SOURCE: "From Pedro Pdramo to Rayuela (1956-1962)," in The Spanish American Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey, University of Texas Press, 1975, pp. 211-48.

[Brushwood is an American writer and educator, and the author of several book-length studies and articles on Latin American literature. In the following excerpt, he discusses some major Latin American novels published between 1956 and 1962.]

Although the terms "new Latin American novel" and "the boom" sometimes appear synonymous, they really indicate two different aspects of a single phenomenon—the maturity of fiction in Latin America. Specifically with reference to the Spanish-speaking countries, it is convenient to think of the new novel as dating from the late 1940s, the years of the reaffirmation of fiction. The boom, on the other hand, best describes the unprecedented international interest enjoyed by Spanish American novelists in the 1960s, and the spectacular increase in the number of high-quality novels they produced. Although nobody thought of it as a boom until several years later, the change is readily apparent in the years following Pedro Pdramo. The foundations had been laid: Spanish American novelists were technically sophisticated and sure that the novel was a valid artistic expression. The overwhelming number of good novels published in the period 1956-1962 could easily justify division into several chapters. Nevertheless, they belong in a single showcase of a remarkable period—one in which two generations are notably productive, in which there is wide variation in techniques and themes, and a period when Spanish American authors write with more confidence in their art than at any earlier time.

In order to provide an organization for the panorama, the present study will deal first with some of the younger novelists most closely associated with the boom. Then a review of the works published in 1956-1962 by established writers will show the relationship of the boom to the new novel. After that, some general thematic classifications of novels by other young writers will illustrate the diversity of fiction during these years. Some novels deal with specific, national scenes; within this classification are some works based on current politics while others are more concerned with the cultural heritage of the nation or region. Another large classification is a far more intimate kind of novel, more overtly concerned for people than for places or politics; within this group are some that are anguished to the point of nihilism while others are more objective studies of human relationships. Such classifications, of course, are oversimplifications of what the novels are. All classifications of this kind should be taken as organizational devices, never as critical opinions.

If someone were to make a survey, asking which Spanish American novelists are the best representatives of the boom, the chances are that the most frequently mentioned names would be Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa (mentioned here in alphabetical order). In addition to their obvious excellence as writers, they share several other characteristics associated with the boom. They belong to an international literary set, travel extensively, spend much time in residence abroad (in some cases even most of the time), but find inspiration in their cultural heritage. To some extent they consider themselves handicapped by the unsympathetic cultural milieu of their native countries. There are practical reasons for this attitude; however, the reaction is occasionally similar to the poete maudit syndrome. Awareness of the creative act of making fiction causes the boom novelists to comment willingly (and sometimes eagerly) on the nature of fiction. Together they make an impressive declaration, in the forum of world literature, of the excellence of Spanish American letters; and it may be even more important that they have stimulated communication among writers of the Spanish American countries—a condition that has never been as productive as during the 1960s. One undesirable effect of the boom is that a few writers in the spotlight tend to be lionized while many good writers are ignored. Such an effect is by no means the intention of the best-known writers, and, although their fame may shine brighter than the reputations of many worthy colleagues, it is equally true that they have attracted attention to a body of literature that badly needed publicity. The boom is not four novelists, or even six or seven. A large number of writers participate in the activities, attitudes, and rewards of the boom. Indeed, the rewards have benefited many novelists who probably would not even consider themselves part of the boom.

Three of the four big names appear as novelists during the 1956-1962 period. The fourth, Vargas Llosa, published an important volume of short stories, Los jefes, during this period, but his first novel, La ciudad y los perros, did not appear until 1963, the year of Cortázar's Rayuela. Cortázar himself published Los premios in 1960, a good novel that has been eclipsed by the fame of Rayuela, Garcia Marquez published two works, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961) and La mala hora (1962), that resemble his La hojarasca in two ways: they are generically somewhere between a short story and a novel, and are creations preliminary to the main event that turned into Cien ahios de soledad in 1967. The most active of the four was Carlos Fuentes, who established himself as a major writer through the excellence and variety of four works in a time span of five years: La región más transparente (1958), Las buenas conciencias (1960), La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), and Aura (1962).

Fuentes's first novel is complicated in structure, long, often discursive, but also highly entertaining. It is a panorama of life in modern Mexico City and, at the same time, an analysis of what it means to be Mexican, including what the Revolution has to do with that condition. There is hardly a reader who does not find the book exciting, yet almost everyone feels compelled to point out some imperfection. The objection may be to the author's unabashed and freely confessed adaptation of the styles of other novelists, most notably of John Dos Passos. Or some may object to the definition of Mexicanism, on the grounds that national cultural identity is out of style. Someone else may object to the melodramatic prose poems that open and close the novel. More than a few have felt the novel attempts too many things. All these objections, and more, have some degree of validity. What it amounts to is that we may call Carlos Fuentes a pretentious novelist, without really speaking ill of his work. He is pretentious in the sense that he does not hesitate to undertake whatever strikes his creative fancy. It might be more accurate to say he is a flamboyant novelist. Whatever the word, in many respects his fiction comes close to being excessive, and it spills over at different places depending on where an individual reader's tolerance level is lowest.

