Abstract
González discusses how through the reading of In Search of Klingsor, within the context of a Latin American tradition that has Borges as its main literary model and as a critical rewriting of the Boom’s “total novels,” we can appreciate this novel as a profound reflection on the paradoxical links between science and magic, art and oppression, totalization and totalitarianism, and as an ultimately fruitful experiment at writing a Latin American novel without an explicit national referent. In this sense, In Search of Klingsor’s additional concern with psychology and fiction writing can be seen as an overture and a touchstone of Volpi’s subsequent novels and essays of the early twenty-first century, from Leer la mente (2001) to La tejedora de sombras (2011).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
---Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1962), 36.
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González, A. (2017). Science, Art, and Magic: Totalization and Totalitarianism in Jorge Volpi’s in Search of Klingsor . In: Jaimes, H. (eds) The Mexican Crack Writers. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62716-8_5
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