Secondary source, Reviews of Books About Gabriel García Márquez
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
University Park, PA : The Pennsylvania State University
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
"This dissertation analyzes three detective novels of the post-boom in Latin American literature. The appropriation of the genre by authors included in this study- Gabriel García Márquez, Luisa Valenzuela, and Leonardo Padura Fuentes- is, I contend, a strategic appropriation of popular culture through which various social, political, and cultural master narratives existent in Latin America are examined. The introduction first discusses how the Boom novels' self-reflexiveness led to demands for a more explicitly politically committed literature, which the appropriation of the detective genre fulfilled while continuing the Boom's preoccupation with writing's traditional support of dominant power structures in Latin America... Chapter one reveals how Crónica de una muerte anunciada by Gabriel García Márquez undermines the concept of causality. Through this questioning, the novel reflects on the arbitrary processes of exclusion through which the writing of history is made possible, a literary preoccupation that gains its political edge through detective fiction and journalism's common root in the classical-realist narrative that Crónica de una muerte anunciada critiques."