Structures of Power: Essays on Twentieth-Century Spanish-American Fiction (review)

Book Reviews 227 Structures of Power: Essays on Twentieth-Century Spanish-American Fiction Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996 Edited by Terry J. Peavler and Peter Standish This anthology brings together nine essays dealing with issues of power and hegemony as addressed in rhe works of Spanish American authors. The editors preface the collection with a thoughtful consideration of the problematic relationship berween literature and politics in the regional conrext. They argue that by defining powet in exclusively political tetms, literary critics have tended to overlook more subrle and sophisticated apptoaches to the theme of power in contemporary Spanish American narrative. The essays chosen thus reflect the editors' wish to broaden critical inquiry to include texts that interrogate all sorts of power relations, whether political, social, textual ot some combination of these. Terry J. Peavler revives the discussion of literatura comprometida begun in the Introduction in his piece on Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Peavler evaluates the Cuban author's position on political engagement versus aesthetics in light of the political content of Cabrera Infante's novels, and also considers the status of Cubans writing in exile. Several selections explore the (de)consttuctive potential of myth and mythical discourse in the novel of dictatorship. José Carlos Gonzálex Boixo examines the mythic aspects of the portrayal of the Mexican cacique as key to full understanding of Pedro Paramo, Rulfo's masterpiece. Rosalia Cornejo-Parriego investigates the role of the grotesque as the central delegitimizing strategy in Garcia Márquez's El otoño del Patriarca. And in a particularly fine essay Todd S. Garth explores affinities berween Macedonio Fernández and Augusto Roa Bastos, showing how the author of Yo el Supremo adapted Fernandez's experiments with mythic time and space to the needs of the historical novel. Myth, specifically the opposition between oral and written discourses, is also central to Sara Castto-Klaréñs thought-provoking analysis of Mario VargasLlosa 's El habUdor. She posits that beyond the novel's critique of ethnographic poetics lies an znû-indigenista political agenda. David William Foster, writing on Alejandra Pizarnik and Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, on Luisa Valenzuela, undertake feminist analyses of two very different works produced during Argentina's most recent military dictatorship. Foster's essay is a welcome addition to this collection, as Pizarnik is arguably the least "canonical" of the writers featured, and her La condesa sangrienta is a fascinating text. Thought to be the poet's only published prose work, it is, in Foster's words "a meditation on the horror of absolute power" (146). Questions of literary authority are explored in an exceptionally lucid essay by Sharon Magnarelli. She analyzes two recent novels by José Donoso in which the struggle for narrative powet is foregrounded through the charactets appro- 228 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies priation of another's artistic vision and voice. Magnaielli suggests that the novels' depictions of all power relations as unstable ultimately serve to undermine aurhorial power. Peter Srandish uncovers related themes in the work of Julio Cortázat, showing how Corrázar uses rhe theatrical in several short stories as "a metaphor of a number of strata of authority" (76), effecrively drawing attention to the power relations between direcror, actors and public, and (by exrension) narrator and reader. Together these essays provide valuable and original insights on important works by well-known Spanish American authots. A variety of theoretical and methodological approaches are represented here. Structures of Power Is a valuable resource for anyone seeking an introduction to contemporary Spanish American narrative, or who is inrerested in questions of hegemony in literature. Cynthia L. Palmer The University of Arizona ...