LITERATURE-COLOMBIA: New Authors a Long Way From Macondo

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, May 21 2002 (IPS) - A new generation of Colombian writers is proving difficult to categorise, but one common denominator is their distancing from the “magical realism” and the town of Macondo created by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.

Narrative has been reborn as a literary genre in this country, say experts, but it is too early to describe the phenomenon as a “boom” in Colombian or Latin American literature as was the movement of which García Márquez formed part in the 1970s.

“What is clear is that a new wave of writers has appeared, some who are very young and some who are middle aged, but all of whom are very successful in Colombia and are achieving greater interest outside the country, particularly in Spain,” Gabriel Iriarte, of Planeta publishing, told IPS.

Planeta, a Spain-based company, sold more literary works at the recent Bogotá Book Fair, which ended May 6, than books on current events or journalism, which in the last few years had overshadowed novels.

Among the new standouts in Colombian letters are Jorge Franco, Santiago Gamboa, Efraín Medina, Mario Mendoza, Gabriel Pabón, Rodrigo Parra, Fernando Quiroz, Alvaro Robledo, Enrique Serrano, Cristian Valencia, Juan Vásquez and Antonio Ungar.

“It is interesting to see their stylistic and thematic diversity develop,” commented Iriarte.

This is a characteristic that most local literary critics are focusing on: each author is writing on different subjects, with their own unique techniques and formulations. No single current unites them. Instead there is a scattering of styles that experts consider healthy.

“My generation writes what it wants. There are some who are doing documentaries, others that aspire only to be good storytellers, and others who are having fun and writing parodies,” said Ricardo Silva, author of the novel “Relato de Navidad en la Gran Vía” (Christmas Story on Main Street).

Jorge Franco, author of “Rosario Tijeras”, rejected the idea of a “boom”, opting for the notion of a literary renovation that responds “to the passage of time, not to the desire for rupture or for a patricidal instinct with relation to the previous generation. ‘Boom’ is too complicated a word,” he told IPS.

Franco defines himself as part of a generation “that is on another stage, in different circumstances, with strong influences from the audiovisual media.”

Poet, literary critic and university professor Luz Giraldo shares that view. “The younger Colombians are very interested in the immediate, in the present,” she said in a conversation with IPS.

“There is a feeling of scepticism towards existence, a special interest in defiant questions that are expressed through crime stories, which have a certain crude realism, but also through a sort of playful relationship with cheap novels and romances,” said Giraldo.

The new Colombian authors’ works reflect a feeling of being unprotected, of uncertainty about the future, she added.

“They express real nightmares with the grammar and vocabulary of death, violence, aggression, cannibalism and pain,” said the expert.

Giraldo selected the stories included in the anthology “Cuentos caníbales” (Cannibal Stories), and in the book’s prologue she says: “Through these writers the city comes alive in its multiplicity of faces, not necessarily as a scenario that attracts, repels or absorbs, but rather as a place that imprints its circumstances and manner of being.”

For Franco, who is included in the anthology, the urban sampling provided by the stories is a natural by-product of the fact that “we are writers who were born and live in the city, and we tell the story of what happens in the city. The writer recounts what is around him.”

These new Colombian voices have caught attention outside the country as well, especially in Spain. This growing interest is in part a result, say critics, of the fact that Spanish companies dominate the Latin American publishing industry.

More than 80 percent of the Colombian writers who have recently risen to fame are published by the Colombian branches of Alfaguara and Planeta, two of Spain’s main literary publishing houses.

Literary awards have also been a decisive factor in giving Colombian writers a boost. Franco won the Gijón Prize, while Robledo and Parra were finalists for the Herralde Prize, both awards are for novels.

Pabón is the sixth Colombian to be recognised with the prestigious Juan Rulfo award for short stories, and Mendoza was the first Colombian to receive the Biblioteca Breve Seix Barral prize for his novel “Satanás” (Satan), which is among the country’s best-sellers.

Critic and academic Giraldo also attributes the rising interest in Colombian narrative to what she says is the reading audience’s boredom with magical realism, the style that García Márquez founded and which the European readers associate with the Latin American literary boom.

The new anthology, according to Giraldo, serves as “a long good-bye to Macondo,” the fictitious village that serves as the scene for much of García Márquez’s novels.

Franco, author of “Rosario Tijeras”, a story about the adventures and loves of a beautiful hired assassin, says that reality has made sure that no traces are left of magical realism.

“Reality today is so absurd and exaggerated that there is no reason to twist it when writing about it. It is like a magical and absurd dream. (The new wave of narrative) is a return to the founding principle of literature: telling stories, and that means writing about violence, love, the history of some object or of a home,” he said.

Pilar Reyes, editor at Alfaguara, told IPS that the media are responsible for some of the new Colombian authors’ success and that her company will continue publishing young writers and other new voices.

“A media phenomenon is occurring, but it is important to make editorial decisions, and to ensure that it boils down to literature,” she said.

At least some of the authors seem to agree. Antonio García, another member of the new generation, said, “We must respond to expectations by writing well and writing more.”