The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction

The article discusses the dating of the beginning of the Post-Boom, the factors involved in discussing it, and lists possible representative writers belonging to it. The views of Skármeta, Allende and others are reported and a list of possible Post-Boom characteristics is suggested. It is argued that there are difficulties in the way of relating the Post-Boom easily to Postmodernism, but that the notion of Post-colonialism may prove helpful in future criticism. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/3 The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction Donald L. Shaw University of Virginia Any attempt to discuss the Post-Boom in Spanish American fiction must attempt to deal with four questions: 1. Can we postulate some general characteristics of the PostBoom? In other words, what does the term mean? 2. Can we, as yet, say anything useful about periodization? In other words, when did the Post-Boom begin? 3. Can we name a suitable group of representative Post-Boom novelists? In other words, who are the Post-Boomers? 4. Can we relate the Post-Boom convincingly to Postmodernism? In other words, where does the Post-Boom fit? Questions 1 and 2 can be answered fairly briefly, if somewhat arbitrarily. We can agree with Elzbieta Sklodowska that the Post-Boom began in the mid-1970s (ix). A suitable date might be 1975, that of the publication of Antonio Skarmeta's first novel, Sone que la nieve ardia, which is about the collapse of the left wing Allende government in Chile. Just as the great decade of the Boom was the sixties, so the great decade of the Post-Boom appears to be the eighties, beginning in 1982 with the runaway success of Isabel Allende's La Casa de los Espiritus and including a number of works that indicate the adoption of a PostBoom stance by older Boom authors such as Jose Donoso, who weighed in early with La misteriosa desaparicion de la marquesita de Loria in 1980, the lesser-known but very representative Carlos Martinez Moreno of Uruguay with El color que el infierno me escondiera (1981), Gabriel Garcia Marquez himself, with El amor en los tiempos del colera (1985), and Mario Vargas Llosa with I,Quien mato a Palomino Molero? (1986). Just as a number of Boom novelists were active before 1 Shaw: The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction Published by New Prairie Press 12 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995) the sixties, so a number of Post-Boom novelists were active before 1975. The question is not when they began to publish, but when they began to emerge recognizably as a group whose work illustrated a definite shift of outlook and technique. As to representative writers: Skarmeta who does not readily accept the term Post-Boom, mentions in addition to fellow Chileans like Ariel Dorfman: Jose Agustin, Gustavo Sainz and Jorge Aguilar Mora from Mexico, Luis Rafael Sanchez (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig and Eduardo Gudiiio Kieffer (Argentina), Reinaldo Arenas and Miguel Barnet (Cuba), Oscar Collazos (Colombia) and Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua) ("Al fin" 139). Ricardo Piglia mentions his fellow Argentines Juan Jose Saer and Puig, Skarmeta, Dorfman, Rafael Humberto MorenoDuran (Colombia), Agustin, Sainz and Jose Emilio Pacheco (Mexico) (Viereck 131). We must, of course, add Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina), and most importantly the new group of women novelists including Isabel Allende (Chile), Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina), Elena Poniatowska (Mexico) and sundry others. It is with the Post-Boom that women novelists in Spanish America really come into their own. So far, so good. But the real task is to try to outline some ofthe main characteristics of the Post-Boom as we see them at present.' It helps to recognize that to some extent the Post-Boom is a reaction against the Boom on the part of younger writers who tended to be critical of it on three grounds: I. excessive elitism and reader-unfriendliness 2. excessive cosmopolitanism and desire for universality at the expense of the here and now in Spanish America 3. excessive emphasis on technique, on the supposed mysteriousness of reality, and on the possible inability of language to express it. This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of the characteristics of the Boom in order to try to clarify the degree to which those of the Post-Boom might be different. I and other critics have given our views on this elsewhere.2 Suffice it to say that what characterizes the Boom writers above all is their radical questioning: a) of reality and b) of the writer's task. This is seen as having led to the rejection of oldstyle realism, with its simple assumptions about time and about cause and effect, and its replacement on the one hand by a heightened sense of the mystery and ambiguity of things and on the other by a greater 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 3 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1359