In La region mas transparente, Fuentes segments the narrative to achieve simultaneity in place-time relationships. By means of references that relate one segment to another, we know that two events separated in space are happening at the same time. The focal point at the beginning of the novel is a party attended by Mexico City's cocktail crowd. The basic scene is more than a view of life in a particular city; it is a revelation of some of the most superficial aspects of western culture. The overall picture, however, includes all social classes in the city, with economic and moral corollaries.

The central character in the novel's basic structure is an old revolutionary named Federico Robles. He is a financial tycoon, a self-made man whose power grew from the Revolution. As we know him in the novel, however, his position among the power elite has no real meaning since it serves only to feed itself. Robles has to find special relationships to maintain his hold on reality. His story is one of financial ruin and possible self-discovery. If this story were the central incident of the novel, it would be a far more compact work than it is in fact. The importance of Robles—and of the Robles story—is to provide a unifying factor that relates many lives and problems so that they form a mosaic of life in Mexico City; it is in this sense that Robles is the central character. Not through him, but in relation to him, we appreciate the reality of post-Revolutionary Mexico—a society changed in many ways from the years preceding, but one that is certainly not revolutionary in any common understanding of the term.

In spite of the very careful characterization of Federico Robles and the use of helpful narrative devices in the manner of Dos Passos, the basic narrative structure of La región más transparente apparently does not serve to create the complex of feelings and ideas desired by the author. Therefore, he adds two important characters, Manuel Zamacona and Ixca Cienfuegos, who are laced into the narrative structure without being essential factors. They are interesting and important to what Fuentes apparently wishes to say, but the Robles story could stand without them. Zamacona is an intellectual poet who thrives on discussions of the meaning of being Mexican. His discourses—and the dialogues in which he participates—are more like essays than fiction. Cienfuegos is harder to define. He is a representation of the Indian influence in Mexican life. Part man and part myth, he suffers some human limitations, but goes beyond these limitations in his ability to be everywhere, inexplicably yet undeniably. We can never know exactly who he is, and this quality is an important element in his symbolic value; that is, the indigenous factor in Mexican culture is generally recognized but not well defined. Cienfuegos, even more than Zamacona, seems to exist in order to make a statement the author considered essential but could not express in any other way.

Fuentes pursues many of the same ideas and attitudes in La muerte de Artemio Cruz, his best novel. His technical virtuosity is as apparent as in La región más transparente, but is more controlled in a novel whose structure is essential to its meaning. The protagonist, Artemio Cruz, is similar in many ways to Federico Robles. The novel opens at a time shortly before his death and creates a multi-faceted biography of the man, using narrative voices in first, second, and third persons. The first-person narrative is absolute present—Artemio Cruz taking account of his actual situation. The second-person voice (the familiar "you" in Spanish) moves back into the past and, from that point, looks toward the future. This future is, of course, already past in terms of the novel's basic present time. The use of a second-person narrative voice, though fairly common in very recent fiction, still tends to be a distracting technique that requires an act of generous acceptance by the reader. The effect it creates seems to depend not only on the author's intent, but also on the individual reader's reaction to the surprise. Some are put off, for example, by the imperative tone of the "you" sections of La muerte de Artemio Cruz. The fact is that several readings are possible. One reasonable and satisfying understanding of this narrative perspective is that Artemio Cruz is beside himself, observing his actions as a normally integrated personality. In addition to this placement of the narrator, the "you" passages exploit the time factor as a means of characterizing the protagonist. This narrative voice does not look back; the view is toward the future. This impulse is one of the major factors in the character of Artemio Cruz. It explains some of his actions, illuminates the tragedy of the moment of his death, and amounts to a moral commentary.

The third-person voice belongs to an omniscient narrator who recounts past incidents in the life of Cruz. Each episode is specifically placed in time. They are important moments rather than a full narration, and their placement is not in chronological order, but in a sequence that produces meaningful associations. Fuentes alternates the three narrative voices to create a fascinating character whose life represents modern Mexico—not as a symbol, but as a real person. The connotations of the characterization of Artemio Cruz are practically limitless. In very general terms, it is probably accurate to say that power is the protagonist's goal, the only thing he really values. He has very little sense of belonging—to another person, to a place, or to a culture. What little inclination he has in this direction falls victim to his will to be powerful. This attitude—still speaking in very general terms—is one way of describing Fuentes's sensitivity to the failure of the Revolution. These novels were published during a period that saw a strike of railroad workers summarily broken by the army in 1959 and the imprisonment of David Alfaro Siqueiros, the leftist painter, for "social dissolution," in 1960. It is not necessary to take sides on these specific issues to understand how they might symbolize the exercise of power at the expense of social justice that is part of the revolutionary ideal.

