Contemporary Peruvian Narrative and Popular Culture: Jaime Bayly, Iván Thays and Jorge Eduardo Benavides (Monografías A)

Colección Támesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 212

CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN NARRATIVE AND POPULAR CULTURE JAIME BAYLY, IVÁN THAYS AND JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES This book provides the first look at the dynamic resurgence that Peruvian narrative has undergone since the late 1990s. Talk-show host Jaime Bayly’s seven novels have scandalized Lima’s society with their treatment of homosexuality and have attracted record sales throughout the Spanish-speaking world with their exciting re-creation of Lima slang and focus on McOndo themes such as marginality, drugs and sexuality. University lecturer Iván Thays has vigorously opposed this ‘light’ narrative by providing a ‘high’ cultural alternative. His three novels have played an important role in the regeneration of Peruvian culture since the fall from power of President Alberto Fujimori. Madrid-based Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ narrative has offered an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative to both Bayly’s increasingly massmarketed, global books and Thays’ individualized, elitist novels. Benavides’ marrying of aesthetics and politics stands in importance alongside Mario Vargas Llosa and José María Arguedas in terms of the mediation between culture and politics in Peru since the 1930s. ROBERT RUZ completed his PhD at Cambridge University under the supervision of Geoffrey Kantaris.

ROBERT RUZ

CONTEMPORARY PERUVIAN NARRATIVE AND POPULAR CULTURE JAIME BAYLY, IVÁN THAYS AND JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES

TAMESIS

© Robert Ruz 2005 The right of Robert Ruz to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2005 by Tamesis, Woodbridge ISBN 1 85566 110 1

Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruz, Robert E., 1970– Contemporary Peruvian narrative and popular culture : Jaime Bayly, Iván Thays and Jorge Eduardo Benavides / Robert E. Ruz. p. cm. – (Colección Támesis. Serie A, Monografías ; v. 212) Summary: “The first book-length study of modern Peruvian narrative and its resurgence in the 1990s” – Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–85566–110–1 1. Peruvian fiction – 20th century – History and criticism. 2. Popular culture in literature. 3. Bayly, Jaime, 1965– – Criticism and interpretation. 4. Thays, Iván – Criticism and interpretation. 5. Benavides, Jorge Eduardo, 1964– – Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series PQ8403.R89 2005 860.9’985’0904–dc22 2004024320

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Pru Harrison, Hacheston, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

CONTENTS Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Note on the Reference System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1 Homosexuality and Gay Identity in Bayly’s No se lo digas a nadie, . 21 Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen 2. Jaime Bayly: Postmodern Narrative Style and Mass Cultural. . . . . Marketing

43

3. Iván Thays: Postmodern Peruvian Narrative of ‘High’ Culture . . . .

64

4. Jorge Eduardo Benavides: the Peruvian Political Novel Revisited . .

87

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is based on my PhD thesis, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, for whose support I am grateful. Chapter 1 was published as ‘Queer Theory and Peruvian Narrative of the 1990s: the Mass Cultural Phenomenon of Jaime Bayly’ in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 12 (March 2003), www.tandf.co.uk/journals. I should like to thank Steven Boldy, Ellie Ferguson, Stephen Hart, Coral Neale, Paul Julian Smith, Emma Wilson and Cameron Wilson for influencing the preparation of this book. I should also like to thank my parents, Jane and Eduardo Ruz-García, for their support over the years. My greatest debt is to Geoffrey Kantaris, who provided me with excellent supervision and nurtured my passion for the study of Latin American culture during my studies at the University of Cambridge. The author and publishers are grateful to The Modern Humanities Research Association for assistance with the production costs of this book.

NOTE ON THE REFERENCE SYSTEM This book follows the guidelines of the style book of the Modern Humanities Research Association and employs the Author-Date System. Where references are made using the date alone (following the author’s name and in parenthesis), the citation has been taken from an internet source. The first time this occurs – on page 2 of the Introduction – a footnote also draws attention to the fact that the lack of a page number arises from the use of internet material.

To Isabel Ruz and Ingvild Øia

INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION

Peruvian narrative has undergone a dynamic resurgence since the early 1990s, after the predominance in the 1980s of the short story and of poetry (especially by female writers), with the exception of the continuing novelistic projects of Mario Vargas Llosa and Alfredo Bryce Echenique (writing predominantly from outside Peru). Within this dynamic resurgence, which solicits urgent critical analysis, the bipolar, oppositional stances of Jaime Bayly (talk-show host and leading exponent of literatura light) and Iván Thays (university lecturer, literary critic and advocate of narrativa culta) stand out as leading alternatives, or as part of what will be understood in this book as the form of a frozen, postmodern dialectic.1 At the same time as Bayly’s seven mass-marketed and hugely successful books have pressed into service a ‘high’ cultural and reactionary response by Thays, a new and highly politicized project has arisen in the 2000s, which has enriched and complemented this bipolar narrative: Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ two novels to date blend aesthetic and political challenges and build on elements of Bayly’s light narrative and Thays’ self-conscious reflections on writing, as well as reworking techniques inherited from Vargas Llosa’s novela política. The object of this book is to study these three most important writers of contemporary Peruvian (popular) culture and to explore the ways in which their narrative texts reflect a mediation between the national and the international in terms of cultural, historical and theoretical concepts such as the postmodernization of contemporary culture, globalization and the relationship between culture and society/politics in a neo-liberal market economy that is also marked by pressing social problems. In order to offer an original study of the Peruvian narrative of the 1990s and 2000s, four chapters will consider how Bayly, Thays and Benavides engage issues of mass culture/mediatization, what their relationship is to social issues, how far they 1 In The Seeds of Time Jameson theorizes the frozen dialectic in terms of the ‘Antinomies of Postmodernity’, arguing that the antinomy is constituted by ‘propositions that are radically, indeed absolutely, incompatible, take it or leave it’ (1994, 1). In this essay, Jameson reaches the conclusion that the antinomy is a type of ‘arrested dialectic’ that typifies the postmodern era. Chapter 3 of this book analyses the complexities of Jameson’s exploration of the antinomy in terms of Thays’ reaction to Bayly producing an impasse in Peruvian narrative in the late 1990s.

2

ROBERT RUZ

can be understood in terms of postmodernity or as a reaction to it and how they call into question or reaffirm the autonomy of the aesthetic in relation to the market. A central preoccupation running through this book is to give a sense of the specificities of Peruvian cultural production and how theoretical readings might deal with them. Critics of Peruvian narrative, such as Iván Thays, Miguel Angel Huamán and Márcel Velázquez, have provided (journalistic) overviews of the 1990s that group writers together by means of different categories, yet they all emphasize the predominance of postmodern narrative style (and the way it represents the subject) and refer to literatura light (including Bayly). In his internet article ‘La edad de la inocencia: acerca de la narrativa peruana última’ Thays (1999b) shows that pre-1992 Peruvian literature was dominated by the short story (including Julio Ramón Ribeyro and Guillermo Niño de Guzmán), by poetry (including Carmen Ollé, Abelardo Sánchez, Rodolfo Hinostroza and Rocío Silva Santisteban) and by the figures of Vargas Llosa and Bryce Echenique.2 In post-1992 Peruvian narrative, Thays identifies three main groups: (1) the short-lived resurgence of a previous ‘generation’ of writers such as Edgardo Rivera Martínez and Laura Riesco; (2) the generally unsuccessful cross-over of poets such as Ollé, Sánchez, Hinostroza and Silva Santisteban to the novel; and (3) the narrativa joven dominated by Bayly. While Thays focuses on individual successes in the late 1990s, Huamán (1996) attempts to theorize generaciones and traces three stages in the Peruvian novel: racionalidad histórica (indigenismo), racionalidad subjetiva (nueva novela) and racionalidad cínica (novela posmoderna). The fact that Velázquez (2001) highlights (in an internet article) both Huamán’s emphasis on the negative qualities of the novela posmoderna – ‘la valoración negativa y empobrecedora del último modelo’ – as well as Thays’ ‘inocultable desdén por el marco social’, reflects the ideological discrepancies at the centre of these three critics’ studies and at the centre of Peruvian narrative itself in the 1990s. While Thays (1999b) celebrates the fall of ‘la pretendida novela total’ in his article (published before Benavides’ first novel) and condemns Bayly’s literatura light – ‘carece de todo oficio literario’ – Velázquez (2001) explicitly builds on Beatriz Sarlo’s vision of the city (specifically Buenos Aires) in Escenas de la vida posmoderna to argue that Peruvian narrative responds to the new conditions of the ‘ciudad andinizada y globalizada’ of Lima in the 1990s. In an internet article entitled ‘Nuevos sujetos y escenarios de la novela 2 As indicated in the preliminary pages, the lack of a page number with the date ‘1999b’ is due to the fact that this date refers to an internet article written by Thays (and not published elsewhere). Throughout this book, the lack of a page number with an author/date reflects this use of internet material. The appropriate reference in the Bibliography clearly indicates if the internet is the source and also gives the address. As far as is stylistically possible, I have tried to state explicitly in the main body of the text the fact that a reference is taken from the internet.

INTRODUCTION

3

en los 90’, Velázquez thus highlights the links between narrative and the market economy in terms of ‘presión del mercado editorial, políticas de homogeneización del público lector y revalorización de minorías étnicas o sexuales a través de la formalización de cosmovisiones subalternas’.3 Furthermore, in the same article, he notes the role played by the consumer: ‘la juventud es el consumidor privilegiado en la era posmoderna [. . .] abundan en la narrativa: la simplificación de las estructuras de composición [. . .] y la imposición de temáticas como las calles, la violencia, la soledad, la indiferencia, el sexo y las drogas’. The different overviews of Velázquez, Huamán and Thays reflect three different theoretical and ideological responses to the same social phenomena and would initially suggest – even at the outset of this study – that what is being analysed is a fluid, rather than a frozen, postmodern dialectic, because it might also be argued that there are other possible groupings of the three most successful novelists who have appeared since 1992. Bayly and Thays might be grouped together in terms of a postmodern, first-person-centred narrative that is opposed by Benavides. Benavides might be grouped with Thays in terms of a ‘high’ cultural response to the mass culture of Bayly. Benavides’ apparent reversion to the novela total might be viewed as a response to the first-person narratives of Bayly, with Thays attempting to find a richer literary alternative. However, given the force and specificity of Thays’ reaction to the overwhelming success of what has been termed the baylyboom4 – he explicitly critiques Bayly in his article mentioned above and in his novel La disciplina de la vanidad – as well as the cultural and commercial dominance of Thays, as well as Bayly, Chapter 3 will explore the thesis that Bayly and Thays might constitute a frozen dialectic or what Jameson (1994, 70–1) terms a ‘blockage’. Chapter 4 proposes that, in many narrative ways, Benavides has responded to this ‘blockage’ by trying to find an alternative literature – a project to which this book aims to contribute.5 In the introduction to Through the Kaleidoscope, Vivien Schelling (2000, 20) argues that popular culture (in Latin America) may be defined, in Renato Ortiz’s terms, as being as much the product of the culture industry as the project of popular liberation and that the continent of Latin America was characterized in the twentieth century by uneven processes of development 3 This article was originally named ‘La cena de las cenizas: novela y posmodernidad en el Perú contemporáneo’ and was renamed for the second volume of the journal Ajos y zafiros, which is available online at: http://ajosyzafiros.perucultural.org.pe/02ensayo2.htm. 4 This is a term used by the magazine Quehacer (February 1998), in which Thays, Enrique Planas and Gustavo Faverón discuss the problems with dismissing Bayly as literatura light because of his huge sale figures for Peruvian publishers PEISA. 5 One of the ways in which Jameson (1994) sees a potential resolution of the ‘arrested dialectic’ in The Seeds of Time is through the very act of exploring and trying to theorize the antinomy.

4

ROBERT RUZ

and modernization. As white, male, educated novelists in/from Peru – one of the poorest and most uneven economies in Latin America – Jaime Bayly, Iván Thays and Jorge Eduardo Benavides need to be introduced in terms of this framework provided by Schelling. In Peru, Bayly has become a one-man mass cultural phenomenon (el baylyboom), though he has achieved success throughout Latin America and Spain. He has published seven best-selling novels in less than a decade: No se lo digas a nadie (1994), Fue ayer y no me acuerdo (1995), Los últimos días de “La Prensa” (1996), La noche es virgen (1997), Yo amo a mi mami (1999), Los amigos que perdí (2000) and La mujer de mi hermano (2002). Bayly has hosted television programmes since the age of seventeen – when he was dubbed el ‘niño terrible de la televisión’ – and in 1985 he was forced to leave Peru after a contentious interview with presidential candidate Alan García. Though Bayly spent most of the 1980s and 1990s working as a talk-show host in Miami, all of his novels are set in Lima and confuse fiction with reality in order to capitalize on the author’s growing notoriety. Three of his novels – No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen – focus on gay protagonists. His narrative is both cosmopolitan, in addressing some of the themes Velázquez identifies (violence, indifference, sex, drugs), and yet captures the localized social and linguistic particularities of Lima. Thays has provided the most concerted response, within Peru, to this baylyboom with the publication of his three novels to date: Escena de caza (1995), El viaje interior (1999a) and La disciplina de la vanidad (2000). Thays has emphasized his literary pretensions within the Peruvian cultural market by publicizing his work as a university lecturer, literary critic and protagonist of literary workshops. He has also enjoyed success with his literary television programme Vano oficio, part of the series entitled La Franja Cultural run by the state-owned Televisión Nacional del Perú. As a novelist, Thays has achieved both popularity and critical acclaim: he is one of the most pirated novelists in Peru; he is cited by Chilean novelist Alberto Fuguet (one of the founders of the McOndo movement) as one of his favourite writers at his website Fuguet.com;6 and La disciplina de la vanidad was short-listed, together with Bryce Echenique’s La amigdalitis de Tarzán, for the 2001 Premio Rómulo Gallegos. The back cover of La disciplina de la vanidad makes the (marketing) claim that Thays occupies ‘un lugar de 6 The word ‘McOndo’ was first used by Alberto Fuguet as an ironic take on García Márquez’s invented and ‘magical’ town of Macondo in Cien años de soledad. It was the title of an anthology of Latin American literature that was published in Spain in 1996, edited by Fuguet and Sergio Gómez. Following the publication of this anthology, the term has come to represent a post-1960 generation of writers who include Fuguet, Bayly, Edmundo Paz Soldán and Santiago Gamboa. The prologue to the anthology describes Latin America as a world of McDonald’s, computers and condos – far removed from García Márquez’s magic realism – and this neo-liberal Latin America dominates the work of the McOndo group.

INTRODUCTION

5

excepción en la narrativa latinoamericana contemporánea’. One of the ways in which Thays achieves this is by offering a radically different alternative to Bayly and by opposing the breaking down of the boundaries between literatura culta, literatura popular and literatura de masas – exemplified in certain ways by Bayly – with an aesthetically challenging and elitist narrative project. While Thays has explicitly responded to Bayly, Jorge Eduardo Benavides has provided an alternative to both writers in two novels that were written during the 1990s. With the publication of Los años inútiles in 2002 and El año que rompí contigo in 2003, Benavides has offered an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative to both the mass-marketed baylyboom and also to Thays’ vision of individualized, ‘high’ cultural narrative. Benavides moved to Tenerife in 1991, where he founded and ran a literary workshop (Entrelíneas), worked as a cultural commentator and journalist (for the newspaper Diario de avisos) and taught at the local university (Universidad de La Laguna). He moved to Madrid in 2002 after securing a publishing contract with Spanish market leader Alfaguara and following the success of Los años inútiles. Like Bayly, Benavides has thus achieved financial success with a major Spanish publishing company and, at the same time, like Thays, he also claims the ‘high’ cultural ground by mentioning his work as a cultural commentator and university lecturer on the covers of both his novels. At the conference ‘The New Latin Americanism: Cultural Studies Beyond Borders’, held at the University of Manchester on 21–22 June 2002, the cultural anthropologist Néstor García Canclini argued that globalization has stimulated what might be termed a ‘New Latin Americanism’ and that any study of culture in Latin America in the late 1990s requires an awareness of a broader social context and of frontier/transnational cultural exchange.7 In approaching the ‘transnational’ narratives of the three most successful novelists in Peru in the period 1994–2003 – Bayly (who has written best sellers between Miami and Peru), Thays (who has responded with a reactionary ‘high’ culture within Peru) and Benavides (who has explored political issues in depth, writing between Peru and Spain) – this study will be situated within a Latin American theoretical framework based on the ideas of García Canclini, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Beatriz Sarlo and (to a lesser extent) Renato Ortiz. These theorists are important because they analyse the relationship between culture and political, social and economic factors in the continent while engaging with and reworking theory from outside Latin America. Of particular importance in this book will be García Canclini’s studies of the interchanges between ‘lo culto’, ‘lo masivo’ and ‘lo popular’, MartínBarbero’s idea of mediaciones in the continent, Ortiz’s view of a globalized 7 García Canclini’s paper was published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 11:3 (December 2002) as ‘Anthropology: Eight Approaches to Latin Americanism’.

6

ROBERT RUZ

culture in Latin America and Sarlo’s proposal, formulated at the University of Manchester’s conference, of what a cultural studies approach might be in Latin America. While each chapter of this book will engage each Peruvian author and narrative project with particular US/European theoretical approaches, this critical and cultural studies framework runs through the study, since it is necessary to see how Latin American ideas – as well as historical contexts – affect key issues such as the interdependency of hegemonic strategies and ways of reading/reception, modernity, postmodernity and globalization. Central to this book is the study of the oppositions between Bayly and Thays, which focus on literary, social and cultural value and which constitute an ideological struggle at the heart of Peruvian narrative and cultura de masas. Pierre Bourdieu (1989) – one of the precursors of cultural studies – argues, in his Distinction, that value judgments aimed at appraising the popular create cultural distinctions that are used to maintain social/class differences (i.e. taste as a marker of class), and this is substantiated by the idea that ‘high’ culture is the result of an individual act of creation and demands a moral and aesthetic response, whereas popular culture is massproduced, commercial culture, which requires ‘merely’ a sociological inspection. For Bourdieu (1989, 6), taste is not simply personal but is the product of social divisions such as class, gender, location and education. Certain patterns of upbringing or schooling provide people with tools for judgment – what he terms ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu 1989, 28–30). What particularly interests Bourdieu is how this ‘cultural capital’ is used to reinforce social as well as intellectual divisions – a process similar to the reactions to Bayly in Peru. In differentiating between a ‘popular aesthetic’ and a ‘high aesthetic’, Bourdieu describes the ‘popular’ as being ‘based on a continuity between art and life’ and the ‘high’ as being deliberately defined ‘against the popular’, as a way to exclude the popular and mark off an elite grouping (1989, 30–2). While Bayly comes from the upper middle classes of Peru (and this social milieu is the setting for all his novels), Peruvian critics Gustavo Faverón and Thays (1998) have focused on differentiating between the commercial and cultural aspects of Bayly’s work, arguing that his novels have no literary value. While Bayly has been widely criticized for trivializing issues such as homosexuality, drug abuse and violence (including in the above-named article), the particular virulence of Thays’ comments about Bayly also say something about Thays. Thays has aimed to craft an image of himself in his novels as the Writer and the Artist, implying that not anyone – especially not a television presenter like Bayly – can write a novel. Furthermore, Thays has blamed Spanish critics for making No se lo digas a nadie a ‘cult’ novel and has argued that the Herralde prize awarded to Bayly has purely a commercial value (see Faverón (1998)). Bayly, in response, has made clear that there is no reason why a television presenter cannot write novels (see Valerio (2000c)). This ideological struggle between Bayly and Thays for the central ground of

INTRODUCTION

7

Peruvian cultura de masas is perhaps the defining characteristic of Peruvian narrative in the late 1990s. While it would be problematic and simplistic to view mass culture as merely commercial, formulaic and manipulative – and John Fiske (1989, 31) points out that between eighty and ninety per cent of new cultural products fail despite extensive marketing – in this comparative discussion of Bayly and Thays the question of reading/reception will be counterpointed by a consideration of the forces and relations that attempt to sustain the differences between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of culture. Whereas Bayly engages in promoting his novels as accessible to all (and his novel Yo amo a mi mami has been one of the best sellers in Peruvian literary history),8 Thays uses his position at an educational institution (the Universidad Católica) to promote his novels as explorations of the complexities of the language of novel writing in contrast with other ‘lower’ forms of popular culture. For Bourdieu (1989, 28–32), the university is a social institution that actively participates in reinforcing social divisions by distinguishing between a ‘popular aesthetic’ and a ‘high aesthetic’. These attempts to sustain social/intellectual differences through the marketing/criticism of culture bring to the forefront questions of hegemony and class. Both García Canclini (1982) and Martín-Barbero (1987) draw on (and problematize) Gramsci’s argument that dominant groups in society, through a process of intellectual and moral leadership, attempt to win the consent of subordinate groups in society. In these terms, popular/mass culture becomes the site of struggle between forces of resistance and domination. In Las culturas populares en el capitalismo, García Canclini (1982, 50) explains how ‘una política hegemónica integral’ needs to be in control of material/industrial production, of a policing force and of the symbolic means of reproduction, especially through the media. In the later Culturas híbridas he analyses the way in which Latin American states have held on to control of traditional cultural institutions (such as the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and Instituto Nacional Indigenista in Mexico) while private companies (such as Esso and Shell) have been allowed to promote and control modern culture, including art, music and literature (García Canclini (1995a, 86)). However, these private companies – which include the editorial multinationals that publish Bayly and Benavides (Seix Barral, Planeta, Alfaguara) – themselves have an economic and political agenda in their incursion into the aesthetic: a liberal market ideology aims to create the illusion that the popular is what appeals to the majority, but in fact this popularity is created by marketing. From the 1970s, the idea of passive reception in media theory and cultural studies was challenged by the work of Foucault and in particular his ideas on 8 According to an article offered on the internet by Adobe Editores, Yo amo a mi mami is ‘un éxito de venta sin precedentes’. This article was read on 20 January 2002 but has since been removed. It was available at: http://www.adobeeditores.com/adobe/ bestsellers/bestsell.html.

8

ROBERT RUZ

power.9 Foucault’s work calls into question the idea of the state as the origin and form of effecting power: power is localized through the network of relationships that make up society and are based in discourse. It also calls into question the Frankfurt School’s view of the ‘culture industry’ as mass deception because mass culture might not effect a controlled influence on mass society, since it has to operate in a network of situations, each of which has the possibility of creating resistance or at least resulting in a different outcome. Foucault’s insistence that power is exercised in different situations also runs counter to Gramsci-influenced theories of hegemony, in which culture is produced through the power relations that operate between dominant and subordinate sectors of society. The key point for Foucault is that these different situations are sites of discourse, and ‘discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy’ (see Bristow (1997, 178)). Following Foucault’s questioning of fixed absolutes or origins and his conception of power as localized and situational, with the possibility of resistance, García Canclini (1982, 69) argues that popular culture should be considered in terms of use rather than origin, ‘como hecho y no como esencia’. As well as studying the ways in which political bodies try to control symbolic reproduction there is a need, therefore, to look at reception in terms of how the public transforms meaning, how culture is a process of social production/negotiation and how there is an interaction between popular media and everyday life. For this reason García Canclini (1995a, 243) quotes Martín-Barbero asking for mediaciones to be reconsidered in Latin America: ‘los nexos entre medios y cultura popular forman parte de estructuras más amplias de interacción social’. He rejects Gramsci-based arguments that culture is based on power relations between classes, based on the struggle for power, because there are in-between cultures that cannot be classified through oppositions between subaltern and dominant or between traditional and modern (García Canclini (1982, 255)). In contrast with García Canclini, Martín-Barbero (1993, xii) dissociates popular culture from questions of class struggle, yet he also calls into question the application of outside models to Latin American studies. He views mediaciones in the city in a potentially positive light in the case of Latin American cities; whereas most sociologists working in Latin America consider the negative effects of migration to the city, for Martín-Barbero it is through this migration and processes of massification that the masses can find ‘no sólo [. . .] su posibilidad de supervivencia física, sino su posibilidad 9 In The History of Sexuality Foucault looks back to the way in which in the nineteenth century sex became an object of scientific study and this science of sex developed as a form of power. Following on from this analysis, Foucault develops a concept of power in which power operates by means of normalization and control and thus operates throughout society, not simply by means of the state and its laws.

INTRODUCTION

9

de acceso y ascenso cultural’ (1987, 173). This idea of the potential cultural benefits of migration to the city ties in with reworkings of definitions of modernity, such as those of Brunner (1986), for whom Latin American modernity has more to do with access to public education and to cultureproducing industries. García Canclini (1995a, 330) identifies four processes of modernity in Latin America: emancipación (cultural fields became independent); renovación (the building of schools, universities, artistic experimentation, new technology – but with very uneven distribution); democratización (in the first half of the century, the diffusion of art and science through higher education; in the second half of the century, through improved technology and media and with smaller, less conventional groups (ecologists, gay rights, feminists – among others)); expansión (just about applicable in the cases of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, but not in other countries, such as Peru). Furthermore, as Schelling (2000, 25) has pointed out, García Canclini has since questioned whether there has been a regression in these four processes because ‘neo-liberal structural adjustment policies adopted in the 1980s have led, in his view, to a dramatic fall in investment in education, a decline of critical reason and a rise in “religious and ethnic fundamentalisms” prone to authoritarian manipulation’. The particularities of Latin American modernity and social processes in the 1980s and 1990s complicate the already problematic definition of postmodernity. Nelly Richard (1994, 210) has noted that the difficulty in defining ‘postmodern’ is accentuated in Latin America, where there have been different historical and cultural processes in each country. There is a need, therefore, to analyse where discussions have gone with this most central of concepts and to consider how they affect the use of US/European theories of postmodernity and identity politics in this book. While there has been a split between the socio-political and the cultural in Latin America that accentuates the division in theorizing the postmodern either as a period or a style in US/European critical thinking (particularly by Jameson and JeanFrançois Lyotard), there has also been a consideration of a prototypical postmodernidad in Latin America. Richard (1994, 213–16) has argued that the cultural heterogeneity, mestizaje, hybridity and fragmentation of Latin America constitute a way of thinking that is ‘una especie de “postmodernismo avant la lettre” ’. In terms of the division between period and style, Santiago Colás – himself influenced by Jameson – has critiqued Linda Hutcheon’s assertion that the term ‘postmodern’ is primarily an American and European concept or a stylistic ‘model’. Colás (1994, 17) argues against Hutcheon’s ‘cultural postmodernism’ in favour of Jameson’s ‘cultural dominant’ and argues that the critic of Latin American literature should trace ‘the various local and global, social and political, cultural and aesthetic strands that are incorporated and transformed through the formal and technical activity of a text’. In Culturas híbridas, García Canclini (1995a, 19) has also noted that – while in art, architecture and philosophy postmodernism

10

ROBERT RUZ

prevails – in questions relating to the economy and politics of Latin America (uneven) modernization is the key issue in debates. To this effect, Rowe and Schelling (1991, 196) have argued that ‘given that a partial and distorted modernization has generally occurred only in recent decades, it is inappropriate to speak of a postmodern condition’. Rather than attempting to split the socio-political and the cultural, García Canclini (1995a, 23) himself sees the postmodern not only as a continuation of the modern but as the means to question and problematize the modern in new and fruitful ways (‘concebimos la posmodernidad no como una etapa o tendencia que reemplazaría el mundo moderno, sino como una manera de problematizar los vínculos equívocos que éste armó en las tradiciones que quiso excluir o superar para construirse’). Raymond Leslie Williams (1995) has added a useful dimension to this debate by showing how a cocaine postmodernity of the Andean region has fuelled the unevenness of cultural as well as economic production in Lima. While this book will primarily consider the cultural and economic particularities of Latin America in terms of postmodernidad as a periodizing concept, one key point where stylistic and periodizing concepts of the postmodern coincide, and which is central to a consideration of Bayly and Thays, is in the idea of the breaking down of the barriers between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. What strikes Jameson most about postmodernity is the ‘erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture’ that is part of the economic reality of late capitalism from the late 1940s (see Roberts (2000, 121)). For Hutcheon, writing with Natoli (1993, 252), ‘Culture’ has become ‘cultures’ and there has been a (not unproblematic) breaking down of genre boundaries such as that between novel and autobiography. García Canclini (1995a, 17) argues that a characteristic of contemporary symbolic structures is the continual interchange between ‘lo culto’, ‘lo popular’ and ‘lo masivo’. Furthermore, he points out that novels still sell in an age in which communication media have become so influential: ‘lo culto tradicional no es borrado por la industrialización de los bienes simbólicos’ (1995a, 17). In the course of Chapters 1 and 2, it will be argued that in many ways Bayly’s writing typifies this postmodern breaking down of boundaries, in terms of crossing over from television to narrative and in terms of his novels encroaching on the spaces of gay literature, political critique, Peruvian narrativa joven and a globalized literatura light. Bayly’s seven novels are both reflective of a postmodern style à la lettre and of the uneven socio-economic postmodernity of Lima. On this level, Bayly’s work bridges Bourdieu’s ‘popular aesthetic’ and ‘pure aesthetic’, and this is what presses into service the response by Thays. On the other hand, the fact that Chapter 3 will show Thays’ narrative itself to be both ‘high’ culture and postmodern would go against the grain of this suggested breaking down of boundaries attributed to postmodern culture. Thays aims to counter this and to mark off his work as part of a cultural elite. This question of breaking down bound-

INTRODUCTION

11

aries will therefore be central to the discussions of Bayly in the context of both Hutcheon’s postmodern style and Jameson’s postmodernity of ‘late’ capitalism. In approaching Bayly’s narrative (in the context of Thays) another key issue that arises is the question of a globalized or US mass culture. It is important to understand how Bayly’s work is a part of this globalized mass culture and also how his narrative reflects a tension between the global and the local. García Canclini (1995a, 46) considers processes of globalization as representing the passage from the modern to the postmodern and presents globalization in terms similar to those in his discussion of modernization. Globalization is an uneven process, which excludes sectors of society in its (re)ordering: ‘la globalización no es un simple proceso de homogeneización, sino de reordenamiento de las diferencias y desigualdades sin suprimirlas’ (García Canclini (1995b, 13)). In an interview with Bitácora, he speaks of globalization in Latin America in terms of advantages, ‘propiciar una mayor interacción y conocimiento recíproco entre las culturas, las naciones’ and in terms of disadvantages, ‘la concentración oligopólica del poder económico y financiero’.10 Similarly, he problematizes the use of global models in Latin America. He identifies (1995a, 265–7) certain global themes and thus describes how a loss of meaning in the city, lack of security and sprawling barriadas (converting countries from being predominantly rural to predominantly urban) make inhabitants look for private spaces and depend on technology to connect to the outside world – very different from the city in the early stages of modernity as explored by Habermas: ‘el uso masivo de la ciudad para la teatralización política se reduce; las medidas económicas y los pedidos de colaboración al pueblo se anuncian por televisión’. In the context of these ideas, this book will consider the impact (on a reading of Lima-based narrative) of social/economic issues such as: (1) the diminishing importance of local and national organizations in favour of private, multinational enterprises; (2) the restructuring of the city, with greater distances and furtheraway suburbs and with the creation of shopping malls as centres of entertainment; (3) new definitions given to private space because of increased consumerism and media; (4) new definitions of identity, which have as much to do with globalized media technologies as with local and national questions. On the other hand, García Canclini (1995a, 267) quickly moves on to note that in the Peru of García, the Venezuela of Pérez and the Argentina of Menem, popular protest in the city often took the form of violent clashes in the street, with residents actively engaged in local politics. While certain global themes overlap, a consideration of Latin American cities as global cities does not correspond with North American models, for there are different conditions and contexts, such as uneven development, mass internal 10 This interview with Antonio Alegre (2001) for Bitácora, entitled ‘Néstor García Canclini’, was available at: www.contenidos.com/bitacora/entrevistas.php3?hoy=2001–02–14.

12

ROBERT RUZ

and external migration, insufficient planning or policy for accommodation, health care or public services, lack of security and different inter-ethnic relations. In terms of globalization (and global models) providing benefits and disadvantages, cultural commentators such as Alberto Fuguet (2001) and Ortiz (2001b) have noted that one of the effects of globalization is a strengthening of national and local cultural enterprises (such as the Chilean television and film industries). There is therefore a tension between ‘local difference’ and ‘global totality’, which for Colás (1994, 18) ‘constitutes a postmodern politics’ in Latin America. This tension between the global and the local is the focal point of the ‘postmodern politics’ and cultural studies approach elaborated by García Canclini and Sarlo at the conference ‘The New Latin Americanism: Cultural Studies Beyond Borders’ at the University of Manchester and in the approach in this book towards Bayly, Thays and Benavides. Cultural studies – a field that developed from reactions to modernity and in particular to its technological advances between the 1930s and the 1950s – is closely linked to postmodern thinking in that it also challenges the stability of concepts and boundaries, especially in terms of the object of study. If cultural studies is the theoretical equivalent of postmodernism – as John Beverley (1999, 106) has argued – then the specificity of a cultural studies approach towards Latin American culture would need to be linked to the specificity of postmodernity in Latin America. Of particular importance is to identify the way in which cultural studies came to Latin America from Europe, before its usage in the USA, and how it operates now in the context of the widespread cultural and theoretical interchanges between Latin America and the USA (rather than Europe) in the 2000s. In Britain, cultural studies is often dated from the work of Matthew Arnold (such as Culture and Anarchy, published in 1869), who theorized the link between ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ (civilizing the masses might prevent social revolution). Cultural studies has challenged the predominance of the governing categories of literary studies (the canon, the homogeneous period, the formal properties of genre, the literary object as autonomous and self-contained) and, to this end, pressure has been placed on disciplinary boundaries and the methods that control these boundaries, while modes of interpretation and critique have been developed that bring other theoretical areas (such as economics and politics) to bear on the formal properties of texts. In addition, the lines between ‘high’ culture and mass culture have been reshaped, making it possible to address texts in terms of their social effectiveness rather than their ‘inherent’ literary or philosophical values: Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and sometimes counter-disciplinary field that operates in the tension between its tendencies to embrace both a broad, anthropological and more narrowly humanistic conception of culture. Unlike traditional anthropology, however, it has

INTRODUCTION

13

grown out of analyses of modern industrial societies. It is typically interpretative and evaluative in its methodologies, but unlike traditional humanism it rejects the exclusive equation of culture with high culture and argues that all forms of cultural production need to be studied in relation to other cultural practices and to social and historical structures. Cultural studies is thus committed to the study of the entire range of a society’s arts, beliefs, institutions, and communicative practices. (See Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler (1992, 4).)

There is a link between the development of literary studies/cultural studies and modernization in Latin America, especially in the 1960s and at the start of the 1970s. For Hernán Vidal (1987, 17), the production and distribution of literary studies in Latin America was at its peak at the end of the 1950s, in the 1960s and at the start of the 1970s, operating in conjunction with ideologies of modernization and development, supported by the USA in response to the establishment of the socialist state in Cuba. Beatriz González Stephan (1985, 24) thus charts both the failure of literary studies to theorize links with the shifting Latin American socio-political scene and the increasing popularity of wider-ranging fields such as cultural studies. She links the opening of new avenues of theoretical enquiry to new social and political problems in the continent: ‘dentro del reciente panorama que se abre para los Estudios Literarios latinoamericanos, donde casi se impone la contrucción de nuestro espacio cultural en función de las nuevas necesidades sociales’. At the University of Manchester conference, Sarlo also argued that there has been a shift from literary critic to cultural studies critic, and she underscored the need for cultural studies to address the local and the particular and to link itself with the economic downturn and crises of the state in Latin America.11 While noting that cultural studies addresses global–local issues that have reflected the impact of a new economic order since the late 1980s/early 1990s, Sarlo argued that cultural studies questions the role of the nation but also calls into question any avoidance of the concept of the nation: there is still a need, in the 2000s, to keep the state as the agent of politics both nationally and internationally in Latin America. This sensitivity to the sociopolitical will be maintained throughout this book (albeit without Sarlo’s politicized agenda). Just as Thays reacts against the breaking down of the barriers between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture in Bayly, his own narrative reflects elements of the socio-political postmodernity of Peru in the late 1990s. Thays’ narrative thus engages with the socio-cultural, and so the engagement between theory and literary text in the study of Thays in Chapter 3 will operate within a cultural studies framework, even if Thays himself attempts to solicit a study of the ‘inherent’ literary values of his novels (as part of his reaction to Bayly). 11 Sarlo’s paper was published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 11:3 (December 2002) as ‘Cultural Studies: Reworking the Nation, Revisiting Identity’.

14

ROBERT RUZ

At the Manchester conference, García Canclini also discussed the important question of the relationship between Latin American cultural studies and any usage of European and US theory. While recognizing that the ideas of Gramsci and Bourdieu and cultural studies came to Latin America from Europe, often before their reception in the USA – meaning that cultural studies has a heritage in Latin America that differs from cultural studies approaches in the USA – he also argued that theories and trends in the 2000s come to Latin America primarily from the USA. (He also pointed out that cultural studies in the USA tends to focus on the literary, while in Latin America it tends to focus on the social.) Drawing on a range of these ideas, the object of this book is to engage a dialogue between the Peruvian literary texts of Bayly, Thays and Benavides and international critical theory (including postmodern debates and queer theory) in the context of Latin American cultural studies and the specific setting of 1990s Lima. A key idea in the work of García Canclini, Sarlo, Martín-Barbero and Fuguet is teleparticipación – a term developed by Ortiz (see García Canclini (1995a, 269)). García Canclini defines teleparticipación as a new way of participating in the city: ‘participar hoy es relacionarse con una democracia audiovisual en la que lo real es producido por las imágenes gestadas en los medios’. Television, in particular, has reconfigured the frontiers between private and public, bringing all that was once reserved for the public space into the domestic sphere. Communication cannot therefore be reduced solely to questions of technology, because it redefines public space and plays a part in constructing democracy – an important part, given that cultural production no longer belongs to the Church or State. How do ideas of teleparticipación and the role of communication relate to Lima, where many of the television stations and key journalists have been silenced or bribed by the state in recent years? The emphasis on television by the theorists mentioned above and the idea of teleparticipación (with mass culture representing a hybrid blend of the foreign and the national) is particularly problematic in the case of Peru. The extent to which the media were controlled by the government is being slowly uncovered at the present (2004). Just as Sarlo has noted an aestheticization of politics in the presidential contest between Vargas Llosa and Fujimori (with the novelist fabricating a pueblo joven setting in the garden of his luxury house and Fujimori dressing as a samurai warrior for the cameras), television has actively participated, since 2000, and dominated the socio-political in Peru.12 Alberto Fujimori is perhaps the first Latin American president to be televisually deposed, to be removed from power by film/home video produced by Vladimiro Montesinos (the head of the Servicio Nacional de Inteligencia), with or without presidential approval. A stolen videotape, aired on television on 14 September 2000, showed Montesinos successfully 12 Sarlo sees ‘la política como reflejo o simulacro’ in ‘Basuras culturales, simulacros políticos’ – see Herlinghaus and Walter (1994, 223–31).

