignacio Taibo's De paso, are longer and more illuminating. Even these discussions, however, do little more than open the door to what could be an intensive, interesting exploration of the role of parody in specific novels. Each of her five chapters on specific types of parody (parody and history, total parody, parody as renovation,parody and the detective novel, parody and feminism)could be a monograph in itself. Sklodowska's monograph reads as an outline for a longer book or a series of books. "Lo que esperamos haber demostrado en nuestro comentario de 25 novelas es el caracter polisemico de la parodia y la presencia no incidental de la parodicidad en estos textos," says Sklodowska. She does a fine job showing the variety of parody, but does not spend sufficienttime with each of her many novels to show the ramificationsof parody within the text, to show how parody is essential rather than incidental. The language of the book is clear, easy for the nonnative reader of Spanishto understand. Indeed, the vocabulary is such that often one feels one is reading English rather than Spanish.A critiquewhich deals with a literature in its original tongue but is written by a nonnative and published on foreign soil, Laparodia takesAmerican criticalpracticeand transposesit into Spanish, makes it strange. Thus the study sometimes reads as a parody of Americancriticaltexts. Sklodowskadoes provide a useful though unfilled outline of how parody operates in Spanish American literature. Her charting of parody is more inclusive than that of other critics writing on recent Latin American literature, and it prepares ground for subsequentcritics.Though limited, the book remains a suggestive survey of recent SpanishAmerican novels, providing a basic understandingof parody and a glimpse at its possibilitiesin Spanish American fiction.
Brian Evenson University of Washington

noamericana(1960-1985). Philadelphia. Benjamins. 1991. xix + 219 pages. $24.95.

La parodia en la nueva novela hispanoamericanais an

Elzbieta Skk>dowska. La parodia en la nueva novela hispa-

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overviewof five varietiesof parody, as displayed in Antologiadel cuentoboliviano.2d ed. Armando Soriano twenty-five novels over twenty-five years of Spanish Badani, ed. La Paz / Cochabamba,Bol. Los Amigos del Libro. 1991. 426 pages. Americanliterature, crammed rather too tightly into a longish monograph. Despite this, ElzbietaSklodowska's With the possible exception of the modernist Ricarstudy is ambitiousand astute, savvyin its use of contemdo Jaimes Freyre(1868-1933), Bolivianshave yet to porary theory (Americantrends more than Hispanic). La parodiathoroughly charts textual parody, exploring taste successin the internationalliteraryarena, and even theoreticalmodels defined by Linda Hutcheon, Mikhail Jaimes Freyre failed to earn "majorauthor"status until Bakhtin, Margaret Rose, and the Russian formalists, he moved to Buenos Aires. Not surprisingly, literary among others. Skk>dowska explores novels by both ca- histories and anthologies rarely give Bolivian writers

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