A few days ago, dear reader, in one of those bad times when someone is always angry, a subject came up that has not yet been addressed in this newsletter, but which is undoubtedly worth addressing because it undeniably influences the Geography of the letters of the continent.
I am referring to the growing number of Latin Americans who are publishing after writing their first books under the auspices of one American university or another, where creative writing programs – from undergraduate to postdoctoral degrees – have reproduced at an impressive rate , especially during the last two decades, they also opened up to languages other than English.
Apart from the fact that one can debate whether it is possible for a writer to become one simply by attending a classroom – just as one should debate the role of workshops, of spaces that, in recent years, too brutally reproduced – what? There is no question that creative writing programs in Spanish have become not only places of resistance—the mere fact of defying the dominant language, says Coetzee, is crucial for the future—but also places of cross-border encounter and enrichment have become the various Spaniards – unfortunately, these areas could hardly establish themselves in our countries.
back and forth
Let’s start with the virtues before pointing out the vices: when I say that programs for creative writing in Spanish have become places of enrichment for various Spaniards, I mean that, like in no other field, they involve the Mexicans and the Colombians the scratching and scratching Bolivian and Paraguayan, but also with the gringoñol, and when I say that these are cross-border meeting places, I am not only referring to geographical and identity-related questions but also to the question of time, i.e. the I I am not only referring to because young people from Peru share with young people from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay and Chicago, but also because they share with writers from generations before us, whether immediate or distant.
And it so happens that, eventually, most of the programs to which I refer and which have been extracted from the corpus of the original English language programs were created, implemented and supported by Latin American writers who had previously immigrated to the United States. One would have to be a fan of nonsense to believe that spaces like this – yes, it’s a shame they only seem possible on the other side of the Rio Grande, but that’s the subject of another, much more complex newsletter – not the case would end up becoming an opportunity and a possibility.
Unfortunately, one would also have to be a fan of nonsense – all nonsense obviously has its opposite – not to realize that as long as these spaces are sanctioned and accepted by the university logic of the United States, even if they are erected as places of the linguistic Resistance and the possibility of cross-border encounters inevitably and immaterially inherit and reproduce the fundamental vices of the programs that preceded them.
Among these vices, which can be summed up in an exaggerated, almost caricatural way, the following must be highlighted: the equation of the idea one has of the reader with the idea that one has of the client and the idea that one has of the literature with the idea that one has of the product – this was already warned by David Foster Wallace at the time -; The silent and, in most cases, certainly unconscious imposition of an algorithm – similar to that of audiovisual platforms – that acts as a funnel for both the mode of narration and the stories being told – the greatest danger of this algorithm is the explosion of a correct one Literature, an aseptic literature that eludes any form of risk – and finally the normalization of an ethics that reacts fundamentally to the threat, that is, an aesthetic hijacked by the morality of the loaded gun.
what to look out for
“It’s not right that in your novel parents smoke and drink in front of their children,” they told a Latin American writer after submitting her novel to an American publisher; “It can’t be that your characters are victims and not victims,” they told another Latin American writer at the end of his master’s degree in writing; “You should think about whether you want that to be your narrator, because that’s not politically correct, plus it’s not going to be easy for the readers,” she told fellow Latin American writers in a working session to fellow program members; “Why use so many narrators when you can use one without complicating the reader’s life?” they asked a writer after he finished a lecture he had given at a university.
Threat-responsive ethics penetrate every pore it finds, and not necessarily the most obvious ones; The morality of the loaded gun not only points, as may be imagined, to the stories being told, it points to the manner chosen to tell it, for it fears both the mode of utterance and that which is pronounced. Therefore, the aesthetic is hijacked. And so literature, which has always served expansion, suddenly and unconsciously becomes a path of retreat.
In this sense, it is worth paying close attention to what interests our newsletter, namely the status of our letters: of course, in the programs of creative writing in Spanish, books have been sketched and written that we have all read and enjoyed. But it is also true that they produce too many correct books and export the rules of morality with loaded guns.
We must pay attention to this complex duality when reading the Latin American literature that is being written in the United States, and we should also ask ourselves, much more seriously, why have we not been able to create cross-border encounter spaces in our countries?
So why haven’t we managed to create locations south of the Rio Grande where the Uruguayans compete with the Guatemalans and Dominicans?