{"id":1367,"date":"2010-12-06T12:28:44","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T11:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2011-01-27T21:47:53","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T20:47:53","slug":"wine-and-grantas-best-of-young-spanish-language-novelists%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1367","title":{"rendered":"Wine and Granta’s ‘best of young Spanish language novelists\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Literary launches are often dull affairs — dutiful publishers, respectful friends, bashful authors — so very agreeable to be invited to the Granta launch for their new \u2018best of\u2019 list of \u2018young Spanish language novelists\u2019 – in Granta 113.\u00a0 Someone (Saskia Vogel) has had the bright idea of combining the reading with a professionally hosted wine tasting so that each writer is paired with a fine Spanish vintage.\u00a0 As punters are only given one glass, this means they have to drain it between each reading to get a refill.\u00a0 Result?\u00a0 A happily inebriated audience who appreciate every last word that the writers feed them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

And the writers themselves?\u00a0 Granta make much of the idea that this new generation (i.e. born after 1975) have not experienced the repression of Franco or the Latin American dictators, so write more of the personal than the political.\u00a0 This perhaps oversimplifies the work of the older generation – like Vargas Llosa and M\u00e1rquez – and also ignores the work of some of the finest young Peruvian writers like Daniel Alarc\u00f3n (Lost City Radio<\/em>) and Santiago Roncagliolo (Red April<\/em>) which is intensely political.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But they do have a point as it is true that one huge influence hangs over this generation and not necessarily a benign one:\u00a0 the late Robert Bola\u00f1o, who was been canonised by the literary world since his untimely death.\u00a0 Bola\u00f1o made a virtue of an autobiographical approach – what it was like to live as a writer in the \u00a0Latin American bohemian world of casual sex and drugs – which in the hands of a master is all very well, \u00a0but when played out in infinite variations by disciples can become introverted and dull.\u00a0 Writers have affairs and literary rivalries — fine .\u00a0 But give me Macondo or the War At The End Of The World<\/em> for a bit of scale and vision.\u00a0 Both Alarc\u00f3n and Roncagliolo provide that in their novels above, as do some of the others;\u00a0 the best of the work here is, to use one of Borges\u2019s favourite words, n\u00edtido<\/em>, \u00a0lucid and intense (and very well translated), and as \u2018viscerally real\u2019 as Bola\u00f1o wanted South American literature to become.\u00a0 Granta are to be commended for their commitment in launching the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is notable is the lack of women writers.\u00a0 All six of those reading tonight are men.\u00a0 And only a quarter of the total published list are women.\u00a0 This is not the fault of Granta<\/em>, who have rightly selected just on merit not political correctness.\u00a0 But surely the next wave of Latin American writing will see far more from the likes of the remarkably accomplished Luc\u00eda Puenzo, who is both a filmmaker and writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back to the winetasting, which should be developed further by other literary publicists:\u00a0 I’d like to see a vodka tasting with Martin Amis and Ian McEwan;\u00a0 champagnes with Howard Jacobson;\u00a0 and \u2018Amazonian armpit arguardientes\u2019 with Will Self.<\/p>\n

see my full review of the issue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Literary launches are often dull affairs — dutiful publishers, respectful friends, bashful authors — so very agreeable to be invited to the Granta launch for their new \u2018best of\u2019 list of \u2018young Spanish language novelists\u2019 – in Granta 113.\u00a0 Someone (Saskia Vogel) has had the bright idea of combining the reading with a professionally hosted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,7,1],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-peru","category-uncategorized","tag-granta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}