BEYOND THE "MARVELOUS REAL": GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ'S ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE AND ALBERTO FUGUET'S THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE.

Abstract

This paper examines the construction of Latin American identity as the place of the marvelous real. This interpretation took place in the literary boom¹ of the 1960's. Rather than analyze the success of the boom, ² this paper discusses the effect of the boom on the construction of Latin America as an exotic European other. The phenomenon of the literary boom has been erected as central not only to Latin American literature, but also to the intellectual, political, and social Latin American discourses for its ontological consequences (Lecuna 25). The boom defined Latin America as the land of the exotic; the region was considered to be itself marvelous. The editorial success of the authors consolidated writers as authorities capable of evaluating and raising matters that were beyond simply literary interests. This magical definition of the region was initiated by Alejo Carpentier with the lure of the poetic vision of magical realism.³ As one of its most influential writers, Carpentier paved the way for the boom writers and intellectuals to caricaturize Latin America as "the voluptuous delights of barbaric otherness whilst satisfying the inherent sense of cultural superiority" of the West (Martin 313)