Proposing a GPS of books that synthesizes Latin American literature in 50 entries demands courage and seems like an impossible task.
How to identify the communicating vessels and the conversations that establish tradition and current affairs?
What classics do young authors frequent and recommend?
These questions, recalls the Argentine writer Clara Obligado, editor of the brand new
Atlas of Latin American
(Nordic) Literature, were in the germ of the project: a map of the literary talent of 20 countries in 224 pages made up of reviews of today's writers and illustrated by Agustín Comotto.
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The Latin American novel today
The volume, a beautiful hardcover edition covered in illustrations, started from a forceful premise: “Remove the boom generation from the foreground
”
, synthesizes Obligado, for whom, although
a priori
such omissions may taste like “barbarity”, those obvious names and those of other classics “appear and reappear, because they are discussed and discussed”.
Borges does not have an entry in the atlas and, nevertheless, “Borges is the first word of my prologue”, exemplifies the author of
Todo lo quecre
.
The trigger thrown to the 47 guest reviewers was engaging: “'If you had to choose one author to put on the map, who would you put?
They have to choose it from the enthusiasm.
And tell a reader who doesn't know Roberto Bolaño, for example, why you have to read him now, what's wonderful about him'”, recreates Obligado, who also asked them to write their essays in the first person to avoid academic jargon (although critical readings such as that of the poet María Negroni on Alejandra Pizarnik show off her decades of research).
With this starting point, the atlas offers readers, specialized or not, exceptional pairs.
From the Argentine Antonio Di Benedetto, revisited by Federico Falco, to the Venezuelan author Elizabeth Schön in a profile of Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, through the Colombian Fernando Molano chosen by Héctor Abad Faciolince and the Chilean scale that includes Marta Brunet portrayed by her compatriot Lina Meruane, the book is full of surprises.
Illustration of the work of Camila Henríquez Urenya included in the 'Atlas of Latin American Literature'.
Agustin Comotto
In his double capacity as guest author and presenter, Madrid professor Julio Prieto, a specialist in Latin American literature and in charge of the entries by Felisberto Hernández and Gabriela Mistral, underlines the commitment of the atlas: “What stands out the most is the somewhat irreverent gesture in relation to the canon;
an option to make an alternative cartography, with a very strong feminist position.
There is a clear intention to recover marginalized writers for different reasons, such as Elena Garro, Sara Gallardo...”.
The interesting decision is not to include what is already visible: Borges, Rulfo, César Vallejo and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz are not there.
They are taken for granted.
It is decided to occupy those 50 boxes with authors sometimes unknown even to specialists and almost vicious of this literature”, jokes Prieto, who marks the contributions on the Central American narrative.
“The essay on Rogelio Simán, a great Panamanian writer, highlights that if he had been Argentine or Peruvian or Chilean he would have been better known because certain countries have great weight in the publishing industry.
There are many secret gems in the atlas and a question not about what Latin American literature is, but about what it will be, based on the choices of the writers they recommend”, he affirms.
The case of Mexico exemplifies the dynamics that feeds back into this cartography.
“Of the five authors reviewed, four are women and the fifth is Jorge Ibargüengoitia (Antonio Ortuño's text is wonderful!).
That is turning Latin American literature upside down,” Obligado enthuses.
“To include is to exclude and when speaking of lists and canons, a very capricious reading has always been made, according to the taste of each one.
I didn't want to do that, but to present a state of the matter, taking into account that in a few years it may be said 'here this or that is missing', he elaborates.
Among these absences, Obligado assumes the lack of entries on literature written in native languages, which would have required a study that exceeds the project.
Hence the subtitle of the book:
Unstable Architecture
, an expression that accounts for "something built, something that is put together, but that is known to be unstable because it does not presume to be the truth about anything," he defines.
Illustration of Clarice Lispector's work included in 'Atlas of Latin American Literature'.
Agustin Comotto
Atlas of Latin American Literature
works with three colors: white, black and coral red, says Agustín Comotto, whose powerful illustrations “tell about others who tell”.
“I did not want to interpret a literal image of what the biographer described or what the biographee represents.
Both parts have their own worlds and I was interested in contributing my own, something complementary”, he explains.
Thus, each entry required a specific strategy: “How can a world, whatever it is, be represented with just one image?
In some authors the face is inevitable because it is a recognizable mark for the reader, in others it is not, but the universe created by that author is recognizable”.
For Comotto, the hesitation recorded in the book's subtitle can be read in another way: “It also refers to the instability of the creator, the precariousness of the writer.
The profession of the writer in Latin America would not be too stable.
And, by the way, neither is the illustrator's, ”he points out.
Profiles and illustrations welcome that demanded and demanding vitality: “It is a plural, rich and buried cartography;
violence appears all the time and the texts record how difficult Latin America can be,” says Obligado, a political exile from the last Argentine military dictatorship, who has lived in Spain since 1976. “That is why I wrote about the Inca Garcilaso, who is the only one of the chroniclers who speaks the native languages.
I titled it
The invention of melancholy
, because in it there is the idea of coming and going, of losing one's homeland, and that gives it absolute currency.
It was essential to bring a chronicler, because they founded literature, but which one?
To this one that is similar to us, now ”.