Deep Literature and Dirty Realism: Rupture and Continuity in the Canon

Abstract

The 1960s and 1970s saw Latin America come to the forefront of international attention. From the triumphal spirit of the Cuban Revolution and its influence on the rest of the region to the oppression and repressive violence of numerous military dictatorships, literature and editorial production were nourished by the impulse of this historical moment. As a result of increased attention, the literary production of this time, which came to be known as the Boom, had the opportunity to access European publishing houses and gain a significantly bigger market. The Boom also signified a reformulation of the Latin American literary canon. Thus, the Boom became a point of departure as two Mexican literary groups theorized a revision of the canon thirty years later. The Crack Manifesto and MoHo, the manifesto of dirty realist writers, introduce two distinct aesthetics that express tension yet harmony with the established canon in their own way. Given that both movements propose an “end” of Latin American literature, it is essential to explore both their manifestos as well as representative works—Jorge Volpi’s El temperamento melancólico (The Melancholic Temperament, 1996) for the Crack writers and Guillermo Fadanelli’s Lodo (Mud, 2002) for MoHo—in order to better understand the inheritance these authors receive from the Boom and the revision they attempt to make of the canon.