Fuentes is so skillful a technician that we can easily identify certain narrative procedures as the dynamic factors of his novels—the source of the change that takes place within the work, or the agent that transforms anecdote into art. These observations, however, can still leave much unsaid, because they do not necessarily indicate how interesting his novels are. It is a sad fact that, in recent fiction, some of the most spectacular narrative techniques grace some painfully dull novels. Not so in the works of Fuentes—at least not in those of the years 1956-1962. What analysis of technique cannot possibly communicate is the sheer joy of a mother-daughter dialogue on the correct pronunciation of Joan Crawford's last name, the insidious presence of old age in an episode about sugar-daddy Artemio in Acapulco with his luscious young dolly, or the combination of fun and cruelty among some lower-class fans at a bullfight. The author's sensitivity to reader interest makes him as competent a novelist on the small canvas as he is in the panoramic, murallike works.

A fine example of this small-canvas writing is Fuentes's second novel, Las buenas conciencias (1960). Rather than Mexico City, the scene is Guanajuato, a provincial town. Jaime Ceballos, a minor character in La región más transparente, is the protagonist. The book deals with well-meaning people who are inhibited by custom and tradition to the point of being unwittingly frustrated. Las buenas conciencias is in many ways the opposite of La región más transparente, almost as if Fuentes intended to show his critics how he could organize a novel economically and use traditional techniques effectively. Las buenas conciencias was originally intended to be the first of a series, later abandoned and, unfortunately, almost forgotten. It is an interesting link between the heroically proportioned novels and the more intimate works of writers like Sergio Galindo, Pedro Orgambide, and Haroldo Conti.

Aura (1962) is a novella that reveals another important aspect of Fuentes as a novelist—his love for the mysterious. In this respect, Aura recalls a number of his short stories and also the elusive Ixca Cienfuegos in La región más transparente. In the novella, a young scholar-narrator is employed by an elderly woman whose life reaches incredibly far back into history. However, she is also a young woman—the product of her own will. It is not likely to surprise many readers that the narrator falls in love with Aura (the young version) and finally discovers he has been duped. Here indeed is the novel's great fault: not many readers will be surprised by any of it. As a mystery story, it fails because the author gives away his secret. Attempts to find other meanings in the story include a social-protest reading which sees the old woman as a representation of the superannuated impediments to social progress in Mexico, the ash that covers the fire and refuses to move. A more interesting aspect of the double personality is the question it raises concerning identity, and the second-person narrative tends to incorporate the reader into the identity problem, unless he rejects this narrative technique and removes himself from participation. Fuentes loves the identity game and plays it well, albeit too frequently, in his later work. This particular interest, however, shows Fuentes's relationship to still another group of recent novelists: those who play tricks with reality, almost always producing a problem of identity.

The two short novels of Garcia Marquez continue the story of Macondo that begins in La hojarasca and culminates in Cien afios de soledad. The epic quality of this body of fiction derives from a profound sense of history that mythologizes a culture, rather than from a panoramic vision like that of Fuentes. The retired colonel of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba is a combination of pathos and dignity. The story concentrates on him, but it suggests much more than it actually says. The man is a victim of dehumanized bureaucracy, for example; yet he continues to hope while trying to hide from others the fact that he is hopeful. This set of circumstances suggests—but only suggests—a detailed biography of the protagonist. La mala hora is a distillation of the fear and distrust that are essential parts of la violencia in Colombia. Someone puts up placards around the town undermining the security of the people who live there. What the placards actually say is not in itself of such devastating import. Much of it is equivalent to common gossip. However, two factors give them a special importance: the message is written, and no one knows who is posting them. The possibility of civil war turns to probability.

Except for a few devices like the multiple narrative voice in La hojarasca, Garcia Marquez's narrative techniques tend to be rather conservative. His storyteller's imagination is the major creative tool. He has not the slightest doubt about his right to invent. Much of the unreality of his work, most of the feeling of myth, and a large portion of the humor come from this uninhibited invention. Often he deals with the extraordinary as if it were entirely commonplace. The colonel keeps his gamecock tied to the foot of his bed, and he does it as matter-of-factly as he pours a cup of coffee. Some of the inventions are preposterous. The newly arrived doctor in La hojarasca asks for grass for dinner, and we never find any explanation or exploitation of this unusual appetite. Wherever the inventions are used (and even where withheld information is itself a form of exaggeration), they create a special atmosphere—a new reality that springs from one that is more familiar.

Lospremios (1960) is Julio Cortázar's major step toward Rayuela (1963), though he had written many short stories. This first novel is a playful yet serious consideration of a set of human destinies. The basic situation of the story is highly artificial—a diverse collection of porte^* os (people from Buenos Aires) are on a sea voyage because each has won the trip in a lottery. They are interesting as types recognizable in porte^* o society. Luis Harss points out that this fact is of secondary interest to the author. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to overlook this factor of identity in a novel that deals with the problem of identity. In any work of this kind, there is a counter-pointing of two qualities: one that emanates from the author's experience of belonging and another that comes from his experience of creating. They are not categorically separated, of course, but they certainly are recognizable as they function side by side. Carlos Fuentes, for example, might say he is only secondarily interested in the definition of the Mexican character, that he is really seeking the human reality beyond that definition. On the other hand, he might say exactly the opposite, and neither statement would change what he has written. So also with Cortfazar. Lospremios can be enjoyed as a gallery of types. Moving to an entirely different level, we experience the inconclusive self-identification of people who do not understand their destinies. As the novel develops, a sense of impenetrable mystery grows. The stern of the ship is forbidden to the passengers. Something strange—probably malevolent—is going on. We never find out what it is.

