Wednesday, June 14, 2006
the jay-z of mexican literature is bizzack!
Carlos Fuentes writes like he's twenty. But his new novel, The Eagle's Throne, which I haven't read yet, sounds brilliant. It's 2020, Condoleezza Rice is the US President and she's cut off Mexico's means of communication. Thats just a footnote to the socially critical book that is a great account of the loony times we live in. Fuentes' other brilliant novels, especially The Death of Artemio Cruz have always been progressive and maybe this work is a reaction to the writers who aren't young but are in literary years. People like Xavier Velasco, Ignacio Padilla, Rodrigo Fresan and Juan Villoro--the Boom done boomed. Fuentes, now in his fifth decade of writing, is still going strong. Pssshh, plot-wise, he's better than he's been in years. It's pretty humbling to know you can not only write this long, but still write loud, experimental novels (at least in terms of ideas) at 78 years old. Why can't rappers age this well?
