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De donde son los cantantes

af Severo Sarduy

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
501509,400 (3.83)1
"Born in eastern Cuba, Sarduy studied at the University of Havana, and, with Guillermo Cabrera Infante, was one of the few writers involved in the fight against Batista. At an early age he was made publisher of the Lunes de Revolucion, the official organ of the 26th of July Movement. In 1960 he left for Paris." "In Paris Sarduy became the editor of the Latin American collection of Editions du Seuil, and became involved with the Tel Quel group. Among the books he introduced to the French were Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Lezama Lima's Paradiso. Sarduy himself, meanwhile, published several works including Escrito sobre un cuerpo (Written on a Body), Maitreya, Colibri, La simulacion, Overdose, and Daiquiri, a book of poems that uses Baroque prosody to describe gay sex in explicit terms." "De Donde son los cantantes (From Cuba with a Song) was Sarduy's first truly experimental work. Divided into three sections, each corresponding to the ethnic groups that make up Cuban nationality (Spanish, African, and Chinese), the book explores the disparate elements at work in Latin American culture. Culture, for Sarduy, is a series of radical and often violent displacements and errors. Transvestitism becomes the common denominator as a symbol of transformation (physical and spiritual) and delusion. As Gonzalez Echevarria observes, "In De Donde son los cantantes, the characters look as if they're made up for a carnival that will let loose their deepest and weirdest fantasies. Sarduy's novel exposes the complicity between the novel's conventions and society's patriarchal structure. He denounces the quest for Latin American identity as yet another ideological maneuver by essentially epic novelists who want to strengthen the hold of the mechanisms of authority.""--BOOK JACKET.… (mere)
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I was coming off a string of books from Argentina, and I decided that I needed a change of scenery, so I spent a bit of time browsing the Cuban literature section of the library. I got an early Alejo Carpentier novel I hadn't read, a collection of José Lezama Lima's short fictions, a novel by Zoé Valdés, and two books by Severo Sarduy. I decided to start with the Cátedra edition of the latter's De donde son los cantantes, hoping that the 75-page introduction would help me get to know the author and prepare me for this book and Cobra, the other novel of his that I grabbed. I was thankful for the biographical information, written by a friend of the author's who has done extensive scholarly investigations on Sarduy and his work. He seems like an admirable, undeniably creative person, and the portrait of him made me excited not only to read this book but also to track down some of his writing for Tel Quel Magazine in Paris, for which he wrote a great deal of literary criticism. The introductory study was long but justifiable considering the tangled web of influences and ideas that went into the creation of De donde son los cantantes. It speaks of the cultural and stylistic influences of Carpentier and Lezama Lima and how they helped shape Sarduy's writing; the historic east-to-west migration of ideas, including those related to music and politics, across Cuba; the tripartite (African, Chinese, Spanish) cultural heritage of the country and the influence of the various parts on Cuban music and national culture; and a brief explanation and classification of the various figures of Cuban religious practices and how they are woven into Sarduy's novel. All of this serves to prepare the reader for a strange, experimental work that is divided into three parts, with each part related to one of the three parts of Cuban heritage as defined here (Chinese, African and Spanish).

In the first part, a General is pursuing a performer from a Havana Chinatown cabaret named Flor de Loto, following her through a chain of shady locales with eastern-influenced performances and clouds of illicit smoke. At one point, there is a performance on stage where Auxilio and Socorro, two transvestites who figure in the telling of all three of the stories, undergo a series of metamorphoses on stage. The general is not able to catch up with Flor de Loto, who is protected by Auxilio and Socorro, who parry his advances and end up convincing him to give them a bunch of stuff in exchange for access to the woman (who actually isn't a woman but another transvestite). The author himself occasionally interjects into the conversations between Auxilio and Socorro, and there are scattered references to Chinese texts, Spanish baroque literature, and a hodgepodge of other sources. I was glad for the footnotes, because it would have been even more difficult to understand what was going on without them.