INTRODUCTION

15

bribing an opposition politician – Alberto Kouri – with fifteen thousand dollars. In the following year a huge quantity of videotape showed widespread corruption in the military and media. This digital deposition brings new meaning to the term teleparticipación. This is an ironic reversal of the intended idea (by Ortiz) of individual participation and appropriation of meaning through the mediation of television. In Lima, the state has been seen to be highly participatory in the media and much more so than private enterprise or individuals have been allowed to be. Furthermore, if the idea of teleparticipación is complicated, in the specific context of Lima, by the fact that the state’s participation has been based on political manipulation and corruption – as revealed by the vladivideos still being released to this day – then several key television channels have themselves been revealed to be corrupt and in the payroll of Montesinos or his associates.13 Shortly after it was used to bring the government down by giving prime-time coverage to the Kouri vladivideo, Peruvian television itself was exposed and discredited for being largely in the payroll of Fujimori’s righthand man Montesinos. This problematizes the concept of teleparticipación further, because what was being shown on television throughout the Fujimori years was revealed to be deliberately and falsely constructed: the sociopolitical images once transmitted were to be replaced years later by another reality, constructed by videocam. There was therefore no ‘democracia audiovisual’ for limeños under Fujimori. The vladivideos have clear relevance to the ambiguous power of televisual, mediatized culture documented by Bayly and Benavides (and discussed in Chapters 2 and 4). Furthermore, in an internet article entitled ‘Magical Neoliberalism’, Alberto Fuguet (2001) has linked the vladivideos to the McOndo group (in which Bayly is included): ‘What can be more McOndo than the scandals surrounding Vladimiro Montesinos, [. . .] to quote Edmundo Paz Soldán’s new novel about political manipulation of the media, Sueños digitales, it was “digital dreams”.’ The idea of participating socio-culturally through the medium of the television screen – which Ana María Amar Sánchez (2001, 207) identifies as a trait of Bayly’s Fue ayer y no me acuerdo, in terms of the McOndo group – further conflicts with the actual behaviour of limeños at the end of the 1990s. Lima is a city with a recent history of active participation in socio-political events, and this is perhaps due to the fact that the country has suffered grave social problems since the early twentieth century. The picture of Lima in 1949 that sociologist Sebastián Salazar Bondy gives in Lima la horrible is one of a city growing beyond control, with a rapid increase in the number of 13 ‘Vladivideo’ is a term widely used in Peruvian politics since 14 September 2000. It refers to hundreds of recordings – authorized by Montesinos – of clandestine meetings with politicians and businessmen. Transcripts of the tapes are available at the website of El Comercio. See, for example: http://www.elcomercioperu.com.pe/ecespe/html/montesinos/vladivideos_index.html.

16

ROBERT RUZ

cars, increasing noise and pollution, with public services (especially transport and telephone) unable to meet the demands of a population reaching nearly two million. It is a Lima in the grip of Catholicism (Salazar Bondy, 59), where women are mistreated and marginalized (67), where 50 per cent of the national income is earned by 13 per cent of the population (31) and where the ruling class exploits the ‘cholo, zambo, injerto, sacalengua y no-te-entiendo (Ricardo Palma)’ (30). In the Lima of the 1980s – which forms the backdrop to Bayly’s No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen – these problems were greatly accentuated: living standards plummeted amid a deepening economic recession, the guerrilla groups Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru) tried to combat social injustice with increasingly ruthless tactics and a cholera epidemic spread across coastal regions. Alan García was elected with a huge victory in 1985 amid hope that he would offer new solutions to the problems facing the country.14 A highly successful short-term economic recovery package was not followed by any long-term economic strategy. The effects of terrorist attacks, an illegal balance of payments stimulated by the globalized coca industry (estimated as constituting almost 40 per cent of the total of Peruvian exports in 1987)15 and the increasing inefficiency of state authorities led to a deep recession between 1987 and 1990 – years known as ‘la crisis’ in Lima. In the wake of Fujimori’s victory in 1990, the sociologist Marcial Rubio noted that the traditional oligarchy-based social order had disappeared without generating a clear replacement: at the end of the 1980s fixed social rules had thus been replaced by ‘the law of the jungle’.16 The fact that Lima is a city with a recent history of active participation in socio-political events is perhaps also due to the fact that no country in Latin America has experienced migration of the same social and cultural proportions as has Lima. In 1940, 65 per cent of the population was rural, whereas today nearly the same figure applies to the urban population; half the population of Peru live in Lima, and 70 per cent of the population of Lima lives in pueblos jovenes.17 During the Velasco years (1968–75), the increased industrialization of the coastal cities and the problems caused by the reforma agraria (giving control of large estates to the people) led to mass internal migration. Two phenomena stand out as a result of the internal migration 14 Crabtree (1992, 69) shows that APRA’s share of the total vote in general elections in Peru rose from 27.4% in 1980 to 53.1% in the 1985 elections, and gives much of the credit for this to the ‘dynamic leadership’ of Alan García, in whom the working class as well as members of the elite placed their hopes. 15 Source: Cuanto S.A. Estadísticas para CADE (Conferencia Anual de Ejecutivos), Instituto Peruano de Administración de Empresas, Lima, 1988. 16 See M. Rubio (1990) ‘Hacia un nuevo orden social’, Debate, May–July: 19. 17 Figures quoted by Martín-Barbero (1993, 198–202), who questions the implications of Andean traditions being brought into contact with popular cultures in a coastal city with creole origins.

INTRODUCTION

17

during these years: achoramiento and cholificación. Achoramiento is a Peruvian term used to express how the migrant, unable to insert himself/herself socially, adopts viveza to survive; and Crabtree (1992, 10–11) notes that internal migration has caused the phenomenon of cholificación: the fusion of popular cultures – Andean and coastal – into a new urban (‘chicha’) culture in Lima. This internal migration has thus created new social groups, which have become significant political forces. In response to the polemical thirdtime election of Fujimori, neighbourhood groups were formed in the popular settlements and these new projects of democracy challenged political parties.18 Lima, at the end of the Fujimori years, was a city marked by social and political protest in the street, and the ‘Marcha de los Cuatro Suyos’ (named in reference to the divisions of the Inca empire) was one of the largest social mobilizations in Peruvian history; it played a key role in removing Fujimori from power – as has been noted by Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique (2001). Fujimori’s televisual downfall was therefore first instigated by public protest, by limeños who chose to participate in the street rather than in a (false) ‘democracia audiovisual’. Running parallel to this internal migration lies a growing Americanization of Lima’s elite and middle classes. All of Bayly’s novels testify to the increasing influence of American popular culture and commercialism that parallels the decreasing importance of British culture and education – a process initiated in Bryce Echenique’s Un mundo para Julius with the marriage of the British-educated upper-class Susan to the nouveau riche businessman Juan Lucas. The death of Julius’ father at the beginning of the novel is symbolic of the death of the old social order of a creole-based oligarchy; he is replaced by Juan Lucas, who brings with him a love of American capitalism rather than European culture, and who has Bobby and Santiago educated in the USA. This reflects political events that followed the publication of the novel: by the time that Belaúnde was serving his second term as President the job of managing the economy was controlled by US-educated Peruvian technocrats with experience of working for international banks, multinational companies and the multilateral lending organizations. No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen reflect a shift in interest towards US popular culture and the dominating influence of American brand names and television references on the part of an author who was himself largely based in the USA during the 1990s. Bayly re-creates a US-influenced popular culture in Lima in which he himself is an influential figure (working from Miami). He engages a particular readership of young (middle-class) limeños by writing about cinema, sport, politics, music, television, nightlife, clothes and food. Bayly reconstructs in his texts, with precise social and geographical detail, the privileged world of a wealthy (young) 18 See the internet article entitled ‘Movimiento popular, transición democrática y la caída de Fujimori’ by Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique (2001).

18

ROBERT RUZ

minority in Lima: the expensive cafés of Miraflores (La Tiendecita Blanca, El Suizo and El Haití), the comfortable suburb of San Isidro, the Malecón (the promenade in Miraflores) and the trips later in the novel to the wealthy suburb of La Molina (especially La Planicie). Teleparticipación in Lima has been seen to be problematic on three levels: (1) in terms of the dictatorial nature of Fujimori’s government in preventing individuals from participating in any ‘democracia audiovisual’; (2) in terms of television being shown to be corrupt and undermining any possibility of a ‘democracia audiovisual’ in the first place; and (3) in terms of citizens choosing to participate in ways other than through media technologies. A scepticism towards Peruvian television since the vladivideos is not only reflected in high levels of social and political participation (which runs counter to ideas of teleparticipación), but also in the importance of the press and the resurgence of Peruvian narrative since the early 1990s. The role of the press in bringing down Fujimori and in denouncing the corruption rife in key television stations was influential: in the run-up to the García/Toledo contest Bayly himself used his columns in different newspapers (including Expreso), as well as his current affairs section at his website, to denounce political irregularities.19 Just as the role of the press and of social participation in Lima at the end of the 1990s were more significant than media commentators or Fujimori’s government had predicted, consumption of novels also grew significantly, both in terms of official figures and the mercado informal. Sales figures in Peru are very misleading, given that it is the country in Latin America with the most piracy. An article at Terra.com.pe by Bryce Echenique in 2002 estimated that for every novel sold legally in Peru, six more pirate copies were sold at the same time and noted that Peru was exporting pirate copies to other Latin American countries such as Chile.20 What is certain is the existence of a one-man baylyboom in the mid-1990s that has been overtly countered by the work of Thays within Peru, at the end of the 1990s, and that the novels of both Bayly and Thays have been complemented by Benavides, who first published in 2002, but who was writing throughout the 1990s. This book aims to study this resurgence of Peruvian narrative – which has received relatively little critical attention in relation to its prominence – in the cultural studies framework presented in this Introduction and in the context of the socio-political background/context of Lima also explored here. In order to offer an original study of the narrative of the three leading Peruvian novelists since 1994 – Bayly, Thays and Benavides – their novels will be discussed in a theoretical framework that includes queer theory, 19 Jaime Bayly updated his website at Terra regularly throughout 2002, offering articles on Peruvian current affairs. This site at http://www.terra.com.pe/jaimebayly no longer exists. 20 ‘La columna de Alfredo Bryce Echenique’ at Terra.com.pe has since been removed. This article was read on 12 January 2002.

INTRODUCTION

19

postmodern thinking (which addresses style in relation to its historical context) and cultural studies (also drawing on Bourdieu). Two chapters of this book will focus on Bayly, because he has managed to create seven novels and one collection of poetry, write journalistic articles for Terra.com.pe and Expreso, produce his own television show in Peru (named La noche es virgen after the title of his most successful novel), as well as participate in the Peruvian elections in 2001. The first – Chapter 1 – will consider the ways in which No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen bring new awareness to the Peruvian literary tradition with their focus on the problems faced by a gay man wanting to come out in Lima in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. As well as displaying some of the characteristic traits of postmodern writing, these novels call into question, in a Peruvian context of the 1980s/1990s, the ways in which US queer theory (Butler, Sedgwick, Bersani) conceptualizes coming out. Bayly’s narrative style will be discussed in Chapter 2 in the conceptual context of Latin American postmodern debates (including McOndo), in relation to a Peruvian/Latin American narrativa joven and in the broader context of Bayly’s work as a whole (television, self-marketing, profile in Lima), as well as Peruvian socio-political concerns. By writing at the edge of different categories (such as gay literature, the political novel, an international narrativa joven) Bayly has managed to produce an easily marketed product that addresses issues such as sexuality, drugs, violence and marginality, while at the same time showing sensitivity to the social and linguistic particularities of Lima. Chapter 3 will address the ‘high’ cultural response that the baylyboom has pressed into service in the narrative of Iván Thays. Though the chapter will consider Thays’ work as whole – including his literary criticism and his television programme Vano oficio, which focuses on the aesthetic challenges of writing – the discussion will focus on the aesthetic and cultural complexities of his narrative in the context of Bayly’s literatura light. Thays’ three novels published to date – Escena de caza, El viaje interior, La disciplina de la vanidad – will be read in terms of the ways in which they have played an active part in the regeneration of Peruvian narrative since the late 1990s, and it will be argued that Thays’ narrative might represent an oppositional stance to Bayly in the framework of Jameson’s The Seeds of Time, with a split between the increasingly mass-marketed and global books of Bayly and the explicitly literary and elitist novels of Thays. Chapter 4 will then analyse the way Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ narrative challenges Thays’ prominence and success (especially outside Peru) and offers an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative both to the mass-marketed baylyboom and also to Thays’ vision of individualized, ‘high’ cultural narrative. Benavides’ two novels published to date – Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo – offer the reader a more integrated balance of politics and aesthetics than either Bayly or Thays, and provide a new richness and depth to Peruvian narrative since the mid-1990s – a Third Way in post-2000 narrativa peruana.

20

ROBERT RUZ

One of the central aims of this final chapter will be to argue that Benavides – in the context of a ‘blockage’ created by the two poles of Bayly and Thays – has managed, in both his novels, to create a postmodern aesthetic and political project that has breathed new life into Peruvian narrative at the start of the 2000s.

1 HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY’S NO SE LO DIGAS A NADIE, FUE AYER Y NO ME ACUERDO AND LA NOCHE ES VIRGEN HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

Gay/lesbian literary studies and queer theory now hold an increasingly visible position in humanities departments in British and US universities and in English/French critical theory. In the USA and UK, queer theory has branched off from gay and lesbian studies; the move to queer represents a theoretical shift linked to the socio-political. It is possible to analyse in Foucauldian terms the historical shifts in identity (self-)categorization from homosexual to gay/lesbian and then to queer. ‘Gay’ was a term appropriated in the late 1960s in order to represent a positive social identity in contrast with ‘homosexual’ as a form of behaviour with negative connotations. Scott Tucker (1982, 60) clarifies the distinction between the two terms thus: ‘many of us define ourselves as gay because we associate that term with pride and self-definition, whereas we associate homosexual with oppression and manipulation’. It was later in the 1980s, within the context of activism in response to the growth of AIDS, as well as to anti-assimilation stances within the collective gay movement (especially by feminists and lesbian groups), that queer came into popular culture and theory. Pejorative terms were again taken and ‘re-lexified’ in the USA: Queer Nation and Pink Panthers were just two organizations exemplary of this process. Queer theory is therefore rooted in the US and British politics of sexual difference of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and the result of a disenchantment with some aspects of gay and lesbian politics in terms of collective normativity. As such, queer is not only at odds with heterosexual norms but also with gay and lesbian norms. As an academic discipline, queer theory can be dated to the beginning of the 1990s. It represents a separate theory, which ‘says something to gay studies’ (to quote one definition),1 and in branching off from gay/lesbian studies some antagonism has been formed between the two areas. Foucault and Butler have been particularly influential to queer theory in terms of power/resistance bindings and sexual identity/gender categories. Literary 1 See the Theory.org.uk website, especially the section ‘Queer Theory’ (http:// www.theory.org.uk/ctr-que1.htm).

22

ROBERT RUZ

critics influenced by Foucault have furthered cultural, historical and gay readings, especially the need to look at homo–hetero relations rather than antagonisms. Leo Bersani (1995, 68–9) mentions in admiration the ‘breathtaking claim’ by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick that any study of Western civilization requires a ‘critical analysis of modern homo-heterosexual definition’. This chapter will focus on this central question of how the gay engages with dominant forms of culture – a question that runs through the narrative of Bayly, a writer who (more than he seems aware) thus addresses issues at the forefront of US/UK literature/theory in a Peruvian tradition that lacks any such thematic awareness. Gay/lesbian or queer literary studies produced in/on Latin American culture are increasing in number, yet have been uneven in focus. Gay male Latin American writers have been visible since the 1970s and lesbian writers since the 1980s, though there were notable antecedents before that, such as the Cubans José Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas and Severo Sarduy, the Argentinians Manuel Mujica Laínez and Alejandra Pizarnik, the Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi and the Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sánchez. Gay male writers who have stood out in the continent since the 1970s include the Argentinians Oscar Hermes Villordo (La brasa en la mano, 1983) and Manuel Puig (El beso de la mujer araña, 1976), the Mexican Luis Zapata (Las aventuras, desventuras y sueños de Adonis García, el vampiro de la Colonia Roma, 1979), and the Brazilians Aguinaldo Silva (No país das sombras, 1979) and Darcy Penteado (Nivaldo e Jerônimo, 1981). Lesbian writers who have received recognition have included the Mexicans Rosa María Roffiel (Amora, 1989) and Sara Levi Calderón (Dos mujeres, 1990), and the Brazilian Márcia Denser (Diana caçadora, 1986). There have been a limited number of gay studies and even fewer queer readings on Mexican, Argentinian and Brazilian literature, and most of these have originated from outside (especially in the USA or UK). David Foster (1991) has produced a partial survey of gay writing in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico in his Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing.2 Emile Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (1995) have edited ¿Entiendes?, which offers queer readings and re-readings of literature, essays and performance art in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela (Spain and the USA), as well as a discussion of concerns regarding the transfer of Anglo-American concepts/theory to Latin American culture. Other areas of Latin American literature have received considerably less attention. In the case of Peru, there has been some research on the representation of men in mainstream literature (such as the work produced by Patricia Ruiz Bravo and the Flora Tristán centre) and on general questions of sexuality at conferences in Lima since 1999.3 Whereas 2 See also Foster’s (1994) ‘Some Proposals for the Study of Latin American Gay Culture’, in his Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature. 3 One of the most important was the ‘Encuentro Internacional de La Mujer en la

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

23

there has been a growing, significant body of recent gay literature in Peru since Bayly (such as Sergio Galarza and Mario Bellatín), there has been almost no research produced on this narrative. There has, however, been some gay activism from within (especially the US-inspired MHOL formed in the 1980s) and sociological study from without by Stephen Murray and Manuel Arboleda (also originating in the 1980s). In terms of the gay studies/queer theory divergence, there has been some critique of queer theory for focusing on the literary text to the exclusion of the socio-political, such as at the Theory.org.uk website.4 Not only is any emphasis on or study of relevant texts lacking in the cases of Lima and Bayly but the critique itself is difficult to uphold in the study of this writer, who had already been active in public life prior to his first novel and in whose literary/media work it is problematic to separate text and biography. Accordingly, and in line with the cultural studies approach laid out in the Introduction, the homo–hetero relations emerging in Bayly’s texts will be approached here in relation to historical and social factors. There will therefore be a consideration of gay identity and community forming in Bayly/the Lima outlined in the Introduction – particularly what ‘gay’ means in Bayly/Lima. However, the main focus of this chapter will be on the specific textual analysis of gay and bisexual identities in his three ‘gay’ novels, in the context of some of the key points of queer theory (Butler, Sedgwick, Bersani), not least because it has been in his texts and not in his media work that Bayly has chosen to explore such identities. Bayly’s exploration of what coming out in Lima might mean will thus be posited within a theoretical framework that includes Judith Butler’s (1990) idea that a normative ‘natural’ heterosexuality is reinforced through a (homophobic) discourse and social ‘scripting’, as well as Sedgwick’s (1993) ironic analysis of the problems of coming out/telling one’s family and Bersani’s (1995) problematizing of the political implications of coming out. The question of importing, incorporating this ‘outside’ queer theory into the Latin American/Peruvian is one that needs to be addressed in the course of this chapter and in Chapter 2’s analysis of Bayly’s narrative style, which draws on US and European postmodern criticism. Given that Bayly’s three novels are explicitly grounded in a specific period (the 1980s in Lima), a contextualization and sensitivity to the local are required, and it is necessary to consider the inseparable relation between the novelist’s fiction/biography and Peruvian politics of the last twenty years. This chapter will posit Bayly’s texts within the Peruvian literary background, the popular context/reception of Bayly’s texts, with reference to local questions of race, class and politics. Literatura’ at the Universidad de Lima (8–10 November 1999), at which the following Peruvian poets and novelists were present: Laura Riesco, Blanca Varela, Carmen Ollé, Giovanna Pollarollo and Rocío Silva Santisteban. 4 See the Theory.org.uk website at http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-que2.htm.

24

ROBERT RUZ

Nationality/location is an important issue in Bayly. Like other Latin American writers about homosexuality, Bayly has spent much of his life away from his native country and has, until recently, been based in Miami. However, this ‘exile’ has been for political reasons and in particular for his contentious interview with presidential candidate Alan García (see Bayly (1995, 68–70)). The peculiarity of this question of location in Bayly means that a sensitivity to a transnational market is also needed, and that it is not just valid but wholly relevant to use theories that are culturally wide-ranging or have been developed in the USA. In a study of a presenter/author who has written from Miami and who has aimed for a market throughout Latin America and Spain it is initially important to consider the linguistic and socio-political ties between Latin American Spanish-speaking countries and between Peru and Spain. Some initial comparisons between Peru and Spain can be made: a look at the gay scene in Peru, with its increasing presence in certain sectors of the media (such as television comedy sketches), has echoes of what was permitted in Franco’s Spain. Most gay/lesbian representation in mainstream media is based on caricature or is trivializing: a report on the gay scene in Lima on the Panamericana 24 horas programme (15/04/01) offered a comic and melodramatic view of the first Peruvian gay dating agency. The programme showed the way in which one of the two members of the agency (Guillermo) was forced to live a lonely and hedonistic lifestyle; as the presenter noted ‘no le queda otra que vivir la vida loca’, the camera cut to a shot of the flamboyantly dressed hairdresser crying in a discotheque.5 However, it would be a mistake to attempt to construct a comparative paradigm: as a Peruvian website’s ‘Gay Oscars 2002’ reveals, there is a growing place for gay actors in telenovelas and shows that is not merely based on the typical effeminate gay type.6 Another disjunction lies in the contrast between an increasingly relaxed Spanish policing of gays as Franco faded from public life and the active government-led homophobia of Fujimori’s Peru in the 1990s. The transcripts of the vladivideos (available at the website of the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio) reveal a widespread homophobic discourse and active anti-gay strategies. In Vladivideo No. 1195 (14 August 1998), for example, Montesinos repeatedly uses ‘maricón’, ‘rosquete’ and ‘el chino rosqueteado’ (referring to Fujimori) in his conversation with politician Joy Way. Moreover, the relatively sudden proliferation of globalized media technologies and the growing production of these media in the 1990s within Peru has allowed for 5 A video clip of this 24 horas television programme was viewed at the Panamericana Televisión archive (http://www.24horas.com.pe) on 20 July 2002. The link has since been removed. 6 See ‘Reconocimiento de la Comunidad Gay Lésbica Peruana al Respeto a la Diversidad Sexual’ at the Cargcal (Comité de Acción por el Respeto Gay Lésbico) website (http://www.geocities.com/cargalperu/2001/resultados/ganadores.htm).

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

25

uneven development of gay/lesbian representation in the country. While the representation of gay men and lesbian women is increasingly commonplace on television programmes and the internet, there is little history of a gay culture in pre-1990s Peruvian popular culture and what history there might be remains to be studied. In the course of this chapter and the next, it will be argued that the publication of No se lo digas a nadie represented a turningpoint in Peruvian mass culture upon its publication in 1994: with one work, Bayly brought gay subject-matter into mainstream Peruvian literature, television, cinema and internet. Whereas most Hispanic studies of the gay/queer include Latin America as a seemingly seamless extension of Spain, what the different linguistic and conceptual terms used in Spain and Latin America show is what might be termed an ‘uncommon language’ in Spanish. There is a distinct difference in the nature of the assimilation of foreign terms by Latin American countries, and in Peru there is evidence of the overwhelming influence of US popular culture, with some explicit rejection of accepting Spanish influences. A political point is made by the use of the term ‘gay’ in Peru rather than the ‘gai’ (less) used in Spain, though it is important to analyse the specific terminology used in Lima and in Bayly. Focusing on Lima, Arboleda (1995, 102–5) distinguishes between activos (who are more socially accepted and many of whom lead a double life) and pasivos (who have low social standing and who use the term ‘gay’ to refer to themselves).7 He goes on (1995, 106) to mention that those who are flexible in sexual roles, not limiting themselves to activo or pasivo, are called modernos and that this term has a different meaning in Lima to ‘gay’, which is used for self-identification (replacing entendido and with little of the political impetus of the English term). However, Arboleda and Murray (1995, 138) have also used statistical evidence to show that modernos (rather than gays) are moving ‘from a gendered to an egalitarian/gay organization of homosexuality’ as sexual practices between Lima and the USA are increasingly comparable (though social, economic and religious circumstances are not). This is supported by the sociological evidence of Cáceres (1991), who in a study of the sexual practices of Peruvian gay men, found that 61.6 per cent behaved as modernos.8 It can be argued that some elements of a common language/discourse exist within Latin America (and Miami), and it would be interesting to analyse Bayly’s work in the broader context of Argentina, Ecuador, Miami and Chile, but this broader context is beyond the main area of focus of this study of Peruvian narrative. Moreover, the Peru of the last nearly decade and a half 7 Activo and pasivo are terms used in Peruvian slang: activo refers to the ‘inserter’ in sexual intercourse and pasivo to the ‘insertee’. 8 See Cáceres and others (eds) (1991) ‘Sexual behaviour and frequency of antibodies to HIV-1 in a group of Peruvian male homosexuals’, Bulletin of the Pan-American Health Organization, 25: 306–19.

26

ROBERT RUZ

has, as outlined in the Introduction, a very peculiar socio-political background. Under Fujimori, the country appeared to have gained a degree of stability (especially as the media were controlled) but there was a high level of deceit involved, of behind-doors torture and repression, which was only revealed as the decade ended. Given these police activities and social intolerance, much gay/lesbian-focused material and calls for social mobilization have grown in the anonymous margins of the web.9 The historical process outlined in the first paragraph of this chapter (in the US and UK) does not correlate with Latin America, which did not undergo the same social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and which has different issues of race, nationality and class. This is reflected in the diversity and uniqueness of the language and popular culture of each Latin American country. However, though it is observable that ‘gay’ has a new, subjective meaning in Peru and some other Latin American countries (a meaning that can be read in Bayly), in Peru there is some identification with the US gay movement (partly as indicative of a broader obsession with ‘lo importado’) and some stirrings of gay rights campaigning, even though faced with violent repression. The Peruvian term moderno, like internacional in Mexico, shows a desire to be part of a wider process (sexual politics as part of modernity) and of an international contemporary popular culture (postmodern in nature). One of the aims of this chapter is to record the particularly striking achievement of Bayly. Chris Perriam (1993, 394) talks of the ‘consciously literary and difficult way’ of same-sex desire in Tusquets and Goytisolo (with this ‘difficult way’ being reflective of the little space for ‘alternative sexualities’ in the traditional media). In a Peru with even less space for these sexualities in traditional media, Bayly has produced accessible texts and pushed them, through his international fame, into the American mainstream. This is uncontested; what remains to be studied is the way in which homosexual and bisexual identities function in his texts and what have been the social, as well as aesthetic effects, given that they have reached such a wide audience. Bayly’s first novel, No se lo digas a nadie, presents a homophobic context and explores the concept of coming out. The humiliating upbringing portrayed in the first person in the opening of No se lo digas a nadie sets the scene for the problematic exploration of homosexuality in all three novels. Memories of painful childhood experiences that are firmly rooted in a stifling hypocrisy are repeated and relived in Joaquín’s/the narrator’s/Gabriel’s difficult and failed relationships in adult life (with Alfonso, Gonzalo, Matías and Mariano). The film version of No se lo digas a nadie – from which Bayly has distanced himself – places considerable emphasis on the homophobic taunts of the father Luis Felipe and his cruel treatment of his son at the brothel 9 Websites in Peru on gay topics that existed in May 2004 included: http://www.geocities.com/a_neutro/, http://www.geocities.com/fredifperu/principal.htm, www.geocities.com/cargalperu/.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

27

(‘Regalo de cumpleaños’) and during the hunting expedition to Piura (‘La cacería’).10 The fact that the rampant homophobia is satirized crudely and comically in the film carries the danger of drawing attention to and perhaps reinforcing homophobic discourse, though in the novel the first-person narrative of the suffering and confused protagonist gives greater depth to the theme of wanting to come out/tell one’s parents in Lima. Bayly’s unflattering portrayal of both the protagonist’s parents in No se lo digas a nadie is central to all three novels because the ‘nadie’ of the title refers primarily to the problem of speaking the truth to them: the novel ends with the rehearsal of an imaginary and unfulfilled coming-out speech to his mother. The novel constructs a background of what one of the founders of the MHOL, Enrique Bossio (1995, 478), has termed the ‘paternal jail’ of Lima. Whereas Luis Felipe’s response to the suggestion that his son might be gay is ‘hubiera preferido un mongolito, carajo’ (Bayly (1994, 127)), for the mother homosexuality is a disgusting transgression in accordance with the teachings of ‘La Obra’ (Opus Dei). Other influential figures in the boy’s upbringing are engaged in sexual activities in a hypocritical way: sexually molesting Opus Dei priests at ‘El campamento’, the headmaster of his school Markham College and his friend Jorge Bermúdez, who betrays Joaquín to cover up his own homosexuality. No se lo digas a nadie not only sets a scene of homophobia and hypocrisy, it contextualizes a local, normative heterosexual scripting and sets the specific socio-economic scene of the upper middle class in Lima. A reading of Bayly’s text requires a sensitivity to the economic structuring of homosexual relations, though not to the fact that in Lima the family tends to retain economic as well as psychological functions (it is commonplace for unmarried men to live at home) and that the few gay venues available in the city are too expensive for almost all of the people who would like to frequent them. In the social setting of No se lo digas a nadie, Joaquín has his own flat by the age of eighteen and spends time in Miami, the Dominican Republic and Madrid. The protagonist’s escape to Miami in the last hundred pages of the novel reflects both the international marketing concerns of the author and the fact that Joaquín has the money to come out in Miami, if not Lima. Joaquín’s two attempted grown-up sexual relationships with Alfonso and Gonzalo would seem bound to fail from the start, given these two friends’ conformity to the social norms and expectations of their class. Thus in ‘Amistades peligrosas’ Alfonso adopts a lifestyle that is close to Murray’s (1995, 104–5) study of the activo who not only leads a double life but may not consider himself gay: ‘En el Perú puedes ser coquero, ladrón o mujeriego, pero no te puedes dar el lujo de ser maricón’ (Bayly (1994, 191)). The friends’ choice of words, along with Luis Felipe’s taunts, serve to reinforce a predominantly 10 See Riff (1999) for details of Bayly’s rejection of the film version (in an internet article): ‘lo hecho por Lombardi fue una deslealtad al espíritu del texto’.

28

ROBERT RUZ

homophobic discourse and are part of a social script/discourse that underlines a normative ‘natural’ heterosexuality in Lima. Butler (1990, 25) has demonstrated the ways sex and gender achieve this so-called ‘naturalness’ through social ‘performativity’ and scripting: ‘There is no gender behind the expressions of gender [. . .] Identity is performatively constituted by the very “expression” that are said to be its results.’ She builds on Foucault’s critique of the fiction of a ‘truth of sex’, showing it to be constructed by ‘the regulatory practices that generate coherent identities through the matrix of gender norms’ – a matrix that depends on ‘asymmetrical oppositions between “feminine” and “masculine” ’ (see Butler (1990, 17)). It is this mandatory heterosexual script that leads Joaquín to initially doubt his own feelings in No se lo digas a nadie and to attempt a relationship with Alexandra in ‘Un amor imposible’. Alexandra’s reactions to Joaquín’s truthful admission about his sexual preferences (Bayly (1994, 228–30)) parallel Sedgwick’s (1993, 53) ironic account of the risks involved in coming out: ‘In the processes of gay self-disclosure, by contrast, in a twentiethcentury context, questions of authority and evidence can be the first to arise. “How do you know you’re gay? Why be in such a hurry to jump to conclusions? [. . .] Hadn’t you better talk to a therapist?” ’ In Bayly’s text, Alexandra almost repeats word for word the script Sedgwick identifies as the typical response to a gay male coming out: she thinks Joaquín is confused, that she is going to ‘cure’ his ‘trauma’ and therefore takes him to Doctor Mori to find out what is wrong with him (Bayly (1994, 230–2)). There is a significantly different emphasis on (homo)sexuality in Lombardi’s film version of No se lo digas a nadie: at the end, Joaquín cynically accepts to finish university and marry Alexandra while seeing Gonzalo on the quiet. Even though the film offers a degree of explicitly gay sex and teasingly uses an actor (Christian Meier) known for his roles of macho lover in Lima-based soap operas such as Luz María, Lombardi’s approach may be seen to correspond with existing taboos concerning male bodies and gay sex on the big screen and to anticipate possible negative reactions from a conservative society that has been repeatedly criticized for a lack of freedom of expression under the government of Alberto Fujimori.11 In contrast, the novel has a gay outlook: the ‘Amor imposible’ with Alexandra is a brief exploratory affair and the main body of the novel centres on Joaquín’s independent relationships with Alfonso, Gonzalo and new partners in Miami. If the happy ending in Miami reflects economic factors, with the gay community of Miami open to limeños of this class, then the main body of the narrative deals

11 See, for example, the article ‘No hay irrestricta libertad de prensa en el Perú [. . .] afirma el presidente de la Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) Jorge Fascetto’, Expreso, Lima, 16 February 1999. (The article was archived at www.expreso.com.pe/ ediciones/1999/feb/16/politica/pol_04.htm but the link has since been removed.)

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

29

with the exploration and articulation of sexuality, with a consideration of what coming out in Lima means. The problems involved in translating the terms ‘closet’, ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘coming out’ to (Peruvian) Spanish reflect the need to conceptualize these terms when used in the Peruvian context of Bayly. Coming out means making the first step of telling friends and family and hoping for more freedom, for coming out does not yet exist as a social practice or concept in the city. The publication of the novel proved polemical because it reflects the difficulties involved in this step of telling parents; in a survey of 60 gay men in Lima, Arboleda (1995, 106) found that only four of them had come out by telling their families and of these four men none had found any acceptance in doing so. Whereas the happy ending of No se lo digas a nadie suggests that Joaquín can find happiness by living in Miami rather than in Lima, then in Fue ayer y no me acuerdo the narrator explicitly tries to reconcile the possibility of an openly gay life with the socio-political situation in Lima. This later novel also contains an explicit account of the problems created by cocaine addiction, and it is through the use of drugs that the narrator starts to feel at ease with his sexuality in public (Bayly (1995, 25–30)). In many ways, it continues the narrative of No se lo digas a nadie: the setting is now the privileged young man’s world of the Universidad Católica and the social scene of fashionable Miraflores. When in the chapter ‘Lima gay’ the narrator decides to visit the gay scene (el ambiente) on offer in Miraflores (the Parque Kennedy, the Café Haití, the beachfront Costa Verde and the bars Escrúpulos, Studio One and Tarot), he is disappointed by what he finds. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that Fue ayer y no me acuerdo ends on an optimistic note in ‘Creo que eres tú’, with a love affair with the television actor Nicolás – an affair that changes the narrator’s view of Lima. However, this is the continuation of a process that is present throughout Bayly’s novels: the personal and the socio-political are closely linked and Bayly’s protagonists’ changing fortunes in their pursuit of gay love and sex continually condition their response to Lima (just as the changing fortunes of Lima affect them): when taking cocaine and feeling lonely Lima seems to the narrator of Fue ayer y no me acuerdo to be ‘el caos, la barbarie’ (1995, 192), and when he finally finds love the novel ends with the words ‘Lima me pareció la ciudad más linda del mundo’ (1995, 345). Moreover, any sign of optimism is tainted by both textual and historical evidence. The novel is still testimony to the unresolved problem of telling family and others of one’s sexual preferences in Lima: having failed to tell anyone he is gay, the protagonist instead writes a letter to his parents (Bayly (1995, 326)), and the novel is explicitly presented from the outset as the protagonist’s memoirs written from Miami. In addition, the testimony of Enrique Bossio (1995, 479–81) shows that the 1990s were dangerous times for Peruvian gays. Any hope that the Movimiento Homosexual de Lima (MHOL) (founded in 1985) would secure rights for a gay community in Lima was fading: in 1993 the Peruvian government fired 117 civil servants for

30

ROBERT RUZ

homosexual behaviour (with a poll showing overwhelming public support) and the arrival of AIDS increased homophobia.12 What the protagonist of No se lo digas a nadie and the narrator of Fue ayer y no me acuerdo aspire to – telling their parents – proves problematic not only in a reading of the texts in the framework of the socio-historical context. The problems of staying in/coming out per se are reaffirmed in the narratives, where even the suggestion of coming out (or telling someone) carries dangers. What Sedgwick (1993, 53–4) has described as the ‘double-edged potential for injury’ of coming out because the ‘erotic identity of the person who receives the disclosure is apt also to be implicated in, hence perturbed by it’ is inherent in Joaquín’s attempt to tell his parents that he is gay after ‘La fuga’. To the father, the son’s declaration may implicate him in two ways: it may cast doubt on his own sexuality and damage his social standing in Lima: ‘Esta ciudad es muy chica [. . .] Tu estilo de vida va contra nuestra moral, contra la moral de las familias decentes de Lima. Andate lejos’ (Bayly (1994, 166)). This threat that the son’s homosexuality may affect the father’s sexuality ties in with Butler’s ideas (1993a, 314) that gender is imitative, performative: ‘That heterosexuality is always in the act of elaborating itself is evidence that it is perpetually at risk, that is, that it “knows” its own possibility of becoming undone: hence, its compulsion to repeat which is at once a foreclosure of that which threatens its coherence.’ Heterosexual discourse counters this threat by the process of elaborating itself through a regime of homophobia – Luis Felipe’s in No se lo digas a nadie. In the USA, both Sedgwick and Butler have shown their suspicion of the benefits of coming out in the face of this regime: for Sedgwick (1993, 46), coming out of the closet brings with it ‘new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of secrecy or disclosure’. Similarly, by telling their parents, Joaquín and the narrator come out of one closet only to enter into another. In No se lo digas a nadie, the homophobic taunts, prejudices and harassment of his father, friends and acquaintances are replaced by new preconceptions concerning homosexuality, such as Alfonso’s opinion ‘hacer el amor con una hembrita es como comer comida vegetariana: todo muy rico, pero sientes que falta un pedazo de carne’ (Bayly (1994, 219)). The character’s crude words resonate with Freud’s much-contested theory of penis envy: the missing ‘pedazo de carne’ therefore symbolizes both lack and misogyny. This Freudian connection (or slip) perhaps reflects a textual link between homosexuality and misogyny in Bayly, which will be explored later in this chapter in terms of Bayly’s texts reinforcing certain patriarchal structures. These new preconceptions show one script to be replaced by another. Butler 12 Bossio, interviewed in 1995, took for granted the accuracy of polls and government statistics. By 1997 such figures were being called into question by opponents of Fujimori such as commentator César Hildebrant. By 1999 it was widely acknowledged that many government polls had been manipulated.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

31

builds on Diana Fuss’ (1991) appropriation of Derrida’s idea of the ‘supplement’: what appears to be the ‘supplement’ is what the supposed original depends on for definition; both concepts depend on each other. For Butler (1993a, 309), coming out acknowledges the centrality of heterosexuality and the marginality of those still in the closet: For being ‘out’ always depends to some extent on being ‘in’; it gains its meaning only within that polarity. Hence, being ‘out’ must produce the closet again and again in order to maintain itself as ‘out’. In this sense, outness can only produce a new opacity; and the closet produces the promise of a disclosure that can, by definition, never come.

In the three novels coming out/‘telling’ can be given three readings: (1) a close examination of the texts (in terms of gay/lesbian studies) shows the impossibility of coming out or even ‘telling’; (2) an autobiographical reading would have shown Bayly, until recently, living a (heterosexual) family life in Miami, though he has since spoken out and defended gays and is now openly bisexual; (3) a queer theory-related reading would emphasize the textual subversion of sexual/gender categories in conjunction with aesthetic playfulness, particularly in La noche es virgen. All three readings show a lack of coming out (or saying to anyone), and any use of Bayly’s biography proves highly confusing. The first explicit reference to his bisexuality was in an interview with Ima Sanchís for the Catalan La Vanguardia at the start of 2002, and at his website Terra.com.pe/jaimebayly there was a section ‘En defensa de los gays’.13 In an appearance on the popular talk show programme Crónicas Marcianas in Spain (Tele 5) on 14 June 2002 he talked about his homosexuality and made a point of kissing the presenter Boris Izaguirre. Interestingly enough, though Tele 5 described the Peruvian guest as ‘gay confeso y polemista irreductible’, the interview was described as ‘Esto es salir del armario a hachazos’ – as if Bayly were forcibly coming out of a Peruvian closet into a Spanish public space. Bayly then added to the confusion by informing the Spanish press that he would not necessarily describe himself as gay, as picked up by Terra.com.pe on 28 June 2002. In the texts themselves there is an identifiable move from the failed hope of opposing homophobia to an acceptance that subversion and being a social outlaw are the only alternatives. The difference between inversion and subversion (with regard to heterosexual norms) has become central (and polemical) to gay/lesbian movements and theory. The emphasis on subversion in queer theory is rooted in the Foucauldian analysis of the status of power as a relation that simultaneously polices and produces; power relations cannot be simply overturned or inverted (resistance and oppression become interdependent). Butler’s Gender Trouble builds on Foucault, arguing that 13

This website was updated regularly during 2002 but no longer exists in that format.

