Carlos Fuentes, Mexico, and Modernity

by Maarten Van Delden

Maarten van Delden's thorough command of his subject, his innovative and sometimes iconoclastic conclusions, and his clear and engaging writing style make this study more than just an interpretation of Fuentes's work. CARLOS FUENTES AND THE DILEMMAS OF A MEXICAN MODERNITY offers nothing less than a comprehensive analysis of Fuentes's intellectual development in the context of modern Mexican political and cultural life.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am inclined to rewrite the title of Maartin Van Delden's book with generous quotation marks. "Carlos Fuentes," "Mexico," and "Modernity" doesn't explore the relationship between its three titular properties so much as it problematizes them. Who is Carlos Fuentes? A novelist? A journalist? A social advocate? What is his expectation for Mexico? How has this expectation changed? What is Mexico, in Fuentes' eyes? What is modernity? What does modernity look like in Mexico? In what ways does Fuentes support, and in what ways does he criticize, modernity in Mexico?

The book is well-written enough, with detailed analyses of several major Fuentes texts -- La muerte de Artemio Cruz, La nueva novela hispanoamericana, Terra nostra, etc. However if you, like I, have not read most of those texts for yourself, you may feel disinclined to read closely the chapters that deal with them specifically.