This withheld information is a major use of a technique that Garcia Marquez uses in a minor way. In Lospremios, it creates an atmosphere that should be enough of a message in itself. Cortázar, however, like Fuentes in La region más transparente, apparently thinks the basic structure of his novel does not say enough, so he inserts a character, Persio, who functions as an invented narrator. In expository passages that bear a limited resemblance to interior monologue (and printed in italics), Persio sees the group as a whole. The unifying effect is aesthetically desirable; but Persio is a presumptuous intruder, a nonentity who does not correspond to author, character, or reader, and his metaphysical wanderings are a bore. The diversity of the passengers is the interesting factor, whatever the level of appreciation. Among the several possibilities, one rather far-fetched one has a certain insistent appeal: that these porte^* o types, taken collectively, may represent the world view of a particular culture in their restricted understanding of their own reality, with a consequent accumulation of doubts and forebodings.

Whatever the shortcomings of particular works by these three writers who became big names in the boom, there is no doubt they are excellent novelists. It is important to notice, however (and it may be surprising to casual readers of Spanish American fiction), that they are not very notable for their technical innovation. In all fairness, the novelists themselves have never made that claim; critics and scholars have tended to emphasize their technical adventures because of a universal tendency to ignore their direct predecessors in Spanish America while eulogizing some of the least imaginative novels the region has produced. Carlos Fuentes freely admits his indebtedness to non-Hispanic novelists, and particularly to some in the United States. What he does not point out is that practically all the narrative techniques he learned reading North American novels had been used also in Spanish American fiction, by authors frequently not well known and, in many cases, not as gifted as Fuentes or the major writers who influenced him.

A number of the established writers who were productive during the period 1956-1962 belong to that delayed generation that tried its wings in the vanguardism of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and then went through a quiet period before participating in the reaffirmation of fiction in the late 1940s. Some established writers show little or no change from their earlier works; others are clearly different. Some participate in the boom, though not as intensely as the newer writers.

The works of Miguel Angel Asturias during this period belong to the negative side of his ledger. Protest dominates them—perfectly justifiable protest against the United States' imperialism, economic and political. Justifiable protest, however, does not necessarily make art; in some instances, Asturias's anxiety makes his work ridiculous. Agustin Yaiiez continues to produce the portrait of Mexico begun in Alfilo del agua. He never again achieves that excellence, but he comes very close in Las tierras flacas (1962). This is a novel of the high country—the land is poor and the people are persistently enduring. One of the major techniques used to portray these people is the proverb, the folk saying, not simply placed in dialogue, but used as the basis of stream-of-consciousness narration or as interior monologue. These sayings create a feeling of the sparseness of the land. The most basic representative of a technological age, a sewing machine, serves to illuminate the frustrations and faith of the people.

In a very carefully balanced narrative structure, the author sets this primitive technology against a more complicated one, and also the general concept of technological progress against the primitive endurance of the people.

Both Yafiez and Eduardo Mallea wrote novels on the creative act: Yaiiez in La creación (1949) and Mallea in Simbad (1957). La creación is about a musician—a very difficult way to deal with creativity when the author is confined to words. The novel contains interesting suggestions about the process of making an artistic work, but there is no satisfactory communication of the feeling of the process itself. The novel is more interesting for its picture of the artistic world in post-Revolutionary Mexico. Mallea wisely creates a protagonist who is a writer. Simbad is an enormous book, a kind of stocktaking of the writer's relationship to the world. In this respect, it is reminiscent of La bahia del silencio—in principle, not in detail. Mallea's protagonist, Fernando Fe, imagines a work in which Simbad will end his quest, discovering his dream world. Fernando's imagined world overlaps with his real world, and this circumstance is the means of highlighting the nature of creativity. The author uses one of his favorite narrative devices: the double plot line. In this case the two are clearly related to each other, but create entirely different impressions of the duration of time. The five sections of the novel tell the life story of Fernando Fe; however, each of the sections has a prelude that deals with the protagonist's action during a short but crucial period of his life. Here, as in earlier novels, Mallea narrates defining. It is possible that the habits and customs of the characters (mostly intellectual bourgeoisie) may have some intrinsic interest, but the principal communication of the book is the never-ending quest of man as artist and as ordinary human.

Both Alejo Carpentier and Juan Carlos Onetti produced their best novels between 1956 and 1962. Carpentier's El acoso (1957) is a short novel generally recognized as a technical tour de force. The plot, basically a manhunt, develops in time and tension that accord with a performance of Beethoven's Third Symphony. The tension created by this structural requirement harmonizes with the emotional tension of the plot. The characters are recognizable Havana types, but that fact, as in Cortázar's Los premios, is secondary unless the reader is looking specifically for that characteristic.