32

ROBERT RUZ

gender identity is a discursive practice based on the concept of a normative heterosexuality and in this argument subversion becomes the way to unsettle established categories. Butler (1990, 137) sees this possibility of subversion in the way in which ‘drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself’. This gender parody reveals an identity that itself is an imitation of an imitation and, for Butler (1990, 138), ‘This perpetual displacement constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization.’ In linking gender and discourse, she argues (1990, 148) against any foreclosure of the possibility of agency because agency is wholly within discourse and subversion (‘displacement’) lies in the process of ‘repeating’: ‘there is no possibility of agency or reality outside of the discursive practices that give those terms the intelligibility that they have. The task is not whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat and, through a radical proliferation of gender to displace the very gender norms that enable the repetition itself.’ In the 1990s in the USA, the focus in gay politics/theory has been on the question of assimilation. In a critique of Butler and Sedgwick, Bersani (1995, 4) has advocated a resistance to sociality and has argued that those gays who form gay communities only apparently play ‘subversively with normative identities’ because their actions create the effect of assimilation rather than subversion – a process Bersani terms ‘de-gaying the gay’. Whereas general theories of inversion/subversion, following on from Butler (and Foucault), may be worked into Bayly, the (socio-political and cultural) question of assimilation in Bersani is not applicable. Bayly has had neither the freedom nor, as it will be argued here, the desire to propose an inversion of a dominant heterosexual structure in his novels; assimilation is certainly not an option because there are no communities to which he might belong, nor is there a body of gay Peruvian literature into which his new work might be incorporated. Moreover, as well as rethinking the concept of a gay community, it is important to remember that the term ‘gay’ has been ‘re-lexified’ to carry a personal rather social implication. In Bayly what the texts show, above all, is that gay is about writing the self, about aesthetics rather than overt, collective political motives; plaisir du texte for writer/reader comes first. However, although there is no overt activism it might be argued that there is an underlying political thread: it is implied through textual experimentation and the depressingly open-ended trajectory of the narrative (particularly in La noche es virgen) that homosexual identity cannot (yet?) form the basis of a political community in Lima. The escapist Miami-based ending of No se lo digas a nadie and the undermined opposition to homophobia in Fue ayer y no me acuerdo are replaced in La noche es virgen by the narrative of the cynical posturing of a television presenter who adopts an amoral, hypocritical stance in order to conform with society’s requirements publicly while pursuing his goal of a homosexual relationship privately. Given this shift, it seems valid to pose the following

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

33

question: what, if any, might Bayly’s contribution to Peruvian narrative and sexual politics of the 1990s be? His media work and texts show caution towards the advocacy of gay communities and a move towards playfulness and undermining of identity categories, creating a very ambiguous stance (especially until very recently when he openly said he was bisexual). The ambiguity of this stance is significant given the importance of the media to gay groups seeking assimilation.14 Bayly did not choose to campaign on the Miami-based programmes he presented in the 1990s (¿Qué hay de nuevo?, En directo con Jaime Bayly and El show de Jaime Bayly), where surely a degree of freedom of expression was possible. Nor has he done so since the year 2000 on his Lima-based programmes, even though in Lima he is very influential in media circles as ‘el niño terrible de la televisión’: he had a prominent role in the García/Toledo election contest and has run media and communications courses at universities such as the UPC (for example, on 5 October 2000). However, since becoming his own producer on his 2002 Lima-based programme La noche es virgen for Panamericana Televisión the content of his shows has become increasingly playful, ambiguous and camp and, significantly, he has been criticized for no longer being a suitably ‘serious’ journalist.15 It will therefore be argued that Bayly’s ambiguous stance is not only reflective of socio-political restrictions but represents a deliberate undermining of categories, which is linked to his use of narrative style in La noche es virgen. Butler (1990, 124) has argued for subverting gender and sexual identity by destabilizing the categories that constitute them because power can be redeployed but not overturned: ‘the normative focus for gay and lesbian practice ought to be on the subversive and parodic redeployment of power rather than on the impossible fantasy of its full scale transcendence’. Butler’s call for subversive play is therefore doubly relevant in Bayly. In the first instance, there is no promise of socio-political freedom. On this level, Bayly’s contribution has been to write ‘Lima gay’, especially in La noche es virgen, though this is about writing the self foremost, about feeling ‘gay’. ‘Lima gay’ is in fact the homosexual desire of the protagonist, who is forced to find gratification mostly in the margins of Lima, rather than in the creation of a positively imaged alternative community. Gabriel (literally) submerges himself in the half-lit, anything-goes world of el ambiente. Again, the 14 The importance of the media in disseminating images of alternative sexualities and gender is included in Gender Trouble by Butler (1990), Virtuous Vice. Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere by Eric Clarke (2000) and in Lesbian and Gay Studies by Theo Sandfort and others (2000). 15 For Juan Álvarez Morales at Decajon.com (October 2001), Bayly has become ‘Un talibán sin panorama’; he has given up the challenges of being a perceptive journalist to act like his textual characters: ‘es comprensible que disfrutes más eso de volver a colocarte, de lunes a viernes, la máscara de Joaquín Camino, ese chiquillo provocador de tu primera novela’.

34

ROBERT RUZ

personal and political are closely linked: in Bayly, the gay scene of el ambiente is linked to drug taking, to a marginal lifestyle and to the negative effects of Peru’s socio-political turmoil. In the second instance, Bayly chooses to undermine: his exploration of the subversive potentialities of novelistic language runs parallel to a blurring of fixed identity categories. There are thus links between political, sexual subversion and a postmodern aesthetics. Just the ability to feel gay and find some self-expression is portrayed as a breakthrough in the Lima of the late 1980s/early 1990s; his characters describe themselves as feeling gay with excitement. There is pleasure not only in the text but also in living the life of an outlaw in the margins. Bayly’s characters operate both on the surface of Lima’s public life and in the underground of its ambiente: Lima can thus both symbolize a prison and constitute a site of freedom at the same time: Caminando con mi pañuelito de seda por la céntrica avenida de miraflores y sintiéndome, a pesar de las ratas y las carcochas y las putas y los policías coimeros y las pirañitas ansiosas de arrancharme el reloj, sintiéndome de lo más libre y de lo más gay. (Bayly (1997, 92))

Gabriel may be forced to stay in the closet because of the imposition of a normative heterosexuality by a particularly conservative society in Lima but he takes full advantage of the powerful weapon of having almost complete control over the output of his television programme. In La noche es virgen frequent reference is made to this television performance: Gabriel descends into the basement pub El Cielo to adopt a different persona (‘yo no soy el payaso que sale en televisión. yo soy medio gay y bien fumón’ – (1997, 14)) and the make-up put on his face every night before going on air is repeatedly referred to in terms of representing a mask (Spanish: ‘mascarilla’). Through his novelistic characters Bayly plays with society’s speculations and accusations in Lima. Gabriel uses this mask and performance as a weapon to dupe the society that constrains him with its hypocrisy and homophobia. Gabriel’s deceit of his audience culminates in his interview of his lover Mariano when the expected guest does not show up and after the two have been taking cocaine in his flat and continue to do so together in the toilet during the commercial break. The emphasis on the symbol of the mask in La noche es virgen resonates in part with Butler’s (1993, 318) idea of using to advantage the fact that identity is a performance: the ‘subversive possibilities [of drag] ought to be played and replayed to make the “sex” of gender into a site of insistent political play’. Butler argues (1990, 137–48) that gender should be seen as a fluid variable, with shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times (in line with Foucault): potentially, the confines of identity can be reinvented, and she calls for subversive action in the present – what she terms ‘gender trouble’. For Butler, the deconstruction of identity does not suggest the negation of politics. Queer theory/practice can thus offer what David Halperin has called ‘a horizon of possibility’, and for Sedgwick, queer

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

35

is ‘undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filiation’.16 Butler herself, however, later sounds a note of caution in Bodies That Matter. In building on Gender Trouble and the politically transgressive potential of gender ‘performativity’, she argues (1993b, 240) against the reduction of the concept of ‘performativity’ to the idea of performance: the goal ‘cannot be pure subversion, as if an undermining were enough to establish and direct political struggle’. Bersani (1995, 51) calls into question Butler’s subversion of identity categories/‘gender trouble’ and suggests that subversion is ineffective; the theory of ‘performativity’ appears to destroy the ground of political movements whose goal is liberation: ‘resignification cannot destroy; it merely presents to the dominant culture spectacles of politically impotent disrespect’. For Bersani, more radical than either an undermining/subversion of or resistance to normalizing methodologies is ‘a potentially revolutionary inaptitude – perhaps inherent in gay desire – for sociality as it is known’ (1995, 76). Moreover, in his reading of Genet, Bersani reiterates Foucault’s idea that resistance and oppression are closely bound together: a rejection of relationality and sociality is tolerable because ‘without such a rejection, social revolt is doomed to repeat the oppressive conditions that provoked the revolt’ (1995, 172). In his study of Genet, Bersani (1995, 151) notes that in Genet’s writing homosexuality is congenial to betrayal and that this betrayal gives homosexuality a lack of moral value that is attractive to Genet (and Bersani). For Bersani, Genet repeats society’s accusation of him as a social outlaw, and Bayly’s recreation of Gabriel’s utter lack of seriousness and outright deceit when recording his television talk show leads to a reaffirmation of Bayly’s own reputation as ‘niño terrible’ of Lima (regardless of whether or not the television episodes actually have any grounding in real events). However, though it would be possible to read Bayly’s protagonists in terms of being social outlaws, the emphasis is very much on subversion/undermining in Bayly: the term used in almost every media reference to Bayly is ‘estilo irreverente’ – a description that is very close to Bersani’s ‘spectacles of politically impotent disrespect’ (in his critique of Butler). However, the question of a specific Lima-centred context means that Bayly’s spectacles of disrespect on his talk shows and in his narratives are far from being ‘politically impotent’. His novels have been polemical best sellers that have provoked legal action, and Bayly himself has twice been forced to leave Peru (for criticizing Alan García and for speaking out when told not to by television bosses). Bayly revels in media speculations and in the question of whether his novels have an autobiographical grounding, especially whether the ‘niño terrible de la televisión’ who antagonized Alan García is himself really gay. In the introduction to their study of homosexuality in Hispanic literature and

16

See Tamsin Spargo (1999, 64), in her Foucault and Queer Theory.

36

ROBERT RUZ

cinema, ¿Entiendes?, E. L. Bergmann and P. J. Smith (1995, 9) note that some writers on homosexual themes in Latin America have gone to lengths to distance themselves from their fictional characters (in the context of oppressive political regimes). This question of distance/proximity of writer to text has provoked the most interest in Bayly’s work: a major conference on Bayly’s work in Lima was entitled ‘Realidad y ficción en la literatura de Bayly’.17 Bayly has teased reader and critic with this question of biographical detail: he has distanced himself from his texts through numerous comments in public (such as ‘Si hay o no parte de la biografía del autor en una obra me parece un dato irrelevante’),18 yet his narratives have drawn attention to the writer through the inclusion of clear identifying marks, including names, places and events (the Brescia family, La Planicie urbanización, allusion to his television interviews). As will be discussed in Chapter 2, this confusion of fact and fiction is one way Bayly has attracted a broad Peruvian readership. Bayly has hovered between the personal and the social, the real and the fantastic, and between autobiography and fiction, between the media of the written word of the novel and the spectacle of the televised image. Just as it is futile and against the grain of the subversive intentions of the narrative to separate fiction and reality, it is equally futile to attempt to distinguish between biography and novels, between Bayly and his characters. A study of Bayly’s texts/Bayly the writer is inseparable from Bayly the media ‘personality’, and all are part of the same package. In (the novel) La noche es virgen the protagonist Gabriel is aware of how he can play with and subvert this identity that is socially and politically constructed through performance, and this is a process that very much mirrors the performative identity of Jaime Bayly the television presenter/writer. There is an inseparable link between Gabriel’s manipulative behaviour, Jaime Bayly the television presenter and Jaime Bayly the novelist – a link that forces a consideration in Chapter 2 of questions of writing the self, language, style, popular culture and novelistic discourse in a Peruvian literary tradition. As a popular and commercial phenomenon, Bayly has succeeded in securing a mass audience to legitimize the existence of his six novels published before 2002 and the feasibility of ongoing publications: in August 2002, he presented his latest novel, La mujer de mi hermano, at the Feria del Libro in Madrid amid huge media coverage. Perhaps following in the line of Vargas Llosa’s ambitions at international distribution, Bayly has set out for a mass, global audience and one centred primarily throughout Latin America, 17 The conference ‘Realidad y ficción en la literatura de Bayly’ took place at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC) on 5 October 2000. Among those present were Bayly and Peruvian critics/novelists Alonso Cueto, Moisés Lemlij and Arturo Fontaine. 18 A comment made in the (internet) interview ‘Jaime Bayly y la conciencia’ with Mariano Valerio (2000e) at Terra.com.pe, 4 December 2000.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

37

southern USA and Spain. It is an audience that is growing all the time: in 2002, he managed to break into the Chilean market.19 There are two main reasons Bayly has achieved such huge success with No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen in Peru and beyond: first, he has deliberately set out to be ‘scandalous’, to provoke media attention in Peru, and he has courted fame and manipulated his image throughout Latin America via his Miami-based television programmes; secondly, he has explicitly styled these three novels as part of a Peruvian narrativa joven at the same time as taking care to be able to reach a wider readership. In terms of fame/scandal, not only did the problematic question of coming out in Lima connect with a marketability of gay topics in Spain in the mid-1990s but it created a very profitable notoriety in a conservative Peru run by the rigid, homophobic Fujimori regime. Though it was Vargas Llosa who secured Bayly a contract with Seix Barral (with whom Vargas Llosa has a longstanding relationship), Bayly has skilfully manipulated his fictional self in order to sell books. In such a Peruvian socio-political context – in which a machista culture was publicly threatened by the mere suggestion of homosexuality – Bayly’s ‘ambiguous’ sexuality became his greatest selling point. The second reason for Bayly’s success is that he has also adopted a series of stylistic narrative strategies in order to reach a wide audience. No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen consistently re-create a ‘twentysomething’ Lima with attention to its language, geography and fashion. As will be examined in detail in Chapter 2, these specific narrative strategies took advantage of a gap in the Peruvian market in the mid-1990s by appealing to a readership not attracted by an older generation of Peruvian writers such as Vargas Llosa and Bryce Echenique. In terms of mass cultural marketing, these narrative strategies – coupled with a deliberately ambiguous portrayal of sexuality – have managed to attract a specific readership and at the same time avoid alienating large segments of the Peruvian/Latin American market. Bayly’s tactics tie in with the fact that mass cultural products are carefully marketed to be generic in form and not target any group to the exclusion of others. In the introduction to their Lesbian and Gay Studies, Sandfort, Schuyf, Duyvendak and Weeks (2000, 169) have noted that ‘mass culture tries to embrace as many segments of the (globalized) consumer market as it possibly can. Any popular cultural form may therefore be as unapologetically sexist, homo/lesbophobic, racist, ageist, looksist and classist, as it may occasionally attempt to be “politically correct”.’ In a study of this young Peruvian writer who has managed to reach such a wide audience, a leading question is: who has consumed Bayly and with which interpretations? In a cultural studies approach that aims to focus closely on literary produc19 The success of Bayly in Chile and other Latin American countries is noted by Ursula Freundt-Thurne (2000).

38

ROBERT RUZ

tion, homosexuality is to be defined not only by the intentions of the author but also by textual performance and the social conditions that allow for its articulation and interpretation. In the case of Peru, Bayly has marketed his work to promote the image of Jaime Bayly above all else, but his open-ended style of writing has allowed for his texts to be appropriated by many readings, especially in terms of the central questions of sexuality and gender. To date, one such study of this relatively new writer has appeared (in Lima). The important question of the representation of men (by men) in Peruvian literature has been addressed by the Flora Tristán women’s centre in Lima. In her study of Bayly and Oscar Malca entitled Sub-versiones masculinas, Patricia Ruiz Bravo (2001) writes that, in contrast with the dominant image they portray in the media, Bayly and Malca, in their texts, undermine dominant images of patriarchy, showing personal male crisis at a time of national crisis (the mid-1980s under Alan García). For Ruiz Bravo, these male textual identities – ‘sub-versiones masculinas’ – prove positive for gender relations in Peru. If the nature of Bayly’s texts (undermining identities/aesthetics) leaves them open to appropriation and if some political links between feminist organizations and gay rights groups have been formed in the USA (though these relationships have broken down), then feminists in Lima have also explored this connection between the condition of women and male gay men. This women/gay men connection and the work done by Ruiz Bravo on behalf of the Flora Tristán group would seem to have hit the mark in Bayly: in his latest novel (La mujer de mi hermano), presented in Madrid in June 2002, Bayly explores gender roles (partly) through a female first-person narrative. Furthermore, in La noche es virgen there are a couple of allusions to the protagonist’s identification with the female (for example, he groups himself with fans of Luis Miguel) and there is also explicit use of the female for himself: ‘y yo sufriendo porque odio estar así sola, sentadita y famosa mientras de las otras mesas me miran y cuchichean a mis espaldas’ (see Bayly (1997, 151)). However, the novel also offers a degree of sexual explicitness, with reference to the specificity of same-sex male sexual desire, to the male penis, backside and muscles (Bayly (1997, 68–9)). Moreover, this use of the female, as shown in this study of homosexuality, is more about Bayly’s character’s pasivo homosexual identity, with a pasivo feeling of female identification, rather than with any political alliance with women. Bersani, among others, has problematized any identification of feminists with gay men; feminist sympathies on the part of gay men are complicated by an ‘inevitable narcissistic investment in the objects of our desire’ (1995, 63). Moreover, in his desires the gay man risks identifying with ‘dominant images of misogynist maleness’. While for Bersani (1995, 65) there is a certain drawing together of a gay and lesbian community because of a new form of heterosexual desire (sure non-desire), as if ‘coming together depended precisely on not coming together’, there is also separation, for lesbians are an oppressed group sexually invested in an oppressed group. Ruiz Bravo makes a valid

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

39

point that Bayly (perhaps more than he is aware) undermines and satirizes patriarchal structures but the dominance of these patriarchal structures is difficult to oppose, as we have seen in the discussion of Butler and Sedgwick, and undermining them may prove politically ineffective, as suggested by Bersani. It can also be argued that Bayly’s texts produce quite the opposite effect (to what Ruiz Bravo is proposing), that they reaffirm patriarchal structures. Several arguments are possible here: (1) the texts describe representations in mainstream media that fail to address issues of women’s or gay rights; (2) the upbringing context shows Bayly’s characters as the sensitive exception to the rule of homophobia; (3) Bayly’s texts are male-dominated narratives, with no female characters and with homosexuality a part of this exclusion; (4) looking at the question of choice and power, the narrators write from a rich, male bourgeois position: the vast majority of the population couldn’t afford to fly to Miami to seek partners, and the USA features prominently in all three novels. In this sense, Bayly’s novels continue a Peruvian tradition of Lima-based narrative written by white, middle-class, Spanishspeaking, male writers. Huge sales figures of No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen and appropriative readings of these texts, such as Ruiz Bravo’s, require a consideration of the effects of Bayly’s narrative as part of Peruvian mass culture of the 1990s. The three novels draw much attention to gay sex and rights in Lima, though what the benefit of this might be to anyone but Bayly is questionable. Marketed carefully as mass culture, Bayly’s texts are clearly not intended for consumption by minority groups but by mass audiences who may have no desire of understanding (minority) politics. Bayly’s primary aim would appear to be to sell as many copies of his novels as possible and he has shown himself to be astute at this: for example, at a time of economic downturn (the end of the 1990s) he serialized his sixth novel, Los amigos que perdí, for the popular newspaper Expreso. None of Bayly’s novels have been written for a (minority) gay audience but does that matter? Though there is relatively little openness of popular media in Peru to the influence of the gay/lesbian, allowing few gay writers, if any, to achieve recognition, Bayly has reached the mainstream, yet it has been argued that assimilation and ‘mainstreaming’ may take the edge off gay and lesbian production – and this is similar to Bersani’s argument that assimilation (of gays into conventional communities) produces the effect of ‘de-gaying the gay’. This question of ‘mainstreaming’ lies at the centre of queer cultural studies. Sandfort and others (2000, 170) have argued that ‘mainstream co-optation of subcultural forms may easily lead to a reinforcement of precisely those negative images and insiduous stereotypes that non-dominant, countercultural forms call into question and try to subvert’. It can be argued that ‘mainstreaming’ in Bayly does reinforce certain negative images/stereotypes. While the later La noche es virgen shows the protagonist finally enjoying a life of deceit, the earlier No se lo digas a nadie book and film,

40

ROBERT RUZ

though much publicized and marketed as ‘La historia más escandalosa de Lima’, perhaps undermine or challenge little. The film, which Bayly later criticized (as mentioned above), shows the protagonist settle for a hypocritical, double life and maintain the appearance of respectability (rather than try to come out). The film also places much emphasis on and draws attention to the homophobia of the father, and the actor who played this part (Hernán Romero) has received acclaim for his performance. It can also be argued that Bayly’s texts achieve little in terms of class or race issues or sexual politics. In terms of class, Bayly writes from a very specific, privileged position, and members of his class in Lima already have considerable freedom of sexual choice by virtue of their economic power. In terms of race, Bayly continues the trend of the Peruvian mass media, such as advertising on television, in which fair skin and hair are extolled as beauty. In terms of sexual stereotypes, in each of Bayly’s texts homosexuality is linked to drugs and deceit. The gay rights group in Lima (MHOL) has criticized such representations. Enrique Bossio (1995, 480) has voiced concerns about the control of the Peruvian mass media by a small elite and the images that are portrayed in its cultural production; he has tried to break preconceptions that link homosexuality with vice, illness, sin and crime. His (self-)criticism might be applied to Bayly’s texts: What I fear is that in our efforts to fit into the mainstream we were not successful in changing the [opinion] people have of most gay men and women. In Peru today everyone knows that there are a few homosexual men and women who go to the university and who appear on TV and radio talk shows to defend their rights. Eventually there will be a certain level of respect for these people. But the transvestites and the hair stylists – the most visible part of the homosexual community – will continue to be discriminated against and marginalised. (see Bossio (1995, 480))

Bossio’s attempt to seek equal rights for all Peruvian gays also underscores the activo and pasivo split. What Bayly shows in all three novels are protagonists who, unlike the other gays around them, identify with the pasivo/moderno (and call themselves ‘gay’) rather than activo. This is a very important detail given the press’ and critics’ repeated insistence on associating protagonists with the very famous author himself. It can be argued that much of the pleasure of the text in Bayly derives from the fantasy of the famous television presenter/himself, and any study of Bayly must look at the whole package (television, literature, press). On the topic of ‘mainstreaming’, it should also be pointed out that these three novels would not have been published in Peru if not for Bayly’s notoriety and Vargas Llosa’s support. Bayly’s texts publicize gay issues (albeit in a negative way at times) but there is also the danger of overexposure of this writer, with too much media exposure leading to one example being held as the norm rather than the extreme or the individual. However, Bayly both subverts sexual identity categories and

HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY IDENTITY IN BAYLY

41

pays careful attention, in trying to please a mass audience, not to put forward any single proposal and thus alienate any segment of the market. Not only has he not put forward any positive queer images, he has not put forward any positive or clear-cut images of any other identity at all, just as on his talk shows he is careful not to back one political party over another. Both this narrative ambiguity and the film’s portrayal of the protagonist accepting a double life are readable in the context of the socio-political. Joaquín accepts a double life because it is the only option open to him. Where the film was radical for Peru (and beyond?) was in the degree of gay sex scenes (especially those with telenovela star Christian Meier). The film was radical for that alone and this is reflected in the appearance of No se lo digas a nadie (Don’t tell anyone) in established gay film lists and at mainstream film festivals.20 Vargas Llosa has commented (on the 24 horas programme on 24 April 2001) that Bayly is morally worthless. This opinion can be upheld in a reading of Bayly’s narrative, yet it is a moral worthlessness (like Proust’s for Bersani) that is stylized and which serves a political purpose. Though Bayly has aimed for a wider market, in this study of Peruvian mass culture it is important to consider the power of popular culture in context. What may seem gossipy or superficial to the outside critic – namely Bayly’s (increasingly subtle) writing of ambiguous identities and sexualities by La noche es virgen – may at the same time be radical and subversive in Peru. In Bourdieu’s terms, Bayly subverts the cultural capital of the middle classes in Lima. The progressive deconstruction of identity in Bayly’s narrative can be linked to the media figure of Jaime Bayly himself. Since admitting being bisexual (long after the release of La noche es virgen), his media reputation has become increasingly unstable and ambiguous. His reputation has undergone a process of ‘re-fictionalization’ in line with the public’s responses to his narrative; he has become both a straight and a gay icon. The fact that his 2002 programme in Peru is called La noche es virgen further undermines the boundaries between fiction and reality. Though ‘gay’ arrived in Peru in the 1980s (and was already preferred to ‘entendido’),21 Bayly puts the gay into the Peruvian limelight. Before Bayly, there was little material by gay writers or on gay topics in this market. In terms of (sociological) gay studies, only Arboleda and Murray appear in any bibliography of Peruvian culture. Though his portrayal of homosexuality is problematic, Bayly thus fills a gap in the market, and Peruvian gays are able to appropriate Bayly’s texts as much as Ruiz Bravo or any other reader. As 20 No se lo digas a nadie has been part of the official selection at the Latin American Film Series at the Lincoln Center, at the Los Angeles and Chicago Latin American Film Festivals and at the Swedish Film Festival. 21 The use of the term ‘gay’ appeared in October 1980 in a publication of Gente, which ran the headline title ‘Los Gays Peruanos Son Libres’.

42

ROBERT RUZ

Peruvian gays cannot learn about common experiences through print media, nor from family, Bayly’s books serve as a source of information. On one level, Bayly’s texts represent a gay guide to Lima. Since the publication of Bayly’s No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen, there has been an increase in visibility of gay and lesbian themes in Peruvian mass culture (novels and television, press and internet). There thus seem to be stirrings of change and perhaps ‘gay’ is in the process of being ‘re-lexified’ again with political intentions: a Gay Pride celebration has been running in Peru since 1999, and 2002’s Miraflores parade was particularly prominent. However, in his study of homosexuality in Peru, Arboleda (1995, 108) concludes that issues of race, class and religion particular to Peru prevent collective action under the government of Fujimori and any hope of increased tolerance from Toledo seems unlikely, as his government struggled to cope with general strikes and mass opposition to privatization programmes in 2004. With his playful writing of the self and with his subversion of (sexual) identities, Bayly has made significant progress through the huge sales of these three novels and has already opened the door to an increase in literature on gay/lesbian themes in Peru.

2 JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS CULTURAL MARKETING JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

Jaime Bayly’s seven novels published to date are first-person narratives that display an agile control of language (with an emphasis on oral characteristics) and reflect what one critic has termed ‘el pulso de su tiempo’.1 The aim of this chapter is to discuss this narrative style within the theoretical framework of US/Latin American/Peruvian postmodern debates and in the broader context of Bayly’s work as a whole (television, self-marketing, profile in Lima), as well as Peruvian socio-political concerns. A consideration of postmodernism as a period or movement is immediately problematic in the case of Bayly/Peru – especially if it is defined in relation to postindustrial, post-colonial, consumer, media society in Jameson’s terms2 – because industrialization in the country is still developing, wealth distribution is uneven and a large proportion of the population is excluded from the media and from consumerism through poverty and illiteracy. On the other hand, uneven development in Peru (boosted by the global cocaine market) has created glimpses of a new configuration of economics and consumerism centred on Lima – with the domination of multinational communications and entertainment companies such as Telefónica and Cinemark – which correlate with Jameson’s ‘late capitalism’. The Lima of No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen is consistent with a postmodern definition of contemporary society in relation to social practices (modernization, consumer society) and in relation to technology and the media. Furthermore, this chapter will argue that Bayly’s style itself is quintessentially postmodern and, to this effect, Bayly’s work will be explored within the well-known (and much-debated) literary postmodern parameters of Ihab Hassan, the theoretical overview of Latin American writing by Santiago 1 See an unattributable reading of Yo amo a mi mami in The Barcelona Review, Issue 12, April–June 1999. This was read on the internet at: http://www.barcelonareview.com/ 12/s_resen.htm#Yo. 2 Fredric Jameson (2000, 190) has defined postmodernity in terms of the emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order: ‘the arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized “post-industrial society” (Daniel Bell), but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society’.

44

ROBERT RUZ

Juan-Navarro, the specific focus on the literary postmodernism of Peru by Raymond Leslie Williams (one of the very few critics to look at Peru at all) and Linda Hutcheon’s exploration of the political and critical aspects of postmodern writing (what she terms ‘complicitous critique’). A reading of any of Bayly’s seven novels makes it difficult to deny the existence of a cultural postmodernism in Peru because his writing is postmodern à la lettre: every aspect of Bayly’s narrative is constructed with style and marketing in mind. In attempting to explain the existence of a cultural postmodernism in Peru, Williams (1995, 43) points to the fact that cocaine is a cultural phenomenon as well as the source of an economic boom: the international drug industry has fuelled the ‘postmodern condition of the Andean region’, allowing for technological advances in Lima while rural areas lie untouched. Moreover, the argument that postmodernism is a Western, ‘imperialist’ term cannot be upheld in the case of Jaime Bayly, who explicitly writes from the privileged position of an upper middle-class background in Lima and whose novels display an unashamed pleasure in assimilating and imitating US popular culture. At his website www.terra.com.pe/ jaimebayly he ironically described his 1991 Miami-based television programme as ‘una copia tercermundista de Letterman’.3 In the course of this chapter, it will be argued that Bayly’s seven novels display characteristics that Hassan (1982, 280) has identified as quintessentially postmodern: irony; playfulness; performance and participation; discontinuity and openendedness; ambiguity; a blend of fiction and reality. Bayly’s writing corresponds with certain aspects of postmodern style in terms of fragmenting narrative and genre, challenging certain limits (reality and fiction, the subject, decency) and offering a humorous, reflexive approach. In this sense, any discussion of Bayly’s postmodern writing is less about analysing narrative structure (more applicable to the study of Thays in the next chapter), than about the way in which Bayly’s style is the narrative itself. However, it will be argued throughout this chapter – in line with Hutcheon (1989 and 1993) – that Bayly’s narrative style excludes neither politics nor contemporary social engagement (initially at least). Bayly has explicitly acknowledged his debt to Vargas Llosa at an early stage in his career, and this is perhaps reflected in the importance of politics and social critique in his first three novels, in which the postmodern writing style is closely linked to society and politics in a period (the 1980s). No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen require of the reader an awareness of Peruvian politics in the 1980s. This chapter will build on Chapter 1’s discussion of these three novels and will also take into account some aspects of the later and less original Los últimos días de “La Prensa” (1996) and Yo amo a mi mami (1999), which show developments in Bayly’s 3

exists.

Bayly’s biography was read on 12 August 2002. His website at Terra no longer

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

45

narrative style (in terms of critique and characterization). Though Bayly has been criticized for facilismo and for providing material de sobremesa,4 it will be argued here that in some respects the style of these novels is more interesting than some of the interpretations they have received. On the other hand, in his 2002 novel (La mujer de mi hermano) and in his 2002 television work (La noche es virgen) Bayly’s focus has moved away from a portrayal of Peruvian socio-politics, as well as away from an attentiveness to Peruvian jerga, to a preoccupation with international marketing concerns – to this facilismo. In these cases, Bayly barely refers to Peru and carefully markets his products throughout Spain and the Americas in terms of fame and scandal, with no knowledge or consideration of Peru necessary on the part of the reader/ viewer. Though it will be argued that Bayly’s novels display postmodern characteristics, it is also necessary to consider his seven novels in terms of ongoing modern/postmodern discussion. In attempting to establish a concept of postmodernism from a literary perspective, Hassan (1982) has written about the difficulties of separating the post from the modern. Hassan argues that the most significant feature of postmodernism – ‘the will to unmake’ and challenge institutionalized high culture – was present in modernism and the avant-garde; that is to say it was present in two cultural responses to modernity.5 In discussing Bayly in the context of more conservative writers such as Thays, it is interesting to note that for Hassan, the postmodern ‘will to unmake’ often takes the form of a re-evaluation of the status of popular culture (see Juan-Navarro (2000, 19–20)). In Chapter 3, it will be argued that the ideological struggle between Thays and Bayly centres on this question of the status of narrative, and that it was Bayly’s cross-over from the talk show to the novel that alienated the Peruvian literary establishment. Furthermore, while the question of status lies at the heart of any discussion of Bayly, any separation of the modern from the postmodern is not clear-cut within Bayly’s oeuvre. While it has been possible to identify some of Hassan’s postmodern characteristics in Bayly’s narrative as a whole, two of his novels – Los últimos días de “La Prensa” and Yo amo a mi mami – have a limited number of features that might be termed ‘modern’, such as a greater sense of form, design and hierarchy. However, these features are the products of the models Bayly uses rather than any intended change in his (postmodern) writing style or structuring techniques. Los últimos días de “La Prensa” has a clear debt to

4 In the words of Gustavo Faverón (2001), in his review of Los últimos días de “La Prensa” (at http://www.apuntes.org/paises/peru/ensayo/faveron_peruanos.html). 5 Postmodernism inherits an aesthetic ‘will to unmake’ from modernism (fragmentation, self-reflexivity) and an attempt to ‘unmake’ the barriers between art and social life from the avant-garde. This reading of Hassan was taken from Santiago Juan-Navarro’s Archival Reflections (2000, 19–21).

46

ROBERT RUZ

Vargas Llosa’s La tía Julia y el escribidor (describing the Bildungsroman of a naïve boy entering the seedy world of journalism) and Yo amo a mi mami is closely modelled on Bryce Echenique’s Un mundo para Julius (describing the visions of a young Bayly caught between rich parents and servants). Both novels have a clearer chronology and structure and are the two novels that Thays (1999b), in his rejection of literatura light, has criticized the least.6 Critics of Bayly’s novels have identified the use of a first-person narrator, the variety of the registers of the language used (particularly through dialogue) and an emphasis on humour as the most noteworthy traits of his narrative. La noche es virgen, which starts with quotations by Madonna and Warhol and a dedication to the author himself, sets the agenda and tone of Bayly’s fiction. Bayly focuses his attention in all his novels on writing the self, portraying convincingly the anxieties of a narrator forced to cope with an insensitive mother and father, widespread homophobia and the problems of cocaine addiction. In the section ‘Rebotar’ in Fue ayer y no me acuerdo, for example, the narrator conveys through the present tense and first person the horrors of ‘coming down’ and facing the grim, homophobic reality around him: each paragraph starts with ‘veo a mi padre’, with a traumatic childhood memory related to the suffering that has continued through to his adult life: ‘Veo a mi padre pegándome con una correa en el culo, diciéndome maricón de mierda’ (1995, 174) and ‘Veo a mi padre jalándome de los pelos, metiéndome a la ducha fría’ (1995, 176). Following the best-selling precedent of the fictionalized ‘memoirs’ of Vargas Llosa/Marito/Varguitas in La tía Julia y el escribidor, Bayly has pushed the concept of writing the self to its limits by also using his fame and the idea of ‘scandal’ to entice readers with the hint of revelations about Lima’s high society. Though it was argued in Chapter 1 that the elements of homosexuality in Bayly’s narrative coincided with a marketability of gay topics in Spain, it is this idea of fame and ‘scandal’ that has maintained Bayly’s success in Peru and beyond: ‘el público seguidor del astro televisivo anota en un papel todas las pistas que vincularían a los personajes literarios con sus pares de piel y carne gay que se esconden en esta Lima la Horrible’.7 Whether Bayly targeted a ‘gayboom literario europeo’ in the first place is debatable, and it has been claimed that the gay theme alienated possible readers in Peru,8 making it quite remarkable that he did manage to reach the mainstream with No se lo digas a nadie. It is more likely that his initial

6 See, for example, Thays’ internet article (1999b) ‘La edad de la inocencia: acerca de la narrativa peruana última’ at www.apuntes.org/paises/peru/ensayo/thays_inocencia.html. 7 Both the idea of the interest in gay narrative in Spain and the quotation are taken from the critic Gustavo Faverón (1998), writing in Issue 111 of Quehacer [Internet]. 8 This is according to Bayly himself in his (internet) interview with Mariano Valerio (2000a): ‘Jaime Bayly y su mamá’ at: Terra.com.pe, 4 December 2000.

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

47

success in Spain was, as suggested in Chapter 1, largely dependent on Vargas Llosa helping him secure a high-profile contract with Seix Barral. There is no doubt, however, that as his fame has grown, Bayly has manipulated his fictional self in order to sell books. His fame has grown significantly: in October 2002, he was voted to present the MTV Latinoámerica awards by its viewers and, also in 2002, he appeared on Crónicas Marcianas, one of the most popular programmes in Spain. Bayly himself has commented that his notoriety is very good for business: ‘una mala reputación es una gran comodidad’.9 Whereas a previous generation of boom/postboom writers, including Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Manuel Puig and Vargas Llosa, adopted elements of popular culture in their writing and also became involved in scriptwriting for television/cinema, Bayly’s career has undergone the reverse process. It is his television work that has made his writing possible. If Bayly has not yet admitted the fact that his television fame is what has sold books, he has acknowledged it as a source of inspiration for plot lines: ‘la televisión me ha permitido enriquecerme como escritor, me ha provisto de historias y de personajes más que pintorescos, extravagantes’.10 At a conference in Lima on this topic at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (‘Realidad y ficción en la literatura de Bayly’) – at which Bayly took his usual line of denying any explicit links between fiction and reality – Peruvian writer Arturo Fontaine suggested that Bayly was perhaps capable of exploiting this fame more than any other Latin American writer: Tal vez no hay nadie en América Latina hoy día, o en el mundo castellano incluso, que esté jugando con su propia personalidad de la forma en que lo está haciendo Jaime Bayly: borrando o redibujando, libro a libro, las fronteras entre realidad y ficción, entre biografía e invención. (See Freundt-Thurne (2000, 54))

The Peruvian critics who have treated with suspicion Bayly’s move from ‘astro televisivo’ to novelist have also praised the ‘oral’ qualities of his narrative. Gustavo Faverón Patriau (1998), who has been consistently hostile to Bayly, has also commented on this aspect of the author’s work, highlighting ‘el mérito de la oralidad [. . .] y una considerable puntualidad en la sencillez de su lenguaje’.11 His use of diverse registers (above all those of young limeños) and his sense of complicity with the reader are at their most accomplished in La noche es virgen. The novel is characterized by the alternation of 9 This comment appears in an (internet) interview with Bayly by Mariano Valerio (2000b): ‘Jaime Bayly: Sexo, drogas y televisión’ at: Terra.com.pe, 4 December 2000. 10 Taken from Mariano Valerio’s (internet) interview with Bayly: ‘Jaime Bayly y su mamá’ at: Terra.com.pe, 4 December 2000 – see Valerio (2000a). 11 Taken from the internet publication of Quehacer, 111 (1998). The transcript of this article is available at: http://www.desco.org.pe/qh/qh111tfp.htm.

