The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris

A fascinating look at the peculiar role of Paris as a key location in the Latin American literary lansdscape - a place where the canonical Latin American writers (Garcia-Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Paz, Neruda etc) converged, and in many cases where they chose to spend the greater part of their adult lives. Part biography, part literary criticism, this book should be of great interest to specialists in Latin American literature and also to those with an interest in Paris as a cultural phenomenon.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Introduction: the lure of Paris 1. The voyage out (1893-1939) The French reception 2. Writers' beginnings(Gabriel García Mrquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alfredo Bryce Echenique) 3. Clarifying sojourns (Octavio Paz, Alejandra Pizarnik) 4. Diplomatic pastures (Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Pablo Neruda) Tradition of Pilgrimage: the dream city 5. Interstitial spaces (Julio Cortzar) 6. Transgressive gestures (Severo Sarduy, Copi) Outside Looking In: Paris, city of exiles 7. The privileged eye, writing from distance (Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Juan José Saer) 8. Tsuris of the margins (Luisa Futoransky) Living in Another Language: the problem of audience, community 9. The translated self (Edgardo Cozarinsky) 10. New World transplants--foreigners in French (Eduardo Manet, Silvia Baron Supervielle) 11. Académicien (Hector Bianciotti) Conclusion: the lights of home Notes Bibliography

About the Author :

Jason Weiss lived in Paris throughout the 1980s and has since taught Latin American literature at NYU, The New School, and Cooper Union. Currently he is a freelance writer, editor, and translator. His other books include Writing at Risk: Interviews in Paris with UncommonWriters and Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader.

"As theoretical constructs turn more and more of the past into an abstraction, detailed cultural histories like The Lights of Home give us the breathing space to reimagine global literary life. Deeply informed and painstakingly researched, Jason Weiss's lively work is a truly useful contribution." -- Ammiel Alcalay, author of From theWarring Factions and After Jews and Arabs: RemakingLevantine Culture
"The Lights of Home is an information-packed excellent introduction to expatriate Latin American and Caribbean writers in Paris . . . It marks a major addition to critical writing on several of the principal poets, novelists and essayists of our time." -- Timothy Reiss, Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University
"In a study that combines a panoramic breadth of perspective with a compelling love of detail, Jason Weiss brilliantly explores the fruitful tension between the seductions of exile and the lure of home in the writings of an array of twentieth-century Spanish American writers who lived and worked in Paris. Based on a prodigious amount of research, this fascinating examination of the experience of cultural displacement from Rubén Darío to Hector Bianciotti will change the way we view Spanish American literature." -- Maarten van Delden, Chairman of the Department of Hispanic Studies at Rice University
"Jason Weiss's thoroughgoing and delving investigation shows how Paris was an even more bountiful movable feast for Latin American writers than it was for their northern colleagues. It also shows the great part the city played in the engendering of what came to be called magic realism." -- Gregory Rabassa, Distinguished Professor at Queens College and translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Weiss intersperses the studies with insightful meditations on aspects of [the writers'] circumstances, such as life in a different language, relationships with fellow exiles and evolving attitudes toward the myth of Paris." -- Alicia Austin, France Today