Salidas: Departures from the real

I’m interested in the political and literary ambiguities of realism in the twentieth century. What ambiguities? How about these?

• In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet realism (Gorky etc.) was intended as radical art (realism = radical = good)
• By contrast, suburban realism from the 1940s to the 1960s in the United States (Cheever, Updike, etc.) was deeply conventional (realism = conventional = good)
• Inversely, the nouveau roman movement in French literature during the 1950s and 1960s (Robbe-Grillet, Saurrate, etc.) rejected realism for being too politically loaded. (realism = radical = bad)
• The Latin-American writers of the Boom generation in the 1960s and 1970s (Márquez, Cortázar, etc.) rejected realism for being too politically conventional. (realism = conventional = bad)

To say nothing of the meaning of realism itself, the politics of realism as such are deeply ambiguous.

Salida is ambiguous as well. Salidas are “departures” and “exits,” but also “quips,” “wisecracks,” “outbursts,” and “escapades.” The readings to be considered under the heading of this Salidas series are intended to offer, cumulatively, an occasion to reflect on realism in the context of the novel in Spain, from the 1940s to the present, as well as the many “departures” from realism in that period.

Realism was more or less official Francoist literary policy for the three decades of the Franco regime, so experimentation in literature was inevitably a form of resistance or rebellion. In addition to looking at a family of novels from the 1940s and 1950s that hew to the realist paradigm, we’ll consider novels from the 1960s to the present that challenge that paradigm. What counts as “realist” is of course a natural question to pose in this context, as it is to consider the many ways in which writers, realists and experimentalists both, did or didn’t manage to be subversive of the official line.

Texts

You’ll find a shelf of novels collected on Bookshop here. I also crudely categorize works there as ‘realist’ or ‘experimental’.

The chronology of works to be considered is as follows (NT=not translated; TD=translated, a little tricky to find; TE=translated, easy to find):

• 1942: Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte (La familia de Pascual Duarte) TE
• 1943: Max Aub, Field of Honor (Campo cerrado) TD
• 1945: Carmen Laforet, Nada TE
• 1956: Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, El Jarama TD
• 1958: Ana María Matute, The Lost Children (Los hijos muertos) NT
• 1958: Carmen Martín Gaite, Behind the Curtains (Entre visillos) TD
• 1962: Luis Martín-Santos, Time of Silence (Tiempo de silencio) TE
• 1966: Juan Marsé, Last Afternoons with Teresa (Últimas tardes con Teresa) TE
• 1966: Juan Goytisolo, Marks of Identity (Señas de identidad) TD
• 1967: Juan Benet, Return to Región (Volverás a Región) TD
• 1970: Juan Goytisolo, Count Julian (Reivindicación del conde don Julián) TE
• 1972: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, The Saga/Fuga of J.B. (La saga/fuga de J.B.) NT
• 1973–1981: Luis Goytisolo, Antagony (Antagonía) TE
• 1975: Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless (Juan sin tierra) TE
• 1980: Juan Goytisolo, Makbara TE
• 1982: Juan Goytisolo, Landscapes after the Battle (Paisajes después de la batalla) TD
• 2000: Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co. (Bartleby y compañía) TE
• 2001: Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis (Soldados de Salamina) TE
• 2006–2009: Agustín Fernández Mallo, Nocilla Dream/Nocilla Experience / Nocilla Lab TE
• 2013: Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Things We’ve Seen (Trilogía de la guerra) TE
• 2018: Cristina Morales, Easy Reading (Lectura fácil) TE