Merle Rubin
The interviews collected in this volume of the Paris Review's excellent "Writers at Work" series are especially enticing. There is a shared sense of community among these writers from different countries, an electric intellectual energy and a feeling of warmth and generosity that often overcome serious breaches and enmities. On both the left and the right, there is a concern for social justice and freedom and, everywhere, a real passion for literature itself.
Politics and literary politics aside, each interview offers unusual and fascinating glimpses into the essence of each writer's art, whether it's Garcia Marquez's acute understanding of the nexus between literature and journalism...or Borges' brilliant and provocative insights into English and American literature...
For anyone with any interest in literature -- English, American or Latin American -- this book will indeed provide many such moments of enlightenment.—Los Angeles Times
Publishers Weekly
Fearful that he had lost some of his mental acuity after a serious accident mid-way through his literary career, Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, who until that point was known as a poet and essayist, tried a new genre-short story writing-to avert possible failure in those in which he had already demonstrated his deftness. The sharp-witted Borges, who won the Nobel Prize on the strength of his stories, is just one of 11 writers featured in this absorbing collection of interviews with 20th-century writers (about half of whom are deceased), the fourth book in the Writers at Work series. Masterfully introduced by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the interviews offer an incisive look into the politics of Pablo Neruda, the nostalgia of Octavio Paz, the morbidity of a young Luisa Valenzuela and the linguistic contortionism of Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Replete with jottings from personal notebooks and manuscript pages, the collection features Julio Cort zar's musings on the diminishing gap between "what we call the fantastic and what we call the real." Gabriel Garcia Marquez laments the destructive potential of fame and the irresponsibility and ignorance of the literary critic. From the transcribed daydreams of Mario Vargas Llosa to Manuel Puig's rigid adherence to routine, the creative impulses of the writers featured range from the sublime to the mundane. Author Silvana Paternostro, who completed a journalism course in Cartagena under the tutelage of Garcia Marquez, did not record an interview with "Gabo" in the traditional sense, but instead seems to have followed his advice to put away the tape recorder, have a long conversation and later reminisce about it, writing it down as an impression instead of as a series of questions and answers. While the book is a remarkable chronicle of Latin American life and writing, it serves primarily as a glimpse into the inner workings of some of the sharpest literary minds of the past 50 years. (On sale Mar. 18) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
This fourth title in the "Writers at Work" series (which includes Beat Writers at Work, Playwrights at Work, and Women Writers at Work) compiles ten interviews and one feature article from the archives of the Paris Review. The writers interviewed are among the biggest names in contemporary Latin American literature: Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Manuel Puig, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Luisa Valenzuela. Sadly, only one woman has been included. Most of the interviews date from the 1980s and 1990s, with one as early as 1966 and one as recent as 2001. Each interview is preceded by a short biographical sketch, an introduction by the interviewer, and a reproduction of a manuscript page. The predominant themes are literature, the act of writing, and the impact of politics on the author's life and work. In addition, interesting details occasionally emerge about the writer's relationships to other writers or literary movements. The discussions of literature may bore the nonacademic reader, but there is enough here to satisfy fans, academics, and aspiring writers alike. Recommended for all libraries with Latin American collections.-Anna Youssefi, Rice Univ. Lib., Houston, TX Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Collection of interviews from The Paris Review with ten authors addressing many subjects but a single overarching theme: What does it mean to be a Latin American writer? "I despise the term 'Latin America,' " declares Cuban novelist and essayist Guillermo Cabrera Infante. "Better call us Mongrelia. We are mongrels, a messy mix of white, black, and Indian." For Colombian Gabriel Garc'a Márquez, it means to be a descendant of the Cuban Revolution, which, having "turned into an article of consumption," ignited interest in a literature hitherto ignored both abroad and at home. "What was really sad," Garc'a Márquez adds, "is that cultural colonialism is so bad in Latin America that it was impossible to convince the Latin Americans themselves that their own novels were good until people outside told them they were." Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges finds the question uninteresting. "For about the last seven years," he remarks in an interview from 1966, "I've been doing my best to know something of Old English and Old Norse. Consequently, that's a long way off in time and space from the Argentine, from Argentine writers, no?" Chilean poet Pablo Neruda dances around the matter, and a couple of dozen others, with a dazzling mix of erudition and Stalinist sophistry, while exiled Argentine novelist Manuel Puig makes a case for the writer as a citizen of a private world. Other stars take a turn in these pages, with Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa weighing in to throw out gossipy tidbits, offer advice to young writers, and speak to favorite causes. Curiously, only one woman is represented: Argentine journalist and novelist Luisa Valenzuela holds her own just fine, but onewonders at the omission of, for example, Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel. A worthy entry in the long list of Paris Review interview volumes, of considerable interest to students of world literature and creative writing.
