Beyond Bolaño
Subtitle: the global Latin American novel
By: Héctor Hoyos
Series: Literature now
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 283
ISBN-13: 9780231168427; 9780231538664
Subjects: Latin American fiction; History and criticism; Globalization in literature
Description: Through a comparative analysis of the novels of Roberto Bolaño and the fictional work of César Aira, Mario Bellatin, Diamela Eltit, Chico Buarque, Alberto Fuguet, and Fernando Vallejo, among other leading authors, Héctor Hoyos defines and explores new trends in how we read and write in a globalized era. Calling attention to fresh innovations in form, voice, perspective, and representation, he also affirms the leading role played by Latin American authors in reshaping world literature. Focusing on post-1989 Latin American novels and their representation of globalization, Hoyos considers the narrative techniques and aesthetic choices Latin American authors make to assimilate the conflicting forces at work in our increasingly interconnected world. Challenging the assumption that globalization leads to cultural homogenization, he identifies the rich textual strategies that estrange and re-mediate power relations both within literary canons and across global cultural hegemonies. Hoyos shines a light on the unique, avant-garde phenomena that animate these works, such as the modeling of literary circuits after the dynamics of the art world, the imagining of counterfactual "Nazi" histories, the exposure of the limits of escapist narratives, and the forumulation of textual forms that resist worldwide literary consumerism. These experiments help reconfigure received ideas about global culture and advance new, creative articulations of world consciousness. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-271) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Globalization as form; title: Nazi tales from the Americas at the turn of the twenty-first century; title: The cosmopolitics of South-South escapism; title: All the world's a supermarket (and all the men and women merely shoppers); title: Iconocracy and political theology of narconovelas; title: On Duchamp and Beuys as Latin American writers; title: Conclusion: The promise of multipolarism.