Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture

3. What We Talk About When We Talk About Dirty Realism in Spain

33 u 3 What We Talk About When We Talk About Dirty Realism in Spain Cintia Santana In recent decades, the object of literary studies (i.e. a once upon a time Canon) has come into question resulting in a foregrounding of the political valuations attached to “literary value.” The notion of the narrative text that is discussed within literary studies has broadened to include texts that are verbal only in part (e.g., film, television, song, zarzuela). Material translations, however, continue to be considered little more than the subject of marginal critical inquiry within literary studies. A critique of Western metaphysics’ phonocentricism and the less privileged position occupied by writing when compared to speech, or “arche writing,” does not exempt the field from its own hierarchies; translated literature vis-à-vis literature in the original language is considered derivative and imperfectly representative, as is writing alongside speech when considered through a Derridian lens. The underexploration of translated literature continues to be the case within Spanish literary studies, despite Spain’s long-standing tradition of literary borrowings across linguistic borders and, in recent decades, Spanish editors’ fervor to publish translations: Spain is second only to Germany (and ahead of France) among countries that publish the highest number of translated works per year (UNESCO). While translation studies has come to constitute a field in its own right, the translated text as the focus of scholarly endeavor continues to be relegated almost exclusively to the aforementioned field, where 34 CINTIA SANTANA it is also marginalized among other areas of inquiry more often involved with technical or “practical” text translations, rather than “literary” texts. The present essay is governed by the understanding that translated texts, the study of their material production and their literal, that is, linguistic transformation , constitutes a valuable, if often overlooked point of entry for critics citing “influence,” “intertextuality,” “literary interference,” and “appropriation” attributed by way of translation. In the analysis that follows, the source and target texts constitute a primary text, its recto and verso. The aim is not simply to evaluate the “deviation” of the translation from the original but rather to read the target text as yet another version of the source text as Jorge Luis Borges proposed (“Las versiones homéricas” 239). In so doing, the transformations of a text across languages can illuminate the various currents that communications navigate between initial utterance and subsequent receptions. In 1983, fiction editor Bill Buford marketed the spring issue of the literary magazine, Granta, under the title “Dirty Realism: New Writing from America .” In 1986, in the same year that Spain entered the EU, consolidating its democracy according to some, Spanish publishing houses took an avid interest in publishing the works of Dirty Realist writers such as Raymond Carver’s short story collection Catedral (Cathedral, Anagrama) and Tobias Wolff’s De regreso al mundo (Back in the World, Alfaguara). The brisk syntax and set of cultural references said to be characteristic of Dirty Realism began entering contemporary Spanish writing soon after: Ray Loriga’s Lo peor de todo (1992), José Ángel Mañas’ Historias del Kronen (1994), and Benjamín Prado’s Raro (1995) became the paradigm of a new generation of Spanish writers. The authors self-consciously and insistently associated themselves with the United States, and were often grouped by critics under the literal translation of the English term: Realismo sucio. Discussion of Spain’s Generación X, Generación Kronen, Realismo duro, and literatura de la cloaca, inevitably makes mention of their Anglo precursors, especially that of Raymond Carver’s work.1 Rather than distancing themselves from the “father’s” influence, as so many writers are eager to do, the writers of Realismo sucio (Dirty Realism) eagerly claimed their fathers, albeit foreign fathers. Realismo sucio writers’ self-conscious insistence on their association with a global (i.e. primarily Anglophone) culture, often carried with it an adamant rejection of an autochthonous tradition: in response to an interviewer’s question about the relationship of the protagonist of Historias del Kronen, Carlos , to Lazarillo de Tormes, Mañas answered, “El Lazarillo es un pan y Carlos es hielo” (Fidalgo). In an interview in El País, Loriga stated, “Mi generación convive con referencias culturales más globales: este es un libro que podía WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT DIRTY REALISM 35 haber escrito un tipo nacido en Liverpool. Para nosotros el folclor no supuso...