Mexican Writers on Writing

The Writer's World

by Margaret Sayers Peden (Editor)

The pieces collected in Mexican Writers on Writing present a vibrant cross-section of Mexican authors’ thoughts on the written word, from Carlos Fuentes’s instructional Decalogue, to Bernardo de Balbuena’s eloquent dissertation on the beauty of poetry, to Octavio Paz’s analysis of the essence of translation. From the literature of colonialism and conquest to contemporary writing, these writers reveal intimate views on what it is to be a writer, and explore just how flexible the boundaries of what we have termed "literature" can be. Contributors include Bernardo de Balbuena, Carmen Boullosa, Emilio Carballido, Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Bartolomé de las Casas, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glantz, Enrique González Martínez, Angeles Mastretta, José Emilio Pacheco, Ignacio Padilla, Pedro Ángel Palou, Octavio Paz, Elena Poniatowska, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Ilan Stavans, Eloy Urroz, Juan Villoro, and Jorge Volpi.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Margaret Sayers Peden is an American translator and professor emerita of Spanish at the University of Missouri.

Reviews

[Ryan Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great introduction to Latin American literature and variously excites the reader, writer, artist, activist, and intellectual within, though at different times. I was most drawn to the chapters from Jose Fernandez de Lizardi's El periquillo sarniento : "Be assured that it is better to profit by other men's disillusions than by your own."; Enrique Gonzalez Martinez's "The Death of the Swan?": "Critics tend to . . . cling to their first discovery . . . closing their eyes to inevitable and obvious evolution. But the poet persists in his task, hoping that . . . there was in his poems something previously unnoticed that broke the narrow mold in which his work had been imprisoned."; Octavio Paz's "Translation: The Literary and the Literal": "literal tranlation is [not] impossible, but that is not translation. . . . This is closer to the function of a dictionary . . . translation implies a transformation of the original. This transformation is . . . literary."; Rosario Castellanos's Selections discussing the discovery of a literary vocation as when: "instinct, blindly yet effectively,finds a response to sudden emergency [. . .] in which a person wagers everything on a single card . . . and wins."; and several others that draw you into the magic and importance of writing with a perspective that is refreshing in light of the same old stuffy . . . stuff that I've grown used to.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I'd hoped...certainly worth reading but with a few exceptions, the essays were not memorable enough.

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starts centuries back but most of the book features interviews with living writers. Worth looking at even if you only read the interviews with Elena Poniatowska and Carmen Boullosa.