Foreign Voices

...Oe has broken them all right...

...There is, he points out, a great void in Spanish literature between the 17th century and the 20th that contemporary writers are trying together to fill, and in so doing to create a cultural identity for themselves...

...Latin America, too, remains remarkably foreign to us, despite its closeness and the vogue for its literature—dubbed "the Boom"—that began in the 1960s...

...they are the consequence of an age-old trial and error search for ways to please, to intrigue and to instruct...

...Vargas Llosa is good-spirited, intelligent and humane...

...Cortâzar says of his stories that "it's as if they were dictated to me by something that is in me, but it's not me who's responsible...

...Derek Walcott claims in his Introduction that "conversation democratizes identity and diffuses style, so Borges does not speak 'Borges,' nor does Neruda speak 'Neruda' or Garcia Marquez the prose of his novels...

...Somersault is a very odd book, fall of arresting ideas and indelibly beautiful images, but written in a style almost aggressively unfriendly: It is long, extremely repetitive, and suffused with a formality and emotional distance that will push many readers away rather than draw them in...

...In Latin America there's the illusion that a writer can change something...

...There are no Japanese shows for adults on American television...

...Neruda has a massive ego, having taken to heart a lifetime of praise and kudos...

...The American writer who seems most important to these authors is, oddly enough, the very regional William Faulkner, possibly because, as Vargas Llosa hazards, the society he writes about is not terribly different from their own...

...But in Latin America the possibility exists of actually shaking that system, because Latin American systems are shaky...

...Latin American writers think of reality as having a wider span, that's all—we explore the shadow side of it...

...We've gone beyond the point of no return...

...Spanish is a language that tends toward exuberance, proliferation, profusion...

...And who's to say if a savior is real or fake...

...The leaders of the unnamed sect in Somersault have long been known to their followers as Patron and Guide...

...On Fiction Foreign Voices By Brooke Allen Ever since World War II Japan has been our partner, whether willingly or unwillingly, in the creation of a consumer society and the development of a business-friendly world order...

...This prolixity may not always be to North American tastes, but in this collection of encounters with almost every great Latin American talent of the 20th century, including Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortâzar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda and others, it becomes evident that for all these writers, stylistic exuberance stems to a large degree from intellectual exuberance, an insatiable interest in the world...

...Latin America is made up of historically and politically failed societies, and this failure has created a subterranean language— since the Conquest...

...He resolved to stop writing fiction...

...I always am quite disturbed when American reviewers call my fiction surrealist," she writes...

...in this respect they have much more in common with their peers in Eastern Europe than with those in North America...

...they write for and toward one another...

...The defining event of his personal life was the birth of a mentally handicapped son in 1963 and the effect this child had on the family...

...I consider it realist in excess...

...Nature that makes up the totality of life on this planet—the environment we humans live in, in other words—is steadily falling apart," he observes...

...But sometimes it is worth remembering that literary rules, if in fact there are any such things, were not set by some arbitrary totalitarian fiat...

...I would say with Garcia Marquez," says Fuentes, "that we are writing one novel in Latin America, with a Colombian chapter written by Garcia Marquez, a Cuban chapter written by Carpentier, an Argentine chapter by Julio Cortâzar and so on...

...Oe is a writer who raises many more questions than he answers, as Somersault demonstrates...

...Then a radical faction within the sect, an elite group of young scientists and technicians, followed their leaders' creed to what they saw as its logical conclusion...

...As Carlos Fuentes points out, it was rather extraordinary that all the prominent writers in the Boom were friends with one another during the '60s...

...Japan, and the world, were given a glimpse of apocalypse...

...The text always separates itself from the author...

...But is his belief justified, or is he simply a well-meaning yet deluded man...

...The church finds a new home deep in a mountain hollow, at the former site of the trilogy's eponymous Church of the Flaming Green Tree...

...We will never again compromise," he vows...

...It was a resolution he cannot have kept for more than five or 10 minutes, because in the intervening years he produced a trilogy, A Flaming Green Tree (not published in the U. S.), and now a novel that might be described as a sequel to the trilogy or at the minimum as having grown out of it, Somersault (Grove, 570 pp., $26.00...

...They decided to become the agents of Armageddon rather than its dupes, attempting to take control of Japanese nuclear facilities and to inaugurate a millennial reign...

...Patron, it seems clear, is no charlatan...

...Borges is indescribably charming, fanciful, erudite, interested in everything...

