La estética de lo mínimo: Ensayos sobre microrrelatos mexicanos ed. by Pablo Brescia (review)

Pablo Brescia’s collection of essays on the contemporary form of the microrrelato in Mexico is a welcome contribution to the study of a genre that has particular resonance in today’s world, and has demonstrated an exceptional vitality in Mexico. The brevity of digital forms like Twitter have given rise to an increased focus on understanding the form and function of the microrrelato as it relates to contemporary forms of communication. The succinct nature of much of social media and interpersonal communications resonates with the focused power of the microrrelato. Perhaps, without even knowing of the existence of the genre, many individuals are daily engaged in crafting what looks like microrrelatos. Faced with the overwhelming, and often underwhelming, textual production of the current age, with the democratization of textual creation posed by the internet and the ubiquity of ephemeral texts that may or may not be literature, a book like La estética de lo mínimo: Ensayos sobre microrrelatos mexicanos is particularly welcome.

As the coordinator of the project, Pablo Brescia has intelligently divided the collection of twelve articles into meaningful sections, separating those articles that attempt to define and analyze the genre of the microrrelato into the first section, entitled “Macromicro: perspectives plurals,” leaving one text by María Guadalupe Sánchez Robles on the work of Julio Torri to stand on its own in “Un mini: el precursor,” creating a space for the concentrated study of specific authors and texts in “Minimexicanos: escritores y escritoras de minificción,” and closing with an exhaustive register of the genre in Mexico entitled “Sea breve: cien años de microrrelatos mexicanos.” Brescia is well-qualified to oversee such a project; his book on the short story in Hispanic America Modelos y prácticas en el cuento hispanoamericano: Arreola, Borges, Cortázar (2011) demonstrates the profundity of his engagement with the short written form in Latin America, as does his other creative and critical work.

The largest section of Estética, entitled “Macromicro: perspectives plurals,” appropriately gives a helpful overview of the ongoing critical effort to describe some general contours of the microrrelato, an effort that is still vigorous in its debates and focus. Even the name “microrrelato” is up for scrutiny, with some critics preferring “microrrelato,” “minirelato,” “cuento hiperbreve” or “minicuento.” Brescia’s solution to this critical disparity is to avoid the temptation to pick sides or act as a final arbiter of nomenclature for the genre; instead he seeks to open up the dialogue, to encourage multiple perspectives and modes of analysis. The three articles in this first section orient the microrrelato in a larger cultural and artistic context, including Gerardo Cruz’s essay on the relationship between the “ephemera” of the web publishing and the consecrated artifact of the printed book and Cándida Elizabeth Vivero Marín’s study on the particular resonance of the ominous in the feminine production of the microrrelato in Mexico. The final article in this section is authored by Lauro Zavala, a recognized theoretician of the genre, which he calls here “minificción.” Zavala’s article focuses on the work of five contemporary writers, and attempts to define the unique personal “philosophy” expressed in the microrrelatos of each. These articles serve to ground the collection, and give the reader new to the genre a helpful introduction to some of its central characteristics.

In the third section, “Minimexicanos: escritores y escritoras de minificción,” Brescia offers the reader a chance to see what the literary analysis of texts that are often considerably shorter than the critical work devoted to them can achieve. Focusing on the production of the last twenty years, this section also offers the reader an introduction to some of the most interesting writers working in the genre in Mexico today, including Alberto Chimal, Ana Clavel, Óscar de la Borbolla, Cecilia Eudave, Luis Felipe Hernández, Guillermo Samperio, and José Luis Zárate.

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