Consuming Aesthetics: Seix Barral and Jose Donoso in the Field of Latin American Literary Production

Abstract

In spite of the disagreements on how to interpret and contextualize the publishing accomplishments of the "Boom" writers, almost everyone would acknowledge the need to ask how the institutions of literature--editors, literary agents, scholars, readers, publishing houses, authors, etc.--interacted in the production of contemporary Latin American narrative. 1 This essay evaluates the field of cultural production of the "Boom" through the interaction of Latin American writers (Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Mauricio Wácquez, Jorge Edwards, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, among others) with the Barcelona intelligentsia of the 1960s and 1970s (writers like [End Page 323] Juan and Luis Goytisolo, Juan Marsé, Esther Tusquets, Juan Benet; and editors such as Carlos Barral and José María Castellet), and looks at how this interaction benefited the prominent Catalan publishing industry as well as the diffusion of Latin American narrative internationally. In particular, this essay focuses on Seix Barral's editorial policies favoring the distribution of the literary works of many Latin American writers in the 1960s and 1970s. In this sense, the case of José Donoso (1924-1996) is particularly relevant to evaluate the interaction among "Boom" writers and the Barcelona intelligentsia since he was a member of this group whose production was mainly published by Seix Barral. 2 Despite his role as agent/reporter/writer of the "Boom" Donoso has disregarded the Latin American publishing success as "anecdotal," and has insisted that "the Spanish American novel began to speak an international language" in a clear departure from "the regional taste and aesthetic values" (9-10) that dominated the novel before 1960.