The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism during the Cold War

Notes

203 Notes Note on translations: Quotations from texts published in Spanish are given in English. Whenever possible, I have quoted from published English translations; when these do not exist, the translations are my own. When quoting from archival materials and interviews that have not been published, I include both the Spanish and my own translations. Introduction 1. Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon had stayed on the list for six weeks in 1962. 2. It is important to clarify up front what I mean by “Spanish America(n)” and “Latin America(n).” I follow standard practice in my use of “Spanish America” to refer to the Central American, South American, and Caribbean nations that were formerly under Spanish colonial rule. “Latin America,” in turn, refers to the region that includes both Spanish America and Brazil. “The Boom” per se was a Spanish American movement, but the profile of Latin American literature as a whole became much more visible internationally in the 1960s and 1970s, and thus this book speaks of the promotion of the work of both Brazilian and Spanish American writers in the United States. I have tried to use these terms consistently throughout this book so that the reader may have an accurate sense of the scope of my assessments of different programs and movements. However, many authors and critics from Spanish America and the United States alike use “Latin America” interchangeably with “Spanish America.” When quoting and translating, I follow the usage in the original texts. 3. “PEN” stands for “poets, playwrights, essayists, editors, and novelists.” 4. I am grateful to Susan Gillman for helping me to articulate this. 5. My discussion of the revolution and its impact focuses primarily on the years following Castro’s identification in 1961 of the revolution as a Socialist one. 204 Notes to Pages 5–12 6. The foundation’s eponymous journal also played an important role in the transmission of Boom literature, as I discuss later in this chapter. Casa de las Américas built upon the success and drew upon many of the strategies of Lunes de Revolución, a popular literary supplement from the earliest days of the revolution that ultimately came into conflict with the latter. Lunes de Revolución falls outside of the scope of this study, but more information on the supplement and its history may be found in William Luis’s “Lunes de Revolución”: Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana. 7. See, for example, works by Susan Frenk, Claudia Gilman (“Las revistas”), Nadia Lie, María Eugenia Mudrovcic, Luz Rodríguez-Carranza, Mario Santana, and Judith Weiss. 8. See Rostagno, 31–58, for a detailed discussion of Knopf’s trip and, more broadly, the Knopfs’ activities on behalf of Latin American literature in general. 9. Letter by Carlos Fuentes on José Donoso’s Coronation, copyright © 1964 by Carlos Fuentes. Qtd. in a letter from Angus Cameron, 28 December 1964, in the Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Records of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC) in the University of Texas at Austin Library, Box 1341, Folder 4. Used by permission of Brandt and Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. Materials in the Knopf Records collection will be identified subsequently as “KR” followed by box and file numbers (e.g., “KR 1341.4”). 10. Letter, Vonnegut to Angus Cameron, 20 August 1967, KR 482.6, HRHRC. 11. See, for example, his letter to de Onís, 6 May 1965, KR 536.1, HRHRC. 12. See, for example, letter from Knopf to de Onís, 21 May 1965, KR 599.1, HRHRC. 13. See letter, Knopf to de Onís, 19 August 1963, KR 599.1, HRHRC. 14. Letter, Weinstock to de Onís, 31 August 1965, KR 441.8, HRHRC. This would not have been a new undertaking for de Onís, who had previously edited several anthologies for Knopf (e.g., The Golden Land: An Anthology of Latin American Folklore in Literature [1948] and Spanish Stories and Tales [1954]), as well as translating Germán Arciniegas’s The Green Continent: A Comprehensive View of Latin America by Its Leading Writers (1944) for the company. The selections in her anthologies leaned toward the idiosyncratic: Spanish Stories and Tales included Spanish medieval works as well as contemporary writers from Spain and Spanish America, while The Golden Land emphasized “local color” in works from the conquerors through the chroniclers of the New World and up through twentiethcentury (and often regionally oriented...