El mágico aprendiz (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 293 is a fundamental problem when trying to link one to the othet. He aigues that postmodernism is essentially "a critique of the modernist position and of all-encompassing explanations ofthe collective social and historical processes" (178) and the PostBoom , as he himself has described it, tends to rely on—or at least aspire to—the reconstruction of a positive order. The political and historical concerns of the Post-Boom even require the return to old models of realism that have been systematically mesmerized by postmodernism(s). Nevertheless, Shaw realizes that the Post-Boom is not entirely incongruous with postmodernism because some of the writers he studies have also been studied for theii postmodern characteristics . To resolve this contradiction, Shaw ends his article in a very postmodern fashion, by saying that the criteria he proposes for the Post-Boom movement is not categorical but "loose." He adds that there should not be full reliability to master narratives in literary history, thus shaking the grounds for the possibility of a solid PostBoom generational frame. This self-questioning does not suffice, however, to dissipate the sense of coherence in this book which has been laboriously constructed by countless arguments. Consequently, Shaw's final statement is quite ironic for it makes his book have an ambiguous finaU, common in well-known Boom novels. Rony Garrido University of Arizona El mágico aprendiz Tusquets Editores, 1999 By Luis Landero Although Luis Landero reached instant fame with his first novel, Juegos de U edad tardÃ-a, winning both the "Premio de la CrÃ-tica" and the "Premio Nacional," his prose has developed substantially widi the publication ofCabalUros de fortuna and this, his third novel, El mágico aprendiz. While he has never abandoned his particular brand of magical realism, his writing has tended gradually to focus somewhat more on the realist side ofthat duality, leading him, from the second to the third novel, to a work that, while maintaining the fantastic nature of a prose that has delighted his readers, delves more realistically into the transcendental problems that touch the contemporary human being. If his first novel created a kafkaesque figure whose very name, Gregorio, reflected the existential frustrations of the likes of Gregor Samsa, in El mágico aprendiz the allegorical nature ofthat figure has given way, in the person of MatÃ-as Moro, to a more palpable character who exists within a fantastic world that drifts much more readily into a comfortable Madrilenian tedium that easily represents the life of many contemporary middle-class Spanish bureaucrats . The first paragraph ofthe novel demonstrates clearly the role of the fantastic in the creation ofthe particular reality Landero seeks to invent. The work begins in medias res, with the presentation of a noticia that begins as a rumor and is gradually developed but always through hearsay, third persons , conjectures, etc. The paragraph thus announces to the reader from the outset that the novel's sense of reality will be contingent upon the various subversions that are created by the subordination of reality to narration, fantasy, and adventure. The tension between reality and fantasy , or perhaps one might say verisimilitude and fantasy, is at the heart of everything Landero has written thus far. Therein lies the importance of Concepción Arenáis 294 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies statement, quoted by Manuel Tejedor in a letter early in CabalUros de fortuna, "Sólo la ilusión nos hará del todo libres." This concept lies at the base of all of Landero's fiction as far as the creation of plot is concerned , though his novels tend to end with the destruction of that illusion or a negative vision of where that illusion has taken the various characters. This dichotomous approach to the role of illusion may be seen as Landero's definition of the novel genre: when the novel reaches its conclusion, the illusion is simply terminated, or vice-versa. Fiction is the opposite of truth, and as such its purpose is none other than to tell a story, which Landero does very well. If there has been a drawback in Landero's technique, however, it has been precisely these...