Customer Reviews (1)

A brilliant poetic satire
"The Daily Daily" is an audacious work of satire by one of Cuba's most important literary figures. Nicolas Guillen has constructed his book length poem of prose fragments, smaller self-contained poems, and other textual forms. The result is a dazzling collage which deconstructs the political, racial, and linguistic anxieties of 20th century Cuba.

This bilingual edition has Guillen's Spanish original on each odd-numbered page, with translator Vera Kutzinski's English version on each even-numbered page. Kutzinski has also written an outstanding introduction which contains insights into Guillen's life and art.

Guillen is a master of wordplay, "special effects," and cultural critique. Whether he is capturing the effect of a blinking restaurant sign, creating imaginary newspaper advertisements, or peppering his verses with sarcastic footnotes, he shows that he is a wizard of the word. And he has serious things to say about racism, Cuban-U.S. relations, consumerism, and other controversial topics. "The Daily Daily" is an important work which should be read by scholars of Latin American literature, by fans of experimental writing, and by those interested in Cuban history and culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good reference book
I ordered this book from the Amazon Marketplace and have found it an excellent reference source on 20th century Latin American literary criticism.The format is by author, with short excerpts from published articles/essays/criticism.While it does not cover some lesser known writers, most major writers are included. One caveat: This is a two volume collection!I ordered and received volume one, which means my research is limited to authors whose last names begin with A-L!The book description or seller or somebody should inform the customer which volume exactly is for sale! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best book on Cortázar's stories
It really is, YES, John Sanjines gets to the rigour of things!He is a real semiotician and with a poets heart.Great read for someone who likes to think about how fiction works and is made.Even dreams have a construction.

One word. Terrific! Looking forward to John's next book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

El deseo según Madame X
Siempre fue más sugestiva, más exitante, una mujer medio vestida que una desnuda. La sensualidad narrada a través de las curvas sugeridas por laseda, puede mucho más que la imagen amplificada de cualquier recodo de lapersona deseada. Éste dato, casi un lugar común, se ve ampliamentejustificado por el tono distendido, libre de todo prejuicio verbal, queutiliza la autora. Narrada por una voz femenina que suele ¨soplarle¨ algunaidea a la protagonista, ésta novela sobre el erotismo es también unaparodia del género, apoyada en certeros epígrafes que anuncian, al modoantiguo, el contenido del capítulo, y que van a sustentar, sobre el final,no la teoría Bataille sobre el tema, sino su antítesis. Allí dónde élsostuviera que la entrega al acto erótico es necesariamente una muerte quegenera vida, Griselda Gambaro prolonga casi hasta el orgasmo la posibilidadde un encuentro que finalmente tomará otro rumbo. Erotizada por lahistoria, la narradora no pierde la oportunidad para burlarse de los íconosdel machismo, ni para dejar en claro que la asistencia sexual femenina parauna mujer puede ser muy gratificante. Un bonito hombrecillo que tiene lavidasupeditada a la de su propio glande descomunal, que es ingobernable;una sierva fiel e ignorante que posee la llave del placer de laprotagonista y un desfile de innobles fornicadores llevan al paroxismo éstanovela sobre lo impenetrable, sobre lo que está tan lejos e inalcanzableque, sólo entregando la vida podremos poseerlo. ... Read more

Product Description
This work presents a comprehensive analysis of Juan Carlos Onetti's short stories, drawing on concepts from psychoanalytical theory and paying particular attention to the representation of gender. After an exploration of the main theoretical concepts deployed, the emerging thematic and textual features in the early stories are defined. The study then concentrates on the stories of the 1950s and 1960s. A repeating pattern in the analyses is the elaboration of a reading and then the discovery of how the coherence of that reading unravels as the stories' textuality disrupts any simple desire to "make sense". The reading process itself is problematized via concepts drawn from psychoanalysis which help to elucidate the non-transparency of the texts and transferential effects in reading. The final chapter considers the nature of repetition in Onetti: the fact that the stories return again and again to certain ideas is viewed as disabling of a final resolution of the gender problems which are implicit in the stories. Conversely, the fact that these problems are not resolved is also enabling of further writing and invention. ... Read more

Product Description
This book, based on years of research, including extensive work in Guatemalan archives, illuminates the social, political, and cultural life of Guatemala and Central America during the nineteenth century through the lens of the University of San Carlos, Guatemala, the period’s only institution of higher learning in Guatemala and the most prestigious one on the Central American isthmus. The major issues addressed include the relationships between institution-building and state formation; between the university and the development of a national and regional identity; and between modernism and Catholicism (still a central tension in the region’s culture), including the discursive process of constructing an ideology that fused elements from the Enlightenment and the tradition of scholasticism. This book contributes to a growing body of revisionism by challenging a flawed liberal historiographical narrative that demarcates changes during the period along the lines of political transitions and insisting that this era be viewed within a broader context of fluidity and continuity in the region’s history. ... Read more

Product Description
An early cameo of Latin American surrealism, Rosamel del Valle's erotic narrative of ecstasy and perdition creates the rhythm of the dream and the tempo of madness. Intermittently a waiflike young woman, Eva, intrudes into the daily routine of the writer. Her appearances are marked by a circle of red and the vision of a deep well with a star hanging over it. A tone poem of surrealist encounter, pursuit, and loss, Eva y la Fuga was written in 1930 and finally published posthumously in 1970, by Monte Avila Press in Venezuela. Anna Balakian offers here the first translation of the work into any other language. She brilliantly conveys in English the author's highly metaphoric language and the immediacy of surrealist experience, signaled in the narrative by frequent lapses into a haunting present tense.On their walks through the streets of Santiago, Eva and the narrator mingle in the fiesta atmosphere of the Chilean Amusement Park, with its gigantic Ferris Wheel. Bits of real-life dialogue float through the air. But the couple move on different wavelengths from the crowd and often from each other. Passing in and out of his life, Eva exercises a hypnotic fascination over the writer and makes an equally profound impression on the reader. This narrative is in the same genre as Gerard de Nerval's Aurlia, Andr Breton's Nadja, and Michel Leiris's Aurora, and should be counted among the most compelling works of twentieth-century surrealist literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

did nothing for me.
this book was hyped as a south american surrealist love novel equivelant to Aurelia Aurora or nadja...by a contemporary of neruda.

its about 100 pages so i gave it a shot.nada.maybe its a bad translation or maybe im not ready for it or ?but there was perhaps one poetic passage in the entire novel that caught my eye. ... Read more