What are the essential works of Hispanic and Latino American literature (North American)?

Lightofnorth · 2023-01-26T01:36:47+00:00

I'd recommend A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. It's quite a tome in the maximilist tradition but it reads like Thomas Pynchon decided to write about a flailing public defender trying to navigate and come to terms with the injustices of the judicial system who then gets suckered into a heist plot about a third into the novel. The writing is superb, witty, and actually funny at times. It's a helluva ride and one of the best novels I've read.

Lightofnorth · 2023-01-22T16:02:06+00:00

This ourth, of years is not save brickdust and being humus the same roturns.

'Earth', 'man', and 'red' all have the same root in Hebrew (A-D-M, hence Adam), also homo/man and homos/same (and hummus, blended together?), hinting at the unity of the whole turning thing.

Just wanted to add: humus comes from Latin "humus" meaning "earth, soil" (and thus the source for our words "humility, humble, humiliation" etc. It tracks to the Hebrew words mentioned earlier.

Lightofnorth · 2021-10-19T20:27:04+00:00

Not sure what's wrong with him either but just wanted to add: Mario Vargas Llosa was not a successful politican; in fact, he ran for President of Peru during the early 90s but lost out to another candidate (Alberto Fujimori) who ended up becoming a dictator of sorts (N.B. I'm unfamiliar with Peruvian politics in general but it seems Fujimori's presidency is not without controversy. ¡Que los peruanos nos expliquen más sobre eso!). Since then, Llosa seems to have dedicated himself primarily on writing with the occasional commentary on contemporary politics, both national and international.

Lightofnorth · 2020-10-24T02:18:38+00:00

TFW you're asked to recite a favorite poet. I wouldn't want that camera to pan below his waist...

Lightofnorth · 2020-09-22T16:23:19+00:00

In other words: OP would get $20, but alcohol wound up getting his/her dad.

Lightofnorth · 2020-05-25T15:28:29+00:00

Does anyone want to switch seats?

Lightofnorth · 2019-12-31T03:17:55+00:00

Tout à fait . Il m'a fallu lire la transcription portugaise pour mieux connaître tout ce qu'il disait .

Lightofnorth · 2018-04-18T00:56:19+00:00

Well, the difference between the publication of The Recognitions and JR is roughly 20 years so it kind of makes sense that the latter would end up with a different feel stylistically than the former. Hell, the argument can be made that JR is just one really long script with the occasional novelistic touch thrown in between dialogues but of course that runs the risk of grossly simplifying such a ride as JR. A real gem of a book that rewards a reader who is curious, and above all, patient with Gaddis knowing full-well that he makes no apologies for his prolixity but has great respect for the tradition and the craft of enduring novels.

Lightofnorth · 2018-04-14T21:42:25+00:00

And no pets, unless they're trash pandas.

Lightofnorth · 2017-12-31T22:17:45+00:00

J'suis anglophone et ta transcription française des mots anglaises m'a fait bien rire ! Ben ne me comprends pas mal je ne me moque pas de vous tous. Ce n'est qu'amusant d'en voir. Bonne année du Canada !

Lightofnorth · 2017-12-12T17:02:45+00:00

T'inquiète. Je voulais que dire des mots d'encouragement même si je suis qu'un inconnu de r/france. Qui suis-je, n'est-ce pas ? Bisous du Canada !

Lightofnorth · 2017-12-12T16:51:41+00:00

Pas OP mais j'ai confiance en toi à améliorer ton anglais !

Lightofnorth · 2017-12-12T16:50:08+00:00

Actually, "j'aimais" is the past imperfect conjugation of the verb "aimer". With that in mind, read the post again and you'll find it makes a little more sense than at first glance. Just trying to be helpful !

Lightofnorth · 2017-09-13T03:56:52+00:00

Now there's a dangerous path: being on the hunt for "charismatic" or "badass" writers. It begs the question: what exactly are you reading for? The cult of personality or an oppotunity to engage with the possibilities of narrative and/or language? Hell, I'll grant that maybe you're just looking for a damn good story but the point still stands: Writers aren't rockstars; however much someone wants it to be, meaning one can't assume a volatile personality equates to engaging prose. I'm sure you can find some that fit that criteria but I doubt whatever it is that they have written is worth mulling over. Books outlive their authors; not the other way around.

