The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 291 projects a similar argument in conspicuously different dress, and, like Iffland, he hopes for a synthesis of ideology and social action. Allen and Weber contribute lively and insightful cautionary tales, the first about reconciliation among generations of critics and the need to guard against extremes , and the second about the desiderata of a postmodern liberalism. Cruz speaks of the estimable and autonomous Marcela of Don Quijote, Part 1, but the protagonist of her essay on postmodern feminism, the male-dominated academy, and their links to the characterization of women in Cervantes is the ground-breaking scholar Ruth El Saffar. Jauralde Pou, of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, attacks his compatriots from within the trenches by suggesting that Spanish scholars have tended to ignore the outside world and that Quijote studies have prospered beyond their natural center. History likewise mediates the essays that look more closely at Cervantes the artist , at the internal structure of his writings, and at his place in literary history. Accentuating the narratives as critiques of romance , Cascardi points to the dialectical relation of history and desire, to a type of dynamic tension between a reconstituted past and history in the making. Lokos examines the status of the women in Cervantes's life as a means of addressing his genealogy and blood purity, and, implicidy, as a factor in the signifying systems ofthe fictions. In her rereading of Elamante liberal, Martin looks at desire in a "contrapuntal" manner and in its historical context, through a focus on gender identity, sexual mores, and deviation. Wey-Gómez uses Freud's discussion of jealousy as the point of departure for his examination of the themes of paranoia and homosexuality in El celoso extremeño and El curioso impertinente. Presberg places Cervantes in a provocative middle ground between Augustinian and postmodern discourse , between imitatio and inventio, and between the City of God and the City of Man. Wilson poses the question, "Where does the novel rise?" and, as one might imagine , her answer is not eighteenth-century England. Foregrounding hybridity and heresy in Cervantes, she engages Watt et al. by writing Spain into the narrative equation. The essays in this volume are uniformly ambitious and well argued. The inevitable conceptual crosscurrents and ironies of juxtaposition do not detract from the value of the collection but instead underscore the breadth of models and the open-ended nature of critical dialogue. The essayists view Cervantes as exceptionally precocious and as a product of his environment , as postmodern and as desmystified by postmodernism. They confirm the pleasure of the text and the pleasurable business of criticism. Edward H. Friedman Indiana University The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction State University of New York Press, 1998 By Donald Shaw Any attempt to capture the essential characteristics of a generation of writers is always a difficult task. It even seems more challenging nowadays when diversity is the norm and unification of criteria the exception . Under these circumstances, Donald Shaw's The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction leaves the reader with the impression that he has chosen to navigate against adverse winds, knowing exactly when and how to avoid formidable foes. The outcome 292 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies of Shaw's quest is a well-structured and wellargued account of a movement that rose from the undying remains of a fantastic monster, the Boom. Consequently, Shaw's point of departure evidently has to be a recapitulation of this Latin American movement that paradoxically displayed the banner of 'hispano-americanism' in a very socially uncommitted manner, much like Moder-nismo did at the turn ofthe century. Precisely in his first chapter, Shaw draws that line between the Boom and the Post-Boom, mapping out the characteristics of these movements. After pondering the opinion of several critics—including himself—about what constitutes the essential features ofthe Boom, he concludes that this movement is characterized by the radical questioning of reality and the way that reality is transformed into writing. He constandy alludes to the metaphor ofthe "splintered mirror" to refer to the typical fragmentation of reality present in the Boom narrative. Pethaps the best example of the...