Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Assays, Essays, and Other Arts

Abstract

Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Assays, Essays, and Other Arts. Ed. Ardis L. Nelson. New York: Twayne, 1999. 242 pages. Cuban-American Literature of Exile: From Person to Persona. By Isabel Alvarez Borland. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1998. 198 pages. Cuban Writers on and off Island: Contemporary Narrative Fiction. By Pamela Maria Smorkaloff. New York: Twayne, 1999. 100 pages. Although these three books revolve around Cuban and Cuban-American literature since 1959, their premises and objectives could not be more diverse. The book on Cabrera Infante is a monographic study of writer's sizable body of essays. Alvarez Borland's study deals with representative works by exiled Cuban and Cuban-American writers. And Smorkaloff's book focuses on a cross-section of literature from both sides of Florida Straits. Nelson's volume is a compilation of thirteen articles on Cabrera Infante's essays as journalist, cineaste, critic, and commentator. Under these rubrics, each of book's four sections includes several articles written by scholars such as Raymond D. Souza, Suzanne Jill Levine, Ardis L. Nelson, and Kenneth Hall who, for most part, are familiar with writer's rich and versatile oeuvre. While some of texts under scrutiny have been collected in volumes like Holy Smoke (1985), Mea Cuba (1992), and Cine o sardines (1997), others are still scattered in newspapers and journals throughout two continents. The first articles by Souza and William Luis, highlighting Cabrera Infante's early years at Bohemia, Carteles, and Lunes de Revolution, from 1947 to 1961, provide a useful context for texts that follow. They dwell at some length on writer's all-consuming interest in Hollywood movies and in literature around a time when utilitarian view of arts and narrow interpretation of culture espoused by cultural bureaucracy of Cuban Revolution brought about an ideological rift and writer's subsequent exile. This background information is especially useful when reading articles on Mea Cuba by Nedda G. de Anhalt and co-writers Justo C. Ulloa and Leonor A. Ulloa, which underscore political circumstances that inspired many of writer's essays and personal and professional alliances. Additional articles consider, among other topics, Cabrera Infante's irreverent obituaries or mock encomia of film personalities (by Kenneth Hall), his and Manuel Puig's shared interest in popular culture (by Levine), his film scripts (by Souza), his musings on cigars (by Regina Janes), his readings of English literature in translation (by way of an interview with Levine), his fascination with Borges (by Carlos Cuadra), and his commonalities with Bunuel (by Nelson). In addition to critical essays, a foreword by Alfred MacAdam, an introduction by Nelson, a chronology covering a seventy-year period, and a lengthy, selected bibliography of writer's essays offer a well-rounded view of Cabrera Infante's non-fiction work. Though arranging essays in chronological rather than alphabetical order by title would have facilitated task of researchers, mere gathering of a significant number of Cabrera Infante's essays in bibliography for an English audience, combined with their incipient critical assessment, should encourage scholars to approach his fiction and non-fiction work holistically. Future studies should be able to determine whether all these threads-novels, short stories, journalistic work, political and non-political essays, and film scripts-can be interwoven into a tapestry, one that blends stylistic brilliance and transcendental meaning. Not surprisingly, Cabrera Infante is one of authors that Isabel Alvarez Borland analyzes in her study of fiction by Cuban exile writers and Cuban American writers. In this book, critic chooses to emphasize themes of exile and displacement. She explores writers' relation to revolutionary events that gave rise to Cuban diaspora since 1959, evaluating tension between the historical person of writer and his or her created persona (x). …