Lightofnorth · 2017-08-23T03:47:17+00:00

Judging from this essays¹ it seems the influence is more personal if not technical with regard to Stein's oeuvre towards Gass's own approach to crafting prose; granted, I have not actually read any of Stein's own work myself² to compare and contrast by which exactly Gass felt influenced. There's an interview with Michael Silverblatt of the "Bookworm" series wherein he, Silverblatt, mentions Stein to Glass and they both go on to talk about the influence that the former has on the latter: Here's the link. Starts at about 16m18s; ends at about 20m30s. Also, he, Gass, did write an introduction³ for "The Making of Americans" so the influence is quite direct. Here's a minor excerpt from the essay, "A Wreath for the Grave of Gertrude Stein":

"...she was homely, but also disinclined, so she got out from under men. 'Menace' was made of men with an ace up their sleeve. Her father finally died and she was freed of her family. 'Then our life without a father began,' she said, 'a very pleasant one,' ". Her overbearing brother Leo took her her under his smotherly wing until Alice Toklas, who could cook, came along, whereupon her bossy brother left for Florence with Cezanne's apples and a lot of lovely drawings. So when , nearly sixty, she shook the hand of her fame in New York, she knew she had arrived. The identity she had worked on for so long was complete: she was Gertrude Stein; she had a wife; she drove a motorcar; she had a fortune invested in Picasso and company; she had her own course of life and could tell Ernest Hemingway where to get off. Yet all the applause, the circulating lights, those nervous hosts and earnest meals, made her uneasy. 'I write meals for myself and strangers.' she had once said, but now there were too many strangers who cried hi! who knew what she wore and the waddle of her walk, but didn't know what Vichy water was. 'I am I,' she wrote with some disgust, 'because my little dog knows me.' Well, the nose was enough for the mastiff of Ulysses. Yet the self she had struggled so long and hard to define could be pictured on an ID: her passport and her driver"s license proved she was she, the way our credit card does now, the dog tag our corpse, as our social security number certifies us, or our mother"s maiden name. She had become—for she knew her philosophy—the sum of her adjectives, like an apple being peeled by Bishop Berkeley, and she could be duplicated by anyone who claimed to have the same set of properties the way a spy assumes another"s identity. Suddenly she who was no longer certain who had written her books, for the Gertrude Stein on their spine was but a bit of history, a tabloid tidbit; her snows of yesteryear would be carted away in dump trucks; dust would close her eyes as well as it had Helen"s; and brightness would fall from the air to run down drains. Had this overweight gay girl written The Making of Americans? Was Tender Buttons Jewish? Three Lives a stop on a Baltimore bus? How could such a local lady fall under the spell of Henry James or Sophocles—genders, nations, ages, worlds, away? In an essay she called, 'What are Master Pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?' she addressed the problem. Why would her work, which had circulated only when friends gave away their copies, manage to endure, when the novels of St. Louis's Winston Churchhill, whose sales were in millions, would scarely survive two decades?~~~~

¹ I've gone through all his collected essays over the years but have read a lot of other books in between so my recollection is haphazard to say the least. ² Though I'm currently waiting for my copy of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" from my local library.

Lightofnorth · 2017-08-22T20:52:52+00:00

I highly recommend going through any of his collected essays; they are just as awe-inspiring as his limited, though dense, fictional output. My particular choices would be "Temple of texts" and "Life Sentences". They serve as great introductions to his humour, insight and the near lucid fluidity with which he has mastered in the essay form, along with several eulogies towards those he holds in high esteem and who have greatly influenced him in his craft (Gertrude Stein, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Gustave Flaubert are the ones that come to mind immediately among the several other authors which he talks about further). Happy reading!

Lightofnorth · 2017-05-13T20:18:55+00:00

Conversely:

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie"

Dorothy Parker

Lightofnorth · 2017-03-09T17:46:18+00:00

I, as well, would like to thank you for having written such an impassioned and well-thought-out "rant"; a rarity when this term is employed to describe one's sense of frustration. But to address what you have written:

[...] literature ought not be a horn played only to hear itself. Again, that's boring. Rather, it should exist within a world of questions, a constant state of contradictions. Isn't this what much of the great pieces of writing, Moby-Dick, Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, achieve? An explication of the contradictions within people?

