Santiago’s Poetry in Motion

Foreign Policy: What are some of the notable recent bestsellers in Chile?

Verónica Cortínez: Bestsellers in Chile represent a good mix of the global and the local, just as you would find in any European country. Local heroes range from our own Isabel Allende, to the patriarch of literary provocation, Nicanor Parra. Isabel Allende’s historical novel, Inés del alma mía (Inés of My Soul), sits atop the fiction bestsellers list; all books about history are selling well. One might say Chile is once again more a country of historians than poets. Titles include a new edition of Jorge Edwards’s classic testimony on Cuba, Persona non grata, an apology for Pinochet by the Italian Mario Spataro, and a collection of essays on 19th-century Chile.

FP: Does the younger generation read more than their parents and grandparents? Is Chile a country of readers?

VC: The younger generation probably reads less literature for art’s sake and more for entertainment. Literature has to compete with television, cinema, and music. But reading and writing poetry is almost part of daily life everywhere in Chile, perhaps especially in the provinces. Young and old, rich and poor, men and women participate in a vivid literary communication that forms the base of the extraordinary richness of Chilean poetry. This richness is documented in the number of anthologies being published and edited, including poetry from the shantytowns.

FP: What are the new names in Chilean literature that people should know?

VC: Almost 40 years after her suicide, [Chileans are recognizing] Violeta Parra as an outstanding poet. Outsiders who really want to know Chilean culture must get acquainted with poetry as song, for instance the works of Patricio Manns. In the field of narrative, several new figures include Carla Guelfenbein and Andrea Maturana, as well as the overrated Alejandro Zambra and underrated Carlos Iturra. Diamela Eltit’s experiments and Pedro Lemebel’s incursions into the gay world are already well known in the American academy.

FP: In his 1997 essay, "I am Not a Magic Realist," Alberto Fuguet quotes one of his characters from his book Por favor rebobinar (Please Rewind), who speaks of his desire to write "pure virtual realism, pure McOndo literature." What is McOndo?

VC: Alberto Fuguet coined the term to stress his own experience in a world where Santiago, Los Angeles, and any other city tend to blend together in a unified world dominated by globalized U.S. popular culture, the Internet, and cable TV. Identity has to be found in this interconnected world rather than in the magical world of Isabel Allende or Gabriel García Márquez. In fact, McOndo is [a play on] Macondo, the mythical town of García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

FP: The dictatorship has been over for 16 years. How has Chilean literature addressed this period of the country’s history?

VC: Even during the dictatorship, writers from inside the country tried to question the Pinochet regime. The massive success of theater, such as the productions led by Nissim Sharim, are still well remembered, and a whole generation of actors formed in this context now contribute to the prestige of the growing Chilean film industry. Since 1990, a relatively small number of testimonies and novels have been dedicated to the theme. The most ambitious projects remain José Donoso’s Casa de campo and Germán Marín’s trilogy, but the great novel on the dictatorship is yet to be written.