Killer Books: Writing, Violence, and Ethics in Modern Spanish American Narrative by Aníbal González (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.2, 2004 523 the evolution of creole patriotism into state nationalism in the post-independence era. For example, is it really satisfactory simply to say, as Melendez does in her chapter, that creole elites used the Mercurio Peruano to control women in the same fashion as 'institutions dominated by male authorities such as the government' do in today's Peru (p. 187)? Similarly, what does it mean to speak of the colonial 'national subject' (p. 264)? Surely this phrase requires some unpacking? What precisely was the 'colo? nial nation'? The book's other chapters survey a variety of topics. Cora Lagos suggests that the images in the Codex Mendoza constitute whispered criticisms of colonial oppression, although the evidence provided for this plausible suggestion is slight. (Incidentally, the various contributors disagree on whether the sixteenth-century Codex Mendoza is a 'Pre-Columbiantext' (p. 39) or a colonial one (e.g. p. 54).) Luis Fernandez Restrepo provides an engaging account of the uses made of the figure of Diego de Torres. Anthony Higgins attempts to reinsert the concept of the sublime into our readings of Baroque poetry. Stacey Schlau argues that the Inquisition's prosecution of two Mexican women reveals its 'rigidly stereotypical notions about women' (p. 171), in an interesting chapter marred by a somewhat over-dramatic view of the Catholic Church's actual power and authority. For example, while in theory all inhabitants of New Spain 'lived under the direction of a confessor' (p. 154), a brief examination of the ratio between priests and the general population makes it plain that in practice the situation was quite different.Jose Antonio Mazzotti notes the exclusion of blacks from colonial epic poetry, and Gustavo Verdesio offersa highly critical reading ofthe novels of Abel Posse and Juan Jose Saer, whose work he characterizes as 'historically irresponsible' (p. 243). The volume is enlivened by a series of 'Spanishisms': 'ignore' to mean 'do not know' (pp. 55, 61), 'brakes' to mean 'reins' (199), 'tilled' to mean 'worked' (describ? ing a shirt, p. 21 o), ete. These quirks could presumably have been ironed out by more assiduous copy-editing at the State University of New York Press. Overall, the book makes gratifying reading for historians, as the centrality of historical research to the study of colonial Spanish America emerges as a key theme. It will make less comfortable reading for literary scholars, many of whose works are implicitly (or explicitly) criticized for perpetuating the conditions of colonialism the book's editors find so offensive in the texts they study. Spanish American colonial studies, they proclaim, is ripe for decolonialization. University of Warwick Rebecca Earle Killer Books: Writing, Violence, and Ethics in Modern Spanish American Narrative. By Anibal Gonzalez. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2001. xi+ 176 pp. $40. ISBN 0-292-72839-5. Killer Books explores modern Spanish American reflections on writing and violence. Following Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Anibal Gonzalez argues that writing involves a compromised relation to the Other when the Other is imagined simultaneously as other human beings and the written text itself. Marking modernismoas the firstSpan? ish American literary movement that cannot ignore that compromised relationship, Gonzalez finds there an acute graphophobia, 'an attitude towards the written word that mixes respect, caution, and dread with revulsion and contempt' (p. 3). He claims that graphophobia bears special significance in Spanish America, where cultural ex? pression has been governed since the Conquest by the legitimation of power through writing. The book's two parts, 'Abuses' and 'Admonitions', reflectGonzalez's thesis: modernist and social-realist texts figured writing through multiple forms of abuse 524 Reviews whereas mid-twentieth century texts engaged ethics much more explicitly to warn that no one escapes writing's violence. 'Abuses' examines how Manuel Gutierrez Najera's 'La hija del aire' (1882) (in Cuentos completos y otras narraciones, ed. by E. K. Mapes (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1958)), Manuel Zeno Gandia's La charca (1894) (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil, 1978), and Teresa de la Parra's Ifigenia (1924) (ed. by Sonia Mattalia (Barcelona: Anaya & Mario Muchnik, 1992)) represent social abuse, abuse of writing, and writing as abuse. Najera and Zeno express concern for the Other?for Najera...