There was a time, at the end of the 80s of the last century, when Spanish literature and the publishing industry felt uneasy due to the overwhelming presence of the boom in Latin American literature.
And it was no big deal: that boom was organized around four names, basically, that are now history and legend: Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, each of them with their own merits.
Other proper names could be added to this nomenclature, but on that basis the church of literature built its legendary temple.
A much larger and more diverse army, because it includes the names of women and men from all over Latin America, is now making its way, overcoming that open Spanish hostility (from Spain) to the brave avalanche that the imperious presence of those four novelists who remain in history.
One of them, Mario Vargas Llosa, continues to publish, he has just given the print his tribute to Peruvian music (I dedicate my silence to him, Alfaguara), with which, on the other hand, he has said goodbye to the narrative (but not to writing: he is preparing a book about Jean Paul Sartre, his first teacher).
The boom, that boom, baptized in Los Nuestros by the legendary Luis Harss, happy alive, is history.
But its seed has germinated everywhere, and in all styles and sexes, and now that phenomenon both longed for and deplored (because it covered like a mantle the possible radiance of later literature) has a multitudinous substitute, the literature of a generation that was born when that boom was already part of history.
Little by little, but as if going boom!
Of the numerous names, it does not deny the ancestor, far from it, but it establishes its realism in the major nomenclature of literature in the Spanish language.
To celebrate the fact, and to explain the reasons why this new boom is already a fact, I sat down with Pilar Reyes, literary director of Penguin Random House, head of the Alfaguara, Lumen, Reservoir, Random House, Debate, Taurus and Salamander.
A spectrum that adds perspective to her editorial experience, since she was born (like her) in Colombia, when she directed the first of the aforementioned editorials.
Alfaguara, that publishing house of its origin, is turning sixty years old, it has just awarded the Spanish Sergio del Molino its annual prize, and at this moment it is among the publishers that most widely embrace the nomenclature of this boom of the numerous names that have come to continue that four-star glow led by the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude... So, I told Pilar Reyes, a new boom is dawning and her publishing house, among many others, has something to do with it...
“But it's not because of us,” says Pilar Reyes.
“We editors are interpreters of reality, more than generators of it… There is, above all, a boom in literature written by women, many of them Latin American, although there are very notable Spanish names… It has to do with the times, with the prominence of women in many areas… I don't know if women are writing more.
What I do believe is that they are daring to show themselves more, and the editorial dynamic picks them up... They are sitting at the table of literature with capital letters.
It is a phenomenon that we have collected in the different labels in which we work, and I, personally, am very happy to be able to experience this moment of literature in Spanish.”
And what is it about Latin America that makes it a sword of this quality?
“
Mario Vargas Llosa says, and I agree with him, that literary creation is born from discomfort with reality... And I think that something that is terrible for life, but fantastic for literature, is that Latin America continues to live through turbulent times and that It produces a lot of force in terms of literary interpretation... Latin American literature has always been very close to life.
Now you see it in the literature, for example, of Mariana Enríquez, who interprets a genre universe but at the same time is making a very strong reading of the reality of her country... Those very turbulent realities of Latin America are producing literary material tremendous".
That boom, the classic one, was also born as a rebellion against the governments of the countries, and also against the complacency of the masters who preceded them... That rebellion continues now... "
Yes, the boom was a rebellion against a way of counting, a very strong interpretation of the present, against dictatorships, even the dictator's novels were invented, in short they were writing about what was happening in their countries... This phenomenon today would perhaps not be the same if those authors had not done those works to interpret the reality of those people... In a certain way, what we are witnessing now is a conversation with the father more than a death of the father... It is a conversation that dialogues with reality, with the influences of other literatures, and that is also due to the boom, whose authors each founded an idea of a country.
And by doing this they transcended their own countries
.”
An angel (or many angels) has come to see this generation of authors, and editors, in the form of great literary events, such as the FIL, Guadalajara International Book Fair (Mexico), and other events of its kind, like the Hay Festival, which recently jumped from Wales to different Latin American capitals... The FIL, which has been bringing together literature from all over in the land of Juan Rulfo for more than thirty years,
“became a meeting place that previously only passed through Spain , in the field of Latin American literary meetings.
It was a showcase, and it still is, of the literary creation that has made this boom we are talking about possible.”
“And in all these events
,” says Pilar Reyes,
“there is none in which the tables where literature is discussed do not have the presence of women, not to talk only about creative books but about what has to do with economics or political thought… I believe that women have also sat, for example, at the table of science.”
In reality, he says,
“we are sitting at the conversation table in all areas.
In the literary aspect, it is clear that, if the women do not sit down, that is not a conversation, although it would not be healthy to interpret that women, or men, have to sit down to fulfill a number…”
Guadalajara, like Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Arequipa, Querétaro..., so many places, including Spain, are
“a port of ideas that welcomes literary, political, journalistic, and social discussion that has in women the ideal sphere of discussion that once was impossible
".
Literature has broken the cultural dynamic, literary festivals emerge everywhere, irradiated by those we just mentioned.
And the boom, this boom of the numerous proper names that Pilar Reyes talks about, is now fulfilled, as the Mexican Gabriel Zaid (the author of Too Many Books) predicted and corroborated by one of the great Anglo-Saxon publishers (Peter Mayer, former president of Penguin , former advisor to Alfaguara), with the most imperious dictate of those that the industry, the profession, and the vocation of reading have ever invented: “You have to put the book in people's conversations.”
I asked the director of Alfaguara, the publishing house that is now turning 60, if this name, the boom of numerous names, seems appropriate for this time.
She didn't say no.
On the contrary, her happy smile seemed to say yes.
So she ended by saying: “I think these are good times for the book.”