El acoso is a virtuoso performance, but El siglo de las luces (1962) is the best of Carpentier's major works. He finds the basis of his magic in history, as in El reino de este mundo. The time is the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. The protagonist is an obscure figure in French history, Victor Hugues. His exploits bring him into contact with an aristocratic family in colonial Havana. The story deals with the family and also with the partially separate line of Hugues's adventures. Cuba, the whole Caribbean area, France, and Spain are brought together in the story, so the concept of cultural heritage develops jointly with the idea of revolution. All this is another part of the New World experience. Carpentier's way of dealing with history, here as elsewhere, gives it a magical quality. Hugues is the man of action, ideas put in motion. The principle of revolution, along with its relationship to ambition and success, appears in a historical frame, but the transfer to contemporary implications is easy enough. Undoubtedly, Carpentier thinks of the Cuban Revolution as a restatement of a historical constant.

The lack of meaning that bedevils the characters of Juan Carlos Onetti becomes a kind of gamesmanship in Elastillero (1961), one of the best novels—possibly the best—written by the dour Uruguayan. The title of the novel is the Spanish word for shipyard. This enterprise is located in Onetti's mythical town of Santa María. The protagonist, Larsen, returns to the town determined to make a name for himself. A position as general manager of the shipyard seems to be the perfect opportunity. Its owner, Petrus, is an aging businessman who pretends that the shipyard's affairs are about to take a turn for the better. The fact is that it is a collection of rusty machinery, a skeleton of what once existed. There is no business except the illicit activity of selling what remains of the machinery, without the owner's permission. General manager Larsen has two employees: a technical administrator and a business manager who pore over disintegrating blueprints and keep imaginary accounts of transactions that never happen. Everybody knows perfectly well that they're just playing a game, going through a set of motions. Larsen even courts the boss's daughter, a mentally retarded girl who lives in a musty old house about as lively as the shipyard.

The narrator tells the story of El astillero as if he himself witnessed part of it and learned the rest from other people. This point of view keeps the reader aware that the novel's characters do not see some facts that ought to be apparent to them. Therefore, we react to Larsen and the others not as we might toward people who are being deceived, but as we might toward those who deceive themselves. One reaction is to feel that they must hold on to this pretense because it is all they have. Another is that life amounts to playing a game that has no meaning beyond the game itself. It is impossible to dismiss El astillero without thinking about Uruguayan politics, which allow government by committee to promote civic inertia and the consequent corrosion, material and spiritual, of the nation. The expose of life as a game demands more than a political answer, but the answer is not found in Onetti's novel.

Ernesto Sabato's Sobre heroes y tumbas (1962) tends to overwhelm readers. An initial experience with it creates an impression of a great mural depicting the present (last years of the Perón regime) and past of Argentina, with an extra dimension provided by the third of the novel's four parts, a penetrating interiorization of Fernando Vidal, possibly the novelist's protagonist. Even after several readings, many questions remain unanswered, and two readers can easily become completely absorbed in asking each other what Sabato means by this or that character or act. Angela Dellepiane does the best job of relating his essays to his novels and it is through her analysis that we begin to see Sobre heroes y tumbas as an examination of values, an attempt to reindividualize human beings in the context of contemporary society.

Sabato contrasts two characters, Alejandra and Martin, particularly in the first two parts of the novel. She is impure and belongs to a family that includes an unusually high percentage of the famous names of Argentine history. Martin, on the other hand, is innocent and is virtually without family ties and tradition. These two antithetical people seem irresistibly attracted to each other. Indeed, one of the less attractive features of the novel is the author's insistence on this deterministic relationship. It is a love affair more for a novel of the early nineteenth century than for one of the late twentieth. However, the telescoping of the emotion-time effect is one of the novel's narrative techniques. An account of the retreat of General Lavalle, a historical event of more than a century ago, functions as one element in the mural of contemporary Argentina and is particularly significant in its communication of a sense of honor and loyalty. There is a suggestion of the decadence of tradition, set forth in the character of Alejandra and the relationship within her family; but the Lavalle account is strongly affirmative. Martin, on the other hand, is devoid of tradition even to the point of being denied by his own mother; yet he is the character who carries the novel's spark of optimism. It is possible to suppose that Sabato wishes to set forth human values in such a way that they cannot possibly be confused with the process of passing time. Such an understanding would be far removed from an initial reading, because the story of the fatally attracted lovers plus a melodramatic development worthy of King's Row (incest, murder, suicide) overwhelm more subtle appreciations.

One critic provides a unified understanding of the novel through the archetypal explanation of Fernando as a hero. He sees a pairing of General Lavalle and Fernando, the latter's interior descent into hell working as a contemporary parallel to Lavalle's heroic act. The nucleus of this reading is the third part of the novel, "Informe sobre ciegos," which may be taken as the journey through the underworld—an interior experience that recalls the journey of Addn Buenosayres. It is possible to find, in Fernando's experience, the seeds of Martin's salvation. This analysis, however, is a lot neater than the novel; it can illuminate the book, but should not be taken as an equivalent to the experience of the novel itself.