...God as the totality of nature—including human beings—is decaying bit by bit...

...Can we be in any real doubt that a little repentance is called for...

...the national eagerness for spiritual peace and reconciliation...

...Only the most fervent American cinéastes make any effort to see Japanese films...

...In 1995 it grabbed the international spotlight when its radical members released a deadly nerve agent throughout the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 commuters and injuring some 4,000 more...

...Several of the writers interviewed link the phenomenon to the strong Spanish roots in the Baroque...

...Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed...

...Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes served as ambassadors in the Mexican diplomatic service...

...One of the clearest differences between Latin and North American writers is the Latins' more flexible attitude toward "the real world...

...Yet despite the postwar proliferation of films and television, not to mention the current explosion in global communications and Internet technology, the Japanese remain strangely mysterious to Americans...

...In the manner of many Paris Review interviewees, the authors here meditate on the nature of "inspiration" and whether such a state really exists at all...

...They are trying to help build their society and simultaneously to define it...

...Puig is modest and low-key...

...They are still not entirely sure...

...Oe has said on occasion that he sees his writing as a conscious attack on the "rules" of literature...

...Luisa Valenzuela can recall his saying that "when the moment came he had to go to the typewriter and pull the story out of himself as if he were pulling out some kind of creepy creature...

...Faulkner's novels, he says, "are a precious source of descriptive techniques that are applicable to a world which, in a sense, is not so unlike the one Faulkner described...

...but they know that it is not, as Vargas Llosa says, "the sum of its imports...

...God is terminally ill...

...Apparently Latin American writers see a political career as a natural extension of their artistic life, whereas here, writers stay at home and it is actors who transfer their skills to the political arena...

...Thanks to his becoming a laureate, though, he is perhaps the one serious Japanese novelist of the second half of the 20th century whose name is familiar in the West...

...Politics, history, movies, and journalism are all vital parts of each writer's mental world: There is hardly an ivory tower littérateur among the bunch...

...This was not the truth, but they were distressed by the radicals' actions and hoped to bring things to a safe conclusion...

...The fundamental style of my writing," he stated in his 1994 Nobel lecture, "has been to start from my personal matters and then to link them up with society, the state and the world...

...What, they ask, is Latin America...

...he truly believes in what he is doing...

...And the vast majority of Americans will never in their lives purchase or read a Japanese novel...

...Fuentes further explains: "He is the one American writer who says 'we are not only a success story...

...of course, it's not that simple...

...A further unanswered question is: How genuine are Patron and Guide...

...Both Neruda in Chile and Vargas Llosa in Peru ran for president of their respective countries...

...the postwar aura of humiliation and repentance...

...They appeared in all the news media stating that their teachings were bogus and they were, and had always been, phonies...

...Paz speaks of "the anguish that precedes the act of writing—the hours, days or months when we search in vain for the phrase that turns the spigot that makes the water flow," and adds: "As you write, the text becomes autonomous, changes and somehow forces you to follow it...

...It's not Europe, Africa, pre-Hispanic America, or indigenous societies—but at the same time, it's a mixture of all these elements which coexist in a harsh and sometimes violent way...

...Oe's deliberate, leisurely tale, in some ways more a symposium than a novel, appears at a moment when apocalypse— whether through war, destroying the environment or terror attacks—has left the realm of fantasy and religion to become perfectly feasible...

...the atomic bombs...

...In books like A Healing Family and A Personal Matter he related the painful but redemptive inclusion of the handicapped boy in the family to the tragedy of recent Japanese history: the hubris and nationalism of wartime Japan...

...How can one respond...

...Unfortunately, the result is alienating and boring, as is Philip Gabriel's painfully awkward translation...

...Cabrera Infante is a compulsive punster, funny, malicious and vain...

...Oe does not answer these questions either, but he certainly challenges us to ponder them...

...Although the authors in this collection represent many nations, they seem to conceive of themselves as, to a certain degree, compatriots...

...Still, there is much that is pleasing about this story of a messianic religious sect and its flirtation with apocalypse...

...by the Jonah-like will to annihilation of some of his younger acolytes...

...Later, of course, rivalries, political differences and swollen egos ended many of the friendships, but a sense of community persists...

...At least there is an awareness that over four decades he has consistently and with humility tried to mend fences and build bridges between Japan and the rest of the world...

...Oe's new novel constitutes his reaction...

