Tag Archives: play

Week 13: Conclusion

I don’t entirely understand what I’m supposed to write about in this conclusion. I can offer my overall feelings on the course and return to some of my early ideas about Latin American literature, but on the whole, not very much has changed. This isn’t to say that I didn’t gain anything, however, far from it: it was one of the most enjoyable courses I’ve taken in my five years of university. It was possibly the most I have ever had to read for a single-semester class, but it didn’t feel overwhelming at all. I’m somebody who likes reading anyways, but something about a book being assigned for a class usually seems to decrease its potential for enjoyment; here, however, there was a perfect balance between reading for fun and reading for academic achievement that made it more enjoyable than either on their own. This was aided by the option to choose between texts for most of the weeks and the fact that some I had already read either in whole or part (Borges and Campobello) or were on my reading list anyways (Carpentier, Rulfo, García Márquez, Lispector, and Lemebel). While my favourite of the books remains Labyrinths, which I loved long before this class started, One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Hour of the Star have also solidified themselves among my favourite books over the course of the class, and I hope to return to them and other books by García Márquez and Lispector in the future. There were times that I had trouble figuring out what to write about for blog posts (this one most of all) but, ultimately, I always managed to come up with something.

I feel obligated to return to my original statement about the playful, self-aware element of irony I have found in a lot of Latin American literature. Though there were obvious exceptions (especially Rigoberta Menchú, who was clearly divorced from any broader Latin American canon), this did seem to hold true for most of the books we read, most prominently those following Borges and García Márquez. I was never particularly attached to this claim, though; it’s little more than a vague generalization pointing to a recurring theme in a handful of well-known classics, a bit like how Russian literature is so often characterized as “depressing” or “existential.” A lot of this seems to derive from the huge presence of Borges and García Márquez (I couldn’t imagine Lemebel or Bolaño writing the way they did without their influence), but it also preexists them in writers like de la Parra and Carpentier, arguably finding its real origin in a mixture of the influence of Cervantes and the peculiar position of Latin America as an oft-forgotten bastard child of imperialism in the twentieth-century world. However, I do wonder to what extent this preconception influenced my reading of these books and whether I would have thought the same if any of them had been written by a writer from elsewhere.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on whether themes of irony or self-awareness play any special place in Latin American literature, or is this simply a matter of perspective?

Week 8: One Hundred Years of Solitude

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I read One Hundred Years of Solitude during the winter break two months ago – spoiler warning for those who haven’t finished since it’s hard to separate the first half from the second in retrospect. Some of the details of the plot have faded from my mind, yet the overall effect remains: this is a beautiful book. This didn’t fully hit me until the last chapter; though I enjoyed it immensely the full way through, the final scene was like waking up from a dream and discovering that I had practically been in a trance for the past few weeks. As cliché as it is, there really is no better word to describe it than “magical.” The whole thing is infused with this sense of playful wonder and it has quickly cemented itself among my favourite books ever.

A defining characteristic of many of my favourite books is the elevation of the mundane to incredible through literary elaboration; Ulysses is my favourite book of all time yet almost nothing actually happens in it. Márquez does the opposite and achieves a similar effect. So much takes place throughout the century this book covers, yet it can feel like nothing happens at all. Even the most marvelous events are portrayed in the same deadpan historical tone and no character is given much inner development; at times, it barely feels like a work of fiction at all. Despite this, it is one of the most imaginative books I’ve ever read. There really is something childlike about it all; it’s like seeing the world without all those preconceptions that we’ve picked up, freed from expectations of reality, morality, modernity and narrative for a smooth plane in which everything is equally possible and nothing is elevated above anything else.

While reading, I kept trying to figure out who the real protagonist of the story was. Early on I figured out that José Arcadio Buendía and Colonel Aureliano Buendía were decoys; as important as they are in certain sections, both are absent for too much of the narrative to fulfill this role in the bigger picture. I then convinced myself that Úrsula was the real hero for how long she persisted and kept order while others came and went. This theory was also disappointed when she too died well before the ending. My next option was Pilar Ternera, who, though seemingly marginal, lives longer than anyone else, first appearing in chapter 2 and not dying until the last chapter. Or was it Melquiades, the mysterious traveller from the opening chapter who survives two deaths to reappear as a spirit and ultimately predict the demise of Macondo in the final scene? None of these possibilities was really satisfying. Ultimately, a book as decentered as this one has no need for a protagonist; if anything, Macondo itself is the protagonist. Or, if we can permit a bit of pretension, maybe that titular spirit of Solitude who comes to visit everyone sooner or later is the real central figure. Maybe a stretch for any other book, but for one such as this where anything is possible, why not?

Who or what do others think could best be characterized as the “protagonist” of this book?

Week 1: Introduction

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Sorry for the late submission – I got a bit lost on the course website. My name is Owen Chernikhowsky and I’m an anthropology major with a minor in music. It’s hard to say which year I’m in exactly, but I started university at UVic in 2018, switched to UBC anthropology in 2020, and expect to graduate at the end of 2023. I’m taking this course for my second literature requirement since the topic is already an interest of mine. I first became interested in Latin America because of an ethnographic field school in Cuba that was set to take place in 2020 but was cancelled; thankfully, it will be this summer instead and I’m quite looking forward to it. Last year I took SPAN 280 on Revolution in Latin American Literature with Brianne Orr-Álvarez, and the region has also shown up in several anthropology courses I’ve taken. Additionally, I’ve already read some of the authors on the syllabus – Campobello, Borges (one of my favourite authors of all time), Rulfo, and García Márquez – while others I had been meaning to read anyways.

Since watching the lecture video, I’ve thought a bit about something that I said in class – that I associate Latin American literature with a kind of playful irony. This comes up against what Prof. Beasley-Murray said in the lecture – that we should not attempt to force any single overarching theme for a region that is already loosely categorized as a unity. Insofar as “Latin American Literature” is an arbitrary generalization, I agree entirely – but so is practically any presumed unity, all of which begin to disintegrate if prodded at. It seems as if it’s a duty for any arts course on a given subject to begin with the statement that said subject does not exist. While this point is always important to recognize, I don’t find it particularly interesting. Maybe “Latin American literature” is as arbitrary a category as the set of authors with names beginning with D, but is either really all that absurd? Obviously neither “Latin American Literature” nor “authors with names beginning with D” exist as unities unless we treat them as such, but both could serve as an excuse for a fun experiment, a way to extract through comparison themes that could otherwise be missed. I’m reminded of the critics in Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” who “often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works – the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say – attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres…” Maybe we cannot reach any external, transcendent principle of unity through such methods, but we can produce new ways of looking at things – only, however, through constantly keeping in mind that the frameworks we use to do so are temporary and fluid. I accept any suggestions for further arbitrary categories to play with until they run dry and must be abandoned for something new.

As for a question, I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on the categorization of something like literature – do you find literary labels such as “Latin American Literature” more useful or restrictive?