48

ROBERT RUZ

short sentences, pauses and long, flowing sentences (to give rhythm and the impression of orality), a use of fragments of English and emphasis on jerga limeña, including a steady stream of aumentativos and dimunitivos (cholón, paisucho, tristón, timiducha). In La noche es virgen a sense of complicity is also created by the fact that the reader is addressed by the narrator as ‘corazón’ and is invited to share in the memories/confessions almost as an accomplice (‘en qué estábamos – ah, claro, en que . . .’ – Bayly (1997, 33)). This style creates an engaging sense of process, as if Bayly were telling the story to the reader. Whereas La noche es virgen consistently re-creates a ‘twentysomething’ Lima, with minute attention to language, geography and fashion, Los últimos días de “La Prensa” is Bayly’s most accomplished novel in terms of the variety of registers employed and the tone of the dialogue. The novel is almost entirely based on the exchanges between the senile, well-to-do grandfather Rafael, the gossipy secretary Patty, the overenthusiastic Director and his editor son Larrañaga, as well as the workingclass staff of the newspaper La Prensa, which Bayly ironically refers to as ‘el periódico para la gente blanca’ (1996, 6). Bayly blends racy dialogue, humour and Peruvian slang together, such as when the protagonist Diego gets an editorial written for his grandfather, in which he demands a reversal of General Velasco’s reforma agraria: Estaba en terno. Llevaba el pelo engominado, peinado hacia atrás. Tenía cara de sapo, de foca, de bulldog. – Cojonudo, Enrico – dijo Larrañaga – . Le has puesto los puntos sobre los íes al timorato de Correa. – ¿Tiene punch el editorial, no? – preguntó Enrico. – No sólo hay que privatizar las empresas públicas, Enrico – dijo Francisco –. También hay que privatizar las fuerzas armadas, la policía y hasta las calles. (Bayly (1996, 40–1))

This extract is typical of the way in which Bayly achieves a conversational fluidity, which – upon further analysis – is highly measured. The use of full stops in the first sentence gives the reader a succinct and comical impression of the editor, who is well-dressed (‘en terno’) and well-groomed (‘pelo engominado’) but has a slightly grotesque facial expression (both like a ‘sapo’ and a ‘bulldog’). The editor’s reference to the president in the second sentence is rich in Peruvian/Latin American slang: ‘cojonudo’, ‘puesto los puntos sobre los íes’ and ‘timorato’. The last sentence concludes the exchange with an element of the political incorrectness that runs throughout Bayly’s work, with the editor suggesting that even the streets should be privatized. The exchange as a whole achieves the ‘punch’ Enrico strives for in his piece on Correa and maintains the high level of humour present in Los últimos días de “La Prensa”. Increasingly in his narrative, from No se lo digas a nadie (1994) to La mujer de mi hermano (2002), Bayly explores the possibilities offered by language/the novel to give pleasure, to seduce, to

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

49

amuse and to shock. From La noche es virgen onwards he uses humour in an unashamedly populist manner and aims for a shock effect to please the reader rather than engage in social commentary. He can thus joke about doormen (‘qué feo eres, tío. deberías hacer una máscara con tu cara y venderla en halloween’ – Bayly (1997, 14)) and then move on to bolder and more politically incorrect claims that the well-known café Haití in Lima is appropriately named given its repulsiveness: ‘todos los sufridos negros haitianos quieren zafar de allí como sea, en llanta, en boya, encima de un cocodrilo, como chucha sea’ (1997, 94). Whereas Yo amo a mi mami is much more lighthearted (with the humour establishing his parents as figures of ridicule) and the later La mujer de mi hermano avoids any socio-political references whatsoever (focusing on romantic intrigue and sexual encounters), La noche es virgen and Los últimos días de “La Prensa” contain elements of critique. In Los últimos días de “La Prensa”, for example, the humour serves the critical purpose of highlighting the continual mismanagement of the country by successive presidents and governments: the grandfather’s furious attacks on both Velasco and Correa for confiscating his lands reflect an issue that still remained unresolved in Peru in 2004. Bayly also uses humour to show the low standards of a newspaper that is considered one of the finest in Peru: Zamorano, the Jefe de Internacionales, tells his apprentice to choose stories at random to save time and the drunkard typist Severo frequently makes errors in headlines such as ‘PRESIDENTE REAGAN SALIO DE LA CLINICA APOYADO EN DOS MULATAS’ (1996, 29). In contrast, in Yo amo a mi mami it is the mother and father who are ridiculed with little reference to events beyond the household. Most of the jokes centre on the mother’s obsession with religion and the father’s insensitivity. For example, when Jimmy asks his mother to be taken to Disney, the mother replies ‘depende de Dios’ and Jimmy’s reply is ‘entonces que Dios pague los pasajes’ (Bayly (1999, 34)). The social critique is therefore greatly diminished and the portrayal of his parents is rather familiar after their presence throughout his first three novels. The structure and characterization of Bayly’s novels have been scrutinized by Peruvian critics, who have agreed on their deficiencies and failings. In an internet article about Bayly’s writing as a whole, Faverón (1998) notes that the novels take the form of comedy sketches rather than identifiable narrative strands: ‘[Jaime Bayly] carece, sin embargo, de cualquier idea de composición que no sea de las escenas casi inconexas’. Thays has drawn attention to the open-endedness of Bayly’s narratives and the lack of secondary characters: ‘Bayly no cierra sus obras sino que las deja extinguirse [. . .] ninguna representa un avance en la trama o en la psicología del personaje’ (see the internet article by Faverón (1998)). Though they both have faint praise for Los últimos días de “La Prensa” and Yo amo a mi mami, both of these novels owe their structural dynamics to the Vargas Llosa and Bryce Echenique models used and both also have a series of undeveloped charac-

50

ROBERT RUZ

ters. Yo amo a mi mami has more than twenty episodes devoted to one character (often a school friend or servant), without returning to that character or developing it further. However, it might be argued (up to La mujer de mi hermano) that there are notable exceptions to the argument that there is no sustained characterization in Bayly’s novels, such as the protagonists of his novels (partly based on Bayly), the figure of the mother (weakened through marriage and her unquestioning alliance with the Opus Dei) and the figure of the father (who represents the worst of Peruvian society: machismo, homophobia, misogyny and racism). However, the characters of the parents are not presented as complex human beings but operate at the level of caricature and stereotype, and any attempt to discuss the protagonists in direct relation to Bayly is problematic because there are similarities and contradictions in the representation of the protagonist from novel to novel and because Bayly’s biography is also unstable. The fact that Bayly’s biography at his website (www.terra.com.pe/jaimebayly) changed from month to month throughout 2002 reflects the inseparable link between fiction and reality in Bayly’s life and work. The futility of trying to establish clear-cut links between Bayly and his protagonists is reflected in the postmodern preoccupation with selfdefinition – a preoccupation that deconstructs the idea that there are clear boundaries in gender or identity. Both Faverón and Thays miss the point – mentioned in the introduction to this chapter – that Bayly’s novels are styled in such a (postmodern) way that makes it futile to analyse their structure precisely or the individual characters in depth. Bayly’s novels are in fact (deliberately) written in an imprecise and unstructured way, with no neat ends or conclusions or unambiguous characters. Much of the pleasure of Bayly’s text derives from this freedom and ease of reading, as well as from the ambiguity of sexuality and identity analysed in Chapter 1 – particularly where the protagonist is concerned. One of the reasons why Bayly’s novels have been so successful is that they are written and carefully marketed to appeal to a certain readership, based on the ‘twentysomething’ audience of his television programmes. In La noche es virgen (as well as Los últimos días de “La Prensa” and Yo amo a mi mami) there is an explicit complicity with stereotype and Bayly engages a particular readership with slang and popular culture references. Bayly engages with the language of a certain generation, using a colloquial, flowing ‘oral’ style that serves the purpose of attracting a specific 18–35 year old readership. At the start of La noche es virgen, Bayly re-creates the slang used by this age group with ‘a morir’, ‘chino’, ‘cojudeces’ (1997, 14), ‘duro/durazo’, ‘ay, me puedo morir’ (1997, 16) and refers to elements of North American/European popular culture that might appeal to these readers: (talking about Mariano) ‘estabas divino, corazón. flaquito tipo amante de kate moss que desayuna un rico pinchazo de heroína; blancón/paliducho porque no vas a la playa . . . conchudazo en fin’ (1997, 18). Furthermore, not only are the themes carefully chosen to attract readers in their twenties or thirties (leaving home,

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

51

drugs, sex, nightlife, cars, first jobs, flat buying) but his characters offer a carefully chosen variety of stock traits – very much like the cast of Luz María (Lima’s soap opera). In Fue ayer y no me acuerdo, not only are the characters underdeveloped but they are deliberately stereotypical and are made to fulfil these soap opera-like roles. The narrator openly praises the superficial qualities of each of his friends: Micaela is a beautiful rich girl keeping up the appearance of respectability; Matías has a toned and tanned body as if he has always just stepped out of the gym; Dieguito is the slightly ugly but kind-hearted millionaire who secretly loves the narrator (Bayly (1995, 21 and 38)). A stereotypical characterization continues in Los últimos días de “La Prensa”, in which the newspaper staff include the fat, man-of-the-world Director, the hard-drinking Editor, lazy writers with extreme political views (often right-wing) and the attractive, gossipy receptionist. Yo amo a mi mami also contains the now familiar characters of the pious mother (‘esta mamacita pituca’ – Bayly (1999, 72)), the brutal father, hypocritical friends and a string of little-developed characters, such as servants and childhood friends. In La mujer de mi hermano, Bayly avoids alienating readers by developing the use of stereotypical characterization and plot. The three main characters are globally recognizable stereotypes: Ignacio is the boring banker with strict routines (who only makes love on a Saturday evening); Gonzalo is the maverick brother, the unpredictable artist who sleeps and works when he wants; Zoe is the bored housewife who spends her time fantasizing about a passionate affair (with Gonzalo). The novel centres on a seductive, melodramatic plot worthy of the telenovela: from a loveless marriage comes a tale of passion, a love triangle and a betrayal by a brother. The first sentence is the first-person confession of Ignacio, who is considering whether his brother is having an affair with his wife. The tension of when Zoe will succumb to the charms of Gonzalo is maintained for more than a hundred pages, during which time Ignacio suspects but has no proof and all three main characters are engaged in word games and deceit. When Ignacio confronts his wife, she seems to him caught up in a melodramatic plot: ‘Palabrería barata, literatura de folletín, pura demogogia conyugal’ (Bayly (2002, 195)). At the same time as providing stereotypical characters and a melodramatic plot, there is the hint of a greater depth to the characters that might be achieved through a first-person narration for each character and because Bayly has reduced the number of characters to three. However, Ignacio is developed into little more than the workaholic banker – even if his self-awareness and his recriminations with regard to his marriage portray him in a more sympathetic light and he makes moves to try to improve the poor relations between him and the others – and Gonzalo is little more than a stock seducer. Furthermore, in line with the traces of misogyny in all of Bayly’s work, it is the female character, Zoe, who is portrayed as frivolous and pathetic: in spite of her first-person narration, it is left unresolved at the end of the novel whether she returns to Ignacio out of necessity, remorse or rekindled love.

52

ROBERT RUZ

Though Bayly has managed to produce in La mujer de mi hermano a novel to please a huge, continental audience, this narrative has lost the political edge of his previous novels, created by a social background and commentary peculiar to Peru and at times recognizably peculiar to a writer whose television work had been overtly political until the publication of La mujer de mi hermano. Bayly’s first four novels – particularly La noche es virgen and Los últimos días de “La Prensa” – focus on social problems such as terrorism, violence, inflation, ethnic unrest and (e)migration, inflation, disease and drugs. La noche es virgen is particularly effective in recreating this atmosphere of terror, chaos and violence that dominated Lima in the 1980s; there are repeated references to the toque de queda existing at the time, to the fear generated by apagones and the bombing campaigns of the MRTA and Sendero Luminoso. Bayly’s novel refers to an infamous bomb that was placed in a car right in the centre of Miraflores, next to the Parque Kennedy: ‘en cualquiera de esas esquinas de miraflores revienta ahorita un coche bomba y a cobrar’ (1997, 66). Whereas Los últimos días de “La Prensa” criticizes the dictatorship of Velasco, as well as the government of Correa, in La noche es virgen Alan García is singled out by Bayly as being personally responsible for these social problems: there are repeated references in La noche es virgen to an interview Bayly did on his talk show to the then presidential candidate (for example: 1997, 15), and this is an interview that is recalled in the chapter ‘La Pregunta’ of Fue ayer y no me acuerdo (1995, 68–70). The narrator remembers when he asked the young García whether he could confirm the rumour circulating in Lima that he had recently received psychiatric treatment, and the narrator also recalls being given the sack the next day. The fact that Bayly was himself sacked in real life after the García interview by Delgado Parker, who was the President of Panamericana Televisión and a close friend of García, reiterates the problematic relationship between text and life in Bayly’s novels. The references to the García interview are an excellent example of the fact that Bayly is not just reproducing Peruvian popular culture but is re-creating it and making it his own. In this instance, this is doubly so: his real-life interview with García, which has become a notorious point of reference in Peruvian television, is rewritten in Bayly’s narrative, which itself is about the expressiveness of language rather than providing accurate social testimony. His relationship with Alan García was to take more twists and turns fifteen years later, in the year 2000, when García returned to Peru amid huge popular support to stand once again for a second term as president. In both Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen, Bayly recreates a Lima where there is no longer law, order or control: in Fue ayer y no me acuerdo Micaela is gang raped by a police patrol (1995, 272–3) and in La noche es virgen Gabriel can barely bring himself to touch the banknotes (‘unos inmundos billetes peruanos’ – (1997, 162)) because of the disease spreading across the coast. It is a Lima where citizens have been left to fight

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

53

for themselves: ‘en lima a nadie le importa medio carajo respetar al peatón o al ciclista o, en general, al prójimo ni al prófugo’ (Bayly (1997, 40)). Problems created by migration and racial tension are also touched on in Bayly’s first four novels. The narrator of La noche es virgen comments on an influx of serranos and mestizos in the once middle-class suburb of Miraflores (the initial setting of Vargas Llosa’s La tía Julia y el escribidor): ‘miraflores, que puja y puja y cada vez que puja, más se llena de brownies, ay, qué le vamos a hacer, pues, amor, los brownies están por todas partes’ (1997, 58). The general state of disrepair and mismanagement of the country are reflected in the repeated references to trying to leave Peru. The social commentary and critique of Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen bear witness to the demographic shifts in Lima in the 1980s when wealthy and wellconnected young men and women left for the USA, Chile or Spain in order to escape from the chaos of Lima. In Fue ayer y no me acuerdo the narrator laments that most of his school friends have left Lima (1995, 171) and he himself dreams of a Spanish, Chilean or even Dominican passport in order to leave (1995, 186). Bayly shows a more subversive underside of Lima by creating protagonists who not only exploit this lawlessness to become drug takers but who are also marginalized from mainstream society in Lima by exploring the (clandestine) world of gay pubs and discotheques. It is this world of beaches, pubs, prostitutes, transvestites, cocaine and marijuana in Lima during the mid- and late 1980s and early 1990s that gives No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen a unique place in the literary tradition and popular culture of Peru. In No se lo digas a nadie, there is a marked change in tone after ‘La Fuga’: Joaquin snorts cocaine before going to his sister’s wedding at the Virgen del Pilar church in San Isidro; he later buys more and more cocaine in the Torres Paz park in Barranco, listens to the DobleNueve radio station (the most anti-establishment in Lima), visits the central park in Miraflores (Parque Kennedy) to pick up boys, goes to pubs such as Studio One and Nirvana before ending up down the coastal road (Costa Verde) playing table football and taking more cocaine (1994, 153–80). Fue ayer y no me acuerdo also centres on the world of cocaine users in Lima and the narrator makes frequent visits to the places/‘Los Puntos’ where he can buy drugs, such as the Torres Paz park in Barranco, La Mar street in Miraflores and the Ovalo Gutiérrez in San Isidro. If Fue ayer y no me acuerdo focuses very much on the devastating effects of cocaine addiction on the protagonist, with the narrator selling his car and using the proceeds to buy fifty grams of cocaine in ‘Como meterse un Fiat por la nariz’ (1995, 104), then in all three novels there is a close link between the degeneration of Lima and the physical/mental degeneration of the narrator and protagonist. The national becomes closely linked to the personal in Bayly: to this effect, the narrator of Fue ayer y no me acuerdo can complain to Dieguito that ‘Ese era el Perú: el caos, la barbarie’ while in the same

54

ROBERT RUZ

conversation taking cocaine using his electoral, the obligatory identity card in Lima (1995, 192). The narrator becomes caught in a city that is out of control, that doesn’t allow him to express his sexuality freely but which nonetheless has a hold on him through his drug addiction: ‘no puedo seguir siendo gay y coquero en lima. me estoy matando. lima me está matando’ (Bayly (1997, 189)). As well as displaying complicity with (US) popular culture, global stereotypical characters and an idiomatic Peruvian language of the moment, La noche es virgen offers critique on three levels: (1) in terms of the socio-political commentary discussed above; (2) in terms of a subversive writing of (sexual) identity (as explored in Chapter 1); and (3) in terms of a playfulness with and undermining of the Peruvian language and jerga that Bayly re-creates. Behind the façade of indulgence in superficiality and popular discourse in La noche es virgen (and Fue ayer y no me acuerdo to a lesser extent), Bayly is playfully questioning and breaking down the language, popular culture and politics he reproduces, and it will be suggested here that this is one of the ways that elements of critique coexist with the complicity in Bayly’s work. The coexistence of complicity and critique has been theorized by Linda Hutcheon, who has explored the ways in which such a style might function in photography and narrative (because Hutcheon sees these genres most readily operating within the domains of both ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture). In her chapter ‘Beginning to Theorize Postmodernism’ in the Postmodern Reader of which she is the editor, Hutcheon argues that there are ‘popular novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet lay claim to historical events and personages’ (1993, 245–6). With the example of Charles Jencks’ ‘double coding’ of postmodern art, Hutcheon (1993, 303) reiterates that, in the case of postmodern literature, the central point of contention is ‘between this positive valuing of parody’s subversive potential, and the negative view that equates it with trivializing kitsch and pastiche’. Moreover, Hutcheon (1993, 260) critiques Terry Eagleton because what ‘he seems to ignore is the subversive potential of irony, parody and humour in contesting the universalizing pretensions of “serious art” ’. In The Politics of Postmodernism, Hutcheon makes her case for the coexistence of complicity and critique and argues against any denial of the subversive potential of postmodern narrative. At the outset she presents the Foucauldian case that the two forces of complicity and critique not only oppose but stimulate one another: ‘this is a strange kind of critique, one bound up, too with its own complicity with power and domination, one that acknowledges that it cannot escape implication in that which it nevertheless still wants to analyze and maybe even undermine’ (Hutcheon (1989, 4)). It is this Foucauldian idea that oppression and resistance are inseparable that fuels Hutcheon’s insistence that there is a comparable paradox at the heart of the postmodern. Hutcheon (1989, 14) asks, ‘What is power to Foucault, writing to Derrida, or class to Marxism?’ and answers that they are ‘impli-

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

55

cated in that notion of center they attempt to subvert. It is this paradox that makes the postmodern.’ It is this implication in the target of subversion that leads Hutcheon to her ‘own paradoxical postmodernism of complicity and critique, of reflexivity and historicity, that at once inscribes and subverts the conventions and ideologies of the dominant cultural and social forces of the twentieth-century western world’ (1989, 11). Jameson also sees useful resistance and potentially radical value in apparently complicit or commercial texts (Jaws, The Godfather), suggesting that the ambivalent coexistence of complicity and critique is not ‘absolutely incompatible’ and that ‘even the most degraded type of mass culture’ is able to be ‘negative and critical of the social order from which, as a product and commodity, it springs’ (1992a, 29). Another way in which Hutcheon paves the way for her explanation of ‘complicitous critique’ is by looking back to the effects of the avant-garde (1989, 13). The breaking down of the distinctions between ‘high’, elitist culture and ‘low’, mass culture has allowed for the paradox that characterizes postmodern culture: ‘It is certainly the historical avant-garde that prepares the way for postmodernism’s renegotiation of the different possible relations (of complicity and critique) between high and popular forms of culture’ (Hutcheon (1989, 28)). In terms of how ‘complicitous critique’ might actually function in narrative, Hutcheon analyses texts (including Puig, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos) that display mimetic qualities of representation and engaged historical contextualization as well as a questioning/problematizing of that representation. She describes postmodern narrative in terms of subversion from within, ‘the simultaneous inscribing and subverting of the conventions of narrative’ (1989, 49). In her reading of Roa Bastos, Hutcheon (1989, 49) argues against Jameson’s idea that the postmodern brings ‘a repudiation of representation, a “revolutionary break” with the (repressive) ideology of storytelling generally’.12 For Hutcheon, ‘there is no dissolution or repudiation of representation; but there is a problematizing of it’ (1989, 49). A central question in Bayly is whether his narrative can be critical or even subversive at the same time as being complicit with the American mass media market. The fact that Bayly’s narrative is so difficult to categorize (subversive? gay? mass?) resonates with Hutcheon’s central concern regarding the categorizing of postmodern narrative: ‘Postmodern representational practices that refuse to stay neatly within accepted conventions and traditions and deploy hybrid forms and seemingly mutually contradictory strategies frustrate critical attempts [. . .] to systematize them, to order them with an eye to control and mastery – that is, to totalize’ (1989, 37). It will be argued here that La noche es virgen displays a critique of the social order that has allowed

12 From Jameson (1984) ‘The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debate’, New German Critique, 33: 53–65.

56

ROBERT RUZ

it be such a successful commodity in terms of the Peruvian upper middle classes, US popular culture and Peruvian jerga. The novel offers a ‘double coding’ that questions elements of US and Latin American popular culture while at the same time focusing on re-creating the most attractive and readable novelistic format possible, so as not to alienate the readership he targets by using (and re-creating) that same popular culture. The case for using Hutcheon’s idea of ‘complicitous critique’ is strengthened by Bayly’s inclusion in the 1996 McOndo anthology edited by Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez, as the manifesto ideas set out in the prologue cast a purposeful light on the critique at work in these writers’ identification with globalization and postmodernity. In the prologue, Fuguet and Gómez argue against a romanticized portrayal of Latin America, as typified by Gabriel García Márquez’s creation of Macondo in Cien años de soledad. They argue in favour of representing Latin America in terms of McOndo, which is characterized by ‘lo bastardo, lo híbrido’ and by ‘McDonalds, computadoras Mac y condominios’.13 McOndo embraces US popular culture, the market and globalization and at the same time adopts a critical approach towards the USA and its influence on Latin America, as well as towards Latin American urban life. For Fuguet and Gómez, McOndo centres on Miami and MTV Latina, and this underscores the relevance of the inclusion of Bayly in the anthology, which also has stories by Fuguet and Edmundo Paz Soldán, as Bayly has lived in Miami and appeared on MTV Latina. In the later article ‘Magical Neoliberalism’ (published on the internet), Fuguet (2001) includes Jorge Volpi and Ignacio Padilla in the McOndo group and re-emphasizes his previous definition: ‘McOndo is a global, mixed, diverse, urban, 21st-century Latin America, bursting on TV and apparent in music, art, fashion, film and journalism, hectic and unmanageable.’ A central example of the way in which ‘complicitous critique’ is present throughout Bayly’s narrative is the image of Miami, mecca of a certain type of US popular culture: the American dream for many latinos, a commercial centre known for its shopping malls (targeted at tourists), the gateway to Disney and the USA. Bayly uses the image of Miami in his novels as the escape route for the gay limeño and the antithesis of Lima. Lima is characterized by a lack of tolerance towards gay people, dirt and disease, mediocrity and a place where young people have nothing worthwhile to do. Miami, on the other hand, is the promised land, where there is sexual tolerance, opportunity, products of quality and safety. When the protagonists of Bayly’s first three novels arrive there, however, the illusion is shattered. Bayly himself has defined this image of Miami as ‘un espejismo, una quimera que está presente en mis libros. Es una fantasía instalada en la imaginación del latinoamericano 13 The prologue to McOndo is available for viewing at Fuguet’s website, Fuguet.com, as ‘Presentación McOndo’ and this copy of the prologue appears in my Bibliography under Fuguet (2003).

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

57

promedio’ and as a place which in reality reveals ‘la idiotez general’ (see Valerio (2000d)). Bayly’s narrative, therefore, both reinforces and undermines the stereotypical image of Miami as the promised land in relation to Latin America, even though in this instance he is playfully critical rather than subversive. Peruvian critics have missed this coexistence of complicity and critique in Bayly’s novels. Faverón (1998) describes Bayly’s works as: ‘un típico bestseller: escándalo, controversia superficial, apropiación de usos artísticos para la confección de productos no artísticos, facilidad de consumo, identificación con un conjunto limitado de referentes próximos’. While this comment is relevant to La mujer de mi hermano (published after Faverón’s internet review), it misses the different layers of La noche es virgen and betrays an objection to Bayly for ideological reasons: writing a novel about material not worthy of the novel. The most productive link between ‘complicitous critique’ and Bayly’s La noche es virgen lies precisely in this difficulty with defining or categorizing Bayly’s work and in the question of language in terms of ‘high’/‘low’ cultural debates (‘usos artísticos’ for ‘productos no artísticos’), with Bayly crossing barriers (in terms of theme, language and genre). Bayly’s narrative operates on the very edge of complicity and of critique, without becoming one or the other, and it is this writing at/on the edge that is perhaps Bayly’s greatest achievement and the reason for his success. Bayly both celebrates the superficiality of the language he chooses (focusing on orality, sound effect and rhythm) and yet probes beneath the surface by experimenting and playing with that same language. One of his accomplishments is the way in which he conveys national and personal chaos/problems in an easily read and polished narrative format. It is the ‘facilidad de consumo’ that makes his novels accessible to a wider readership and his critique more effective within that readership. One of the ways that he makes his novels more accessible is the choice and register of the language used, yet it is a language and style that Bayly also experiments with and questions, and this adds to the elements of socio-political critique centred on Lima and Miami. In Fue ayer y no me acuerdo there is a degree of experimentation in structure, narration and style not present in No se lo digas a nadie – a very conservatively written story, however ‘scandalous’ the theme of homosexuality was in a conservative Lima society – and this experimentation continues through to La noche es virgen, where Bayly adopts a more humorous, subversive and playfully seductive style that reflects the progression in the three novels to a more cynical and ambiguous portrayal of gender and identity in the later work. The reader is offered a variety of narrative perspectives (omniscient narrator, an address to the reader as tu and a first-person confessional mode), continual switches in tenses (from nostalgia for the past to the present horror of being imprisoned by drug addiction and a city bombarded by terrorists), a variety of different writing styles (letters, interior monologue, dialogue, television announcements). This variety of narrative styles is absent

58

ROBERT RUZ

in No se lo digas a nadie, which relies on a third-person narration to chart in chronological order the growing up of Joaquín, from ridiculed schoolboy to gay man living in Miami. In La noche es virgen, Bayly displays a questioning/problematizing of linguistic conventions and the conventions of the Peruvian novel, as well as suspicion towards coming out, and this experimentation with language is part of the pleasure of the text for both writer and reader – part of the ‘complicitous critique’. The novel operates at the very edge of an all-out complicitous reaffirmation of US culture, at the very edge of a fashionable re-creation of Peruvian slang and at the edge of a critical stance towards Peruvian politics, which in turn is closely linked with his television, journalistic and political work. In effect, he literally ‘mutilates’ language in La noche es virgen, and this is the culmination in Bayly of a suspicion towards progress (both in terms of Lima and coming out as a male homosexual in that context) and a problematizing of the language that reinforces those identities through popular culture. Again, Bayly’s fiction not only reflects the new ethos of youth culture in Lima (drugs, sex, rock n’roll) or the author’s work in the media, but gives the reader a reworking of the language of that popular culture. While it is true that Bayly is alluding to the slang of Lima (offering an insider’s view on what they say), it also the case that Bayly’s fiction re-creates that language by increasing its modalities and enhancing its expressiveness. Take the following paragraph, for example, from La noche es virgin: sigo caminando por pardo y veo asqueado como entran y salen las ratas por los huecos del desagüe, y por eso no camino por la alameda central que tiene sus banquitas y sus faroles amarillos así de lo más peatonal, porque cuando caminas por ahí de noche salen unas ratazas enormes, gordas, que parecen pingas de moreno. camino rápido, con miedo. me dan miedo las ratas. en este momento odio lima. puede ser una ciudad tan deprimente. y conste que yo no pido mucho, solo pido una ciudad donde pueda caminar de noche sin que me salten ratas encima. (1997, 92)

The carefully constructed conversational fluidity of this passage blends racy political incorrectness (‘pingas de moreno’), self-pity (‘no pido mucho’), aloofness (‘asqueado’). The use of full stops as well as lower case combines a complex Joycean stream of consciousness with an awareness of the reader’s hermeneutic limitations. The pleasure of the reading process on each page of La noche es virgen reflects the pleasure taken by Bayly in undermining/playing with this language: he breaks down syntax and punctuation, invents new words, confuses gender endings in Spanish, at the same time as indulging in US pop cultural references and the pleasure of elaborating new words and text (often through use of hyphenated expressions): ‘mi adorada madonna, que sale al escenario con una ganas increíbles de decirle al mundo yo soy así . . . una puta-riquísima-millonaria-cabrona-que-cacha-con-quien-

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

59

chucha-le-da-la-gana’ (1997, 34). This questioning of language/the novel is an integral part of Bayly’s exploration of the expressive and pleasurable aspects of that same language. Just as identity is continually in the process of elaborating itself through performance (which Bayly enjoys exploiting), language can be subverted and manipulated because it also is in the process of being continually elaborated. Bayly’s ambivalent approach to language – reproducing and also rewriting language – is reflective of the wider, ambivalent coexistence of complicity and critique present in his novels (particularly in La noche es virgin) and which Hutcheon argues is typical of postmodern narrative. La noche es virgen represents a turning-point in Bayly’s novelistic trajectory and one that is closely linked to his television work. The variety of narrative techniques employed in Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and the progressively undermining and experimental style of his first three novels, culminating in La noche es virgen, with its exploration of language and identity, give way to an increasingly fluid writing style (with little narrative variety to challenge the reader), an emphasis on seductive plot lines and complicity with stereotypes taken from melodrama, the telenovela and US popular culture. La noche es virgen is Bayly’s most accomplished novel in terms of ‘complicitous critique’. His later novels have disappointed: while Los últimos días de “La Prensa” and Yo amo a mi mami still have elements of interest (humour and autobiographical elements linked to national questions), Bayly’s sixth novel, Los amigos que perdí, represents a significant drop in quality: the novel is little more than a commercial venture in the shape of a few, unrelated apologies to the (well-known) individuals he has implicated in his previous novels. The removal of social commentary, critique and direct references to limeños in La mujer de mi hermano in favour of a melodramatic plot reflects a shift in Bayly’s public life and television work. On his Lima-based talk show in 2002, Bayly avoided political interviews and direct commentary on most Peruvian affairs in favour of a more populist approach, interviewing celebrities and inviting participation from the audience/public. While the television channel announced Bayly’s show La noche es virgen as ‘programa de cultura’ in the commercial break to the fourth programme, Bayly adopted a populist stance that only delivers a certain kind of culture based on popular references to football, actors and models. The clearest sign of Bayly’s growing focus on sales rather than quality was reflected in Bayly’s joke in the third programme: instead of repeating his characteristic ‘¿cómo estamos de tiempo?’ he asked his producer: ‘¿cómo estamos de ratin . . . perdón, de tiempo?’ The shift from ‘complicitous critique’ in his novel La noche es virgen (1997) to an emphasis on complicity, populism and marketing strategies in his television programme La noche es virgen (2002) and his novel La mujer de mi hermano (2002) has fuelled arguments about the status of Bayly’s literature in Peru and beyond. The argument that Bayly’s literature is superficial, mass culture has been prevalent since the publication of his first novel in

60

ROBERT RUZ

1994. Since the release of No se lo digas a nadie, there has been a contrast between huge sales returns and poor critical responses given to his novels. The argument that one of the key elements of the postmodern is a demystification of the modern idealization of art/literature as some inherently superior and meaningful activity is contested by the conservative responses of the few Peruvian critics who have published on Bayly.14 Many of these critics have posts in departments of Literatura Peruana at the more traditional universities such as San Marcos and La Católica. Many of the criticisms have stemmed from the fact that Bayly crossed over from television presenter to novelist. Thays, who has a post at La Católica and has achieved considerable success with his own novels, such as El viaje interior, is just one of many critics who has identified Bayly as commercial rather than ‘literary’.15 The Peruvian critic Gustavo Faverón – at Cornell University – has commented that Bayly has opted primarily for producing ‘facilidad de consumo’. In an (internet) interview with Mariano Valerio (2000c), Bayly himself has defended himself, asking his novels to be judged without this prejudice: ‘No me digas que porque yo salgo en la tele no puedo escribir o bien soy un escritor menor.’ After his more Peru-centred, politically orientated first three narratives, Bayly’s novels have, increasingly, been marketed on a continental level throughout Latin America (and Spain) and with explicitly commercial aims. The most notable feature of La mujer de mi hermano has been the huge marketing campaign that surrounded it, which covered Spain and the whole of Latin America. Bayly personally presented the novel in Madrid’s Feria del Libro and in every Latin American country in 2002. Bayly has exploited technology (television, internet, international publishing companies) to promote his novels throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In terms of mass cultural marketing, the style of Bayly’s novels has become similar to that of certain other contemporary Latin American novelists, such as Alberto Fuguet (Chile) and Oscar Malca (Mexico), who in turn are closely linked with a ‘Generation X’ of North American writers such as Bret Easton Ellis and Douglas Coupland. Bayly’s writing has certain stylistic qualities in common with this postmodern Latin American McOndo narrative, which is part of a global packaging of contemporary novels: (1) a fascination with popular culture (especially of the USA) – a fascination that is often ironic rather than an unquestioning acceptance; (2) a major influence is the mass media, with some narratives about journalists, TV presenters or rock stars; (3) along with a complicity with the language of mass media and references to music and 14 An idea analysed by Charles Russell in Hutcheon’s (1993, 292) The Postmodern Reader. 15 In addition to Thays, critics who have focused on the commercial aspects of Bayly’s narrative (and television work) include: Faverón (1998 and 2001), Will Jiménez Torres (2002), Marcel Velázquez Castro (1998) and Enrique Planas (see Faverón 1998).

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

61

cinema, this narrativa joven deals with subject-matter from its own point of view and places it centre stage (for example, drugs and homosexuality): we are often given marginal characters in society; (4) a representation of sexuality other than the norm is now typical, and this is remarkable given the lack of tolerance in many sectors of Latin American society; (5) these narratives have a ‘cinematic’ quality about them: not only is cinema a theme in Bayly and Fuguet but, in terms of style, description is reduced to an absolute minimum: the script fills in background essentials and it is the dialogue that reflects a diversity of registers and broadens the picture where description is lacking; (6) though fragmentation reveals the accumulated frustrations of the marginal characters, there is less emphasis on narrative techniques and a linear structure creates easily read texts; (7) aesthetics is of primary importance: while the political is not excluded, novelists are less engaged and there is an oblique political thread in their narratives. Fuguet (2003) himself has stressed (in the prologue to McOndo) that ‘la fiebre privatizadora mundial’ has created a McOndo style that centres on ‘realidades individuales y privadas’ and that uses street slang or youth jargon. These qualities of this narrativa joven, however, apply not only to La mujer de mi hermano but also to Bayly’s first three novels, and it can be argued that La mujer de mi hermano constitutes the extreme product of a progressive shift towards the ‘global’. La noche es virgen is able to appeal to a wide readership through its portrayal of marginal characters living through personal chaos (unable to come out or leave the drug scene) and national chaos (their lives are caught up in the socio-political chaos of the late 1980s and early 1990s), as well as to provide a unique insight into Peruvian popular culture and the language of its youth. It was also carefully produced and marketed: as argued in Chapter 1, the novelist targeted a gay theme that was just growing in popularity (in terms of queer theory as well) in Spain and Latin America in the mid-1990s. The novel engages with both global stylistic/marketing concerns and with local questions of politics/society. This engagement with the characteristics of a global narrative in Bayly’s early novels has allowed for readings of Bayly in terms of the way in which cultural symbols/themes operate across frontiers. As mentioned in the Introduction to this book (page 15), Ana María Amar Sánchez has read Fue ayer y no me acuerdo in the context of the McOndo group by looking at the way the protagonists embrace media technologies and participate socio-culturally through the medium of the television screen. This reading fails, however, to take into account the other side of the global/local paradox and of the McOndo group’s aims (as set out on page 56 of this chapter). The other side includes Bayly’s elements of socio-political commentary and his questioning of language, the novel and gender categories in the first three novels. In theorizing Time and Space in The Seeds of Time, Jameson has argued that Identity/Difference represents the central paradox of postmodernity, noting ‘an unparalleled rate of change on all levels of social life and an unparalleled

62

ROBERT RUZ

standardization of everything – feelings along with consumer goods, language along with built space – that would seem incompatible with just such mutability’ (1994, 15). Similarly, in Latin America, García Canclini has also studied the interdependency of the local and the global in terms of Sameness/Difference: ‘el problema principal es que el capitalismo desarrolla sus tendencias expansivas necesitando a la vez homogeneizar y aprovechar la multiplicidad’ (1999, 51). García Canclini considers cultural products in Latin America in terms of hybridity: cultural products adapt to the world market by becoming global commodities without losing their local reference or identity. For García Canclini, the global/local split is an irresolvable paradox that has produced the neologism ‘glocalización’: ‘Las paradojas no se encuentran sólo en la globalización o las culturas locales, sino en la “glocalización”, ese neologismo proliferante ante la necesidad de designar la interdependencia e interpenetración de lo global y lo local’ (1999, 51). Thays has noted that ‘Bayly parece preferir lo actual antes que lo moderno’:16 with the publication of La mujer de mi hermano Bayly has abandoned any attempt to analyse politics or explore the possibilities of narrative in favour of the most superficial and marketable ploys. It is the end product of a shift towards a global narrative without local referents, with Bayly moving away from ‘glocalización’ and perhaps proving García Canclini’s optimism regarding local representation/resistance in the face of (US) global culture to be misplaced. In the theoretical overview of the Introduction, García Canclini’s idea that an interchange between ‘lo culto’, ‘lo masivo’ and ‘lo popular’ is characteristic of contemporary popular culture was linked to the hybridity of postmodern narrative, in which elements of all these categories could (potentially) be presented to the reader. Whereas it has been argued here that La noche es virgen is a Peruvian example of this (it blends Peruvian and US popular culture in a novelistic format that experiments with language and criticizes local politics), by La mujer de mi hermano, there are few remaining elements, if any, of sophisticated narrative technique: the novel offers melodramatic plot lines and consumerist titillation in an easily read format that is based on dialogue. Some Latin American theorists, such as George Yúdice, have argued that postmodern culture that encourages participants to strive for ‘consumer delights’ is socially disadvantageous in all but the wealthiest countries (see Lindstrom (1998, 50)). It is the reference to and glorification of these ‘consumer delights’ (based on the central image of Miami) that Bayly takes advantage of in order to market his novels: the US-inspired dream of being able to indulge in melodramatic love adventures and consume at will is a powerful lure in a Latin America, which in 2002 suffered a widespread economic crisis (with the exception of Chile).

16 See the internet article ‘La literatura y el baylyboom’ for Quehacer (111) by Faverón, Planas and Thays (1998). Available at: http://www.desco.org.pe/qh/qh111tfp.htm.

JAIME BAYLY: POSTMODERN NARRATIVE STYLE AND MASS MARKETING

63

In terms of marketing his narrative, Bayly has aimed to give the public/his readers what they might want. To this effect, he performs and reinforces his role of ‘el niño terrible de la televisión’ in his narrative and markets himself above all else. In an interview with Ima Sanchís (2002) of La Vanguardia (published on the internet), Bayly admitted that his reputation is what sells above all: ‘con el tiempo he convertido mi lado oscuro en un asunto muy rentable, casi una profesión. Soy un profesional del lado oscuro’. Furthermore, not only is it impossible to identify Bayly directly with the gay protagonists of his first three novels, it is impossible to separate the performances of the protagonists of all his novels from the linguistic performances of Bayly the novelist and the numerous performances of Bayly the television presenter. As television presenter and best-selling novelist, Bayly has achieved success at a time when the consumption of literature is decreasing and culture is predominantly consumed in urban centres through the use of mass media technologies (see García Canclini (1995, 137 and 139)). However, though Bayly has achieved notable success by marketing himself and confusing media figure with novelist, the success of his narrative extends beyond the aims of the talk-show host. In the Introduction to this book, it was argued that marketing a product is never straightforward: Fiske (1989, 31) has noted that between eighty and ninety per cent of new products fail despite extensive marketing ploys. Moreover, textual meaning spills over beyond the reach of the intentions of the author, as was suggested by Chapter 1’s study of the appropriative readings of Bayly, especially regarding issues of sexuality. What the marketing of the media figure of Bayly in connection with his narrative has clearly achieved is to allow for the breaking down of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture on an unprecedented scale in Peru. This mass cultural phenomenon in Peruvian narrative since 1994 – el baylyboom – brings us back to one of the most striking and paradoxical features of the postmodern – the coexistence of diverse and opposing cultural responses pressed into service by ‘the homogenizing impulse of the consumer society of late capitalism’17 – and, in terms of this apparent paradox, it is the baylyboom that has rekindled the writing of Literature and Culture in post-1990s Peru by novelists such as Iván Thays.