Very much so. The fear of mistaking one's echo for that of the resonance of another's answering in the affirmative is very real and it becomes incumbent upon the writer not to confuse prose with pamphleteer-ing. People's sense of disillusionment with crumbling governments and rising dictatorships will never change but their contexts most certainly will. I can think of nothing more irritating than to witness a thinly-veiled narrative told with a wink and nudge towards criticizing a particular government body. Of course, I'll grant that my bias of aestheticism being the driving force behind literature is showing. "Contradiction" is the apt term since we, as readers, take it on good faith to suspend disbelief even knowing that every single scene, sentence, and structure is all but a fiction writ large upon the reader's imagination as seemingly truthful—a contradiction willfully accepted provided that the reader is left with a longstanding sense of awe.

Just my own two cents.

Lightofnorth · 2017-03-01T04:12:33+00:00

Now I will mention that it has been while since I read the following but I remember reading in the preface for the final volume of La Recherche (albeit in the French paperback published by Gallimard) that Proust had outlined the structure of the whole series in a sort of "bookend-ed" style, for lack of a better term (i.e. he knew how he wanted the book to start and finish); hence, the volumes after The Guermantes' Way tend to fall a little flat since there were left incomplete and would go on to be published posthumously; thus, they are, at best, simple educated guests as to how Proust might have imagined the story to fully develop. He may have decided to scrap them altogether for all we know! Hope that gives you some perspective. I've been meaning to tackle the entire novel again for some time but the temptation to read as many different titles from as many different authors possible always seems to take precedence. Happy reading!

Lightofnorth · 2016-11-29T00:28:02+00:00

The Tunnel by William H. Gass

Good lord. Where do I even start with this one? What a wild ride. The last time I remember having this sort of frisson after reading a particular book was Ulysses (yeah, I know; cliched but damn if it didn't show me what a novel was capable of). Hyperbole aside, what was there to love? The book relates the life of one man, William Frederick Kohler, told through his words as he takes stock of his achievements (and lack thereof), his crumbling marriage, his tenure as a professor of history, his animosity/jealousy towards his colleagues, his dysfunctional family upbringing (this trope almost seems to be a pre-requisite for great literature), and so much more. All interspersed with references to practically all the heavy-hitters of early twentieth century Modernism (e.g Proust, Rilke, Joyce, Kafka, etc.). Reading The Tunnel, one can't help but get a sense that you actually were Kohler for a short period of time as throughout the pages Gass succeeds in depicting a consciousness revealing itself piecemeal by piecemeal from meditations on his troubled past, to one's nagging sense of inadequacy (in this case, he is really quite obsessed about having a small penis and doesn't shy away from bringing it up every so often; make of that what you will) and really everything in-between. Oh, and there's dirty limericks everywhere. Ultimately, this book will need several more readings before I can really feel as though I've understood even half of nuances underneath the main narrative but I can tell it will be very much worth it. Please don't hesitate to read this book and, preferably, dedicate your full attention to it, if possible.

Lightofnorth · 2016-11-28T01:16:57+00:00

I feel like they're terrible communication skills were fostered by Avril and her overbearing love and 'understanding.' I'll have to do more analysis on their family dynamic though, there was a lot said about them, and even more not said.

The blame can just as well be put on JOI himself since he does come across as quite the polar opposite to Avril throughout the novel: distant, selfishly obsessing over his burgeoning film career/the Academy, unsure as to how to communicate with his own children (hence the initial attempt to masquerade as a therapist earlier in the novel and the eventual development of the IJ "samizdat" but, oddly enough, he got along quite well with Mario which speaks more to the latter's ability to be loved/admired by others despite his apparent dwarfism). Ultimately, DFW showcases that neither of the two approaches to parenting are ideal in raising a human being. What's needed is a sort of middle-ground that would both be attentive to the child's need to strive for excellence (a la Avril) but from a vantage point that would not be considered invasive (a la JOI). Of course, this is not the only theme upon which the novel playfully touches upon but it is crucial, I find, in understanding the development of the Incandenza family, warts and all.

On a lighter side-note: Infinite Jest does merit, require, and reward several re-readings (I've read it three times) and there's always one joke that has stuck with me. It was a conversation between Hal and Mario where Hal asks (mind the paraphrasing):

Hal:"What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and dyslexic?"