Manuel Mujica Lainez, already known for his aesthetic interests and his nostalgic novels based on the changing social structure of Buenos Aires, published Bomarzo in 1962. This book provided the story for Alberto Ginastera's opera. It is a historical novel that creates the flavor of the Renaissance. The author has been the art critic for the newspaper La Nación and for several years was connected with a museum. His sensitivity is not simply the enjoyment of artistic creations, but includes also a reaction of delight in the very act of evoking a past era. This evocation is one of the two important factors that make Bomarzo interesting. The other is the incorporation into the story of many well-known historical personages: Cervantes, Michelangelo, Lotto, Cellini, Charles V, and others. Mujica Lainez's work reveals his aristocratic attitude, and it is also a representative of the Argentine literary world's sophistication. The author is a latter day member of the Florida fellowship; his works contain many of the qualities that provoked the rebellion of the parricides, the revisionist writers of the Vifias group.

Another important writer, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, may seem a strange addition to a group of established novelists, since he is more often thought of as an essayist. Actually he has made distinguished contributions to literature also as a poet and as a writer of fiction. While none of his works in the latter category have ever been considered major, they might well have enjoyed more attention if his essays had been less remarkable. The excellence of his stories and short novels is the result of several factors of great importance in the development of the genre: transformation of philosophical attitudes into fiction, association of narrative invention with the creative impulse, and use of stylistic variation to communicate the experience of the story.

His "Viudez" (1956) is the portrayal of a widow's confusion, indecisiveness, and eventual recognition of her state of being alone. The dynamic factor in the novel is the progressively nightmarish quality of its three episodes. The scene is rural—the home and family of a small farmer. The first episode contains a labyrinth experience when the woman gets lost among the cattle (it is night) while going to seek aid from a neighbor. The second episode turns Carnival into a dead clown. The third tells of relatives who come and, instead of being helpful, make a fiesta that gets in the way of work the woman has to do. The reader identifies easily with the protagonist because the narrative, although in the third person, sees the situation as she would see it. It is also interesting that from this position the narrator is able to ask questions and answer them. They do not appear obtrusive because they seem to be the woman's natural questions. This advantage is a large contributing factor in the transformation of philosophical attitude into fictional experience.

Marta Riquelme is a Borgesian piece that cloaks subjectivity with a presumed objectivity. The story pretends to be a prologue written by Martínez Estrada for Marta Riquelme's memoirs. The book itself is presumed lost. It was supposedly given to Martínez Estrada for editing, by Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, who actually was director of Mexico's Fondo de Cultura Económica at one time. This setup gives the piece a desirable ring of authenticity. Beyond that, Marta Riquelme is a multiple satire: on the familyhistory type of novel, on literary scholarship of the "detective" kind, and on interpretive literary criticism. It is a stylistic tour de force because Martínez Estrada says most of what he wishes to say simply by changing from one style to another. He uses at least four major style tones: scholarly exposition, the style used by the editor whose personal interest makes the prologue more intimate, Marta Riquelme's own style, and a style that may possibly not be Marta's.

The established novelists writing in the period 1956-1962 reveal few important changes in narrative technique. They did not need innovation. Their works often to fifteen years earlier established them as modern novelists. Even the best known of the younger writers used the same techniques. If it is possible—admittedly it is risky—to establish a difference between a large-screen, muralistic novel and a small-screen, salon-type book, it is correct to say that the large-screen type is more common among the established novelists. It is doubtful, however, that this preference indicates a generational choice. Among the younger novelists, the muralistic concept is very common. In any case, the established novelists of this period make up an unusual generation, because the fruition of their productive period was delayed so they often appear younger than they really are.

Separation of the new novelists of this period from the big names of the boom does not in any way mean that they are inferior writers. The well-known figures of the boom serve to define the phenomenon; they do not dominate it artistically. Another pitfall in discussing the boom is the temptation to separate writers who belong to it from those who do not; or, even worse, to make a complicated scale of relative "in-ness." If we allow consideration of the boom to go deeper than reaction to personalities, all the current novelists in Spanish America participate in the phenomenon in some way and to some extent.

Among the newer novelists of the period 1956-1962, a substantial number wrote novels that fall into our general classification of large screen or muralistic. Almost always these works are concerned with some understanding or explanation of a national (or regional or cultural) situation, developing it in terms and by means of techniques that make it a vital experience rather than a set of statistics or an objective account of an event already terminated. Making a subordinate classification within this large one, it appears that some novels are primarily political, while others are more concerned with the heritage, history, or tradition of the place. The political concern seems to emphasize three countries: Colombia, Argentina, and Cuba.

One of the most vital political novels is La calle 10 (1960) by Manuel Zapata Olivella. Its factual basis is the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and the subsequent rioting in 1948. The novel was probably written at a time closer to the event than to the date of publication. It has a sense of immediacy; however, this particular vitality persists through repeated readings, probably because a compelling impression of mass insurrection operates in balance with portraits of individuals who are genuinely appealing. This way we feel the excitement of the mass movement while, at the same time, the attractive individuals create a natural sense of brotherliness. The association makes exhortations to brotherhood unnecessary, and the result is much more convincing.