17 This quotation is taken from Hutcheon (1993, 252), in the context of a discussion of Jameson’s essay ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’.

3 IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

Iván Thays is the most prominent and successful alternative to the mass cultural marketing of Jaime Bayly of the more than twenty novelists to have emerged on to the Peruvian literary scene since the early 1990s. It is the aim of this chapter to study Thays’ three novels published to date – Escena de caza, El viaje interior, La disciplina de la vanidad – in terms of the three ways in which they have played an active part in the regeneration of Peruvian narrative since the late 1990s: (1) their oppositional response within Peruvian culture and postmodern narrative to the work of Bayly by re-mystifying the ideal of Peruvian Literature and by fortifying certain elitist, cultural pretensions; (2) their contribution to the integral role played by Peruvian culture in the processes of socio-political regeneration at the end of the 1990s, even if Thays himself attempts to posit Literature as an entity detached from political dynamics; (3) their exploration of the novel-writing process, focusing on structure, language, intertextuality and the image of the writer. These central characteristics and themes of Thays’ narrative will be discussed in a theoretical framework that includes Bourdieu’s (1989) exploration of how divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture operate in society, García Canclini’s (1995a, 1995b and 1999) study of the functioning of written culture in an age dominated by global media technologies and of the relationship of popular culture to Latin American societies, and Jameson’s analysis of antinomies in The Seeds of Time, focusing on the fact that the most striking characteristic of postmodern Peruvian narrative is this coexistence of contradictory cultural responses, of a radical split between the increasingly mass-marketed and global books of Bayly and the explicitly literary and elitist novels of Thays. Thays has emphasized his literary pretensions within the Peruvian cultural market by publicizing his work as university lecturer, cultural critic and protagonist of literary workshops. The novel La disciplina de la vanidad foregrounds Thays’ activities at a fictitious Lima-based taller called Centeno, and Thays has represented Peru at the Foro Joven de Molina in Spain and the Taller Latinoamericano de Jóvenes Escritores in Venezuela. His three novels mention inside their covers that Thays has both studied and taught literature at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He has enjoyed success with

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

65

his critical literary television programme Vano oficio, part of the series entitled La Franja Cultural (run by the state-owned Televisión Nacional del Perú). Thays writes against the grain of the argument that one of the key elements of the postmodern is a demystification of the modern idealization of art/literature as some inherently superior and meaningful activity (discussed in Chapter 2). In his novels, he both overtly posits his work as postmodern and elevates the ideal of Literature above all other media. In the internet article of literary criticism entitled ‘La edad de la inocencia: acerca de la narrativa peruana última’, Thays has described the 1990s Peru that novelists write about in terms of ‘post-modernidad, la liberalización del mercado, las inversiones extranjeras’. Thays thus considers Peruvian postmodernity in Jameson’s terms (as set out in Chapter 2), yet in terms of Lyotard’s postmodern condition his response is contradictory, as will be argued in the course of this chapter. Thays’ narrative itself displays fragmentation, a reaction against the ‘total’ novel, the boom and a breaking down of metanarrative, and yet he affirms a need for some form of grand ideology of modernist aesthetics to police the quality of literary production in Peru. At the end of ‘La edad de la inocencia’ Thays identifies the need for Peruvian novelists to find a ‘verdad artística’ in terms of style and quality, yet he is in favour of multiple narrative responses and diversity in terms of content, as pointed out at the end of this chapter. Similarly, in La disciplina de la vanidad the narrator critiques a speaker at the literary conference who rejects outright technological advances and their benefits in relation to culture and at the same time accepts the speaker’s ‘argumentos estéticos’ (Thays (2000, 193–4)). It is important, therefore, to consider Thays both in terms of an uneven Peruvian postmodernity and certain aspects of his postmodern writing style while being aware at the same time of his nostalgia for modernist traits.1 In terms of idealizing Literature, for Thays his writing is the product of ‘mi imaginación febril, llena de clisés y fantasías, de buena literatura y mal cine’ (1999a, 83). This idealization makes Thays’ television programme more of a peripheral activity (that follows the publication of his novels) than an integral part of his work (as in the case of Bayly), and Thays himself has focused his aspirations on written media: ‘publicar todo aquello que pase el control de calidad que me he impuesto y que, de alguna manera, complemente y complejice el significado de mis libros anteriores’.2 As a novelist, Thays has achieved both popularity and critical acclaim: he

1 Critics such as Miguel Bances (2002) have viewed Thays in an unproblematic way as postmodern, without considering either the differing theoretical discussions of the term or the contradictions in Thays’ texts. 2 These comments were archived at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos’ Sistema de Bibliotecas. The transcript was available at http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/ bibvirtual/1peruana/Escritores/Thays/Entrevista.htm. The page was read throughout March 2003 but has since been removed.

66

ROBERT RUZ

is one of the most pirated novelists in Peru; he is cited by Alberto Fuguet as one of his favourite writers at Fuguet.com3; and La disciplina de la vanidad was short-listed, together with Bryce Echenique’s La amigdalitis de Tarzán, for the 2001 Premio Rómulo Gallegos. The back cover of La disciplina de la vanidad makes the (marketing) claim that Thays occupies ‘un lugar de excepción en la narrativa latinoamericana contemporánea’. One of the ways in which Thays achieves this is by offering a radically different alternative to Bayly: the pretensions introduced at the start of El viaje interior, with references by Czeslaw Mi¿osz and Walter Benjamin, contrast with the agenda set by Bayly, whose La noche es virgen opens with epigraphs by Warhol and Madonna. Though it was argued in the context of the previous chapter’s discussion of Bayly’s extraordinary success that the most visible aspect of Peruvian narrative since the mid-1990s has been a predilection for the marketable theme of social, sexual and cultural marginality in the postmodern metropolis, Thays has rejected this popular formula and has carefully crafted an image of himself in his narrative (and on his television programme) in terms of the Artist as a young novelist/university lecturer in late-1990s Peru. Thays’ three novels are therefore part of a search for an alternative space to the baylyboom within Peruvian postmodern culture, and it is a search for a new aesthetics that has arisen in response to the sociopolitical downturn highlighted and intensified by the televised images of corruption and fraud (vladivideos) and the resignation of Fujimori from Tokyo. La Franja Cultural series of Televisión Nacional del Perú, which contracted Thays, was itself only possible at this time of post-Fujimori regeneration because this channel had been used before that as a propaganda tool for more than ten years.4 Thays’ reactionary return to Literature constitutes an antithetical and oppositional response to the baylyboom and in doing so demands an urgent critical analysis of these apparently paradoxical responses within Peruvian popular culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In analysing how it is possible for these radically opposing narrative positions (Bayly and Thays) to be produced and to coexist in a postmodern marketplace (Lima) the work of two theorists’ offers productive areas of interaction: Jameson’s formulation of the ‘arrested dialectic’ of postmodernity in the shape of the binary or the antinomy in The Seeds of Time, and García Canclini’s ongoing study of the relationship between culture, industrialization and society in Culturas híbridas, Consumidores y ciudadanos and La globalización imaginada. In the first chapter of The Seeds of Time, entitled ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernity’, Jameson pursues the prospect of ‘cognitive mapping’ presented at the end of ‘Postmodernism, or 3 4

The exact page is: http://www.fuguet.com/fuguet/main.html. Taken from an interview with Luis Peirano for Gestión.com.pe on 26 February 2003: ‘Entrevista con Luis Peirano sobre la televisión cultural en el Perú. El primer año de la Franja Cultural’ by Alicia Meza (hyperlink since removed).

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

67

The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ and argues that ‘the age is clearly more propitious for the antinomy than the contradiction’ (1994, 2). In this chapter, he continues a discussion of the difference between the contradiction and binary/antinomy started in The Prison-House of Language, in which he notes ‘a difference between the binary opposition, and what ordinarily [. . .] would be more properly described as a contradiction. The former is a static antithesis; it does not lead out of itself as does the latter’ (Jameson (1972, 36)). However, rather than view the binary/antinomy as qualitatively different, he categorizes the antinomy as a ‘paralyzed’ dialectical form that ‘somehow “reflects” some more basic contradiction in social life’ (Jameson (1972, 213)). In ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernity’ Jameson outlines four of these systemic oppositions or ‘paralyzed’ dialectics within which postmodern thought oscillates without resolution: between ‘absolute change’ and ‘stasis’ (1994, 19); between a ‘global commodification’ resulting in ‘spatial homogeneity’ (27) and a market-driven ‘individual hyperconsumption’ that results in a ‘Bahktinian carnival of heterogeneities’ (31); between a ‘profoundly formalist’ philosophical antifoundationalism (43) and a ‘passionately ecological revival of a sense of Nature’ (46); between an anti-Utopian ‘celebration of late capitalism’ and the ‘Utopian discourse’ that it presses into service (60). The two central points of Jameson’s ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernity’ are that the antinomy rather than the contradiction typifies the postmodern era, and that the antinomy can be represented. Given its fluid and negative quality, any attempt to name a contradiction, according to Jameson, would result in its reification: ‘contradiction is always one step before representation: if you show it in its conflicted moment, you freeze it over so rigidly that it tends to take on the form of the antinomy’ (1994, 5). Both these central points resonate with the oppositional relationship between Bayly and Thays in contemporary Peruvian popular culture. Their stance might constitute ‘a paralyzed dialectic’, a systemic opposition between an anti-elitist celebration of micronarratives and consumerism (Bayly) and the elitist, meta-literary discourse it presses into service (Thays). What we might have in the Peruvian socio-cultural arena are, in Jameson’s words, two ‘propositions that are radically, indeed absolutely, incompatible, take it or leave it’ (1994, 1) but which are represented in literature, within the domain of popular culture. Furthermore, the pole positions of Bayly and Thays continually stimulate one another. One of Jameson’s leading premises is that not only do certain characteristics of these postmodern antinomies manifest their opposites, but they in fact ‘create’ them: ‘one dimension of the antithesis necessarily expresses itself by way of the figurality of the other’ (1994, 21). However, for Jameson such stimulation or perpetual oscillation between the poles of the antinomy represents a moment devoid of any transformational power as with the contradiction. Ultimately, this leads Jameson to describe our historical condition as one of ‘blockage’, ‘paralysis’ and as the ‘absence of any sense of

68

ROBERT RUZ

immediate future’, marked by our inability to ‘imagine historical change’ and where we exist like captives in an ‘eternal present’ (Jameson (1994, 70–1)). The Seeds of Time thus posits a ‘blockage’ within the antinomies of postmodernity, envisioning our situation as one of ‘waiting with a kind of breathlessness, as we listen for the missing tick of the clock, the absent first step of renewed praxis’ (70–1). Where such a ‘blockage’ might exist within postmodern Peruvian culture in terms of the systemic opposition between Bayly and Thays is in the fundamentally antithetical positions of mass-marketed, populist narratives and elitist, individualistic work. García Canclini has analysed and theorized this apparently paradoxical coexistence of culto and masivo in Latin American popular culture. One of the central arguments of Culturas híbridas is that traditional forms of culture are not eradicated by industrialization and technological advances. García Canclini (1995a, 17) argues that ‘lo culto tradicional no es borrado por la industrialización de los bienes simbólicos’, noting that novelists such as Eco, García Márquez and Vargas Llosa still sell significant numbers of books and that popular art and ‘folklore’ have become more successful than ever since industrialization. While García Canclini (1995a, 335) notes that a characteristic of contemporary symbolic structures is this continual interchange between culto, popular and masivo, in his later Consumidores y ciudadanos he shows that technological advances, as well as political shifts in the relations between Latin America, the USA and Europe, have changed the way in which cultural identity is negotiated in Latin America. The intellectual elites of Latin America now look to New York for inspiration (rather than Europe), and cultural interchanges between Latin America and the USA operate primarily via the mass media (García Canclini (1995b, 17 and 19)). It is precisely this way in which cultural identity is now negotiated in Latin America, including Peru, against which Thays’ novels react, and this opposition is reflected in the editorial companies that support the two writers. Bayly’s latest novel, La mujer de mi hermano, was published by the Spanish market leader Anagrama and Thays’ third novel, La disciplina de la vanidad, was included in the Universidad Católica’s newly formed literature series. This editorial split reveals the political and cultural oppositions between Bayly and Thays. García Canclini has traced how political and cultural changes in Latin America have led to ‘una política de bestsellerización’, and it is this that has brought the reactionary rearguard action of writers such as Thays into being. In La globalización imaginada García Canclini (1999, 150) argues that writing was the first cultural form to be industrialized and yet is one that still clings to ‘tradiciones localizadas’ because of ‘el arraigo de la literatura en una lengua particular’. However, the decline in production of Latin American publishing companies (primarily based in Mexico and Argentina) has been counterpointed by the growing strength of Spanish publishers, which have in turn been taken over by multinational media companies. García Canclini (1999, 153) notes that the fact

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

69

that these multinationals have imposed ‘una política de bestsellerización’ (only publishing 5,000 copies or more) within the specific context of Latin America (with growing illiteracy, distribution problems, a drop in the spending power of the middle classes) has created a cultural market in which only a few best-selling authors now get published. In La disciplina de la vanidad Thays explicitly critiques the commercial, ‘non-literary’ strategies and intentions of multinational companies (2000, 17 and 367), and he has commented in (the internet article) ‘La edad de la inocencia’ that Bayly fits into this category: ‘carece de todo oficio literario’ (Thays 1999b). La disciplina de la vanidad was published by the conservative Universidad Católica, for whom Thays has worked, and who started the Serie Ficciones NARRATIVA only recently in 2000 at the height of the baylyboom and at a point of major socio-political instability, with Fujimori’s resignation leaving no government in Peru. This editorial clash brings us back to the apparent paradox at the centre of Peruvian popular culture and to the fact that, as García Canclini (1999, 62) argues, culture is produced by means of socio-political opposition and in order to negotiate this difference: En suma: lo cultural abarca el conjunto de procesos a través de los cuales representamos e instituimos imaginariamente lo social, concebimos y gestionamos las relaciones con los otros, o sea las diferencias, ordenamos su dispersión y su inconmensurabilidad mediante una delimitación que fluctúa entre el orden que hace posible el funcionamiento de la sociedad (local, global) y los actores que la abren a lo posible.

The point of departure for Thays’ cultural negotiation and cultural response to the baylyboom is the way in which he crafts and controls the structure and the register of the language used in his novels, particularly in El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad. Their numerous intertextual literary and philosophical references – Adán, Kafka, Nabokov, Flaubert, Braudel, Benjamin, among many others – are a continuation of the point made by stating Thays’ degree in literature on the inside of the covers of the two novels. For Bourdieu (1989, 28), ‘educational qualifications come to be seen as a guarantee of the capacity to adopt the aesthetic disposition’ and legitimate the idea that those who possess such titles are ‘separated by a difference in kind from the commoners of culture, who are consigned to the doubly devalued status of autodidact and “stand-in” ’ (1989, 24). This status of ‘autodidact and “stand-in” ’ is perhaps what Thays means when he says Bayly ‘carece de todo oficio literario’. In contrast with Bayly’s focus on Lima’s social and political scene using colloquial dialogue, Thays’ two novels have plots based on literary, historical and philosophical discussion. El viaje interior (published in 1999) presents the experiences of a first-person narrator who spends almost a year living in the fictitious city of Busardo, a Mediterranean fishing village whose focal point is an archaeological site remnant of a decisive historical battle. At the same time, the narrator relives

70

ROBERT RUZ

memories of his relationship with Kaas (his fiancé who abandoned him in Busardo) and discusses his conception of history in the postmodern era (while remembering trips to the cultural centres of Europe with a friend). La disciplina de la vanidad (2000) offers the first-person narrative of the author attending a literary conference in Spain, interpolated with his short stories (read and commented on by a participant of the conference named Mario) and fragments of literary and philosophical figures, set in the framework of an overriding discussion of the novel-writing process. The first-person narratives of both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad create for the reader an impression of linearity, even though their structures are intertextual and contain interpolated fragments, and in this sense Thays’ novels are part of a postmodern narrative that in the case of Peru includes Bayly. El viaje interior spans one year in Busardo and, despite the reflections on history and memories of Kaas, moves forward to the narrator’s experiences with the son of the local bar owner (Agustín) and the local celebrity painter (Dicent) and to the final, cathartic decision to leave the fictitious city. Similarly, La disciplina de la vanidad progresses through the meetings and the outings of the conference in Spain at the same time as through the short stories written by the narrator at the conference. Though Thays posits his work in a postmodern framework, both novels would appear to display qualities associated with modernist narrative, with their purposeful forms and designs, finished boundaries and readings/interpretations of history. This would appear to further complicate the problematic and simplifying binary formulations of Ihab Hassan discussed in the previous chapter, which attempt to separate strictly the qualities of modern and postmodern narratives.5 However, these contradictory characteristics of Thays’ narrative are part of his contradictory response within, rather than against, postmodern Peruvian narrative.6 With his discussions of the work of modern writers such as Arguedas, Borges, Stendhal, Zola, Foster, Adán and Nabokov in particular (who devoted his life to writing, yet spurned ‘what is called the literature of social comment’),7 Thays almost solicits from his reader/critic a response that 5 See above, p. 45, for discussion of the characteristics termed postmodern by Hassan and the problems with using such boundaries (in the case of Bayly). 6 It is the contention of this chapter that the positions of Bayly and Thays might resonate with Jameson’s idea of a frozen, postmodern dialectic or ‘blockage’. However, in the close reading of Thays’ narrative that follows the term ‘contradiction’ is not used strictly in the way in which Jameson uses the term. In The Seeds of Time Jameson distinguishes between the antinomy (which is a frozen dialectic) and the contradiction (which is a fluid dialectic). In this instance and throughout the chapter ‘contradiction’ is used in terms of inconsistency and contrariety – as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. 7 An extensive biography of the writer can be found at the website of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/nabsoc.htm. The short quotation was taken from this page. This society was formerly known as the Vladimir Nabokov Society, which published The Vladimir Nabokov Research Newsletter in printed journal format between 1978 and 1984.

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

71

takes recourse to ‘traditional’ critical methodology and analyses characterization, use of time, narrative voice, themes and each detail of structure. This is the way in which Thays himself attempts to judge Bayly in his article ‘La edad de la inocencia’. However, at the same time Thays (2000, 195) explicitly critiques and rejects the ‘total novel’ of a previous generation of Latin American writers (including the early works of the Peruvian Vargas Llosa) and aligns himself with a breaking down of a Latin American metanarrative (‘el discurso de América Latina’). This posture aligns Thays with the breaking down of metanarratives typical of the postmodern condition in terms of the definition offered by Lyotard (1984). Thays therefore both idealizes the artistic pretensions of modern(ist) narrative and positions this idealization within a response that he himself considers both postmodern and postboom. Both novels reaffirm the virtues of High Culture and Literature while embracing postmodern techniques and cultural discussions. Thays’ novels are therefore both contradictory in their systemic opposition to Bayly and contradictory in the way in which they themselves function. Part of Thays’ contradictory response includes the way in which he uses intertextuality in La disciplina de la vanidad by interpolating philosophical discussion at the same time as melodramatic stories, whose main purpose is clearly to please and divert the reader. Examples of diverting stories include: ‘Encuentro con Tomás’, which describes the narrator’s idyllic and then tragic stay in Venice (honeymoon with his wife, her pregnancy, the death of his child); ‘El cenicero’, which deals with the narrator’s affair in Italy and his attempts to rescue his lover from a mental asylum at the end of the story; and ‘Un famoso ratón’, about a love triangle articulated via web chat rooms and e-mails. As a consequence, Thays aligns himself with both Nabokov and his contemporaries as well as with writers such as Puig (El beso de la mujer araña) and Allende (Eva Luna): La obra de un escritor debe estar compuesta por múltiples fragmentos, por pedazos de ser humano, que solos no sirven para escribir pero que juntos hacen una vida espléndida. [. . .] He ahí la verdadera maestría del escritor, he ahí su único triunfo sobre la realidad, la muerte, la totalidad. No se trata de crear un mundo para imponerlo sobre el ya existente. Eso es monstruoso. De lo que se trata es de introducir en el mundo un fragmento capaz de subvertir por completo el orden, así como una mínima célula sumada al cuerpo podría subvertir la naturaleza humana. (Thays (2000, 243))

The focal point of both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad, which gives the interpolated, multiple fragments a sense of unity and the narratives an underlying sense of linearity, is the theme of the journey. El viaje interior’s title and opening epigraph, in which Benjamin compares love to ‘un eterno viajar’, signal the fact that the motif of the journey operates on different levels in Thays’ narrative and represents both a search for a unique

72

ROBERT RUZ

literary posture within postmodern Peruvian culture and a personal search for heightened self-understanding. The novels’ journeys are therefore physical and metaphysical. On the one hand, El viaje interior charts a journey to a fictitious city via some of the cultural centres of Europe (Venice, Paris, London), and La disciplina de la vanidad plots a journey to the south of Spain in the context of a tourist route to symbolic destinations such as Granada, Ronda and Toledo. On the other hand, the novels offer a discussion of the analysis and representation of historical events and a consideration of the creation of literature and its role in society. Above all, the journey is constituted as an exploration of the personal history of the narrator, and Thays has described his narrative as ‘el relato de un proceso de aprendizaje’.8 This quest for self-knowledge is taken to the extreme and parodied in La disciplina de la vanidad when two of the characters (Luisa and Díaz) of the story ‘Visita al maestro’ written by the narrator at the literary conference in Spain are granted an audience with the key figure of a fictitious literary taller in Lima who resembles Thays himself. In El viaje interior reading and writing are themselves portrayed as a journey into the past and a means of self-discovery. The narrator’s reading of Spanish translations of Gerald Durrell at different points in the novel provides insight into himself and his own personal background. Thays himself comments on the irony that his awareness and critique of Durrell’s Orientalism run parallel to his own idealization of European culture as personified by the figure and work of Durrell, by means of which Thays reads/interprets both himself and Peru.9 The process of reading these translations of Durrell proves both unhomely and, paradoxically, curiously familiar and relevant: Era demasiado irónico o absurdo que fuese reencontrándome con mi país y mi pasado a través de la traducción de un libro que nada tenía que ver con mi historia personal, sino con la de un británico juzgando a Oriente. [. . .] Había en ese libro algo de mí, algo sutil pero contundente que hablaba de mí, de mis experiencias privadas y colectivas. Cada mordida me devolvía mi lenguaje, mi familia, mi historia. Mi historia, sobre todo. (Thays (1999a, 43))

At the same time as providing interpolated tales to entertain the reader, La disciplina de la vanidad is an overt exploration of writing/Literature that runs 8 See his interview with Juan Carlos Mendez, ‘Ya no quiero caerles bien’, Caretas (20 December 2001). Transcript available at: http://www.caretas.com.pe/2001/1701/ secciones/cultural.phtml. 9 Said (1978) defines the tradition of Orientalism as a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European (and particularly French and British) experience. The Orient is one of the West’s most recurring images of the Other and has helped Europe (or the West) define itself as its contrasting image and experience.

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

73

parallel to the journey of self-discovery, ‘el relato de un proceso de aprendizaje’. The novel’s form is a postmodern bricolage of interpolated short stories (closely linked to the main narrative by means of the device of creating the fictitious literary workshop Centeno), literary criticism, intertextual fragments of other writers, philosophical references and a firstperson narration written, in part, in journal form. The eclectic format is exploited to produce a didactic purpose to Thays’ novel, which discusses the qualities and characteristics of contemporary narrative, the recent history of Latin American literature and the Peruvian literary context, as well as providing a humorous depiction of a literary conference in Spain. Thays discusses (2000, 196) ‘el éxito comercial de los autores del boom’, arguing that ‘el auténtico boom’ (referring to the non-commercial one) occurred before Vargas Llosa, García Márquez and Fuentes through the work of Onetti, Borges, Rulfo, Arreola, Carpentier, Lezama Lima, Mujica Laínez, Sábato and Ribeyro. Furthermore, he launches an explicit attack on commercial literatura light that fills shopping malls and airport lounges: ‘¿Por qué todos se empeñan en libros de bolsillo, paperbacks, en otros idiomas, con carátulas estridentes? ¿Por qué sólo libros de autores de moda?’ (Thays (2000, 17)). Thays then asks: why Mastretta, Rushdie, Bayly? The literary discussion Thays embarks upon in La disciplina de la vanidad has the objective of finding an alternative to the novela total and this literatura light (as well as to marketing labels such as ‘boom’), and Thays finds his solution in the literary experimentation and workmanship that can be created by a self-disciplined and individualistic, fragmented approach to writing, away from both mass-produced paperbacks and the metanarratives of boom writers. This objective will be further discussed in Chapter 4 in the light of Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ reworking of the novela total (in the context of Bayly’s literatura light and Thays’ attempt to find his own path). Thays’ appreciation of individual literary mastery, detached from socio-political commentary and conveyed through the young artist-protagonists of his narratives, is consistently referred to in all his novels. Two extracts, one from his first novel Escena de caza (1995) – in which the narrator visits the Altamira cave paintings – and the other from his 2000 La discplina de la vanidad, illustrate this preoccupation: Lo que yo estaba viendo no era un producto masificado sino el acto único de un artista individual. Ciertamente, había mucha necesidad de expresarse, líneas y colores desgarrados, pero sobre todo había talento: el talento de un individuo. (Thays (1995, 68)) Ahora en estos años en que la caída de las ideologías cuestiona todo, parece ser que los proyectos totalizantes se han dejado de lado y la ambición literaria es considerada, si no un pecado, por lo menos un asunto de nerds. Todo parece indicar que la verdadera literatura está en manos de quienes son capaces de contar aventuras o de escribir obras light que no indigesten

74

ROBERT RUZ

a sus lectores. Y así se arman dos frentes: aquellos que creen que la ambición de la totalidad, aunque fuera de moda, sigue siendo el camino para alcanzar alguna verdad literaria y quienes piensan que las verdades literarias, como todas las demás, se disuelven en el aire y por tanto, carpe diem, vive el día sin problemas y sin tribulaciones. Unos y otros olvidan que la verdad literaria radica en una especie de aleph artístico, una sabiduría concentrada en el hecho artístico desde el momento que un hombre del Paleolítico Superior dibujó unos bisontes en Altamira. La verdadera autenticidad del literato, su verdadero triunfo y su coherencia, no radica en el camino que escoja sino en adónde pretende llegar por ese camino. (Thays (2000, 197))

Following Thays’ explicit critique of Bayly and literatura light, these two quotations clearly illustrate his oppositional stance within Peruvian popular culture. The path Thays has chosen and what he intends to achieve having done so is reflected in his prioritizing of individual expression and talent, ‘una especie de aleph artístico’, a stance posited in opposition to the vogue of literatura light in the contemporary literary market. The author warns the reader of this focus on vanidad literaria from the outset: ‘¿Otro retrato del artista adolescente? Pues sí, el lector está preparado desde ahora y puede abandonar la función’ (Thays (2000, 36)) and ‘curioso comienzo de un ensayo sobre un asunto tan delicado y transparente como la vanidad’ (2000, 10). Thays both focuses on his own writing process, through the short stories and his journal notes, and discusses key Peruvian (modern) novelists such as Abraham Valdelomar and Martín Adán, whose novel La casa de cartón has been described as the first Peruvian postmodern novel (Thays (2000, 15)). In charting Valdelomar’s rise from poor villager to ‘el más grande esnob que jamás ha conocido la literatura peruana’, Thays exemplifies Valdelomar as the epitome of the artist dedicated to his work: ‘Valdelomar es un pionero en cuanto a la idea del escritor moderno [. . .] la esencia ética y estética, de la rigurosoa disciplina de la vanidad’ (2000, 53 and 54). In positioning the central analysis of his own novel writing within the context of Peruvian literary figures such as Valdelomar and Adán, Thays further emphasizes his desire to be considered within the canon of ‘serious’ writers, rather than literatura light. La disciplina de la vanidad’s preoccupation with representing the history of its own creation rather than engaging with the (pressing) socio-political problems of Peru in the late 1990s is a reactionary response that correlates with Bourdieu’s ‘pure aesthetic’ and depiction of Art. For Bourdieu (1989, 3), ‘an art which increasingly contains reference to its own history [. . .] asks to be referred not to an external referent, the represented or designated “reality”, but to the universe of past and present works of art’. The title itself ‘La disciplina de la vanidad’ carries two meanings: it refers both to this rigour and dedication required for ‘la verdadera autenticidad del literato’ (as personified in Thays’ eyes by the figures of Onetti and Nabokov) and to Literature as a discipline, to the literary world of writers, critics and

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

75

publishers. This literary world is portrayed in miniature by means of the narrator’s participation at a literary conference in Spain in the course of La disciplina de la vanidad. Given the fact that Thays himself attended a literary conference in Molina, Spain (as noted in the introduction to this chapter), his humorous, ironic and sometimes scathing portrayal of a conference in a fictitious town called Morillo reinforces the links between Thays’ writing and its socio-cultural context. The conference centre at Morillo is set out like a holiday camp with chalets (Thays (2000, 30)), offering trips reminiscent of a package holiday to ‘lugares exóticos y hermosos de Andalucía’ (23), and yet has a panoptic layout because the location was to have been a centre for the rehabilitation of young delinquents until the plans were blocked by local protest (57). Its participants are given stereotypical traits, as indicated by their nicknames (Valenciana, Poliéster, Barbarella) and their behaviour (the Argentinians refuse to leave the limelight in ‘EL MICRÓFONO ARGENTINO’). The target of Thays’ most cutting irony, however, are three literary critics/journalists – Tunc, Aut and Nunquam – who have united to form ‘La Liga en pro de la Moral y el Buen Gusto’ and who act as ‘policía de la ética literaria’. As Thays has criticized Peruvian literary critics in articles such as ‘La edad de la inocencia’, it is possible to form a link between these fictional characters (Tunc, Aut, Nunquam) and a specific Peruvian context. However, such a link is not necessary given that Thays’ interest lies in the analysis of contradictory literary stances and a discussion of their merits and coexistence. Tunc and Nunquam represent two oppositional literary positions and Aut’s position becomes meaningless in adopting a halfway position, or trying to reconcile the two, and this discussion in La disciplina de la vanidad brings us back to Thays’ own part in a Peruvian literary ‘blockage’ (with Bayly at the other pole): Tunc, el entonces, con su absoluta certeza en el momento literario, enamorado de la posmodernidad, de la generación X y de la literatura norteamericana, director de una revista literaria de moda. Nunquam, el nunca, editor de un diario cultural, escéptico y bien vestido, seguro de que ya la literatura no tiene sentido en este mundo, de que ya todo está dicho, de que las palabras no sirven para nada. Y finalmente, Aut, la conjunción, el o, la unión de los extremos, el vacío, el que no significa nada sin el contexto, sin los demás, sin Tunc, sin Nunquam. El cero. (Thays (2000, 11))

The above quotation illustrates Thays’ engagement with contemporary literary discussion, even though he rejects the social ‘purpose’ of narrative: ‘la literatura no cambia a la sociedad, pero sí a algunos individuos, incluyendo – con suerte – al creador’ (2000, 67). At an early point in La disciplina de la vanidad’s discussion of the characteristics and status of literature, Thays laments the low social standing of the writer in 1990s Peru, where novelists are obliged to give classes and write newspaper articles in

76

ROBERT RUZ

order to earn a living (2000, 20). The level of the narrative that centres on this discussion is counterpointed by the narrative of the literary conference in Spain, which takes place in a disused compound in the middle of nowhere (at an unspecified location in inland Andalusia) and has no social use in the narrator’s eyes, as reflected in the fact that he comments that only a few local newspapers show any interest in the proceedings. In terms of this approach to the relationship between society and literature, Thays’ stance is the antithesis of Bayly’s. The previous chapter’s exploration of Hutcheon’s ‘complicitous critique’ analysed Bayly’s explicit engagement with politics and a particular readership: building on his reputation as ‘niño terrible de la televisión’, Bayly has carefully marketed his novels by showing a thematic complicity with his ‘twentysomething’ audience (leaving home, drugs, sex, entertainment venues of Lima, references to famous limeños), as well as a linguistic complicity with their language and slang. Furthermore, his first three novels address the political failings of Alan García’s government and the social problems created by terrorism in the early 1990s. Thays’ narrative, on the other hand, engages with a Peruvian and world canon of novelists rather than address specific Lima-based socio-political problems. He addresses the social indirectly rather than explicitly. In terms of the relationship between novel and society, Thays’ narrative is intertextual rather than overtly political. Both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad are given symbolic settings (a fictitious town and a literary conference) rather than social engagement, though it is a setting that is both contemporary (with technology playing a prominent role) and shows nostalgia for the past (with a stream of references to past writers). The reader is given what amounts to a literary tour of Peruvian twentieth-century literature, with analysis of Martín Adán, his forgotten home in Barranco (the bohemian quarter of Lima in which Vargas Llosa lives) and the literary venue of Bar El Cordano in the centre of Lima (far removed from Bayly’s fashionable cafés in the suburbs of Lima). The reader is given a steady stream of maxims and quotations of famous world figures: for example, ‘Dice LAWRENCE DURRELL’ and ‘Dice WILLIAM FAULKNER’ (Thays (2000, 239)). This emphasis on intertextuality carries the (intended) risk of alienating potential readers and it is certainly far removed from the ease of reading and complicity with slang provided by Bayly. In Chapter 2 ‘high’ culture was defined, in Bourdieu’s terms, as the result of an individual act of creation that demands a moral and aesthetic response. Thays’ repeated use of quotations and the pervasive intertextuality of his texts would indeed appear to solicit an analysis of their ‘inherent’ literary and philosophical values rather than the cultural studies approach used in Chapter 1 (in terms of queer theory) and in Chapter 2 (in terms of postmodern narrative). In pursuing this argument, Thays’ narratives not only represent an oppositional position as regards Bayly but also would appear to read against the grain of the work of leading theorists on postmodern culture. For

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

77

example, the guiding premise of Jameson’s essay ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ is that cultural creations are representations of their historical circumstances, whose concrete social conditions they distort, repress and transform through aesthetic form. The role of the critic thus becomes the analysis of a work’s roots in political and economic conditions and to explain why these roots might have been obscured, rather than the analysis of a work’s aesthetic qualities. Jameson builds on this premise in The Seeds of Time to argue that an absolutely inseparable relationship between culture and politics typifies the postmodern era. He notes ‘a prodigious explosion of culture throughout the social realm, to the point at which everything in our social life [. . .] can be said to have become “cultural” in some original and as yet untheorised sense’ (1994, 226). Similarly, García Canclini (1982, 26) has insisted (in early Marxist work) that economic and symbolic systems should be inseparable in any study of (Latin American) culture: ‘la cultura como un tipo particular de producción cuyo fin es comprender, reproducir y transformar la estructura social, y luchar por la hegemonía’. However, it can be argued that Thays’ novels are political and social in a different way from Bayly’s, while nevertheless aligning themselves with postmodern narrative traits (in terms of intertextuality, a break with metanarrative, the predominance of a first-person narration with an impression of linearity). Thays is not apolitical in the way Bayly becomes in his latest, mass-marketed novel La mujer de mi hermano because his novels are, through the use of intertextuality, part of a wider cultural and philosophical discussion. In using intertextual fragments, Thays focuses on two aspects of novel writing: the relationship between writers and society (often mediated by critics) and the theme of love in writing. This eclectic narrative style has direct links with a tradition of twentieth-century Latin American narrative: García Canclini (1995b, 22) notes that the appropriation of a European literary canon by writers such as Borges and Fuentes has a resignified social purpose in order to respond to ‘variadas necesidades nacionales’. Furthermore, what is especially significant about the intertextuality in the case of Thays is the choice of writers and thinkers, such as Nabokov, Borges, Proust, Benjamin. The use and choice of this type of intertextual fragment not only create a ‘high’ cultural response to Bayly but also represent a socio-political stance, given the role of culture in creating and reinforcing social differentiation. In opposing Bayly, Thays’ narrative therefore carries with it an underlying affirmation of social superiority and this is why, in Bourdieu’s words, ‘art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences’ (1989, 7). The relationship between literature and society is one of the weekly topics for discussion in the literary conference that takes place in La disciplina de la vanidad (164), and this central theme in Thays’ three novels is explored by means of the leitmotif of archaeological ruins. As well as constituting a physical presence in terms of background (the historical ruins of Busardo and the

78

ROBERT RUZ

tourist sites visited by the conference participants), ruins become a symbol for a lost culture and literature. The narrators of both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad take refuge in their nostalgia for a lost literary canon that highlighted a few examples of genius rather than allowed for the mass multiplication of a viable formula: ‘para [mi] la belleza está y siempre estará asociada a las ruinas, a los anticuarios, a los arcaísmos, a las decadencias, a las preocupaciones pasadas de moda’ (Thays (2000, 195)). To this effect, the year 2000 becomes symbolic of an age in which literary originality is destroyed by mass repetition and reproduction: ‘me hace saber que ya no pertenezco al milenio de Dante, de Shakespeare, de Cervantes, de Joyce, de Proust, de Bufalino, de Borges, sino al de No Sé Quien y de Jamás Lo Sabré’ (Thays (2000, 194)). In both novels, the reader is given a cultural tour of Europe and examples of great achievements, such as the Louvre and Great Canal of Venice, are lauded. However, Thays’ nostalgia for a past Culture and Literature focuses on aesthetics and the social position of the artist/ writer, rather than representing an outright rejection of present culture. Thays engages in contemporary discussion about postmodern culture, and in La disciplina de la vanidad argues against a reactionary rejection of modern European society or the role of technology in society in relation to culture (2000, 192–3). Furthermore, in stories such as ‘Un famoso ratón’ he explores the relationship between consumerism and individual participation in society and culture. In exploring the ruins of cultural artefacts, what interests Thays is the essence of individual artistic creativity, and he looks back not only to recent twentieth-century examples of cultural achievement but right back to the first examples of artistry. To this effect, the viewing of the Altamira cave paintings in Escena de caza brings the narrator in touch with the essence and origins of this artistry: ‘mi emoción, que se remontaba a los orígenes de la cultura’ (Thays (1995, 47)). This brings us back to Thays’ idealization of individual literary creativity that is part of a contemporary ideological response to the proliferation of mass-produced airport lounge paperbacks. It takes us back to Thays’ narrative journey of self-discovery, ‘el relato de un proceso de aprendizaje’, to a dominating first-person exploration of the subject of postmodern narrative and to the hope that literature might change the writer in some way. As well as considering the position of the writer/artist in the age of globalized media technologies, in which individuality is effaced, Thays further uses the leitmotif of archaeological ruins in El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad to explore the end of History/ideology thesis that is a common topic of postmodern theory and the relationship of the individual, the yo of his narratives, to this postmodern ‘crisis’ in terms of how History is experienced by the individual. In the episodes in which the narrator of El viaje interior recalls his memories of the time he spent with his fiancé Kaas in Busardo, he focuses on the disagreements between them, which centre primarily on the narrator’s view of history. The narrator is both fascinated by

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

79

what he views as the decline in Western civilization and frustrated by his inability to find a position for himself in this process: ‘Las teorías contemporáneas que discutían o confirmaban las teorías de Sprangler – y que parecían confirmarse con los sucesos recientes de Europa – sobre el agotamiento de Occidente, nos fascinaban’ (Thays (1999a, 38–9)), and ‘Ante mis ojos se alzaban columnas de ceniza y humo que ocultaban al sol y la luna; era el fin de la historia y yo seguía sin entender nada, encerrado en mí mismo, en mis problemas incomprensibles’ (Thays (1999a, 219)). However, the ironic tone with which he cites the ‘end of history’ thesis throughout both novels reveals a certain critical distance in relation to this idea: ‘en estos años en que la caída de las ideologías cuestiona todo [. . .] la ambición literaria es considerada, si no un pecado, por lo menos un asunto de nerds’ (Thays (2000, 197)). Thays laments the ‘end of history’ thesis in one sense because he wants, as part of his oppositional position within Peruvian popular culture, an ideology to impose and police a definition of culture related to (educational) ‘cultural capital’. Thays’ rejection of any end to History in terms of his oppositional stance in a ‘blockage’ within Peruvian postmodern narrative correlates with Jameson’s treatment of the ‘end of history’ idea. In The Seeds of Time, Jameson considers the ‘end of ideology’ to be a fashionable working hypothesis rather than a conclusion and notes that what such characterizations are trying to accommodate is ‘the paralysis of postmodern thinking by the structure of the antinomy’ (1994, 68). The ideological vision of the narrator of El viaje interior, which views the stagnation of Western civilization, is reinforced by the stagnation of the protagonist himself (who relives memories of his past affair with Kaas) and the description he gives of the town of Busardo, in which there are few indications of human activity and which is symbolized by the abandoned archaeological ruins. The narrative focuses on a prolonged retreat into the world of the individual: ‘Todo es movimiento, pero algo no trajina, no se mueve: yo’ (Thays (1999a, 11)). Though Thays’ novels offer a discussion of history, culture and in particular narrative, superimposed upon this discussion is the dominant presence of the ‘yo’. In El viaje interior the narrator notes (1999a, 71) the creation of ‘mi nueva patria interior’ through the power of memory and writing, at the same time as weaving the theories of the historian Fernand Braudel into the narrative (and his name is repeatedly cited in both novels). The significance of Braudel lies in his analysis of the individual’s perception of history, and this ties in with the overwhelming dominant use of the first person in postmodern narrative. In La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II, Braudel’s (1966) studies based at Venice, Milan, Genoa and Florence divide historical time into three movements: geographical time, social time and individual time. It is this individual time that dominates the slow pace of events in Thays’ reflections on history in a fictitious Mediterranean town in El viaje interior. Furthermore, Braudel argues that history does not exist independently of the historian’s gaze and

80

ROBERT RUZ

that the lengthy rhythms and details of everyday life hold more significance than the swift pace and dramatic moments of battles.10 Braudel’s vision of history thus turns away from the factual ‘certainties’ of economic and social history and holds that the historical world is created by perceptions rather than events, that the whole of history is a construction of human perceptions. When visiting Venice, Thays’ narrator notes the importance and validity of his own present-day perception rather than what the city’s architecture might indicate about the past, and implies that through this perception history may seem unchanging in terms of individual experience: Sentía la respiración del Adriático que fluye por los canales y que parece acompasar la respiración de los venecianos como un clima más que como mar. Comprendí el acierto de aquella teoría de Braudel sobre la historia de larga duración. Hay un movimiento continuo que se renueva para repetirse, para ser siempre el mismo movimiento. No importan las circunstancias, existe aquello no inmóvil sino inconmovible, ajeno al devenir y a las situaciones, que era la historia viva en la que yo acababa de introducir un brazo, a la que yo acababa de darle una mano. (Thays (1999a, 70))

The central paradox of Thays’ novels is that the narrators take refuge in the unity and ‘truth’ of this individual perception, which in the course of the cultural and philosophical journey become fragmented and lost. Rather than come into contact/opposition with social discourse (as is typical of the modern novel), the narrators embark upon a viaje interior, which leads to a postmodern crisis in individuality that is closely linked to the ‘crisis’ in a Peruvian narrative paradigm of the 1990s – the struggle by different writers to impose their aesthetic model on Peruvian literature (with Bayly and Thays dominating the market). El viaje interior hints at the possibility of unravelling mystery through interior exploration, but the exploration of the yo through fiction proves continually inconclusive and provides no clear answers. The reflections on the town of Busardo, the failed love affair with Kaas and the activities of the painter Dicent become increasingly contradictory, and single events, such as the discovery of a corpse by the narrator and Dicent (Thays (1999a, 179)), are given no explanation. Both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad take refuge in the history of the self (‘mi historia, sobre todo’ – (1999a, 43)) that is called into question during the narrative. This disintegration of the yo upon which both narratives are built creates a fracturing of the lines between fiction and reality. Thays prioritizes the individual for aesthetic and political reasons (to create a unique style in Peruvian narrative), but any sense of credible, individual experience is frag-

10 This reading of Braudel’s work is taken from the internet magazine Label France, 23. Available from: http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/ENGLISH/IDEES/BRAUDEL/bra.html.

