Writing and Politics in Franco's Spain by Barry Jordan (review)

88Rocky Mountain Review broader philosophy in relation to film. He also offers a number of original insights. For example, he proposes "that the microchronology of film recapitulates something like a realism/ modernism/ postmodernism trajectory at a more compressed tempo: a proposition that could also be argued for other semi-autonomous sequences of cultured history such as American Black literature ... or for the history of rock . . ." (156). With a unique approach, he presents the history of film in "two distinct evolutioneuy species or subspecies—«ferai and sound," parenthetically adding that "the extinct species was an altogether more intelligent and sophisticated cultural form ..." (157). For me, however, Jameson's analysis of filmic realism as "Event" (185) and peirt of "the capitalist (or the bourgeois) cultured revolution itself' (164), proved one of the book's most thought provoking concepts. Indeed reevaluating and projecting the stages offilm history through Fredric Jameson's eyes—despite his demanding practice of piling on parenthetical materials and his sometimes desperate need for a copy editor—reward the reader with both the tensions and pleasures ofan intellectual thriller, as well as with the chedlenge ofinvolving oneselfin the processes ofcritical thinking. SHEBLA K. JOHNSON University of Texas, San Antonio BARRY JORDAN. Writing and Politics in Franco's Spain. New York: Routledge, 1990. 213 p. This is a useful survey ofthe novel ofsocial reedism emd the relationsbetween politics and literature during the 1950s and 60s. But the title is too inclusive and perhaps misleading, since the work deals only with the novel, while other forms of writing, poetry, and theatre, important in this period, eire mostly absent. Jordan discusses at some length the various influences that contributed to the formation ofthe novela social: the pre-war social novel (Arconada, Sender, and others), the Italian realistic film, American novels such eis John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer, and Seirtre's call for a literature ofpolitical commitment. The author disallows the influence of Sender, claiming that his works were simply unknown in post-Civil War Spain because ofcensorship. I find it difficult to believe that Goytisolo, for example, was unaware of Sender as late as 1959 (8). It is more likely that the social novelists didn't mention Sender because that would have caused further problems with the government censors. There may also have been a generational refusal to acknowledge predecessors. Jordan also mentions briefly the tremendista novels ofthe 40s, and their possible role (which he denies) eis an evolutionary stage toweird the social novels. Since these novels (Nada emd Pascual Duarte) were implicitly critical of the post-War society, although they are first-person subjective narratives and not objectivist, there would seem to be a legitimate case for the "evolutionary" perspective. The second chapter, "Writing and Opposition," is for me the most informative emd revealing part ofthe book. Jordan adroitly traces how nearly Book Reviews89 all of the writers of social realism—Aldecoa, Fernández Santos, Sánchez Ferlosio, the Goytisolo brothers—were products of middle-class Catholic families, mostly Francoist, who revolted against their rigid schooling, which led to broad criticisms oftheir social class and family. Indeed, many belonged to the Falangist party, and used their publications to initiate sometimes surreptitious criticism from within the party structure. Ridruejo weis the most eloquent in denouncing their social and political heritage: "del seno de la misma burguesía brota un torrente de disgusto por las formas y situaciones creadas bajo su predicamiento . . ." (54). The following chapter details the role of the Fedangistjournal Laye and the more independent Revista española (a creation ofRodríguez Moñino) in the forging ofa critical literary opposition to the Franco statue quo. The key roles of Castellet and Goytisolo in providing a theoretical underpinning to the new reedist novel are examined in the following chapter. While their work was useful in this sense, Goytisolo is especially, and rightly, castigated for reducing Sartre's subtle reasoning to "a few basic slogans and radical-sounding phrases" (100). Goytisolo, of course, was to recant his own ingenuous theories at a later date. Chapter five undertakes to analyze several novels which fall under the author's rubric of novelas sociales: Juegos de manos and Duelo en el paraíso, by Juein Goytisolo...