The narrator opens with a morning scene: a cadaver, a family waking up, a man with a cart, a mule, and a dog. The prose is clear, direct, sparse. Yet it creates a feeling of great tenderness when the narrator speaks of emotions, always with simplicity that is convincing because it is unadorned. He brings the crowd to life by using unidentified dialogue. The narrative darts from one street scene to another. There is enough relationship between scenes to provide a sense of group unity, but the narrator does not develop a conventional plot line. That is, there are always people or situations that connect one scene with another, but these relationships may be of little importance in the total action that takes place in a given scene. There are moments that recall Los de abajo. The momentum of the novel develops in three stages: the circumstance seen in terms of an individual, then in the movement of mass insurrection, and finally back to an individual. Zapata Olivella portrays abject poverty without dramatic protest, but with tenderness. Class differences become apparent, but the novel's emphasis is on contrast rather than on indignation. The tone becomes disgust when politicians destroy the momentum of the rebellion by declaring, via radio, that they are the voice of the people and the people are triumphant. Finally, back once more to communication through an individual, one disillusioned rebel starts to break his rifle, but another stops him saying he will soon have use for it. This prediction—somewhat dramatic in the cold atmosphere of today's news report—is an entirely credible promise, even a consolation, in the context of the novel.

The feeling of frustration produced in La calle 10 has a counterpart in another Colombian novel of the same period, Fernando Soto Aparicio's La rebelión de las ratas. It is a social protest novel, and, although it is not based on a specific political incident or problem, it deals with the dehumanizing effect of power. The circumstance is exploitation of the worker by a mining company. Soto Aparicio sets the tone, with no great subtlety, at the beginning of the novel: the advent of the mining company interrupts the bucolic quiet of the locale. Soto Aparicio moves from the general scene to the family of Rudecindo Cristancho and then shifts to the ideas of Rudecindo, his protagonist.

The time span of the novel is very specific, with narrative divisions indicated by days from February 10 to February 19. During this time, Cristancho's family suffers all the trials of poverty and exploitation by the company. Rudecindo is reduced to a number, sees his domestic happiness destroyed, and loses his life in a revolt against his exploiters. The narration is consistently third person, but from the standpoint of several different people. This procedure relates the social protest to the question of individual dignity. Therefore La rebelión de las ratas does not suffer from the doctrinaire effect that clutters the fictional experience of many proletarian novels.

The Argentine crisis of awareness is still acute during the years 1956-1962. David Vinias produced three novels that show he is as adept at the intimate study as he is in the muralistic books. Los anos despiadados (1956) is the story, possibly autobiographical, of a schoolboy who feels imprisoned by the traditions of his family. It is important to note that they are not aristocratic but middle class. Even so, he feels restricted by a way of life that seems to him to belong to another age. Vifias states the message in one of his favorite ways—the development of an opposite. The protagonist's friend and opposite is the son of immigrants, and, so far as the protagonist can see, is not inhibited by any traditions. He has no apparent need to create any particular image or earn the approval of anyone. He is proletarian, peronista, even somewhat cruel; and his need for the protagonist's friendship is primitive. Although the novel deals only with this personal situation, we can hardly avoid the reference to change in Argentine society.

The narrative techniques Vifias uses are intended to emphasize a certain point he wishes to make. Sometimes the point is preconceived and the technique designed to bring it out. The author risks becoming didactic when he does so, but usually he is clever enough to make his characters so vital they mask his planning. That is the case in the development of the opposite. For the same reason, Vifias uses typographical effects, especially italics. The first three parts (there are six in all) of Los duenos de la tierra (1959) are in italics, which properly set them apart because they are historical background. The novel, whose title means "the owners of the land," deals with the expansion into Patagonia, a frontier movement something like the United States' conquest of the West. In the three introductory parts of the novel, Vifias chooses three important moments in the history of the southward expansion: the Indian wars, development of the wool industry during World War I, and labor troubles between ranchers and peons in 1920.

The novel's present time—that is, the action that takes place in the last three parts—coincides with the third historical moment. President Irigoyen sends Vicente Vera to Patagonia as a conciliator. The change from italics signals the narrator's change from background to novel proper, and Vera becomes a symbol of what Vifias finds wrong with the official regime. The mood created by the story of Vera is surprisingly like the reaction to the protagonist of Los anios despiadados. Vera, like the boy protagonist of the other novel, is so controlled by formulas there is little or no hope of his accomplishing anything. His approach is platitudinous. The difference between him and the boy is that Vera does not even know he is caught. In the next-to-last section Vifias sets up an opposite in the person of Yuda, a schoolteacher with progressive ideas. The love affair between Vera and Yuda softens the contrast, just as friendship shades the difference between the two boys in Los años despiadados. It is unproductive so far as Vera's mission is concerned. His government is too far removed from the nation's reality for him to be able to accomplish anything.