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

81

mented as a result of his intertextual style (using other writers’ words) and the fact that in the course of their physical and cultural journeys the narrators gain a dream-like existence that has echoes of literary and cinematic scenes. When the narrator of El viaje interior finally tracks down the mysterious painter Dicent he is attacked by birds in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds: ‘corrí cubriéndome la cabeza con los brazos, imaginándome tétrica, cinematográficamente, que aquellas aves asustadas querrían atacarnos y que pronto caerían sobre nosotros, furiosas, utilizando sus garras y sus picos como navajas’ (Thays (1999a, 82–3)). The narrator remembers his first arrival with his fiancé Kaas as ‘un viejo recuerdo cinematográfico’ (Thays (1999a, 150)), and after his metaphysical journey his self collapses endlessly into a postmodern death of the subject: ‘Como si lo estuviera leyendo en una mala novela, me veo a mí mismo protagonista de un viaje interior interminable’ (Thays (1999a, 200)). This ‘death’ of the subject is given a historicist explanation by Jameson in ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’. For Jameson, a once existing centred subject in the period of classical capitalism and the nuclear family has ‘waned’ in today’s world of organizational bureaucracy. In analysing this ‘death’ of the subject, which he terms a ‘waning of affect’, he compares Van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes to Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes, and by pinpointing a lack of depth, elements of textual play and a commodification of the subject in the later work, finds that ‘the alienation of the subject is displaced by the fragmentation of the subject’ (Jameson (2000, 199)). Furthermore, Jameson notes that in the ‘narrower context of literary criticism’ the central characteristic is the ‘waning of the great high-modernist thematics of time and temporality, the elegiac mysteries of durée and memory’ (2000, 200). A central contradiction of Thays’ narrative is that it displays evidence of Jameson’s ‘waning of affect’, a postmodern fragmentation of the subject, and yet Thays strives in El viaje interior to recover these ‘high-modernist’ thematics of time and temporality (in terms of his analysis of Braudel) and of memory, in terms of his memory-induced voyage of selfdiscovery, his viaje interior. Paradoxically, as we have seen, it is this choice of Braudel’s conception of the individual perception of the present significance of history that brings Thays’ writing style into line with certain postmodern characteristics. Another contradiction in Thays’ work lies in the way in which he tries to stamp a badge of literary individuality upon Peruvian narrative and yet in the process uses a transnational intertextual style. Above all else, Thays attempts to impose a unique style on Peruvian narrative and yet uses multiple fragments of literary, historical and philosophical texts in the process: his attempted return to ‘high-modernist’ principles thus displays postmodern traits and brings his reactionary response within the boundaries of a wider socio-cultural dynamics that includes Bayly and the novelist to be considered in Chapter 4, Jorge Eduardo Benavides. This contradiction ties in with the fact that Jameson (2000) links the loss of the experience of the ‘so-called

82

ROBERT RUZ

centred subject’ to a loss in a ‘high-modernist’ conception of a unique style within the collective ideal of an artistic (or political) vanguard. This brings Jameson to one of the central concepts of his essay, that of pastiche: For with the collapse of the high-modernist ideology of style – what is as unique and unmistakable as your own fingerprints, as incomparable as your own body [. . .] the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture. (Jameson (2000, 202))

For Jameson (2000), the ‘waning of affect’ is closely linked to the end of an individual ‘brush stroke’, as symbolized by the dominance of mechanical reproduction. If for Jameson the ‘global culture’ of postmodernity is characterized by pastiche, the ‘imitation of dead styles’, then it is precisely by means of a process of recovering ‘dead styles’ that Thays opposes the mass cultural marketing of Bayly and aims to create a unique style within contemporary Peruvian narrative. By quoting and mimicking the work of Adán, Nabokov and Borges – what Thays terms ‘las preocupaciones pasadas de moda’ (quoted on page 78 of this chapter) – Thays aims to emphasize his literary individuality in the context of writers such as Bayly and Malca and to stamp his individuality upon Peruvian postmodern culture. He has worked at creating an image of himself as the Artist both in his novels and on his television programme Vano oficio. When questioned about the title of the programme by the magazine Impresión (published by the Universidad Católica del Perú), Thays referred to this artistic disposition separated from social issues: ‘Es un oficio porque es duro, fregado, constante. [. . .] Pero por otro lado es vano porque no vamos a cambiar el mundo.’11 This artistry, as Bourdieu (1989, 30) has argued, depends on (Peruvian) social and cultural dynamics – ‘the conventional norms governing the relation to the work of art in a certain historical and social situation’ – and also on the potential to be appreciated by an educated cultural elite, ‘the beholder’s capacity to conform to those norms, i.e., his artistic training’. What Thays intends with his ‘imitation of dead styles’ is to create a literature that allows him to demonstrate a ‘Distinction’ over others, which in turns separates him and his novels from the mass readership of Bayly: Everything takes place as if the ‘popular aesthetic’ were based on the affirmation of continuity between art and life, which implies [. . .] a refusal of the refusal which is the starting point of the high aesthetic, i.e., the clear-cut 11 Quoted in an interview with Thays for the Universidad Católica del Perú’s Facultad de Ciencias y Artes de la Comunicación on 26 February 2003. The transcript was read on 17 March 2003 and was available at: www.pucp.edu.pe/fac/comunic/impresión/ franjacultural5ampliado. The link has since been removed.

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

83

separation of ordinary dispositions from the specifically aesthetic disposition. (Distinction, 32). YO AMO LA TORRE DE MARFIL. Me encierro en ella, escribo en ella, y desde su altura veo o siento cómo la ciudad está siendo saqueada por la rapiña. Si me preguntaran dónde me ubico dentro de mi generación de escritores, tendría que contestar como Nabokov: muy buena la vista desde aquí arriba, gracias. (La disciplina de la vanidad, 65–6)

Through re-reading past literary works and through the process of writing from the standpoint of this ivory tower Thays has a special role among the Peruvian masses, which is to stimulate in the reader a process of interpretation in the course of his narrative. The main theme of both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad is that history is a process of ongoing interpretation, and his literature is posited as part of that process. For Thays, writing is an artifice, a building of layers of narrative upon the ‘ruins’ and fragments of past works: ‘un largo y hermoso artificio’.12 Furthermore, as Thays mentions in La disciplina de la vanidad, a key postmodern narrative trait is the revealing of this artifice and building process to the reader during the course of narration: ‘la novela contemporánea adquiere su personalidad al conseguir enfatizar la habilidad para reconstruir’ (2000, 117). This reconstruction and ongoing process of interpretation creates a sensation of a lack of movement in Thays’ narrative. Though both novels have an overall linear proposal, they have a reflective tone, and in them literature is seen as a process rather than as a stable product. For example, in El viaje interior the reader is given the impression that the narrative is in the process of elaboration: ‘la historia que cuento, que contaría, a lo que sucedió o sucederá’ (Thays (1999a, 12)). Furthermore, there is a close link in Thays’ work between the leitmotif of archaeological ruins and history and narration. History is viewed by Thays as perpetual ruins, which give a perpetual testimony and give meaning to the present. He links ruins to narration, to his process of building layer upon and around intertextual layer – a process in which the reader has a prominent role: La historia es la verdadera ruina perpetua: todo viejo orden es derrocado por uno nuevo, que a su vez es derrocado. Pero las ruinas son testimonios de la vida, no un simple souvenir, no una astilla que el náufrago arranca del barco para ostentarla frente a los vecinos y mostrarla a sus nietos cuando ya no tenga nada más que mostrar. [. . .] Narrar es suplantar, es crear márgenes en la vida, es hacer paréntesis ahí donde no hay un texto oficial. Es habitar las notas de pie de página. (Thays (1999a, 108))

12 See Thays’ article ‘En el centenario de Borges’, Quehacer, 119, July/August 1999. The transcript was available at www.desco.org.pe/qh/qh119gte.htm (page since removed).

84

ROBERT RUZ

Literature and the possibilities of creative writing may thus provide an alternative reading to history and to official versions/texts: ‘narrar es suplantar’. At the heart of Thays’ narrative is a struggle to bring meaning, and this creative struggle is symbolized in La disciplina de la vanidad by the analogy of the lion and the hunter. The difficulty of trying to contain and represent reality in literature is compared to the complicity between hunted and hunter, with total sacrifice on the part of the author: ‘Con la obra publicada, muere el león pero también el cazador. La persona que fue, que escribió cada línea, que sopesó cada pausa, cada coma del texto, muere con la obra’ (Thays (2000, 362)). Moreover, there is no resultant, definitive or reliable text: in La disciplina de la vanidad writing is viewed in terms of ‘esa imaginación, esa mentira, esa capacidad de fabular’ (2000, 63), and in El viaje interior reality/events must be accommodated, adapted to narrative: ‘Mi realidad, Busardo, Kaas, mi infancia y adolescencia, han ido acomodándose a la ficción’ (1999a, 41). What literature allows for in El viaje interior is an exploration of the unknown: ‘el arte es un registro de lo invisible’ (Thays (1999a, 203)). In La disciplina de la vanidad writing permits for the juxtaposition and combination of both probable and improbable facets of reality: ‘un número limitado de elementos cuyas combinaciones son infinitas. La vanidad es el gran combinador’ (Thays (2000, 341)). These facets are limited, yet the writer’s and Thays’ unique role lies in the art of combining, in ‘la disciplina de la vanidad’ and, given Thays’ definition of literary ‘vanity’, this constitutes an individualistic, elitist stance. Just as his narrative is written for only a select group of individuals – ‘la literatura no cambia a la sociedad, pero sí a algunos individuos’ – his work is one that he aspires to undertake without the approval of society: ‘No depender de los demás para ser calificado. No depender de los demás, críticos, reseñadores, lectores, en ninguna medida’ (Thays (2000, 32)). This idea of individual ability to combine and create correlates with Bourdieu’s idea of the ‘pure aesthetic’ and ‘pure pleasure’. In recounting Proust’s pleasure in reading Ruskin’s Stones of Venice (because of the challenge involved in unravelling its intricate intertextuality and web of references), Bourdieu (1989, 498) describes this ‘pure pleasure’ in similar terms to Thays’ literary ‘vanity’: It is a pure pleasure [. . .] of the playing the cultural game well, of playing on one’s skill at playing, of cultivating a pleasure which ‘cultivates’ and of thus producing, like a kind of endless fire, its ever renewed sustenance of subtle allusions, deferent or irreverent references, expected or unusual associations.

In trying to bring together ‘un mundo de anacronismos y hechos inverosímiles’, Thays’ narrative represents the attempted containment/representation of paradoxical elements (2000, 32). For Thays, the medium of the novel allows for a viewing of historical events from another perspective, ‘la literatura refleja la realidad del revés del espejo’ (2000, 65), and this is the

IVÁN THAYS: POSTMODERN PERUVIAN NARRATIVE OF ‘HIGH’ CULTURE

85

way in which he reads and re-reads other texts: ‘colocar un espejo frente a la obra para verla desde otra perspectiva’ (2000, 219). In introducing the fictional literary critics of La disciplina de la vanidad – Tunc, Aut and Nunquam – Thays suggests, as quoted on page 75 of this chapter, that no resolution of contradictory or antithetical literary positions is possible – an argument that resonates in part with Jameson’s antinomies in The Seeds of Time. Aut’s attempt to mediate between the two positions of Tunc (advocate of postmodern trends) and Nunquam (who believes that there can no longer be any literary originality, that this disappeared with the fall of modernism) proves meaningless. Furthermore, Thays also argues that two antithetical positions depend on one another for existence: ‘los extremos de la Tierra están siempre íntimamente ligados. Una moneda girando, que muestra al mismo tiempo ambos lados’ (2000, 10). These two features of Thays’ argument – that contradictory literary stances and antithetical positions cannot be resolved and yet depend on one another – bring us back to the positions of Thays and Bayly in postmodern Peruvian narrative. Thays’ attempt to contain paradoxes in his two novels is refracted in his place in Peruvian narrative. Just as there is a paradox in both novels in the attempt to retreat into an individuality that is fragmented or ‘waned’, and a paradox in the way in which a crisis in history/progress is portrayed in a linear narrative format, Thays’ narrative is part of a wider crisis in contemporary Peruvian narrative, a post-Fujimori period in which all meaning has been particularly questioned since the broadcast of the vladivideos. This socio-political context brings us back to Thays’ claim that his narrative constitutes the alternative ‘notas de pie de página’ and a ‘paréntesis ahí donde no hay un texto oficial’ and to the importance of culture as part of the post-Fujimori regeneration of Peru. Within this cultural regeneration, Thays has argued for the necessity of antithetical literary positions, which he identifies as a trait of European modernity: ‘En Europa este fenómeno siempre existió [. . .] por cada autor A había un escritor Z igualmente brillante y totalmente contrario’ (quoted in the interview cited above, p. 65, n. 2). However, just as Jameson (2000, 201) has noted ‘the absence of any great collective project’ in the ‘postliteracy of the late capitalist world’, Thays (2003) has identified in Peruvian narrative ‘un proceso de dispersión en donde cada autor resuelve sus problemas con la realidad de diversas maneras’.13 As literary critic, Thays is thus suggesting that the oppositional positions of himself and Bayly need not stand in isolation, that there might exist (in the future) a pluralist offering of multiple positions fighting for ground in Peruvian popular culture. In La disciplina de la vanidad ‘todos los escritores jóvenes luchaban por opinar, discutir, apabullar’ 13 This quotation was taken from an untitled interview with Thays published on the internet by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos’ Sistema de Bibliotecas. The transcript was available (in March 2003) at: http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bibvirtual/ peruana/Escritores/Thays/Entrevista.htm. The link has since been removed.

86

ROBERT RUZ

(Thays (2000, 351)). These considerations lead to a central question in this study of Peruvian narrative at the start of the new millennium: in relation to the poles of Thays and Bayly, where do new narrative projects, such as those of Jorge Eduardo Benavides, stand? Do they align themselves with the poles or propose alternatives?

4 JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL REVISITED JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

In Chapter 3, Iván Thays was introduced as the most successful and prominent Peruvian alternative to the mass cultural marketing of Jaime Bayly since the mid-1990s, and it was argued that Thays’ central exploration of the relationship between history and literature focuses on the idea that narrative can build on and challenge versions of social, political and cultural events and ‘facts’: ‘narrar es suplantar [. . .] es hacer paréntesis ahí donde no hay un texto oficial’.1 With the publication of Los años inútiles in 2002, Jorge Eduardo Benavides challenges Thays’ prominence and success (especially outside Peru) and offers an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative both to the mass-marketed baylyboom and to Thays’ vision of individualized, ‘high’ cultural narrative. With Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo (2003) Benavides provides a wide spectrum of alternative interpretations of events that took place during the García government, for which there is little official text or clear answers, and his questioning is also applicable to the governments of Fujimori and Toledo, which form part of a continuing narrative of Peruvian politics. Born in Arequipa in 1964, Benavides moved to Tenerife in 1991, where he founded and ran a literary workshop (Entrelíneas), worked as a cultural commentator and journalist (for the newspaper Diario de avisos) and taught at the local university (Universidad de La Laguna). Benavides moved to Madrid in 2002, after securing a publishing contract with Spanish market leader Alfaguara and following the success of Los años inútiles. Like Bayly, Benavides has thus achieved financial success with a major Spanish publishing company and, at the same time, like Thays, he also claims the ‘high’ cultural ground by mentioning his work as a cultural commentator and university lecturer on the covers of both his novels. The fact that Benavides found it necessary to move to Spain in order to establish himself as a novelist and that it took him six years to secure a publishing contract for Los años inútiles correlates with the discussion in the last chapter of what García Canclini (1999, 153) has termed ‘una política de bestsellerización’, whereby the decline in Latin American publishing compa1

See above, p. 83, for the full quotation (taken from El viaje interior, 108).

88

ROBERT RUZ

nies has been counterpointed by the growing strength of Spanish publishers, who in turn have been taken over by multinational companies who publish fewer writers in greater numbers. For Los años inútiles, Alfaguara undertook a high-profile marketing campaign, in which it promoted the novel as an exhilarating aesthetic puzzle and a complex exploration of pressing Peruvian political and social problems. Both Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo offer the reader a more integrated balance of politics and aesthetics, of social denunciation and novelistic pleasure, than either Bayly or Thays, and constitute part of what critic Ernesto Escobar Ulloa (2003) has seen as the resurgence of the ‘novela latinoamericana de corte urbano e intriga política’.2 Both novels provide a new richness and depth to Peruvian narrative since the mid-1990s – a Third Way in post-2000 narrativa peruana.3 In the course of this chapter this new richness offered by Benavides will be discussed in terms of the following points of particular interest: (1) the structure and characteristics of Benavides’ complex aesthetic project, which surpasses Bayly’s mass popularity as well as Thays’ ‘pure aesthetic’ (engaged with cultural and philosophical analysis) and which displays some of the aims of the novela total and the political novel (showing the clear influence of Vargas Llosa’s Conversación en la catedral); (2) the link between this aesthetic system and political systems in the framework of Jameson’s The Geopolitical Aesthetic and in terms of the sense of conspiracy produced by the effects of both narratives; (3) Benavides’ position in relation to Peruvian postmodernity and Peruvian postmodern narrative and his relation to the oppositional stances of Bayly and Thays, analysed in the last chapter, in the framework of Jameson’s antinomies of postmodernity. As in the case of Bayly’s mass marketing throughout the Americas and Thays’ promotion of his cultural credentials within Peru, part of Alfaguara’s marketing of Benavides in terms of a ‘política de bestsellerización’ includes acknowledging a debt to, and suggesting similarities with, Vargas Llosa. However, in the case of Benavides this debt takes the form of a reworking of Vargas Llosa’s (early) novelistic techniques and not just an admiration for the writer’s prestige and success. Benavides has commented on his use of Vargas Llosa’s techniques and stated an intention to push these techniques to their limits: ‘Tenía un interés por la cuestión técnica. Por eso me convertí en un estudioso de la obra de Vargas Llosa. [. . .] Quería aprender el funciona-

2 Taken from the internet article ‘Retrato de un país a la deriva’, in Lateral, 99 (2003). The transcript is available at: http://www.lateral-ed.es/revista/anteriores/99.html. 3 In this chapter the term ‘Third Way’ will be used (and capitalized) in terms of an alternative in 1990s Peruvian narrative that has arisen in part from a reworking of previous novelistic formats such as the novela total. It will not be used strictly to engage in political debate in the context of Anthony Giddens’ (1999) Third Way, in which he argues that the Third Way (in Europe) has replaced neo-liberalism and social democracy by means of the Left adopting certain methods of the Right to achieve its fundamental socialist goals.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

89

miento de sus novelas. Me dije: “Vamos a ver hasta dónde se puede llevar esta técnica” ’.4 Both Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo, in differing ways, build on Vargas Llosa’s technique of the novela total, established in La casa verde and developed further in Conversación en la catedral.5 These techniques, which Benavides builds on, include: multiple plot lines and characters; a carefully constructed structure that creates effects of ambiguity and fragmentation; use of assimilated or ‘telescoped’ dialogue; montage of time, events and dialogue (often creating the illusion of simultaneity); and multiple points of view used to present a multifaceted social world and to cope with political and social complexities without direct authorial comment (in a way that is far removed from Bayly and Thays). A central concern throughout this chapter will therefore be the position of Benavides’ narrative in relation to Chapter 3’s discussion of Jameson’s antinomy or ‘paralyzed dialectic’ (as typifying the postmodern era) in The Seeds of Time. How does Benavides’ reworking of certain novela total techniques (as well as his new and original input) tie in with the ‘blockage’ presented in Chapter 3 – the systemic opposition between an anti-elitist celebration of micro narratives and consumerism (Bayly) and the elitist, metaliterary discourse it has pressed into service (Thays)? The most intriguing initial question about Benavides is whether he has reverted to certain aspects of the novela total in terms of what he might view as the failure of postmodern aesthetics, or whether he has reworked the novela total within the parameters and stylistics of postmodern aesthetics. Similarly, a second key question in approaching Benavides is whether his use of the novela total is part of a questioning/failure of neo-liberal projects in Peru, or part of an aesthetic reworking within the context of existing neoliberal projects in Peru. At this point, there is a need to readdress the definitions of postmodernity in Peru already formulated in previous chapters. There has been a publicized rejection and crisis of neo-liberalism in Latin America since 2001, most notably in Argentina and Brazil and, to a certain degree, in Peru when Fujimori resigned in the wake of allegations of corruption. Though it is debatable whether countries in which these projects have failed correlate precisely with Jameson’s definition of postmodernity in his ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ in terms of consumer-driven and spectacle-based societies, it is important to note that in Peru (as opposed to Argentina) there has been a questioning rather than a failure of neo-liberal projects. Peru has had its own particular problems under García and Fujimori (particularly with the overwhelming corruption of the 4 Taken from the interview with Benavides at Imaginando.com on 3 March 2003. The transcript was available at www.imaginando.com/diccionario/diccionario.html but the page has since been removed. 5 The use of the terms ‘total’ and ‘totalizadora’ are used to describe Vargas Llosa’s techniques in these novels by most critics, including Standish (1982, 16).

90

ROBERT RUZ

media) and still had, in 2004, an uneven, post-Fujimori postmodernity focused in Lima, as outlined in Chapter 2. Before looking at Benavides’ position in the ‘blockage’, another important point is that – although he is part of narrativa peruana – Benavides writes from outside Peru in different socio-political circumstances from Bayly and Thays. Benavides writes from a distance, like Vargas Llosa, and does not live in Peru, like Bayly (who lives between Lima and Miami) or Thays (who has tried to find success based in Lima). In approaching Benavides’ narrative within the framework of Chapter 3’s discussion of the possibility of a ‘paralyzed dialectic’ in Peruvian narrative since the early 1990s, as represented by the oppositional aesthetic stances of Thays and Bayly, there are two possible arguments: (1) by reverting to and recontextualizing the (modern) novela total Benavides has attempted to analyse political complexities that neither the populist narrativa joven of Bayly nor the ‘pure aesthetic’ of Thays could address. At the same time, by reworking the complexities of the novela total (within the context of 1990s Peruvian postmodernity), Benavides is part of Thays’ reactionary stance towards Bayly’s literatura light, albeit with a very different aesthetics, and is therefore inside the ‘blockage’; (2) as well as reworking the novela total (in the context of Peruvian postmodernity), Benavides offers a new (postmodern) literary project in post-1990s Peru that combines aesthetic and (explicitly) political complexity in a highly stylized and readable format. Benavides has thus forged a Third Way in post-1990s Peruvian narrative and is outside the ‘blockage’ represented by Thays and Bayly. In the case of the first argument, the assertion that Benavides reverts to the novela total would be potentially attractive to critics of the postmodern (as well as to critics of literatura light) because both his novels are overtly political, and one of the central and most contentious issues of postmodern aesthetics (for Jameson, Eagleton and Hutcheon, in different ways) is the question of its political agency. Though it was argued in Chapter 2 that by writing at the edge of several categories (narrativa joven, political writing, gay literature) Bayly’s postmodern narrative might be more political than its critics suggest and might validate Hutcheon’s idea of ‘complicitous critique’, Benavides’ novels, in this instance, might show otherwise and suggest that Bayly’s style of writing is incapable of probing into political issues in depth and that it might not be possible to validate the idea of ‘complicitous critique’. Might Benavides have recontextualized the novela total for the purpose of social denunciation, especially by means of the multiple perspectives that this model offers? According to all the press reports and journalistic critique to date, Benavides has indeed reverted to the Vargas Llosa modern model of the novela totalizadora. These assertions imply that Benavides might be part of postmodern Peruvian narrative in terms of Jameson’s periodizing concept rather than in terms of postmodern style, hence the apparent need to express the workings and machinations of politics through the plot lines of many

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

91

characters in a modern, complex model of the novel rather than in a (light) postmodern aesthetics.6 In terms of the stylistic innovations and socio-political complexity offered to the reader of both Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo, the second argument that Benavides offers a new, richer alternative to either Bayly or Thays would seem more feasible. In terms of style, Benavides’ narrative – with its rejection of the predominance of the first person and its reversion to multiple perspectives – constitutes a break with Thays’ individualistic cultural and philosophical discussion as well as with Bayly’s autobiographical and hedonistic narrativa joven. In terms of style and politics, El año que rompí contigo offers much more than Thays and Bayly, by blending the complexities of the novela total with certain light elements of the folletín (melodramatic story lines that provoke emotional engagement, romantic intrigue and sexual scenes) and with political engagement in a highly readable and compact format. Furthermore, while Los años inútiles presents the reader with a considerable rewriting/reformulation of the novela total as created by Vargas Llosa in Conversación en la catedral, El año que rompí contigo is a new venture altogether. This second novel, which at times is quite similar in tone to Thays’ La disciplina de la vanidad, looks at the ways in which four middle-class students/journalists are affected by the turbulent political events that engulf them and considers the role of culture/learning in trying to negotiate meaning in that context. Benavides’ narrative, therefore, represents more than a postmodern reworking/recontextualizing of certain modern aesthetic traits and more than a ‘high’ cultural response to Bayly (which aligns him in part with Thays). Benavides’ narrative not only includes a reworking of the novela total’s aesthetics but produces a new, highly politicized aesthetic project in postmodern, post-2000 Peruvian narrative (albeit one with a negative outlook on politics). Above all, it is this explicit political engagement in a novelistic format that includes elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture that irrevocably detaches Benavides from Thays’ pole of alternatives in the oppositional stance discussed in Chapter 3, and means that Benavides is outside the ‘blockage’ with a new, richer alternative. Another way in which Benavides provides a new alternative to Bayly and Thays in Peruvian narrative lies in the responses his two novels force in the reader. In Chapter 3 (page 76), it is argued that, in Bourdieu’s terms, ‘high’ culture is defined as the result of an individual act of creation and demands a moral and aesthetic response in the reader. The fact that Thays’ texts solicit analysis of their ‘inherent’ literary and philosophical values moves the critic 6 In Chapter 2 the uneven postmodernity of Peru is noted. Whereas the struggle for survival in large sectors of the economy and society means that postmodernity – in any kind of definition – is arguably impertinent, in terms of Lima-based culture it is valid to discuss the postmodern. As shown in Chapter 2, Bayly is a striking example of postmodern style à la lettre.

92

ROBERT RUZ

away from the cultural studies approach used for Bayly in Chapters 1 and 2, though it is also argued in Chapter 3 that Thays’ novels are political and social in a different way from Bayly’s, given the role of culture in defining social differentiation – according to Bourdieu (1989, 7). Benavides’ two novels solicit both responses in the reader, forging a Third Way between Bayly and Thays on one level: the structural complexity of both Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo requires an aesthetic response and the political engagement warrants a cultural studies approach (as well as a moral questioning). The fact that Benavides’ blend of aesthetics and politics forces different kinds of responses in the reader cements the second argument that Benavides provides a new, postmodern project in Peru, especially given Hutcheon’s (1989, 28) argument (analysed in Chapter 2, page 55) that the renegotiation of diverse cultural, social and political elements (including ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms) typifies the postmodern. Another question that must be addressed, when considering the way this new project by Benavides places political as well as aesthetic challenges upon the reader, is the fact that the novelist is writing about the past, about the government of García in the 1980s. This can be explained in part by the fact that Los años inútiles took so long to be written and published (twelve years). Moreover, both of Benavides’ novels have been written (relatively recently) about the past and testify to the ongoing failure in Peru of political projects such as Marxism, APRA and the populist governments of both García and Fujimori, given that the social problems since the early 1990s in Peru are remarkably similar (just magnified and covered up) and that García is back at the centre of Peruvian politics in 2004, making Benavides’ writing seem curiously familiar.7 It should also be remembered that Benavides’ novels set in the 1980s were written at the end of the 1990s at the same time as the work of Bayly, who addresses exactly the same period and social problems, allowing for a comparison of the two novelists’ treatment of these issues. Unlike Bayly, however, Benavides cannot be read in terms of pleasure alone: all his characters have some political involvement, or are affected by politics, and the reader, whether aware of the real events reflected in the novels or not, is forced to make moral judgments and to make sense of the complex social problems as well as deal with the aesthetic challenges of both novels. With Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo Benavides produces a new project in post-2000 Peruvian narrative that is thoroughly postmodern in 7 Critics such as Ernesto Escobar Ulloa (2003) have noted (in an internet article) the irony of the fact that the characters of both novels despair at having sunk to the lowest possible levels of existence and are unaware of the fact that what would come next (Fujimori) would be, if anything, worse: ‘Benavides se propone novelar el desenlace de aquella guerra política que, pese a su suciedad, era por lo menos democrática; fatídico desenlace, puesto que nadie imaginaba que esa incipiente democracia iba a ser liquidada por una mafia sin escrúpulos que terminaría sometiendo al país a un saqueo demencial, a la vez que asesinaba, encarcelaba y asfixiaba económicamente a sus enemigos.’

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

93

its Latin American/global politics in the way that the text/aesthetic system is reflective of geo-politics as well as local politics. The way in which the reader is given a problematizing of the representation of an aesthetic and political system, in the context of both national and international economics, resonates with Jameson’s analysis of filmic texts in The Geopolitical Aesthetic. Jameson’s thesis is that the cinematic texts he talks about give access to ‘trends and forces in the world system’ as if there were a political logic that pre-dates and goes beyond the author’s intentions (1992b, 5). In his culturally sensitive readings of cinematic texts such as Salvador, Jameson argues that ‘we can only understand a film’s politics when we place it both in its local political context and its global context as film’ (1992b, xv). While it was suggested in Chapter 3 that literature is more anchored in local language/culture than cinema (and Thays uses this facet of narrative for political motives), it will be argued here that Benavides’ narrative is also reflective of global politics, with remnants of grand narratives as well as the influence of US political dominance. The particular relationship of Benavides’ aesthetics to international postmodern aesthetics and the relationship of Peruvian politics to world politics goes some way towards disproving Jameson’s view that ‘Third World’ literature is allegorical of the national rather than the geo-political. In the course of this chapter, Benavides’ portrayal of national politics in Lima – including García’s Socialism as well as his use of capitalist measures, Peru’s dependency on the USA and international organizations based in the USA, Marxism, terror groups such as the MRTA – will also be shown to be part of a wider, international politics. Furthermore, in Benavides the aesthetic/political system is posited in terms of the concept of a puzzle and in the context of a pervading sense of national/international conspiracy in both novels. As in the case of the postWatergate films Jameson chooses – including The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976) – the reader of Benavides’ post-vladivideo narrative is left with a paranoid relationship to the ‘system’, since it remains impossible to know whether or not there is a system in place in the first place. This paranoia in the reader mirrors the paranoia of the characters – Sebastián, Pinto, Aníbal – as they become involved in the intrigue in the narratives and develop their own conspiracy theories. While it will be argued that Benavides’ texts reflect both national and global politics, it will also be argued that the effect of the aesthetic/political ‘puzzle’ of the narratives is partly to frustrate these aims and to undermine any idea of ‘system’, ‘truth’ or ‘politics’. This chapter will show that in becoming implicated in the uncovering of conspiracies that pervade Peruvian politics the reader is encouraged to sense a ‘truth’ that, at the same time, slips out of his/her grasp as the effects of the narrative techniques lay bare the fact that any sense of ‘truth’/‘system’ itself is an artificial and false construction. In Chapter 3 it was argued that Thays tries to stamp a badge of individuality on Peruvian narrative and in doing so (indirectly) contests what Jameson

94

ROBERT RUZ

(2000, 202) has seen as a ‘waning’ of personal feeling and style in postmodern culture. Ironically, it is by means of Benavides’ recourse to the fundamental elements of the novela total – in which authorial intervention is reduced to a minimum – that Benavides stands out in the context of the overwhelming presences of both Bayly and Thays in their novels. By name and through its effects, the novela totalizadora hints at an underlying aesthetic and political system.8 This suggestion of an aesthetic/political totality is achieved through what Benavides has termed ‘un mecanismo de reloj [. . .] porque al leer el libro se va armando un rompecabezas’ – by means of the montage of multiple plot strands belonging to diverse aspects of intrigue.9 Los años inútiles offers the reader a vast, sprawling web of intricate and interweaving plot lines in a relatively compact, manageable novel (481 pages). Like Conversación en la catedral, it is dominated by the central device and focal point of a framing conversation between the main character, the student and journalist Sebastián and his friend Pepe Soler, who is the son of the political leader for whom Sebastián has worked towards the end of the García government (José Antonio Soler). Los años inútiles is structured in a very precise way: the novel is divided into three parts: ‘UNO’ has three chapters, which in turn have eleven sections; ‘DOS’ has three chapters, which in turn have thirteen sections; ‘TRES’ has three sections, which constitute the dénouement of the three central plot lines that have unfolded and converged during the reading process. Amid the multiple plot strands and within the framing conversation in which Sebastián attempts to understand why Rebeca left him, as well as who controls the comando, the focal points of the intrigue include the ins and outs of the relationship between Sebastián and Rebeca and his attempts to sell a Peruvian baby to North Americans, the arrival of Rafael at the pueblo joven hut of Mosca, Alfonso and Luisa and the activities of the journalist Pinto on the trail of the comando. With 343 pages, El año que rompí contigo reduces this scope to focus on the lives, friendships and relationships of four central characters – Aníbal, María Fajís, Mauricio and Elsa – in the midst of the socio-political turbulence at the end of the García government as Fujimori and Vargas Llosa contested the presidency in 1990. El año que rompí contigo contains eight chapters, which contain irregular numbers of sections (between one and eleven), and in this sense it is very different from the first novel’s ‘mecanismo de reloj’. The novel relies more on description and on an omniscient narrator than did the dialogue-based first novel, and is more self-reflective and focuses on the initially laissez-faire 8 This is a term used by Vargas Llosa himself: ‘las grandes novelas no mutilan la realidad, sino que lo ensanchan; no sólo son novedosas, sino que dan un testimonio nuevo, son totalizadoras’ – see Standish (1982, 16). 9 Taken from his interview with Chiappe (2002), published on the internet at Verbigracia. It is available at: http://www.eluniversal.com/verbigracia/memoria/N225/ apertura.shtml.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

95

attitude of the four educated, middle-class characters towards the horrific social events around them. Punctuated by the frequent social gatherings of the four characters, the main elements of intrigue in this second novel centre on the relationship between María Fajís and Aníbal (including their extramarital adventures), Aníbal’s obsession with his mysterious neighbour, as well as the MRTA manual and his friend Mauricio’s work as a journalist, including the threats and propaganda he receives from the MRTA. The montage of plot strands and proliferation of assimilated dialogues multiply and escalate in both novels to give the reader a sense of totality in terms of Peruvian politics and society. This technique of juxtaposing and alternating plot lines quickly and effectively, and of assimilating dialogue into dialogue repeatedly, is one of the most readily recognisable techniques taken from Conversación en la catedral (and other Latin American novels of the time, such as Fuentes’ La muerte de Artemio Cruz), and yet it is the technique that Benavides pushes to its furthest limits in terms of refining it and using it to create an overwhelming atmosphere of political intrigue. A striking example of the way montage multiplies to produce a sense of totality in the first novel is the pervasive, conspiratorial idea of the comando, including its execution of the Sendero lawyer. The picture the reader is given of the comando is made up of diverse narrative elements. First, we witness the event first-hand through the dialogue of the comando members (Benavides (2002, 181–7)), then we listen to Pinto and Montero analysing the event as journalists (212–13) and finally Rebeca and Sebastián comment on it, as they go about their domestic chores and watch television, which in turn is commented on by the framing narrative of Pepe and Sebastián, who remembers this moment at home (261). The comando is thus everywhere. It is portrayed as a symbolic threat in terms of the idea of there being some form of corruption and conspiracy that pervades the Peruvian political system and is reflective of actual national politics (the fight against Sendero Luminoso in the late 1980s/early 1990s), which in turn depends upon US politics (the extermination of the Marxist guerrilla group being a condition of increased loans from the USA). This technique of montage has been described by Vargas Llosa (1991) in terms of ‘cajas chinas’ – each episode casts light on another, providing clarification, or forcing reassessment. In Los años inútiles – which, as noted above, Benavides describes as a ‘rompecabezas’, a puzzle – each piece of information that the reader is given takes him/her down a different and often unexpected avenue, which in turn doubles back, intersecting and interweaving with other facts and plot lines that lie dormant. Information given by one character often collides (ironically) with that of another, underscoring the differences that exist between husband and wife, father and son, APRA and FREDMO, poor and rich. The use of montage and in particular the way in which dialogue is incorporated into dialogue without quotation marks allows for economy of narrative. As Oviedo (1977, 260) points out, in the case of