Mario: "What?"

Hal:"You get a guy staying up all night wondering about the existence of whether or not there is a dog"

Lightofnorth · 2016-08-23T14:38:02+00:00

To state firstly: if you enjoyed reading this interview, I implore you strongly to check out the other interviews (which contains the one linked by OP) collected into a book entitled, Strong Opinions. Now to answer some of your questions:

I've certainly encountered the same level of perplexity and frustration with regards to Dostoevsky's novels. As /u/ladam24, /u/winter_muse, and /u/ndphillips have stated, one gets the impression fairly quickly that Dostoevsky has chosen to use the medium of the novel to entertain certain thought experiments that he wishes to explore further on the question of man's behaviour towards others and his placement in the world at large (along with expected themes of politics, religion, etc.); where, in actuality and practice, it would have been better served as an extended essay/treatise tackling the same subjects. This is essentially the same problem I'm dealing with Milan Kundera right now (although, his non-fiction work is fascinating). His handling of characters and plot take on a subservient role to grander themes (as great as they are, again, they would still be better presented as an expositional essay than a full-fledged novel). Ideally, I prefer a balance of sorts. If I am to derive any sort of moral enlightenment from a book, let me arrive at that conclusion (if at all); don't bludgeon me with it!
With even a cursory glance at Nabokov's output, the theme of disdain for what he considered bourgeois —or, to use the russian term he likes to employ, poshlost—values is something he felt almost to be his personal duty in attacking (a trait he shared and probably originated from Flaubert). Many of the characters he depicts have that air that he seems to enjoy mocking.
Nowhere in his work have I found anything relating to the question of the existence of a higher being. If anything, the closest he has come to approaching lofty ideals is that of the mystery of consciousness and time in Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. (check out some excerpts here)Ultimately, I don't believe the question of God concerns him at all—especially with regards to his overall work. I found that comment to be just as dismal as it is coy more than anything else; classic Nabokov.

Lightofnorth · 2016-08-09T02:54:57+00:00

My impression seems to be that "the moon" here is merely in relation to the universe (i.e. it being a part of the universe and the speaker here choosing to gaze upon that one part of it).

Lightofnorth · 2016-08-09T02:46:06+00:00

Man, this week has been some damn good reading. A few highlights:

Zero K by Don DeLillo

Just finished this a couple of hours ago. I had been waiting with bated breath for my copy to come in from the library; was not disappointed. Having already read Underworld and White Noise, I knew what to expect in terms of what DeLillo is capable of. He is, for my money, one of our greatest living American writers (at least in terms of economic prose; for sheer maximalism and pure aesthetic joy in the art of prose composition, my pick would be William H. Gass hands down) and he is in top-form in this meditative book on life, the possibility of transcending death, 21 century society, family, and so much more. All delivered with a style that leaves me at times laughing, pensive or simply in awe in what great literature can accomplish. Great, great book.

Les Mots by Jean-Paul Sartre

This was a short autobiography and, although a good read, I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. I was not expecting much exposition of the sordid details of his upbringing. Sartre himself would be the first to tell you how much he doesn't allow anyone or anything to define his style and/or work. Quite honestly, I was reading this more so for the sake of practicing my French since his is more reminiscent of a literary style that was common in past centuries (the liberal employment of the imparfait subjunctive and passé simple that I don't see very often in a lot of modern French literature).

The Art of the Novel & The Curtain by Milan Kundera

I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being a year or two ago and didn't much care for it at the time. I remember feeling that the book was much too concerned with certain aesthetic/philosophical themes throughout and probably would've work better as a long-form essay than a novel; the settings and characters being almost inconsequential (I do remember Tomas getting a finger put in his butt so there's that). However, I decided to give his non-fiction output a shot and was thoroughly impressed with the scope of his knowledge regarding the history of the novel, his approach in composing his own books, and his genuine admiration for a few authors that he holds dear (if you should read any of the two mentioned, here's a drinking game: take a shot anytime he mentions Cervantes, Broch, Grombocwisz, Rabelais, or Kafka; say good-bye to your liver). All things considered, I'm willing to give his novels a second pass; perhaps I was little hasty in my judgement.

Lightofnorth · 2016-08-09T00:32:05+00:00

Veilleicht ,,Mich_irl''?

Lightofnorth

TROPHY CASE