The Reader as Translator: Rewriting the Past in Contemporary Latin American Fiction

Abstract

One of the largest problems facing contemporary Latin American writers is the Boom, or rather, readers’ demand for a particular version of it. The international and US markets, in particular, often have seemed to expect a “Boom jr.,” as Rodrigo Fresân once called it (55). ¹ To make matters worse, the perceived “Boom jr.” often takes the form of a cheapened magical realism that reduces and essentializes the whole, diverse Latin American region into a uniform, colorful rural and political entity, “where everyone wears a sombrero and lives in the trees,” as Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez wryly noted in the introduction to their anthology, McOndo (14). The writers associated with McOndo have been careful to note that their work does not reject the Boom and their literary past, though they also suggest that critics have argued as much. Ignacio Padilla states: “[Some] believe we decided to free ourselves from the heavy shadow of our illustrious forefathers of the Boom, but we’re not that foolish” (137). Instead, he and his fellow writers have been careful to clarify that they reject a market demand for the Boom and its inferior disciples, what Pascale Casanova called a “vogue for exoticism” in The World Republic of Letters her groundbreaking examination of international literary culture (121). ²