Some time ago I was collaborating with some researchers at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. My four weeks in that city represented the best “working vacation” I ever had. I really got involved in Spanish culture. Together with the cook at a coffee shop near my pension (boardinghouse), for example, I even left my mark on their culture—a grilled cheese and egg sandwich with a hole in the top where the yolk can wink at you.
Garcia Marquez created a fictional place called Macondo which provided the setting for novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien An~os de Soledad) and Love in the Time of the Cholera (Amor en los Tiempos de la Colera). His stories spawned a new current in 20th century literature called magical realism, in other words, how ordinary day-to-day events become cloaked with an aura of magic.
We now have our own Macondo. A blustering old ex-VP, still practicing Machiavelli’s magical art of fascist repetitive doublespeak, is out challenging a sitting President little more than 100 days into his term, an extraordinary event in American politics which doesn’t bode well for eliminating the partisan rancor that has split this country into two camps in verbal warfare. I am referring to Mr. Cheney versus Mr. Obama, of course.
A lo largo de la historia compleja y turbulenta del America Latina el hombre comun ha mantenido cierto aprecio para el dictador pomposo y narcissista. Excluyendo los muchos del siglo diecenueve, los siglos veinte y veintiuno han tenido buenos ejemplos: Somosa, Castro, Rojas-Pinilla, Pinochet, Noriega, Chavez y Peron, para nombrar algunos. Garcia Marquez en su novela El Otono del Patriarca nos presenta con un dictador quien agrupa todas las malas calidades de estos personajes y otros. Aunque el sujeto de la novela sea la soledad del General, mientras que lei el libro me sientia que el autor tambien tenga aprecio para el viejo dictador y lo compartia, pero al fin el desgusto me gano. Asi el autor me ayuda entender el odio sentido contra tales figuras, pero no su aprecio.
All during the complex and turbulent history of Latin America the common man has maintained a certain admiration for the pompous and narcissistic dictator. Excluding the many from the 19th century, the 20th and 21st centuries have had some good examples: Somosa, Castro, Rojas-Pinilla, Pinochet, Noriega, Chavez and Peron, to name a few. Garcia Marquez in his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch presents us with a dictator who brings together all the bad qualities of these and others. Although the subject of the novel is the loneliness of the General, while I read the book I feel that the author also admires the old dictator and I joined in the admiration, but at the end disgust overtakes me. Thus the author helps me understand the hate felt for these figures, but not the admiration.
La Sombra del Viento por Carlos Ruiz Zafo’n crea ma’s y ma’s intere’s en el mundo de la literatura hispanica. Toma lugar en Barcelona al comienzo de la Guerra Civil. Es una mezcla de intriga, suspense, amor, y el rito de pasaje de la juventud a la vejez. No es exactamente literatura de America Latina, pero lo recomiendo como una novela muy interesante que demuestra la gran capacidad e inteligencia de este autor espan~ol.
Mis tres libros tienen latinos como caracteres principales. En esta seccion de mi blog me gustari’a charlar sobre libros latinos que lei’ y me gustan. Considerando que vivi’a en Colombia por muchos an~os (Una Cancion para Sancho relatara’ aquellos tiempos), mantengo buenos sentimientos para la cultura latina y todavia hablo espan~ol, aunque sea como gringo. Como consecuencia, y ariesga’ndome a mayor humiliacio’n, an~adire’ aqui de vez en cuando versiones en ingle’s y espan~ol, algunas revistas corticas y commentarios.
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