Boom, Yes; 'New' Novel, No: Further Reflections on the Optical Illusions of the 1960s in Latin America

Abstract

No cultural phenomenon of the 1960s did more than the apparent explosion of creativity in the Spanish American novel to bring Latin America to international attention. It is no exaggeration to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fail coincided with the rise and fail of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971. At a moment when such creativity was in short supply internationally, when the French nouveau roman was antagonizing ordinary readers and academics everywhere and critics repeatedly asked them? selves whether the novel, in the age of the mass media, was now moribund, a succession of Latin American writers?above all, Cortazar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez?rose to international prominence, others from an earlier generation, like Borges and Carpentier, consolidated their status, and Asturias became the first Latin American novelist to win the Nobel Prize, in 1967. At the same time Vallejo and Neruda were increasingly recognized, albeit belatedly, as two of the world's great poets of the twentieth century. Moreover, although the rhythm of Brazilian cultural development has always been different to that of the larger Spanish American countries, the movement for the first time incorporated Brazil, retrospectively appropriating such works as Joao Guimaraes Rosas' classic Grande sertao, veredas (1956). It also inspired new departures in peninsular Spanish novelists like Juan Goytisolo (see especially Reivindicacion del conde don Julidn, 1970), who in the mid-1960s quickly became an honorary member of what was by then known as the 'boom', a phenomenon through which Spanish America again transformed Spanish literature?in this case its fiction?as Dario's Modernist movement had trans? formed its poetry at the turn of the century. Goytisolo was a particularly significant adherent, firstly because he was a Catalan, and Barcelona-based editorials profited more from the boom than any of the Latin American publishing houses; and secondly because, like most of the new Latin American novelists themselves, he was an exile from his native country and a long-term resident in Paris.1