96

ROBERT RUZ

Conversación en la catedral, this technique of ‘el corte’ has the effect of accelerating the plot lines as well as presenting the pieces of the puzzle that might give a ‘total’ picture of society/politics. However, the effects produced by both of Benavides’ narratives are to simultaneously fragment/disarm/ break down systems, including themselves. The idea of the novela total is therefore a paradox: in trying to hint at a totality, the narrative reveals itself also to be fragmented and contradictory; the novels give a sense of a system at the same time as undermining a sense of ‘truth’. This is reflected by the difficulty with which the characters and reader try to interpret the escalating sense of intrigue and conspiracy in the political/aesthetic system in Benavides’ narrative – which one critic has described as ‘mezcla de novela política y folletín’.10 This atmosphere of intrigue builds up as the characters and the reader try to grapple with the political twists and turns. In the first novel, Sebastián pursues the potential sale of a baby (which turns out to be his child) at the same time as he slowly becomes aware of the dubious morality of his party leader, and Pinto tries to uncover the links between politicians and clandestine operations at the same time as (during a later period) he learns about pueblo joven politics. In the second novel, Aníbal tries to find out who his mysterious neighbour is and learns about terrorist aims by being given the MRTA manual. Both narratives operate on one level as detective novels and give a sense of there being a conspiracy that has its tentacles everywhere, creating a sense of mass paranoia as all the characters can be implicated in something bigger and nobody is to be trusted. The idea of a social detective is created by means of characters – Sebastián, Pinto, Aníbal – who are either intellectuals or journalists because the intellectual in society might endow the individual with ‘collective resonance’ (according to Jameson (1992b, 38)). The protagonists of Benavides’ narratives are given what Jameson terms an ‘actantial function’, which is the means by which ‘the individual subject of the protagonist somehow manages to blunder into the collective web of the hidden social order. This intersection, this incommensurability, is the fundamental form-problem of the new globalizing representations’ (1992b, 33). Jameson (1992b, 34) identifies three typical actantial positions as being the detective, the victim and the villain, and suggests that these positions are by means of the ‘momentum of their rotation, slowly conflated with one another’. In Los años inútiles, Sebastián is the intellectual who uncovers clandestine activities (the links between Soler and the comando), becomes the victim (of political machinations and the devious methods of the baby traffickers) and is throughout the villain (who exploits Luisa and dupes Rebeca). The fact that the reader is invited into a sense of complicity with Sebastián as he uncovers these clandestine activities is reinforced by the fact that Jameson’s protagonist who

10

Taken from Benavides’ interview with Chiappe (2002), published on the internet.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

97

‘manages to blunder into the collective web’ might be anyone. A sociopolitical picture is created for characters and reader by the elements of the puzzle, and yet it is a picture that does not quite hold together. Both novels have elements of the Bildungsroman, as the main characters Sebastián and Aníbal slowly become partly aware of the political complexities/corruption around them at great personal cost, and in the process any sense of progress in the novels is at the same time destroyed. Writing about Los años inútiles (on the internet), critic Antonio Ruiz Vega (2002) sees it as ‘novela, por tanto, de iniciación y a la vez desmitificadora de los ideales progresistas del momento’. Both narratives reflect an interplay between a frustrated desire on the part of characters and reader to discover the ‘truth’ and a multiperspective breakdown of the concept of truth. There is no overall solution to the puzzle in either novel and both narratives have very unclear endings: what might happen next to Sebastián, Pinto and Aníbal is very much open to interpretation. In implicating the reader in the work of the ‘social detective’, Benavides plays with Lyotard’s (1984) formulation that in postmodern culture sources of knowledge lie in the space of the aesthetic, and in particular it is through the micro narratives of politics that the reader is able to move towards any picture of macro politics. Though there are enough possible resolutions/ permutations for the reader to construct some form of an overview (if he/she chooses), Benavides lures the reader with just too few clues to leave him/her with the sense that there is a system or resolution of the ‘rompecabezas’. In this important regard, the conspiracy lies in the aesthetic system of Benavides’ narratives. The multiplying and intersecting story lines of the different characters create an overall picture of society for the reader that Escobar (2003) has seen as ‘un mural de la vida peruana’, because of the way the novels cover a range of ‘ordinary’ (and extraordinary) social situations, from the lowest position of female pueblo joven dweller and empleada (Luisa) to the highest echelons of society, where the decisions that affect a wide range of people are made (by José Antonio Soler). However, this ‘mural’ or ‘total’ picture of Lima is constituted and represented by characters who, in the reading process, appear to the reader to be isolated and alienated. This intersection of the personal and the social in an alienating city resonates with what Jameson has termed ‘cognitive mapping’ to describe the way in which the individual orients himself or herself in relation to an ideological totality. Jameson takes the term ‘cognitive mapping’ from Kevin Lynch’s 1960 book The Image of the City, which ‘taught us that the alienated city is above all a space in which people are unable to map (in their minds) either their own positions or the urban totality in which they find themselves’ (1992b, 51). ‘Cognitive mapping’ thus reflects the distortions of the individual’s personal experience of living in such an alienating environment. What is interesting in Benavides is connected with Jameson’s use of ‘cognitive mapping’, his idea that the way in which people make sense of their surroundings is very localized and yet links the intimately

98

ROBERT RUZ

local to the national and the geo-political. An example of this in Los años inútiles is the character of Luisa, whose attempts to make sense of what is going on in Lima are conveyed through the pre-speech means of interior monologue as well as through dialogue. While Luisa’s position as an exploited empleada is reflective of both Latin American and Peruvian society, she herself is confused and taken aback by local politics in the form of the social unrest she witnesses on a bus ride: the city she witnesses is alien and terrifies her (Benavides (2002, 287–9)). At the same time, her plight is linked to national politics (she is sacked because of a particular instance of hyperinflation caused by an austerity measure authorized by García’s finance department) and to geo-politics (her unwanted baby is to be marketed as a commodity in Canada by Sebastián). While Escobar (2003) sees this ‘mural de la vida peruana’ in his reading of El año que rompí contigo (in the context of the first novel), this description is more appropriate for Los años inútiles. Instead of using dialogue for a wide social range of characters, in El año que rompí contigo Benavides makes frequent use of an omniscient narrator and focuses on the journalistic and university-centred language of five middle-class limeños who view Lima in terms of literary figures such as Martín Adán, Eguren and Diez Canseco y Valdelomar (2003, 103) and cultural meeting places such as El Cordano (104). Whereas the ‘mural’ of Los años inútiles is created primarily by means of aesthetic montage/political intrigue, in El año que rompí contigo the reader’s view of the city of Lima is provided predominantly by two devices – by use of an omniscient narrator and through the description of Aníbal’s taxi adventures into uncharted territory. In both books, the two characters who try to comprehend Lima/Peru and its politics – Sebastián and Aníbal – are both outsiders (having migrated from Arequipa). While they get a glimpse of what Peru might be like (as they travel from one corner of the city to another and learn about the web of political intrigue that underlies its society), they cannot get to grips with the city because of its sheer scale and degeneration. Both characters learn that there is no possibility of improving their society through education or work, and also gain shocking new insights into the suffering around them. As part of the Bildungsroman of Los años inútiles Sebastián’s desperate decision to sell a Peruvian baby takes him to areas he had never envisaged: ‘empieza el Perú real, qué profundo ni qué ocho cuartos; la miseria profunda [. . .] esta basura también es tu país, Sebastián’ (2002, 214–15). Furthermore, in this novel Pinto links the social and political degeneration with the actual physical degeneration of the city of Lima with the idea ‘Lima se estaba calcutizando’ (2002, 110).11 Similarly, in El año que 11 This has been reinforced by comments made by Benavides in an interview with Belén Sánchez (2002) that is available on the internet: ‘Se generó un descontento social que derivó en huelgas y corrupción, caminabas por una ciudad sucia, había un clima de efervescencia de gente buscándose la vida en la calle, que te vendía naranjas peladas o te

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

99

rompí contigo the exposition of corruption is closely linked to the omniscient narrator’s overview of a bleak, cancerous city: En Lima, capital mundial de la desesperanza, [. . .] flotaba un paisaje inextricable de olores violentos: orines esquinados que empezaban a horadar las paredes de quincha, naranjas peladas y frituras caseras mezclándose con el humo turbio que exhalaban los micros descascarados y repletos, sobacos y pelos sucios de una multitud indigente que estiraba las manos para pedir unos soles. [. . .] Desde allí, desde el centro de Lima donde resistían bancos y oficinas, gente bonita y blanquiñosa escapaba hacia San Isidro, Monterrico, San Borja y Miraflores, donde persistía escasamente un ligero respiro de barrio decente y burgués a sus horas, de casas coquetas y edificios flamantes, ajenos por completo al cáncer que empezaban a carcomerles las orillas donde se instalaban mercadillos y ferias artesanales con sus regateos huachafos que eran sólo el anverso de la medalla, juegos necesarios de correspondencia entre cholos y blancos, tan distintos de los juegos nocturnos de las discotecas y bares, restaurantes y cines que se abrían mimosos para respirar un tiempo irreal, vago territorio de la verdad occidental en Lima, capital mundial de la desesperanza. (Benavides (2003, 11–12))

Benavides links the degeneration and chaos of Lima to the corruption at the heart of Peruvian politics, exploring the effects of the contradictions and complexities of power on a group of interconnecting individuals. Both novels are explicitly political and examine issues from every possible angle, while at the same time maintaining an attention to detail – Benavides’ ‘obsesión maniática por los detalles’ – and looking at the workings of major actors in the 1980s, including APRA, FREDMO, the alleged existence of a comando (to counter terrorism), Fujimori and Vargas Llosa himself. Against the backdrop of the physical degeneration of the city, what the characters suffer is the result of a precise historical moment that is in the process of being analysed. This includes hyperinflation, the corruption of APRA once in power, strikes by workers and students, an increase in delinquency and the drug trade, the increasingly brutal bombing campaigns of Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA, the arrival of Vargas Llosa on the political stage as leader of FREDMO and his ‘alarmante entusiasmo thatcheriano’ and the surprise rise of independent candidate Fujimori. Both novels include a pervading sense of uncertainty and testify to the failure of hope and of political projects such as APRA, instilling a hopelessness that would return to Peru with the failure and corruption of Fujimori’s government: ‘no tenía más opciones que la corrupción e ineficacia

cambiaba dólares . . . me hacía recordar Calcuta como estereotipo. Era un término utilizado por los sociólogos de entonces para definir una ciudad con una infraestructura muy precaria y una sociedad que se busca la vida como puede.’ This interview is available from: http://www.terra.es/cultura/articulo/html/cul4624.htm.

100

ROBERT RUZ

del pasado (la derecha), la corrupción e ineficacia del presente (el APRA) y la corrupción e ineficacia del futuro’ (Benavides (2003, 123)). As well as examining events that actually took place in the 1980s, what Benavides shows is a model of the dynamics of power (particularly in Los años inútiles) and a questioning of events, particularly their representation in the media, in the novel and in language. In El año que rompí contigo this questioning of the representation of events is conveyed primarily through Aníbal’s discussions with his four friends. Upon reading the MRTA ‘manual’ posted to his journalist friend, he discovers ‘la otra versión de los hechos: el dibujo de un Perú distinto y maniqueo, era cierto, dijo Aníbal, pero hasta qué punto la otra versión, la de todos los días, la oficial, no era la falsa’ (2003, 263–4). Rather than constituting the synthesis of the thesis of Bayly (of Chapter 2) and the antithesis of Thays (of Chapter 3), Benavides’ narrative represents a new project that focuses on politics and in particular on the concept of a ‘puzzle’. The word ‘puzzle’ reappears repeatedly in both texts: in El año que rompí contigo Aníbal is faced with ‘el Lima puzzle y sus miles de variantes’ (52). As well as providing testimony of an era that remains confusing, Benavides is interested in the power of suggestion in narrative to create a web of political ambiguities (as part of his model of the dynamics of power): ‘lo importante es aquello que no está escrito, lo que se sugiere’.12 In terms of Benavides’ presentation of this model of the dynamics of power and the balance he strikes between macro and micro politics, Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo represent both an extension and a reworking of the Vargas Llosa novel (Conversación en la catedral) to which Benavides has said he is paying ‘tribute’.13 As with the Third Way’s renewal of the Left in the context of new political circumstances, Benavides has adapted the model to new social necessities. Not only does he follow the guiding premise of representing a self-sufficient, multifaceted ‘reality’ – Vargas Llosa’s ‘totalizing’ ‘testimonio nuevo’ – but he also expands the project by covering a wider ‘mural’ of social and ethnic groups living in Lima and by giving greater voice to lower-class characters. In line with this idea of the reworking and recontextualizing of the novela total in 1990s Peru, the most striking difference in this period is the death of the author, totally ‘waned’ in Jameson’s (2000) terms, in relation to the ostentation of Bayly and Thays. While the first-person-centred postmodern narratives of Bayly and Thays both emphasize the yo and in the process show the fragmentation of the yo, Benavides’ reworked novela total also shows the fragmentation of the yo through the use of multiple perspectives and, in this sense, shows the 12 Taken from Benavides’ interview with Chiappe (2002), published on the internet and available at: http://www.eluniversal.com/verbigracia/memoria/N225/apertura.shtml. 13 According to a review of Los años inútiles for Satiria on 3 March 2003. The transcript is available at www.satiria.com/libros/anus_2002/sumario/sumario_novela_inutiles.htm.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

101

‘waning’ of individuality at the hands of the (corrupt) state. A central question in approaching Benavides is thus whether the characters operate primarily at the level of the individual (in terms of micro politics) or whether they (also) represent social groups/masses (in terms of macro politics). In approaching the representation of macro politics and the relationship between local and global politics in Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo, Benavides’ comment that what is important in narrative is what is suggested rather than what is written is particularly interesting in the theoretical framework of Jameson’s The Geopolitical Aesthetic. As was suggested earlier, Jameson chooses films such as The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and All the President’s Men – in which the characters uncover a possible conspiracy underlying ordinary life – because he sees in them a partial and allegorical attempt to represent the sort of Hegelian totality in which everything is an aspect of a larger whole. The totality in question is, Jameson suggests, the negative one of the global manifestation of ‘late’ capitalism. By means of reading the latent, rather than the manifest, content of films Jameson is encouraged to see in them the attempt to represent ‘in allegorical form’ the ‘world system’ of late capitalism – a totality ‘so vast that it cannot be encompassed by the natural and historically developed categories of perception with which human beings normally orient themselves’ (1992b, 2). What is portrayed by Benavides through fragmented plot and subjects – which has the effect of both hinting at the idea of totality and deconstructing that idea – might be reflective therefore of what Jameson sees as the ‘trends and forces in the world system [. . .] a new density of global management’ (1992b, 5). By reading their latent content it can be argued that Benavides’ texts – in contrast with Jameson’s view of ‘Third World’ literature – carry a ‘geopolitical unconscious’ whose effect is to ‘refashion national allegory into a conceptual instrument for grasping our new being-in-the-world’ (Jameson (1992b, 3)). All the plot lines and levels of intrigue in Los años inútiles can be read in terms of being part of both national and international politics. It was suggested earlier (page 95) that while the comando’s activities are national, its politics are international (in terms of the USA exerting pressure upon García to exterminate Sendero Luminoso by any means necessary) and that Luisa’s loss of employment and decision to sell her baby are the products of US neo-liberal market forces. The effects of the texts are both personal and general, and Jameson (1992b, 4) argues that ‘all thinking today is also, whatever else it is, an attempt to think the world system as such’. One of the benefits of narrative over cinema – and one that Benavides exploits – is a strengthening of this relationship as the intrigue is both collective and personalized through narrative devices such as interior monologue (as well as dialogue and montage). The plight of pueblo joven dwellers Luisa and Mosca are examples of this strengthening. As well as Luisa being sacked because of US-imposed economic austerity measures and being forced to offer her baby on the international market, her life with Mosca and Alfonso is both

102

ROBERT RUZ

marginalized and very much part of national/world politics. The cruel repression of migrants who arrive at her pueblo joven is both particular to the mistakes of García’s government and in part imposed by the USA in trying to crush Marxist groups in Latin America. In the context of army attacks on the pueblo joven settlements because of the arrival of these migrants from Ayacucho (themselves forced to flee by Sendero Luminoso), Luisa’s and Mosca’s life becomes ‘no pensar, no recordar, no existir’ (Benavides (2002, 53)). Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo testify to the decomposition of aesthetic and political grand narratives and yet show the powerful remnants of these projects in the uneven postmodernity of Peru. The grand narratives of modernity, such as Socialism and Marxism, remain present in the context of a postmodern US global politics that dominates Latin America and Peru. In the 1980s and 1990s, there are still important political actors who align themselves with these grand narratives, and throughout the novels the reader witnesses the guerrilla tactics of Sendero Luminoso (founded on Maoist principles) and of the MRTA (an anti-US, Marxist group), as well as the failing socialist project of García’s APRA. In this sense, Benavides shows in his ‘totalizing’ narratives (inherited from the primarily left-wing aims of the 1960s and 1970s) the final stages in the 1980s and 1990s of the breakdown of macro politics and the failure of politics for the totality of society. We witness the failed attempts of the hopeful ventures of the characters Santiago meets in Conversación en la catedral, such as the Cahuide group at San Marcos university who believe that only a Marxist revolution will set the Peruvian nation on a road of development and justice. It is this setting of San Marcos in the 1980s in El año que rompí contigo that offers Carmen (the prostitute Aníbal meets in downtown Lima) a way out of her sordid existence by joining the MRTA. The ‘totalizing’ project that Benavides inherits uncovers in the process of the narratives only corruption and failure, bringing it closely in line with Jameson’s (2000) (and Lyotard’s) ‘absence of any great collective project’ in postmodernity. The few characters (such as Sebastián) who have faith or a personal investment in macro politics (Nation, State, Party) are left totally disillusioned in the course of the narratives. What Benavides’ texts show above all to the reader is the failure of all projects and politics for the characters he develops. While the characters of El año que rompí contigo can discuss the exact manifesto of the MRTA and its differences with Sendero Luminoso (272), their discussion leads to the conclusion that the dynamics of power and the state (rather than any particular party) are what fail the people of Peru: El sistema es el que falla, no los partidos políticos, que son tan sólo una contingencia, una anécdota dentro de ese aparato monstruoso que se devora las mejores intenciones. En el supuesto que existan. Y ese sistema está en plena descomposición. (Benavides (2003, 274–5))

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

103

Benavides shows both the decomposition and corruption of the state and of politics in general in a specific period (the particular failings of APRA) and the effects of this process on individuals. His novels, therefore, say something about both macro and micro politics. Benavides’ reworking of the novela total addresses politics in a different way from both Vargas Llosa (the most high-profile, politicized Peruvian novelist) and from his contemporaries (the most prominent of whom are Bayly and Thays). Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo also address politics indirectly and obliquely, and this is very much part of Benavides’ Third Way. Political effects often operate indirectly, almost by stealth, because the narrative lines are dominated by elements of the folletín (which centre on the personal and emotional needs of the characters) and because the highly complex intersections between plot lines often make it unclear exactly what has happened. The precarious social background of both novels influences the characters’ behaviour as they are forced to fight for survival: in the (internet) interview with Chiappe (2002), Benavides argues that this context accentuates ‘el lado oscuro de cada persona: arribismo, intolerancia, sordidez, corrupción’. Furthermore, in this context, in the novels each character appears to be victim or victimizer, and the difference is often surprisingly subtle (and many characters are both). Benavides continues his (internet) interview with Chiappe (2002) by adding: ‘En nuestras sociedades es muy fácil corromper. Nuestros países se han decompuesto. Nos creemos víctimas y somos cómplices.’ Benavides’ characters in both novels are developed with great care and do not appear to the reader as types, though they do – as is argued above – represent larger social groups as well. This character development makes the politics seem very personal to the reader. Furthermore, Benavides places substantial emphasis on characters from the lowest social groups, for whom politics are not a priority of which they are often aware, yet the reader himself/herself is very much aware of the devastating effects of politics on their lives. Though most of the characters are immersed in what is to them an undetected process of social decomposition, the importance of analysing the effects of politics on individual lives is reflected in the marketing campaign undertaken by Alfaguara, which has tried to make Benavides seem relevant to readers from any country. While Benavides shows sensitivity to the particularities of the social context, in terms of analysing the relationship between power and the individual, the novels are set in ‘una sociedad que bien puede ser cualquiera en general, y más en particular latinoamericana del siglo XX’.14 Where Benavides’ concerns again meet with those of Vargas Llosa is in his efforts to show ‘l’histoire privée des nations’ – a quotation from Balzac chosen by

14 Taken from the review of Los años inútiles for Satiria on 3 March 2003. The transcript is available at www.satiria.com/libros/anus_2002/sumario/sumario_novela_inutiles.htm.

104

ROBERT RUZ

Vargas Llosa as the epigraph to Conversación en la catedral.15 Benavides wants to convey the effects of politics on individual lives by showing different individuals, different places and social groups who are all affected by the same political event in different ways. Through the power of suggestion in narrative and the aesthetic complexity of intersecting plot lines Benavides strikes a balance between social complexity and individual choice. Faced with this balance, the reader is continually forced to address both socio-political concerns and individual concerns, and to unravel the plot strands as different levels of interpretation of events mingle and collide in Benavides’ ‘rompecabezas’ (first quoted on page 94 of this chapter). Benavides has himself emphasized this active participation that is required from the reader: ‘la estructura obliga al lector a una participación activa. Es una novela puzzle, con múltiples fracturas temporales, una novela coral, con muchos personajes y el lector está más acostumbrado a las novelas lineales’.16 This aim of involving the reader aesthetically as well as socially is particularly interesting in the context of Benavides’ position in Peruvian narrative since the mid-1990s because both Bayly and Thays – in the differing ways set out in Chapters 2 and 3 – force upon the reader their imposing presences and opinions (in many ways in relation to one another) in linear narratives. The fragmented, multiple viewpoints (as well as the linear aspects) of Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo allow the reader to be part of the creative process and to create meaning amid ‘las frases que se van soltando como piezas de un puzzle’ (2003, 243). At times the reader has more information than the characters and is aware of the cruel irony of events. An example of this in Los años inútiles is the moment when Sebastián tells Pepe (in the framing conversation) that he had sex with Luisa at the pueblo joven when the reader already knows that she becomes Sebastián’s ‘adoption’ case (and that he is never aware that he is the father or that she is the ‘case’ because he uses an intermediary). More often, however, the reader does not have any clarification of events but instead has the aesthetic pleasure of participating in possible interpretations of the ‘puzzle’. An example of this in the same novel is the very start of one of the three final sections, which starts with the shouted words ‘– Lo mataron, lo mataron’ (2002, 468). The reader can believe that any one of a number of characters has been killed but is particularly faced with the possible deaths of political candidate Ganoza or slum dweller Mosca (given the suspense built up by the preceding events). The reader is thus offered many possible ‘truths’ in the novel, and this is 15 As pointed out by R. L. Williams (1986, 93) in his chapter on ‘Conversation in the Cathedral: Life as a Shipwreck’. 16 This quotation is taken from Sánchez’s interview with Benavides for Terra.es on 25 February 2002. The transcript was available at www.terra.es/cultura/articulo/imprimir.cfm?ID=CUL4624, but this page has since been updated.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

105

especially effective given the way in which Benavides manages to bring together so many plot lines at the end of Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo. The way suspense is built up not only invites the reader to have an increasingly active participation but tempts the reader to reread and try to uncover the ‘truth’. It might be argued that both novels are as challenging as Conversación en la catedral but are more pleasurable, and in this sense they not only test the ‘model’ but surpass it. One of the most pleasurable aspects of Benavides’ narrative is the depth he gives to a wide range of characters. In El año que rompí contigo he achieves this with all five major characters (with the possible exception of Elsa), and in Los años inútiles he does so with Sebastián, José Antonio Soler, Luisa, Pinto, Rebeca and Rosa. Of these characters, Sebastián and Pinto stand out as they play leading roles in the ‘rompecabezas’. Sebastián is tortured throughout by his conscience (the tu Benavides inherits from Conversación en la catedral and La muerte de Artemio Cruz), and yet he lacks the moral courage to take a stand against the political corruption and abuse he witnesses: ‘el cholo no es tonto [. . .] Díselo, Sebastián, suéltalo de una vez’ (Benavides (2002, 409)). His understanding towards the end of the novel that the politician he works for has plotted the murder of his rival (the leader of the Frente) comes as a cruel but convincing revelation to the reader who has already been given sufficient clues to know this for himself/herself and yet has also witnessed Sebastián’s naivety throughout the novel (2002, 465). In the end, the fascinating way in which the characters’ lives intersect in the narratives focuses on Pinto, who is the central piece of the ‘puzzle’ in Los años inútiles. The reader gradually learns that Pinto is the journalist who uncovered the electoral fraud (101), who has considerable professional integrity working in the context of death threats (161). At the same time, the reader is given two or three very minute clues to the fact that Pinto is in fact also the character Rafael, who appears in the novel’s opening section close to death on the doorstep of Luisa, Mosca and Alfonso. Towards the end of the novel, Pinto is called Rafael for the first time by his sister Clara (461). The reader’s suspicion is confirmed in ‘TRES’ when – in extreme circumstances (the fatal wounding of Mosca) and by a quirk of fate that the reader is aware of (the nurse that Luisa calls for used to be Pinto’s girlfriend, Rosa) – Pinto/Rafael is forced to flee, just as at the start of the novel. The idea of a political, aesthetic and personal puzzle is thus pushed to the absolute limit at the end of Los años inútiles as the plot strands collide and are pulled together, and the reader is given just enough clues to satisfy the curiosity that has been stimulated over so many pages. The reader of Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo is given the pleasure of participating in a masterful threading together of narrative lines and yet is also faced with confusion and ambiguity until the final pages. At the same time as being given certain clues that allow the reader to gain an impression of linearity (such as the Bildungsroman elements of the main characters Sebastián and Aníbal), the reader is presented with narrative tech-

106

ROBERT RUZ

niques that give an impression of circularity (such as montage, assimilated dialogue and overlapping plot lines), as well as with the pervasive atmosphere of political and social stagnation present in both novels. In presenting a depressing ‘mural’ of Lima and its politics in the 1980s and 1990s, Benavides does seem to testify to the inability ‘to imagine historical change’ in an alternative project to Bayly and Thays that itself does display aesthetic change, expansion and reworking in relation to the novela total.17 In both novels, the search for truth remains private and individualized, and the characters cannot break through the institutionalized system that Benavides posits as potentially reflective of the state of any Latin American country (see n. 14, p. 103). This idea of individualized ‘truth’ brings us back to the ‘paréntesis ahí donde no hay un texto oficial’ – the many alternatives to political and social events – mentioned in the introduction to this chapter. While Pinto, Sebastián and Aníbal (in particular) struggle to find the ‘truth’ at some point in the narratives, the ‘truth’ finally turns out to be unbearable for Sebastián, Rebeca, Pinto and Aníbal, as well as for Mosca and Luisa. The reader is thus given a demystification of the ideals of progress through the multiplicity of story lines, which operate with the effect of giving an overwhelming sense of there being no ending or release. The effect of Benavides’ aesthetic/political ‘rompecabezas’ – including the emergence of new conspiracies out of old ones in a mise en abyme structure – is to give the reader the sense that there is no totality or system or truth, and this is what creates the pervasive pessimism of the books, though it is possible to take a step back as critic and recognize that the formulation of the puzzle itself constitutes a positive stance – what Jameson (1992b, 3) terms the ‘beginning of wisdom’. Benavides’ narratives achieve the twofold purpose of showing the devastating effects of the state (and its corruption) on the masses (in terms of macro politics) and on the individuals with whom we are given great involvement (in terms of micro politics). Even though Santiago’s questions in Conversación en la catedral lead to dead ends, there is some hope in the novel in the sense that the question ‘¿En qué momento se había jodido el Perú?’ is given considerable reflection, implying some underlying belief in a ‘truth’.18 As Gerdes (1985, 112–13) has pointed out, this situates the novel ‘squarely within the parameters of modernist literature’, with Santiago at ‘odds with the dominant social and cultural order’. Ultimately, in Benavides’ two novels – in spite of (and perhaps because of) the increasingly devastating ways the aesthetic twists and turns and political events affect different individuals – there is a pervasive and unending descomposición and hopelessness that contrast with Vargas Llosa’s modernist questioning. In his (internet) interview with Chiappe (2002), Benavides has stressed this point: ‘Podía 17 An idea Jameson develops in his The Seeds of Time (70–1) and which is discussed in the course of Chapter 3. 18 See Vargas Llosa (1969, 13) for this question in Conversación en la catedral.

JORGE EDUARDO BENAVIDES: THE PERUVIAN POLITICAL NOVEL

107

haber contado redenciones. Pero mi labor no es dar esperanza a nadie. Me fascinan los antihéroes, el horror y la descomposición. Eso escribí.’ Both novels constitute new projects: while Los años inútiles is a reworking of this ‘modernist literature’, El año que rompí contigo is also a step forward as Aníbal represents the postmodern equivalent of Santiago because he avoids looking back to question his frustration and is stagnated in the present, in a pessimism that for all of Benavides’ characters is an accepted part of their lives: ‘el escepticismo de saber que ahorrar no sirve para nada era el mejor estímulo para vivir la inmediatez’ (2003, 93). The novel ends with the beginning of Aníbal’s torture at the hands of the police: ‘Aguantar un poco más, se repitió al sentir la primera bofetada’ (2003, 343). The aesthetic puzzle and clues of both novels reveal the extent of the characters’ hopelessness amid the seemingly endless political and social problems of Peru in the 1980s, the 1990s (and the 2000s). What remains with the reader amid this bleak context is the exciting aesthetic project that constitutes an alternative in Peru to Bayly and Thays, and that blends ‘pure’ and ‘popular’ aesthetics, as well as political, social and highly personal ‘paréntesis’ by means of novelistic virtuosity.

CONCLUSION CONCLUSION

Throughout this book I have argued that Bayly’s narrative is more interesting than most critics have suggested in terms of writing sexual identities and that three of his novels can be interestingly engaged with queer theory.1 Critics have repeatedly dismissed Bayly as ‘low’ culture or mere entertainment. Though the narratives of both Bayly and Benavides aim to break down divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, criticism of Bayly’s work – such as that by Thays – is shown to be ideologically motivated and often misinformed. This ties in with Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of a ‘pure’ and ‘popular’ aesthetic and of how cultural divisions are used to perpetuate social difference or ‘Distinction’.2 A very different treatment was given to Benavides in 2002, who immediately received positive reviews by some critics who clearly hadn’t read him – because he was overtly political.3 Not only does queer theory provide useful insight into and reflection on Bayly but Bayly’s narratives – particularly the accomplished writing of La noche es virgen – call into question and enrich US/British queer theory in a new social context. Though Bayly has aimed for a wider market and though this account has studied him in a framework of US/British queer theory, it is important to consider the power of popular culture in context. What might seem just mildly subversive to the outside critic – namely Bayly’s (increasingly subtle) writing of ambiguous identities and sexualities by La noche es virgen – has at the same time proved radical in Peru. Upon publication, No se lo digas a nadie was a ‘scandalous’ bestseller and in Bourdieu’s terms Bayly has subverted the cultural capital of the middle classes in Lima. There is a unique blend of Miami and Lima in Bayly’s narrative that is reflective of the attitudes of the upper classes in Lima and that Bayly has made central to his work. Bayly’s protagonists fantasize about certain traits of Miami (sexual freedom, wealth, consumerism) and criticize certain traits of 1 A notable exception is the Peruvian literary critic Marcel Velázquez (1998 and 2001), whose work is presented in the Introduction. 2 This idea is presented in the Introduction (page 6). 3 For example, Chiappe (2002), in his internet interview with Benavides for Verbigracia, describes an incorrect structure: ‘Los años inútiles consta de tres partes, con tres capítulos cada una, subdivididos en siete episodios para los capítulos impares y once episodios en los pares.’ The transcript is available at: http://www.eluniversal.com/ verbigracia/memoria/N225/apertura.shtml.

CONCLUSION

109

Lima (lack of personal freedom, the hypocrisy and double standards of the upper classes). In terms of his exploration of homosexuality in Lima, his texts engage with US queer theory, focusing on what Butler (1990, 25) calls ‘social scripting’. At the same time as recontextualizing any use of queer theory, my reading looks at the way in which queer in Bayly is primarily about writing the self. Showing sensitivity to the lack of gay rights in Lima, Bayly offers a very cynical attitude to the fantasy of coming out. It can be argued that this cynical attitude is politically effective in the context of Lima, where there is still a lack of basic freedoms under Toledo. Furthermore, Bayly has marketed his own image above all else, playing with the confusion between fiction and reality. The progressive deconstruction of identity in Bayly’s narrative can be linked to the media figure of Jaime Bayly himself. Though he has since admitted being bisexual (long after the release of La noche es virgen), his media reputation has become increasingly unstable and ambiguous. His reputation has undergone a process of re-fictionalization in line with the public’s responses to his narrative; he has become both a straight and a gay icon. The fact that his 2002 programme in Peru was called La noche es virgen further undermines the boundaries between fiction and reality. Bayly puts the gay into the Peruvian limelight. His treatment of homosexuality is both fascinating and original: before Bayly, there was little material by gay writers or on gay topics in this market. No se lo digas a nadie literally tells a previously unspeakable narrative. Though his portrayal of homosexuality is problematic because his treatment of important issues such as marginality is trivializing and misogynistic at times – as noted by Patricia Ruiz Bravo (2001) – Bayly’s overall contribution is positive in terms of filling a gap in the market and promoting awareness of gay rights in Peru. This contribution is particularly important given political factors: the vladivideos revealed active homophobic strategies under both García and Fujimori. Bayly’s three ‘gay’ novels show and almost document the gay scene in Lima with their depiction of bars, restaurants, slang and customs. Since the publication of Bayly’s No se lo digas a nadie, Fue ayer y no me acuerdo and La noche es virgen, there has been an increase in visibility of gay and lesbian themes in Peruvian mass culture (novels and television, press and internet). There thus seem to be stirrings of change, and perhaps ‘gay’ is in the process of being ‘re-lexified’ again with political intentions, as suggested by the Gay Pride celebrations in Peru from 1999 to 2002. However, in his study of homosexuality in Peru, Arboleda (1995, 108) concludes that issues of race, class and religion particular to Peru would prevent collective action under the government of Fujimori, and any hope of increased tolerance from Toledo seems unlikely, as his government struggled to cope with general strikes and mass opposition to privatization programmes in 2003.4 With his playful 4 Following civil unrest – sparked by the protest of teachers – an estado de emergencia was declared on 28 May 2003. In resultant clashes with the army in Lima and

110

CONCLUSION

writing of the self and with his subversion of (sexual) identities, Bayly has made significant progress through the huge sales of these three novels and has already opened the door to an increase in literature on gay/lesbian themes in Peru. One of Bayly’s greatest achievements is to make his novels difficult to categorize by touching on several genres very successfully with his use of narrative style. Bayly is a key figure in twentieth-century Peruvian literature. He is the new voice after Vargas Llosa and Bryce Echenique, and is the Peruvian link to a globalized narrativa joven and the Latin American McOndo movement. He addresses aspects of youth culture (drugs, pop culture, music, food, clothes) with an unprecedented blend of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Yet Bayly does not merely re-create Peruvian slang and pop cultural references but expands them, increasing their richness. Another of his achievements is that his writing is very much about Lima and does not exclude socio-political critique (of Sendero, García, corruption, class inequalities, migration problems, violence). The ferocious attacks on Bayly are predominantly ideologically charged and related to the figure of Bayly, and the fact that he crossed over from being a talk-show host to a writer and failed at university in a country where writers and literary critics are given a stamp of approval by having a university degree. As well as providing an unprecedented breaking down of culto, masivo and popular in Peruvian literature, Bayly has used this focus on his personality to market himself in his narrative as ‘scandalous’ and has highlighted his image as ‘el niño terrible de la televisión’. His use of humour and the first person are the two most original aspects of his work. Bayly’s narrative identities and his television image are inseparable yet confusing, allowing no clear reading of his work. Furthermore, there is a clear shift towards an increasing preoccupation with marketing concerns in his work (and television as well). Bayly has included new strategies of marketing Peruvian narrative, using television, publicity stunts and gossip. By La mujer de mi hermano Bayly’s narrative shows an absence of political or aesthetic complexity in favour of superficial marketing strategies and an easily read format based on dialogue. In this novel, Bayly focuses on consumer delights centred in Miami and US popular culture to sell books. The huge marketing campaign of La mujer de mi hermano – perhaps unprecedented within Latin America – reflects and is the final stage in the transformation of Bayly from ‘scandalous’ writer and enfant terrible into the phenomenon of the baylyboom – a phenomenon that has dominated the market of 1990s culture in Peru. Thays’ ‘high’ cultural response in El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad is strikingly original given the vogue and success of Bayly’s

key cities such as Puno at least one student was reported dead and more than fifty people were seriously injured.

