The Latin American Literary Boom and U. S. Nationalism during the Cold War

摘要

Deborah Cohn presents an illuminating study of the crucial impetus given by different US groups to the boom in Latin American literature in the 1960s and 1970s in the context of the Cold War. Since international attention to the boom was significantly shaped by the US reaction, her account is of interest to any literary scholar involved with the period. Cohn has written a history of a literary phenomenon - a study not of the literature itself nor of how its content relates to historical and political contexts, but of how the authors and their work became caught up in ideological battles in the Americas. The authors sought to project their work on the international stage, and that effort coincided with the aims of different players in the United States. Cohn explains that there were various groups in the United States which promoted the projection of Latin American literature to the public: leading writers, commercial and academic publishers, translators, academics, philanthropic organisations and government departments. Even though the translations had mixed commercial success, the writers were taken very seriously by these groups, albeit for different reasons. Cohn traces the ways in which the approaches of these groups were at times complementary and at others contradictory.