Beatriz Guido's Fin de fiesta (1958) is a successful though discouraging picture of the persistence of caudillismo. Guido, who likes to use young people as her protagonists, tells the story primarily through four cousins who grow up in the household of their caudillo grandfather. Multiple point of view contributes substantially to the effect of the novel, which alternates passages of first-person and third-person-omniscient narration. The presentation of the four cousins develops from their relationships during their early teens and continues into their political awareness. The death of the old caudillo fades into the rise of a new one (Perón, though he is not identified in the novel). The story suggests possible change in the quality of caudillismo, but it also suggests its indestructibility as an institution.

Concentration of power in one individual is the theme of La alfombra roja (1962), by Marta Lynch. It is a psychological study of what happens to several people during an election campaign which the protagonist, Doctor Anibal Rey, wins. The focus is on his use of people and their reaction to him. The narrative point of view is the most important technical factor. It is consistently first person, but the identity of the first-person narrator varies from chapter to chapter. The chapter titles indicate who the narrator is in each case. The time perspective is also important—the narration is retrospective, but refers to the immediate past. The tone usually has an effect similar to a diary. The narration produces a more logical sequence of events than is characteristic of interior monologue, but the revelations made by the narrators are more intimate than we normally expect from a first-person narrator who functions in the novel on equal terms with the other characters.

Each chapter places emphasis on the person speaking, but we always learn something about the others. The candidate himself narrates chapter one (he also narrates several others) and reveals his growing taste for manipulating the crowd. In the same chapter, this euphoric demagogue introduces some of his supporters, so it is quite natural for one of them to act as the narrator of the second chapter. The technique of changing from one narrator to another produces a certain amount of simultaneity in the time covered by the various chapters. As the presidential campaign comes to a close, Lynch brings the novel to a climax. In one chapter (Beder), Rey's publicity man views the change that has taken place in the candidate. This episode is one of several where the first-person narration actually produces the effect of third-person omniscient. It is a description of the transformation of an intellectual into a powermyth: "… although the image of Rey that is current among the people has connection with reality, his myth is already in the making, created partly by himself, partly by history."

The remaining chapters of La alfombra roja really constitute an epilogue. They all occur on election day; and the last, in which Rey is again the narrator, is called "El Sefior Presidente," rather than "El Doctor." The basic facts of the campaign and election are commonplace, so the psychological insight into several characters is more interesting than the event itself. This fact, however, makes the mechanics of the campaign seem so cold and impersonal that its significance in the lives of human beings takes on a terrifying quality. Rey uses people more and more to gain his own ends, as he thinks of himself increasingly as a man of destiny. When Beder describes the transformation of the candidate, he describes him as unreal. By the end of the novel, the circumstance and the man are dehumanized—that is, they are not what we hope humanity is. The concluding chapters reveal the sacrifice of individuals to destiny, and at the end of the novel Anibal Rey stands quite alone in his new residence.

The experience of political concern in these novels is preeminently one of objection to the concentration of power. There is also a strong revolutionary feeling—not in the specific threat or prediction of an uprising, but in the feeling that established political patterns must change. Nevertheless, hovering over the scene is the presence of the caudillo, the leader who will run the country. Marta Lynch's contribution to the literary life of this myth is portrayal of the change that takes place in the man as a corollary to the concentration of power. La alfombra roja deserves a place with El Senor Presidente and La sombra del caudillo in the literary picture of the phenomenon.…

Speaking in broad, general terms, the novels of 1956-1962 are a somber lot, although many of them are excellent. They initiate an intense bourgeois self-flagellation that still goes on in 1970. However, the years following 1962 saw several innovations or intensifications of tendencies already begun and related to the century's anguish. The most widely cultivated is the segmented narrative. This technique is valuable for creating new appreciations of reality. It also reflects the fragmented nature of contemporary society, and segmented narration turns out to be alternately centrifugal and centripetal.

No doubt in some instances readers may ask what became of the story. With this reaction in mind, it is important to point out that the raconteur's art has not disappeared. One important witness to this fact is Fernando Alegria's Caballo de copas (1957), a Damon Runyon-type story about a race horse imported into the United States from Chile. It is what Graham Greene calls an "entertainment"—smooth, professional writing, fun to read, no profound implications but quite a few matter-of-fact revelations of what life is like. Many novelists, particularly the innovative ones, would do well to learn from Caballo de copas or similar novels, and then innovate. The results could be rewarding, as in the case of La muerte de Artemio Cruz. Actually, the departure from an expected order of narration varies in nature. Many contemporary novelists tell the story fairly straight, but without explanations. Others do the unexpected, but take care that we follow them. Still others leave their readers to struggle.

The story is there; or, if it is not, there is a substitute. What has happened is that ways of presenting the story have changed, and, in addition, a circumstance may have taken the story's place. By 1962, the novelist is extremely aware of his creative function, though he talks about it more later on. Since he is so aware of creating, experience becomes more important than denouement. Of course, the experience of any novel is always the most important consideration, but it can become confused with or even hidden by the traditional plot-development sequence. The novelists after 1962 depend to a very great extent on the importance of experience.