CONCLUSION

111

narrativa joven. It is striking also that Thays found a space for his work in this literary market. As well as explicitly reacting against Bayly’s literatura light, Thays underscores his artistic pretensions by publicizing his participation at literary conferences, by writing ideologically slanted criticism such as ‘La edad de la inocencia’ (mentioned in the Introduction), by presenting a television programme (Vano oficio) that focuses on a ‘lost’ tradition of writers. While Thays’ signposting of his ‘high’ cultural qualifications and aspirations is at times as overbearing as Bayly’s insistence that he is uneducated, Thays’ novels successfully stimulate the reader on many different levels, with plot lines interwoven with sophisticated literary discussion. His oeuvre as a whole and persona therefore stand in opposition to Bayly. His three novels – Escena de caza, El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad – present the reader with a vast web of intertextual literary and philosophical references: these first-person-centred postmodern narratives are contextualized with contemporary discussion (for example, references to editorial trends and internet technology) and yet look back towards modernist aesthetics, particularly in terms of the role of the intellectual in society. To this effect, Thays idealizes the figures of Arguedas, Borges, Stendhal, Zola, Foster, Adán, and (in particular) Nabokov. His disdain for social comment and withdrawal into a literary world create an indulgent read, taking the reader’s imagination to the cultural centres of Europe (Venice, Paris, London). Both El viaje interior and La disciplina de la vanidad are above all journeys of self-discovery, with the narrator searching for ‘mi nueva patria interior’ through reading/writing, and the central paradox being that the narratives prioritize a yo that is in the process of being fragmented/lost. Both are self-reflexive, critical narratives: the protagonist of El viaje interior reflects on the loss of his lover, as well as on history/ruins/Braudel, and La disciplina de la vanidad balances the petty world of literary critics and writers at a conference with a window into Thays’ writing process by means of the protagonist’s discussions with Mario. While Thays spurns literature of overt social comment, there is much discussion about literature – including boom and light – and about what it means to be a writer, with Onetti and Nabokov representing ideals. There is an attempt to find a viable literary alternative to the baylyboom in the process of writing, with an individualistic and didactic approach to writing. There is emphasis on the individual’s perception and experience of history and culture: ‘mi historia, sobre todo’ (1999a, 43). However, while he turns away from social comment to literary individuality, Thays’ novels are political in an oblique way as literature is posited as an alternative to history: Thays’ highbrow novels explore the ways in which narrative can offer alternative and fruitful insight into social, historical and cultural events – ‘la literatura refleja la realidad del revés del espejo’ (2000, 65). Furthermore, this role of narrative in exploring socio-political complexities and forcing reappraisal reflects the importance of culture in the

112

CONCLUSION

post-Fujimori regeneration of Peru. As well as aiming to create an aesthetic project that is enjoyable to read, Thays – as critic and writer – plays an important role in the resurgence of Peruvian narrative (which in turn is part of the regeneration of Peruvian culture at the end of the 1990s), in providing a successful alternative to the baylyboom and being published by a local company (the Universidad Católica). In reacting against a ‘política de bestsellerización’, Thays is an accomplished writer who has also enjoyed the success and the prestige he sets out to discover in Escena de caza. Benavides’ two novels to date offer an aesthetically challenging and explicitly politicized alternative to both the mass-marketed baylyboom and to the ‘high’ cultural, individualized narratives of Thays. With Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo Benavides finds a way out of the ‘paralysis’ and ‘blockage’ created by the bipolar, oppositional stances offered by Bayly and Thays. Rather than align himself with or reject outright these poles, Benavides builds on them. With what has been marketed by Alfaguara as an aesthetic and political ‘puzzle’, Benavides’ narrative has achieved mass sales and the novelist has secured a high-profile publishing contract and claimed the ‘high’ ground with his self-portrayal as a well-educated and qualified writer. While the two novels probe into political events and reflect different social realities of different Peruvians, the reader is also forced to cope with aesthetic complexities (different narrative angles and voices, interweaving plot lines and time lapses, elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture). The novels therefore force an aesthetic as well as a political response in the reader. Furthermore, as well as providing aesthetic and cultural challenges, Benavides builds on Bayly’s narrativa joven and attention to the social and linguistic particularities of Lima (particularly in the second novel). In terms of style, Los años inútiles pushes the novela total to its limits: in employing multiple plot lines and characters, ‘telescoped’ dialogue and montage to create a ‘puzzle’, Benavides refines and ties plot threads together with considerable agility, making the novels exciting and compact. The ‘mural’ of Lima that Benavides creates in Los años inútiles is noteworthy both because of its scale and because of the pathos afforded characters such as Luisa and Mosca, owing to the way in which a variety of narrative angles (including interior monologue) presents an increasingly ironic and conflictive picture of their precarious existences. This picture of Peruvian life is much more vivid and diverse than Bayly’s portrayal of Lima, which highlights the lifestyles of the upper classes. In terms of themes, Benavides focuses on explicit politics in the García period and strikes a balance between a model of power (macro politics) and the effects it has on individuals (micro politics) – which are brought home to us in narrative format by the polished novelistic techniques used. The reader is given a representation of an aesthetic and political system in the context of national and international economics (which are shown to be interconnected). Both novels also incorporate elements of the folletín by focusing on the ins and outs of the domestic routines and love lives

CONCLUSION

113

of the main characters. El año que rompí contigo builds on these elements and aims for the narrativa joven market by focusing on culture and education in the lives of young characters as they try to come to terms with the social and political chaos that has continued from the García era to the time of writing, with Toledo declaring a state of emergency in May 2003. The few characters who have faith or a personal investment in politics are left disillusioned in a seemingly hopeless city. Similarly, the reader who tries to find a solution to the aesthetic and political puzzle is left with little hope or clear answers. The explicitness of Benavides’ project in marrying aesthetics and politics in narrative forces a questioning of the relationship between culture and politics in Peru, and this takes us back to both key moments in Peruvian culture/society (the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s) and to the postmodern theorists used in this study who consider this issue – especially Hutcheon and Jameson. It is necessary to rethink/rework the relationship between writer and politics in Peru in the context of previous debates – most notably by César Vallejo and Vargas Llosa. While Vallejo (1973) argued for combining aesthetics with a Marxist social objective (with a prioritizing of politics) in the collection of essays El arte y la revolución, Vargas Llosa (1991) has argued for the need for literature to be socially engaged (with an emphasis on aesthetics). What has remained constant in Vargas Llosa’s very changeable work and politics since his Rómulo Gallegos acceptance speech in Caracas in 1967 is this idea that ‘literatura es fuego’ and that the writer should accept his social responsibilities. In considering Benavides in the context of the relationship between narrative and politics in Peru, it is possible to identify three periods: (1) the 1930s, with Arguedas’ modern indigenista narrative, Mariátegui’s indigenista politics and Vallejo’s socially engaged poetry and essays; (2) the 1960s, with Vargas Llosa’s social defiance through modern narrative and high-profile status as intellectual; (3) the 1990s, with an oblique postmodern politics in narrative that includes Bayly, Thays and Benavides. In terms of this question of politics in literature, Bayly, Thays and Benavides all agree on the power of suggestion and ambiguity in narrative. While Thays (1999a, 108) suggests that narrative can build on and challenge versions of social, political and cultural events and ‘facts’ – ‘narrar es suplantar [. . .] es hacer paréntesis ahí donde no hay un texto oficial’ – Benavides is interested in the power of suggestion in narrative to create a web of political ambiguities: ‘lo importante es aquello que no está escrito, lo que se sugiere’.5 In line with Hutcheon’s (1989, 11) and Jameson’s (1992a, 29) belief that mass culture can be subversive, not only does Bayly’s narrative have a political edge but because of its place in Peruvian popular culture it has reached a very wide audience. However, the fact that his politics are confused and superfi-

5

Taken from Benavides’ internet interview with Chiappe (2002).

114

CONCLUSION

cial – with clear traces of misogyny – means that Bayly’s narrative does not constitute a social project that warrants comparison with Arguedas, Vargas Llosa or Benavides. In terms of the marrying of politics and aesthetics, Benavides is the most successful Peruvian novelist since Arguedas. While Vargas Llosa has become directly involved in politics by standing for President with FREDMO and because his politics have been ambiguous and unconvincing – switching from Marxism in the 1970s to what Benavides terms his ‘alarmante entusiasmo thatcheriano’ in the 1980s – Benavides has achieved a better balance by presenting an oblique critique of power rather than representing a party and by avoiding any conflictual personal or political involvement. Benavides takes Thays’ cultural formula – ‘narrar es suplantar’ – and employs it in a social way by questioning official and accepted versions of events and by undermining in his narratives all faith in grand narratives, parties or states. The upside to this questioning is a political engagement that might be considered necessary in the treatment of a country that has urgent social problems. The downside is the negativity of Benavides’ viewpoint: his political engagement leads to a total lack of faith and hope in politics and in particular Peruvian politics, so in a sense this justifies Thays’ retreat into a ‘pure’ aesthetic, if not Bayly’s narrativa joven – though at least Thays aims for literary as well as commercial achievement. However, the return of politics to the centre of Peruvian narrative is important and does publicize and force reassessment of social problems in a country where freedom of public speech – as demonstrated by the Fujimori years and by Toledo’s use of the estado de emergencia in May 2003 – is continually under threat, and in this sense it can be concluded that Benavides’ political project has a positive role, even if it is bleak in outlook. This study of Peruvian narrative 1994–2003 has presented the mass cultural phenomenon of Bayly in Peru by emphasizing the author’s original treatment of homosexuality in three of his novels and by considering the narrative style used in six of his seven novels. As well as being the most prominent exponent of literatura light in Peru, Bayly’s novels have been hugely successful throughout South America and Spain since the mid-1990s, which in itself is a notable achievement. Three of his novels deliver a narrativa joven formula with panache, and present the reader with the original and highly conflictive setting of Lima in the 1980s/1990s, as well as offering an interesting take on coming out – something almost undocumented and unspoken in Lima before Bayly. Thays has responded to this baylyboom with an oppositional stance by means of an individualistic and highly elaborate narrative style in novels that prioritize presenting the reader with engaging and demanding aesthetic and cultural discussion. Thays has played a significant role in responding to the mass success of Bayly by producing a local novelistic project that has been able – in the very limited marketplace of Lima – to take on globalized mass culture with both success and critical

CONCLUSION

115

acclaim. In a different historical period (the 1930s), before the late capitalist takeover and mass industrialization of culture, Vallejo addressed the question of what he termed a ‘proletarian literature’.6 While it can be argued that Benavides’ narrative is far removed from the category of ‘proletarian’ culture because his writing maintains the aesthetic standards set by Thays and because his politics are oblique (with no revolutionary social praxis in the ways proposed by Vallejo and the avant-garde), this book presents the case that – by means of his aesthetic and political ‘puzzle’ – he does probe into ‘proletarian’ issues such as poverty, unemployment, discrimination and collective action through workers’ unions, as well as mainstream issues, such as racial and gender discrimination, crime, violence and alcoholism. Furthermore, in marrying aesthetic and political complexity in Los años inútiles and El año que rompí contigo, Benavides also continues elements of the narrativa joven and builds on/develops further Bayly’s successful but limited breaking down of elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, as well as Thays’ prioritizing of aesthetic challenges. Though Peru has seen civil unrest in 2003 and 2004, Benavides writes from Spain and is not at the cusp of revolution or war, as was Vallejo in the 1930s, but he keeps ‘proletarian’ issues prominent in ‘bourgeois’ culture in his two novels published to date. In building on Bayly and Thays, Benavides rekindles Vallejo’s ‘historic battle’ in a postmodern context, bringing back to life Peruvian narrative of the early 2000s by means of finding a Third Way out of the ‘blockage’ of Bayly and Thays and by means of both social complexity and novelistic virtuosity.

6 This idea is taken from the essay ‘Duelo entre dos literaturas’, which is part of El arte y la revolución – see Vallejo (1973, 94–9).

BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY TEXTS Alegría, C. 1973. El mundo es ancho y ajeno, Lima: Editorial Universo. Allende, I. 1987. Eva Luna, Mexico: Edivision. Ampuero, F. 1992. Caramelo verde, Lima: Jaime Campodónico. Arguedas, J. M. 1970. Todas las sangres, Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada. ———. 1985. Indios, mestizos y señores, Lima: Ediciones Horizonte. ———. 1990. El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo, Madrid: CSIC. ———. 1995. Los ríos profundos, Madrid: Cátedra. Bayly, J. 1994. No se lo digas a nadie, Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1995. Fue ayer y no me acuerdo, Barcelona: Anagrama. ———. 1996. Los últimos días de “La Prensa”, Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1997. La noche es virgen, Barcelona: Anagrama. ———. 1999. Yo amo a mi mami, Barcelona: Anagrama. ———. 2000. Los amigos que perdí, Barcelona: Anagrama. ———. 2002. La mujer de mi hermano, Barcelona: Planeta. Benavides, J. E. 2002. Los años inútiles, Madrid: Alfaguara. ———. 2003. El año que rompí contigo, Madrid: Alfaguara. Bryce Echenique, A. 1995. Un mundo para Julius, Barcelona: Anagrama. ————. 1999. La amigdalitis de Tarzán, Madrid: Alfaguara. Chiappe, D. 2002. ‘Creo que hay esperanza’, Verbigracia.com [Internet], 21 September. Available from: [Accessed 23 May 2004: page since removed]. Cueto, A. 1993. Deseo de noche, Lima: Apoyo. ———. 1994. Amores de invierno, Lima: Apoyo. ———. 1995. El vuelo de la ceniza, Lima: Apoyo. ———. 1996. Cinco para las nueve y otros cuentos, Lima: Alfaguara. Fuentes, C. 1995. La muerte de Artemio Cruz, Madrid: Cátedra. Fuguet, A. and S. Gómez (eds). 1996. McOndo, Barcelona: Grijalbo-Mondadori. Gutiérrez, M. 1991. La violencia del tiempo, Lima: Milla Batres. Mendez, J. C. 2001. ‘Ya no quiero caerles bien’, Caretas [Internet], 20 December. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Morgado, M. 1999. ‘¿Quién es la mami?’, Barcelona Review [Internet], 12. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Puig, M. 1976. El beso de la mujer araña, Barcelona: Seix Barral.

118

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rodríguez, G. 2001. La furia de Aquiles, Lima: Santillana. Sanchís, I. 2002. ‘Jaime Bayly: “Soy un profesional del lado oscuro” ’, La Vanguardia [Internet], 18 March. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Silva Santisteban, R. 1995. Me perturbas, Lima: El Santo Oficio. Thays, I. 1995. Escena de caza, Lima: El Santo Oficio. ———. 1999a. El viaje interior, Lima: PEISA. ———. 1999b. ‘La edad de la inocencia: acerca de la narrativa peruana última’, Apuntes.org [Internet], 5 November. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 1999c. ‘En el centenario de Borges’, Quehacer [Internet], 119. Available from: [Accessed 11 September 2000: page since removed]. ———. 2000. La disciplina de la vanidad, Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2003. Untitled ‘Entrevista’ [Internet], Sistema de Bibliotecas, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru), 18 January. Available from: [Accessed 23 February 2003: page since removed]. Urquidi Illanes, J. 1983. Lo que Varguitas no dijo, La Paz: Khana Cruz. Vargas Llosa, M. 1969. Conversación en la catedral, Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1978. La tía Julia y el escribidor, Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1995. La ciudad y los perros, Barcelona: Seix Barral. SECONDARY TEXTS Alegre, A. 2001. ‘Néstor García Canclini’, Bitácora [Internet], 14 February. Available from: [Accessed 27 March 2002: page since removed]. Alvarez Morales, J. 2001. ‘Un talibán sin panorama’, Decajon.com [Internet], 30 October. Available from: [Accessed 27 November 2001: page since removed]. Amar Sánchez, A. M. 2001. ‘Deserted Cities: Pop and Disenchantment in Turnof-the-Century Latin American Narrative’, in D. A. Castillo and E. Paz Soldán. (eds). Latin American Literature and Mass Media, London: Garland Publishing, 207–221. Amnesty International. 1987. ‘Disappearances’, Torture and Summary Executions by Government Forces after the Prison Revolts of June 1986, London: Amnesty International. Arboleda, M. 1995. ‘Social Attitudes and Sexual Variance in Lima’, in S. O. Murray (ed.). Latin American Male Homosexualities, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 100–110. ———, and S. O. Murray. 1995. ‘Stigma Transformation and Relexification’, in

BIBLIOGRAPHY

119

S. O. Murray (ed.). Latin American Male Homosexualities, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 138–144. Arce Borja, L. 1989. Guerra popular en el Perú, Brussels: self-published. Arnold, M. 1994. Culture and Anarchy, London: Yale University Press. Bances, M. 2002. ‘Iván Thays: El viaje interior’, More Ferarum [Internet], 4. Available from:

[Accessed 20 December 2002: page since removed]. Bergmann, E. L. and P. J. Smith (eds). 1995. ¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, London: Duke University Press. Bersani, L. 1995. Homos, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Beverley, J. 1999. Subalternity and Representation, London: Duke University Press. Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture, London: Routledge. Bossio, E. 1995. ‘Interview with a Gay Activist’, in O. Starn, C. I. Degregori and R. Kirk (eds). A Peru Reader, London: Duke University Press, 477–481. Bourdieu, P. 1988. Homo Academicus, Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1989. Distinction, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Braudel, F. 1966. La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II, Paris: Librairie Armand Colin. Bristow, J. 1997. Sexuality, London: Routledge. Brunner, J. J. 1986. Los debates sobre la modernidad y el futuro de América Latina, Santiago: Flacso. Burt, J. 1998. ‘Shining Paths and the “Decisive Battle” in Lima’s barriadas: The Case of Villa El Salvador’, in S. Stern. Shining and Other Paths, London: Duke University Press, 267–306. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble, London: Routledge. ———. 1993a. ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in H. Abelove, M. A. Barale and D. M. Halperin (eds). The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 307–321. ———. 1993b. Bodies that matter, New York: Routledge. Cáceres, C. and others. 1991. ‘Sexual behaviour and frequency of antibodies to HIV-1 in a group of Peruvian male homosexuals’, Bulletin of the PanAmerican Health Organisation, 25: 306–319. Castro-Klarén, S. 1992. Mario Vargas Llosa, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Clarke, E. O. 2000. Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere, London: Duke University Press. Colás, S. 1994. Postmodernity in Latin America. The Argentine Paradigm, London: Duke University Press. Cornejo Polar, A. 1982. Sobre literatura y crítica latinoamericanas, Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela. ———. 1989. La formación de la tradición literaria en el Perú, Lima: CEP. Crabtree, J. 1992. Peru under García, London: Macmillan. ———, and J. Thomas (eds). 1998. Fujimori’s Peru: The Political Economy, University of London: Institute of Latin American Studies. De la Riva Agüero, J. 1905. Carácter de la literatura del Perú independiente, Lima: Rosay.

120

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dore, E. (ed.). 1997. Gender Politics in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press. Escobar Ulloa, E. 2003. ‘Retrato de un país a la deriva’, Lateral [Internet], 99. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003: page since removed]. Fanon, F. 1986. Black Skin, White Masks, London: Pluto Press. Fascetto, J. 1999. ‘No hay irrestricta libertad de prensa en el Perú’, Expreso [Internet], 16 February. Available from: [Accessed 16 October 1999: page since removed]. Faverón, G. 2001. ‘Los últimos días de “La Prensa” ’, Apuntes.org.pe [Internet], 8 September. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003: page since removed]. ———. 2002. ‘La narrativa peruana después de Vargas Llosa’, Sololiteratura.com [Internet], 18 April. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———, E. Planas and I. Thays. 1998. ‘La literatura y el baylyboom’, Quehacer [Internet], 111. Available from: [Accessed 23 March 2003: page since removed]. Ferman, C. (ed.). 1996. The Postmodern in Latin and Latino American Cultural Narratives, New York: Garland. Fiske, John. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture, Boston: Unwin Hyman. Forgacs, D. 1988. A Gramsci Reader, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Foster, D. 1991. Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing, Austin: University of Texas Press. ———. 1994. Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Foucault, M. 1984. The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, London: Penguin. Franco, C. (ed.). 1983. EL PERU DE VELASCO Vol. 1, Lima: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Participación. Freundt-Thurne, U. (ed.). 2000. Conferencia en Lima. Realidad y ficción en la literatura de Bayly, Lima: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. Fuguet, A. 2001. ‘Magical Neoliberalism’, Foreign Policy [Internet], July/ August. Available from: [Accessed 20 July 2003: page since removed]. ———. 2003. ‘Presentación McOndo’, Fuguet.com [Internet]. Available from: [Accessed 28 September 2003]. Fuss, D. 1991. Inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, London: Routledge. Gálvez, J. 1915. Posibilidades de una genuina literatura nacional, Lima: Moral. García Canclini, N. 1982. Las culturas populares en el capitalismo, Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen. ———. 1995a. Culturas híbridas, Argentina: Editorial Sudamericana. ———. 1995b. Consumidores y ciudadanos, Mexico: Editorial Grijalbo. ———. 1999. La globalización imaginada, Mexico: Paidós.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

121

———. 2001. ‘Hay que reconocer la diferencia y ver qué se puede hacer con ella’ [Internet], Institut de la Comunicació (Barcelona), 16 March. Available from: [Accessed 10 October 2001: page since removed]. García Márquez, G. and M. Vargas Llosa. 1988. Diálogo sobre la novela latinoamericana, Lima: Perú Andino. Gerdes. D. 1985. Mario Vargas Llosa, Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers. González Stephen, B. 1985. Contribución al estudio de la historiografía literaria hispanoamericana, Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia. González Vigil, R. 1990. Retablo de autores peruanos, Lima: Arco Iris. Grossberg, L., C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds). 1992. Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge. Guzmán, A. 1980. ‘Somos los iniciadores’ [Internet], Comité Central Ampliado, Partido Comunista del Perú, 24 August. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 1988. ‘Entrevista al Presidente Gonzalo – 1988’ [Internet], Comité Central Ampliado, Partido Comunista del Perú, 24 July. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Hall, S. 1980. ‘Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms’, Media, Culture, Society, 2: 57–72. Hassan, I. 1982. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, New York: Oxford University Press. Herlinghaus, H. and M. Walter. 1994. Posmodernidad en la periferia, Berlin: Langer Verlag. Hooks, B. 1989. Talking back, London: Sheba Feminist Publishers. Huamán, M. A. 1996. ‘¿Narrar la crisis o crisis del narrar?’, Lienzo, 17: 409–428. Hutcheon, L. 1989. The Politics of Postmodernism, London: Routledge. Hutcheon, L. and J. Natoli (eds). 1993. The Postmodern Reader, Albany: State University of New York Press. Imaginando.com. 2003. ‘Jorge Eduardo Benavides’, Imaginando.com [Internet], 3 March. Available from: [Accessed 8 March 2003: page since removed]. Jameson, F. 1972. The Prison-house of Language, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1984. ‘The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debate’, New German Critique, 33: 53–65. ———. 1992a. Signatures of the Visible, London: Routledge. ———. 1992b. The Geopolitical Aesthetic, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1994. The Seeds of Time, New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2000. ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, in M. Hardt and K. Weeks. The Jameson Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 188–232. Jiménez Torres, W. 2002. ‘Jaime Bayly: imitándose a sí mismo’, Peru.com [Internet], 15 October. Available from:

122

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Accessed 26 October 2002: page since removed]. Juan-Navarro, S. 2000. Archival Reflections, London: Associated University Press. Label France. 1996. ‘Fernand Braudel’, Label France [Internet], 23. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Lafuente, F. 1991. Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica. Lauer, M. 1989. El sitio de la literatura, Lima: Mosca Azul. Lindstrom, N. 1998. The Social Conscience of Latin American Writing, Austin: University of Texas Press. Lyotard, F. 1984. The Postmodern Condition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Martín-Barbero, J. 1987. De los medios a las mediaciones: comunicación, cultura y hegemonía, Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili. ———. 1993. Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations, London: Sage Publications. ———. 1996. ‘Communication and Modernity in Latin America’, in C. Ferman. The Postmodern in Latin and Latino American Cultural Narratives, New York: Garland Publishing, 15–27. ———. 1999. ‘Communication, Thinking and Culture’, The Communication Initiative [Internet], 11 May. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Meza, A. 2001. ‘Entrevista con Luis Peirano sobre la televisión cultural en el Perú. El primer año de la Franja Cultural’, Gestión.com.pe [Internet], 26 February. Available from: [Accessed 27 February 2003: page since removed]. Murray, S. O. (ed.). 1995. Latin American Male Homosexualities, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Orquendo, A. 1975. La narrativa peruana: 1950–1970, Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Ortiz, R. 1988. A moderna tradição brasileira, San Pablo: Brasiliense. ———. 2001a. ‘Globalización, poder y miedo’, Número [Internet], 20. Available from: [Accessed 6 October 2001: page since removed]. ———. 2001b. ‘La modernidad-mundo’, Innovarium.com [Internet], 21 November. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Oviedo, J. M. 1977. Mario Vargas Llosa: la invención de una realidad, Barcelona: Seix Barral. Pérez, A. J. 1995. Modernismo, vanguardias, posmodernidad, Argentina: Ediciones Corregidor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

123

Perriam, C. 1993. ‘Gay and Lesbian Culture’, in H. Graham and J. Labanyi (eds). Spanish Cultural Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 393–395. Poole, D. and G. Rénique. 1992. Peru. Time of Fear, London: Latin American Bureau. ———. 2001. ‘Movimiento popular, transición democrática y la caída de Fujimori’, Cyberayllu [Internet], 10 June. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Quintanilla Ponce, A. 2001. ‘Los caminos del mestizaje cultural peruano’, Cyberayllu [Internet], 8 October. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Richard, N. 1994. ‘Latinoamérica y la posmodernidad’, in H. Herlinghaus and M. Walter (eds). Posmodernidad en la periferia, Berlin: Langer Verlag, 210–222. Riff, J. 1999. ‘Francisco Lombardi: “Los presupuestos extranjeros hacen perder autenticidad” ’, La Tercera [Internet], 30 August. Available from: [Accessed 20 September 1999: page since removed]. Roberts, A. 2000. Fredric Jameson, London: Routledge. Rowe, W. and V. Schelling. 1991. Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America, London: Verso. Rubio M. 1990. ‘Perú: antes y después de Fujimori’, Quehacer, 65: 4–11. Rudolph, J. 1992. Peru. The Evolution of a Crisis, Westport: Praeger Publishers. Ruiz Bravo, P. 2001. Sub-versiones masculinas, Lima: Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán. Ruiz Vega, A. 2002. ‘Los años inútiles’, Libros que he leído [Internet], 20 October. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Russell, C. 1993. ‘The Context of the Concept’, in L. Hutcheon and J. Natoli. A Postmodern Reader, Albany: State University of New York Press, 287–298. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Salazar Bondy, S. 1964. Lima la horrible, Mexico: Ediciones Era. Sánchez, B. 2002. ‘Los años inútiles: Perú, entre la corrupción y la decepción’, Terra.es [Internet], 25 February. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Sánchez, L. A. 1974. Panorama de la literatura del Perú, Lima: Editorial Milla Batres. Sandfort, T. and others. 2000. Lesbian and Gay Studies, London: Sage. Sarlo, B. 1992. La imaginación técnica, Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. ———. 1994. Escenas de la vida posmoderna, Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe Argentina. Satiria. 2003. ‘Los años inútiles’, Satiria.com [Internet], 3 March. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Schelling, V. 2000. Through the Kaleidoscope, London: Verso. Sedgwick, E. K. 1993. ‘Epistemology of the Closet’, in H. Abelove, M. A. Barale

124

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and D. M. Halperin (eds). The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 45–62. Sheridan, A. 1980. The Will to Truth, London: Tavistock. Spargo, T. 1999. Foucault and Queer Theory, Duxford: Icon. Spivak, G. 1987. In Other Worlds, London: Methuen. ———. 1990. The Post-colonial Critic, London: Routledge. Standish, P. 1982. La ciudad y los perros, London: Grant & Cutler. Starn, O., C. I. Degregori and R. Kirk (eds). 1995. The Peru Reader, London: Duke University Press. Stern, S. 1998. Shining and Other Paths, London: Duke University Press. Storey, J. 1993. An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. ———. 1999. Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life, London: Arnold. Tamayo Vargas, A. 1976. Literatura Peruana. Tomo I, Lima: Librería Studium Editores. Terra.com.pe. 2003. ‘La mujer de mi hermano’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 3 March. Available from: [Accessed 23 May 2004]. Toro Montalvo, C. 1994. Literatura Peruana. De los Incas a la Época Contemporánea, Lima: AFA Editores. Tucker, S. 1982. ‘The Power of Naming’, Christopher Street, 58: 50–63. UNESCO. 1980. Many Voices, One World, The MacBride Report 1980, Paris: UNESCO. Universidad del Pacífico (UPC). 1990. El Debate, Universidad del Pacífico: Centro de Investigación. Valerio, M. 2000a. ‘Jaime Bayly y su mamá’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 4 December. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 2000b. ‘Jaime Bayly: Sexo, drogas y televisión’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 4 December. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 2000c. ‘Jaime Bayly y la envidia’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 4 December. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 2000d. ‘Jaime Bayly, Miami y mami’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 4 December. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. ———. 2000e. ‘Jaime Bayly y la conciencia’, Terra.com.pe [Internet], 4 December. Available from: [Accessed 19 August 2003]. Vallejo, C. 1973. ‘Duelo entre dos literaturas’, El arte y la revolución, Lima: Mosca Azul, 94–99.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

125

Vargas Llosa, M. 1975. La orgía perpetua. Flaubert y “Madame Bovary”, Barcelona: Seix Barral. ———. 1991. A Writer’s Reality, London: Faber and Faber. Velázquez Castro, M. 1998. ‘Jaime Bayly. La noche es virgen’, Ajos y zafiros, 1: 86–88. ———. 2001. ‘Nuevos sujetos y escenarios de la novela en los 90’, Ajos y zafiros [Internet], 2. Available from: [Accessed 6 August 2003]. Vidal, H. 1987. Poética de la población marginal, Minneapolis, Prisma Institute. Wacquant, L. J. D. and P. Bourdieu. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity. Wood, D. 2000. The Fictions of Alfredo Bryce Echenique, London: King’s College London, Department of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies. Williams, P. and L. Chrisman (eds). 1993. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Williams, R. 1983. Keywords, London: Fontana. Williams, R. L. 1986. Mario Vargas Llosa, New York: Ungar. ———. 1995. The Postmodern Novel in Latin America, New York: St Martin’s Press.

INDEX All the President’s Men 101 Amar Sánchez, Ana María 15, 16 Arboleda, Manuel 23, 25, 29, 41, 42, 109 Arguedas, José María 70, 111, 113, 114 Bayly, Jaime and characterization 33, 34, 36, 39, 49, 50, 51, 54, 61 and literatura light 1, 2, 3, 10, 19, 46, 73, 74, 90, 111, 114 and narrativa joven 2, 10, 19, 37, 46, 61, 90, 91, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115 and McOndo 4, 15, 19, 56, 61, 110 and use of slang 25, 48, 50, 58, 61, 76, 109, 110 Fue ayer y no me acuerdo 4, 15, 16, 17, 19, 29, 30, 32, 37, 39, 42, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 109 La mujer de mi hermano 4, 36, 38, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 68, 71, 77, 90, 110 La noche es virgen 4, 16, 17, 19, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 66, 90, 108, 109 Los amigos que perdí 4, 39, 59 Los últimos días de “La prensa” 4, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 59 media work Alan García interview 4, 24, 35, 52 Baylyboom 3, 4, 5, 18, 19, 62, 63, 66, 69, 87, 110, 111, 112, 114 reputation and marketing 35, 41, 63, 76, 109 talk-show host 1, 4, 63, 110 Terra.com.pe website 18, 19, 31, 36, 44, 46, 47, 50 No se lo digas a nadie film version 26, 28, 41 portrayal of coming out 25, 26, 27, 30, 109 reviews in the press 6, 39, 60

portrayal of Lima 16, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 34, 37, 43, 44, 46, 52, 54, 58 socio-political critique 52–54, 61 Yo amo a mi mami 4, 7, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 59 Bellatín, Mario 23 Benavides, Jorge Eduardo and Bildungsroman 97, 98, 105 and descomposición 102, 106, 107 and grand narratives 93, 102, 114 and idea of social detective 96, 97 and Third Way 19, 88, 90, 92, 103, 115 and Vargas Llosa 88, 90, 91, 94, 95, 99, 100, 103, 104, 106 concept of the puzzle 88, 93, 95, 96, 97, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107 El año que rompí contigo 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107 link between aesthetic and political system 93, 94, 112 Los años inútiles 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107 mural of Lima 97, 98, 100, 106 novela totalizadora 89, 90, 94 portrayal of Lima 93, 97, 98–99, 100, 106 social issues 94, 104 Bergmann, Emile L. 22, 36 Bersani, Leo and coming out 32, 38 and reading of Genet 35 assimilation/subversion 32, 35 Bodies That Matter (Butler) 35 Bossio, Enrique 27 Bourdieu, Pierre ‘cultural capital’ 6, 41, 79 Distinction 6, 10, 83 ‘high aesthetic’ 6, 7, 82 ‘popular aesthetic’ 6, 7, 10, 82 taste 6

128

INDEX

Braudel, Fernand 69, 79, 80, 81, 111 Bryce Echenique, Alfredo Un mundo para Julius 17, 46 Butler, Judith Gender Trouble 31, 34, 35 performativity 28, 35 ‘social scripting’ 109 Colás, Santiago 9 Coming out 9, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37, 48, 58, 109 Consumidores y ciudadanos (García Canclini) 66, 68 Conversación en la catedral (Vargas Llosa) 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 96, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106 Crabtree, John 16, 17 Crónicas marcianas 31, 47 Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature (Foster) 22 Cultural studies 5, 6, 7, 12–13, 14, 18, 19, 23, 37, 39, 76, 92 see also Latin American cultural studies Culturas híbridas (García Canclini) 7, 9, 66, 68 Diario de avisos 5, 87 Distinction (Bourdieu) 6, 10, 83 Duyvendak, Jan Willem 37 Eaglteon, Terry 54, 90 El año que rompí contigo (Benavides) and folletín 91, 96, 103 characters 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106 image of Lima 98 El arte y la revolución (Vallejo) 113, 115 El Comercio 15, 24 El viaje interior (Thays) 4, 19, 60, 64, 66, 69, 70–72, 76, 78–81, 83, 84, 110, 111 Elections 2001 19 ¿Entiendes? (Smith and Bergmann) 22, 36 Entrelíneas 5 Escena de caza (Thays) 4, 19, 64, 78, 111, 112 Escenas de la vida posmoderna (Sarlo) 2 Escobar Ulloa, Ernesto 88, 92 Expreso 18, 19, 28, 39 Faverón, Gustavo 3, 6, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 57, 60, 62 Fiske, John 7, 63

Flora Tristán centre 22, 38 Fontaine, Arturo 36, 47 Foster, David Cultural Diversity in Latin American Literature 22 Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing 22 Foucault, Michel 7, 8, 21, 22, 31, 32, 34, 54 FREDMO 95, 99, 114 Freundt-Thurne, Úrsula 36, 47 Fue ayer y no me acuerdo (Bayly) 4, 15, 16, 17, 19, 29, 30, 32, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 46, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 109 Fuguet, Alberto 4, 12, 14, 15, 56, 60, 61, 66 see also McOndo 14, 15, 56, 60, 61, 66 Fujimori, Alberto 14, 17, 24, 28, 30, 37, 42, 66, 85, 89, 90, 92, 94, 99, 109, 112, 114 and control of the media 15, 18 Fuss, Diana 31 Galarza, Sergio 23 García, Alan 4, 16, 24, 35, 38, 52 García Canclini, Néstor bestsellerización 68, 69, 87, 88, 112 Consumidores y ciudadanos 66, 68 Culturas híbridas 7, 9, 66, 68 ‘glocalización’ 62 hybridity 62 Las culturas populares en el capitalismo 7 Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing (Foster) 22 Gay/lesbian studies in Latin America 21–22 Gay rights 9, 26, 38, 39, 40, 109 Gender Trouble (Butler) 31, 33, 34, 35 Geopolitical Aesthetic, The 88, 93, 101 ‘Generation X’ 60 Globalization 1, 5, 6, 11, 12, 56 Gómez, Sergio 4, 56 Gramsci, Antonio 8, 14 Halperin, David 34 Hassan, Ihab 43, 44, 45, 70 Huamán, Miguel Angel 2, 3 Hutcheon, Linda 10, 44, 54, 55, 59, 63, 90 Image of the City (Lynch) 97

INDEX

Izaguirre, Boris 31 Jameson, Fredric and dialectic of postmodernity 66 and definition of postmodernity 9, 10, 43, 81, 82 ‘cognitive mapping’ 66, 97 ‘late’ capitalism 10, 11, 43, 63, 67, 77, 81, 89, 102 ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ 67, 77, 81, 89 Prison-House of Language, The 67 Seeds of Time, The 1, 3, 19, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 77, 79, 85, 89, 106 ‘waning of affect’ 81, 82 Juan-Navarro, Santiago 44, 45 La discplina de la vanidad (Thays) 3, 4, 19, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 83, 84, 85, 91, 110 ‘La edad de la inocencia’ (Thays) 2, 46, 65, 69, 71, 75 La muerte de Artemio Cruz (Fuentes) 95, 105 La mujer de mi hermano (Bayly) 4, 36, 38, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 68, 77, 110 La noche es virgen (Bayly) complicitous critique 55, 57, 58, 59 conversational fluidity 46, 47 performance 34, 36 sense of complicity with reader 48 socio-political critique 16, 44, 52–53 ‘twentysomething’ Lima 37, 48, 50 La tía Julia y el escribidor (Vargas Llosa) 46, 53 Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (García Canclini) 7 Latin American cultural studies 14 The New Latin Americanism 5, 12 Lima la horrible (Salazar Bondy) 15, 46 Literatura light 1, 2, 3, 10, 19, 46, 74, 90, 111, 114 Los amigos que perdí (Bayly) 4, 39, 59 Los años inútiles (Benavides) commando 94, 95, 96, 99 debt to novela totalizadora and Conversación en la catedral 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106 mecanismo de reloj 94

129

Los últimos días de “La Prensa” (Bayly) and humour 48, 49, 54, 59 and socio-political critique 4, 46, 52, 53, 54 Lynch, Kevin The Image of the City 97 Lyotard, François 9, 71 Malca, Oscar 38, 60, 82 Martín-Barbero, Jésus 5, 7, 8, 14, 16 Mass culture 1, 3, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 25, 37, 39, 41, 42, 55, 59, 109, 113 McOndo (Fuguet and Gómez) 56, 61 McOndo group 1, 14, 15, 19, 56, 60, 61, 110 Media in Peru newspapers 15, 18, 19, 24, 28, 39 television 14–15, 17, 18, 19, 24–25, 35, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 57, 60, 61, 63, 65, 82 vladivideos 15, 18, 24, 66, 85, 109 Meier, Christian 28, 41 MHOL 23, 27, 29, 40 Miami 4, 15, 17, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 37, 39, 44, 56, 57, 58, 62, 80 Miraflores 18, 29, 34, 42, 52, 53, 99, 108 Modernity 6, 9, 11, 12, 26, 45, 85, 102 Montesinos, Vladimiro 14, 15, 24 MRTA 16, 52, 93, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102 Murray, Stephen 23, 25, 41 narrativa culta 1 narrativa joven 2, 10, 19, 37, 61, 90, 91, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115 No se lo digas a nadie (Bayly) film version 26, 28, 41 portrayal of coming out 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 109 reviews in the press 6, 25, 37, 39 Novela totalizadora and Benavides 89, 90, 94 see also Vargas Llosa Ortiz, Renato 5 Panamericana Televisión 24, 33, 52 Parallax View, The 93, 101 Penis envy 30 Perriam, Chris 26 Politics of Postmodernism, The (Hutcheon) 54

130

INDEX

Popular culture and culture industry 3, 8 and marketing 7, 37, 60, 63, 103 Postmodern Reader, The (Hutcheon and Natoli) 54, 60 ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ (Jameson) 67, 77, 81, 89 Postmodernity and Bayly 43–45 and consumerism 2 definitions in Latin America 9 François Lyotard’s definition 71 Fredric Jameson’s definition 1, 10, 43, 61, 66, 67, 68, 82 Peruvian specificities 10, 89–90, 102 Prison-House of Language, The (Jameson) 67 Queer theory and coming out 19, 109 and Latin America 22–23 and subversion 31 and writing the self 32, 33, 46, 109 Resurgence of Peruvian narrative 18, 112 Richard, Nelly 9 Ruiz Bravo, Patricia 22, 38, 39, 41, 109 Salazar Bondy, Sebastián Lima la horrible 15, 46 Salvador 93 Sanchís, Ima 31, 63 Sandfort, Theo 33, 37, 39 Sarlo, Beatriz Escenas de la vida posmoderna 2 Schelling, Vivian and Rowe, William 10 Schuyf, Judith 37 Sedgwick, Eve K. 19, 22, 23, 30, 32, 34, 39 Seeds of Time, The (Jameson) 1, 3, 19, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 77, 79, 85, 89, 106 Sendero Luminoso 16, 52, 95, 99, 101, 102 Smith, Paul Julian 22 Social problems in Lima 1, 15, 52, 76, 88, 92, 107, 114 see also Bayly and Benavides teleparticipación 14, 15, 18 Terra.com.pe 18, 19, 31, 36, 44, 46, 47, 50

Thays, Iván and impression of linearity 70, 77 and intertextuality 64, 71, 76, 77, 84 and use of first person 69, 70, 77, 78, 79 El viaje interior 4, 19, 60, 64, 66, 69, 70–72, 76, 78–81, 83, 84, 110, 111 Escena de caza 4, 19, 64, 78, 111, 112 journey of self-discovery 72, 73, 78 La disciplina de la vanidad 3, 4, 19, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 83, 84, 85, 91, 110 ‘La edad de la inocencia’ 2, 46, 65, 69, 71, 75, 111 leitmotif of ruins 77, 78, 79, 83 literary criticism 65, 73, 81 literary and philosophical references 69 modernist aesthetics 65 postmodern style 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 77, 81, 83 television work 65, 66, 82 Toledo, Alejandro 18, 33, 42, 72, 87, 109, 113 Tucker, Scott 21 Un mundo para Julius (Bryce Echenique) 17, 46 Universidad Católica 7, 29, 64, 69, 82, 112 Valerio, Mario 6, 36, 46, 47, 57 Vallejo, César El arte y la revolución 113, 115 Vano oficio 4, 19, 65, 82, 111 Vargas Llosa, Mario 1990 election campaign 14, 94 Conversación en la catedral 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 96, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106 influence on Benavides 88, 90, 91, 95, 100, 103–104, 115 La tía Julia y el escribidor 46, 53 Velázquez, Márcel 2, 3, 4, 69, 108 Vladivideos 15, 18, 24, 66, 85, 109 Weeks, Jeffrey 37 Williams, Raymond 10, 44, 104 Yo amo a mi mami (Bayly) 4, 7, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 59 Yúdice, George 62