...Our great writers have all been prolix, from Cervantes to Ortega y Gasset, Valle-Inclân or Alfonso Reyes," says Mario Vargas Llosa...

...That's also the case in countries like Germany...

...All four combine his fascination with mysticism and with the events of his own life...

...When this happened, Patron and Guide recanted, or performed a "somersault...

...Patron, whose trance-induced visions were translated and interpreted by Guide, had long preached the imminent end of the world and the necessity of universal repentance...

...the capitulation of the Emperor and his fall from divine status...

...He is the only writer in the Spanish language who has almost as many ideas as he has words...

...the current magic realism fad is largely due to the success of authors like Garcia Marquez...

...Guillermo Cabrera Infante worked for the Fidel Castro regime until his disenchantment and defection from Cuba...

...as usual, the answers are fascinating...

...For people who feel the need for a savior deeply, on a personal and societal level, isn't even a phony savior better than none...

...In both America and Latin America," comments Manuel Puig, "the young writer usually doesn't like the system, with a capital'S,' in his country...

...we are also the history of defeats,' and this he shares with us...

...We live in a continent where the novel is a recent development, where many things have been left unsaid...

...he was also, at the time of the interview in 1970, an unrepentant and doctrinaire Stalinist...

...and by what, exactly, repentance involves...

...Luisa Valenzuela attributes it to specifically Latin American ways of seeing and understanding...

...As his work evolved, Oe was eventually disenchanted with the course it had taken...

...Borges is the opposite—all concision, economy and precision...

...It is therefore not surprising that so many prominent Latin American writers have taken active political roles...

...Can one prevent apocalypse through spirituality, or does spirituality, instead, inspire apocalyptic urges...

...You may not like Wall Street, but it works somehow...

...the heady years of what the Japanese refer to as the Era of Rapid Growth and the Bubble Economy...

...should they in any way be taken seriously...

...Last year he wrote to Edward Said: "The materials of my novels had become too much involved with my own life, on the one hand, and, on the other, with esoteric mysticism...

...Even a Nobel Prize-winning author like Kenzaburo Oe has had a quite modest impact here...

...Garcia Marquez stays "very quiet so that if it passes by I can capture it...

...And are we supposed to agree with Guide, who says: "Real saviors are few and far between...

...The 10 superb interviews in Latin American Writers at Work (Modern Library Paperback Original, 287 pp., $ 13.95), the latest volume in the Paris Review's, indispensable "Writers at Work" series, will bring the region's literary consciousness vividly to life for even the most stubbornly Anglo-Saxon reader...

...yet a certain generosity shines through at odd moments, and the reader is softened and disarmed at discovering that he kept a giant poster of Twiggy on his living room wall...

...Somersault is not so much based on as inspired by the infamous Japanese sect Aum Shinrikyo...

...In response, Patron, aided by a few new, dynamic young followers, decides the time has come to revive the church...

...Here Patron is challenged by his own vague ideas of what God wants from him...

...As one of them later remarks, "If you followed the church's doctrine you couldn't very well oppose this plan...

...This is not strictly true: each of these authors indeed has a recognizable speaking as well as writing voice, which emerges with the help of the skillful interviewers...

...Their vital engagement seems to derive from the continual political chaos in South and Central America...

...Nor is the possibility that man's need for a savior might not be a redemptive quality but rather a sign of his irremediably fallen nature...

...Those issues are never satisfactorily dealt with...

...The "Writers at Work" interviews are always useful and interesting, but this collection is more than that: It is itself inspirational, probably because of the writers' vast range of interests and their active engagement with the world...

...He has always seen the years in the wilderness as a descent into hell, and he plans a reverse somersault...

...Young writers who don't like the American way of life feel impotent, because it's really tough to shake Wall Street...

...Now, 10 years later, some of the former radical faction kidnap the physically vulnerable Guide and harass him until he dies of an aneurysm...

...We avidly buy Japan's cars, sound systems and TVs, but we have taken little interest in its cultural products, except for some comic strips and a few benign children's creations like Pokémon and Hello Kitty...

...It's easy to reject a violent sect's apocalyptic vision, for example, but the concept of the world as we know it coming to an end in the next century or so is not far-fetched when one thinks, as Patron does, in terms of rapid environmental degradation...

...They are in late middle age as the novel opens, and have spent a decade in self-imposed exile from their people and their church, trying to come to terms with the crisis they unintentionally caused 10 years earlier...