The second part is a gloss of a ten-line epitath written on the gravestone of Dolores Rondón, a Camagüeyan woman who meets and wins the affection of the politician Mortal Pérez and ascends with him as he gains increasing political power and moves on up to Havana, where she lives in the lap of luxury with a small squad of servants and handlers, drinking rum and getting her hair done in a series of colors. The good times eventually come to an end and she comes home to Camagüey defeated and humbled.

The third part, the longest of the three, tells the story of Auxilio and Socorro's procession across Spain and Cuba, first in pursuit of Mortal, and later accompanying a decaying wooden carving of Jesus, whose journey across Cuba from East to West mirrors the procession that Fidel Castro and his victorious revolutionary troops made after the Batista left Cuba. The procession ends in a strange, futuristically-distorted Havana, where the Jesus figure in the final stages of decomposition is met by a blanketing of white snow and helicopters patrolling the skies, ominously monitoring the procession.

The three parts of the story are interrelated but don't particularly rely on one another. It's an experimental book, and I struggled a bit to get through it. I have a friend who often utilizes a particular vocabulary and series of references to past shared experiences and interests when he talks to his friends, making it difficult for other people, who did not share these interests or experiences, to understand what he's talking about. It makes for constantly exclusive conversations, and while these can be a lot of fun, they often frustrate those people in the group who haven't gotten to know him well enough to build up the shared experiences needed to penetrate into his web of references to Montreal Expos baseball history, Argentine politics, pick-up basketball at the park, and other odds and ends. His commentary is often cryptic, obscene, sensationalistic, hilarious and infuriating. People have strong feelings about their experiences with him, although as they become more and more initiated into his unique conversational methods and their charms, he tends to grow on them. Reading Sarduy's De donde son los cantantes was a lot like talking to my friend. When Sarduy blends things that I'm interested in and know about, like Cuban music and Spanish baroque literature, it can be a lot of fun. When the references stray from my knowledge base, it can be very, very difficult to follow along with an already unorthodox and fragmented story. I enjoyed reading this book and was happy to have the critical edition with introductory study and footnotes to help supplant my relative ignorance of a lot of the reference material. As I read more by him and come to better understand his perspective, he might grow on me. I can also imagine a lot of people I know putting this book down nearly imediately. It's an intriguing direction to take as a writer, away from a universal language that can be understood by all readers and toward a more particular, individual representation of one's heritage and country. ( )
  msjohns615 | Nov 1, 2010 |
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"Born in eastern Cuba, Sarduy studied at the University of Havana, and, with Guillermo Cabrera Infante, was one of the few writers involved in the fight against Batista. At an early age he was made publisher of the Lunes de Revolucion, the official organ of the 26th of July Movement. In 1960 he left for Paris." "In Paris Sarduy became the editor of the Latin American collection of Editions du Seuil, and became involved with the Tel Quel group. Among the books he introduced to the French were Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Lezama Lima's Paradiso. Sarduy himself, meanwhile, published several works including Escrito sobre un cuerpo (Written on a Body), Maitreya, Colibri, La simulacion, Overdose, and Daiquiri, a book of poems that uses Baroque prosody to describe gay sex in explicit terms." "De Donde son los cantantes (From Cuba with a Song) was Sarduy's first truly experimental work. Divided into three sections, each corresponding to the ethnic groups that make up Cuban nationality (Spanish, African, and Chinese), the book explores the disparate elements at work in Latin American culture. Culture, for Sarduy, is a series of radical and often violent displacements and errors. Transvestitism becomes the common denominator as a symbol of transformation (physical and spiritual) and delusion. As Gonzalez Echevarria observes, "In De Donde son los cantantes, the characters look as if they're made up for a carnival that will let loose their deepest and weirdest fantasies. Sarduy's novel exposes the complicity between the novel's conventions and society's patriarchal structure. He denounces the quest for Latin American identity as yet another ideological maneuver by essentially epic novelists who want to strengthen the hold of the mechanisms of authority.""--BOOK JACKET.

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