Crónicas orientalistas y autorrealizadas: entrevistas con Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Elena Poniatowska, Severo Sarduy y Mario Vargas Llosa by Julia A. Kushigian (review)

This fascinating collection of interviews with canonical Hispanic authors is guided by two main orientations: Hispanic Orientalism (Borges, Goytisolo, and Sarduy) and the Latin American Bildunsgroman (Fuentes, Poniatowska, Vargas Llosa). Julia Kushigian addresses the presence of these topics in several works by the authors, all the while asking provocative questions about different literary and cultural theories, their literary influences, writing process, creative inspiration, and literary goals. Although the interviews to Sarduy and Vargas Llosa had been published in Vuelta and Hispamérica, the others were previously unpublished. The last section of the volume includes photographs of the authors taken by Kushigian as well as letters. In the introduction, the author points out the difference between Edward Said's idea of Orientalism and her own interpretation of a very different and more benevolent and intimate Hispanic Orientalism, as explained both in her seminal 1991 study Orientalism in the Hispanic Literary Tradition: In Dialogue with Borges, Paz, and Sarduy, and in Goytisolo's introduction to the Spanish edition of Orientalism. Indeed, Kushigian defends the enlightening and transformative potential of multiple types of orientalist analyses through which centers of peripheries, or south-to-south peripheries, can have a fruitful dialogue.

Kushigian also looks at aspects dealing with archetypes, rites of passage, self-fulfillment and self-discovery, as reflected in the Latin American Bildungsroman. In her view, the Latin American Bildungsroman version veers away from the classic Bildungsroman model, dislocating the typical biological and psychological phenomena by reflecting the political voice of marginal groups (women, homosexuals, transvestites) and the collective or national consciousness. In his interview, Fuentes declares that somehow every novel, including Don Quixote, is a Bildungsroman, because there is usually a process of formation and education of the characters, even if it is not a chronological process from childhood to old age. Likewise, Poniatowska explains her selection of Jesusa Palancares in Hasta no verte, Jesús mío, thus reclaiming for the Bildgunsroman a rare abnegated, working class feminine voice of ambiguous sexuality. In turn, Vargas Llosa, in La ciudad y los perros and El hablador, recreates the social and collective character of the Bildungsroman to reflect, through a collective hero, the self-fulfillment process as a common social experience. In the case of Severo Sarduy, this same goal is attempted indirectly: with the goal of addressing Cuban national issues, he sets his postmodern novels in Asian settings, thus providing a south-to-south dialogue of cultures.

The opening interview with Sarduy, perhaps the most interesting one, reveals his impressive knowledge of literary and critical theories by thinkers such as Bakhtin, Lacan and Althusser, as well as his deep knowledge of Eastern religions and philosophies. The interview sheds light on the Cuban author's use of parody (Cuban choteo) and pastiche in his novels, as well as on Octavio Paz's influence on his own interpretations of "the Orient." It is also interesting to read Sarduy's confessions about his sexual life and his habit of conceiving himself as a duality, which prevents him from being able to eat or sleep by himself. Equally original is Kushigian's questionnaire in which Sarduy has to react quickly to certain words with other words.

The interview with Borges reveals that his interest in the Orient was born through his readings of The Arabian Nights. Curiously, when Kushigian asks Borges if he considers himself an orientalist, he answers that he does not know any Oriental language. He also points out the differences among Asians from different countries, but claims that, in general, they think in different ways than Westerners. Borges also states, often using English words, that "Western culture" is not entirely Western because the Bible comes from the Middle East. Finally, we learn that Borges never read his own writings and owned none...