Art and Anger

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-1

   PDF

2. Letter to a German Friend

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 3-8

3. Two Peruvians

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 9-30

4. The First Book

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 31-34

5. Las Mariposas

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 35-40

6. The Master of Aracataca

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 41-67

7. The Verbal Quest

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 68-78

8. Art and Anger

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 79-84

9. Pessoa’s Echoes

   • Ilan Stavans

   Pages 85-92

10. Of Arms and the Essayist

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 93-111

11. Vuelta: A Succinct Appraisal

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 112-120

12. Discoveries

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 121-130

13. Mexico: Four Dispatches

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 131-143

14. The Adventures of Maqroll

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 144-149

15. Felipe Alfau

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 150-158

16. The Brick Novel

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 159-166

17. The Latin Phallus: A Survey

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 167-186

18. Translation and Identity

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 187-203

19. Tongue Snatcher

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 204-209

20. Hello Columbus

    • Ilan Stavans

    Pages 210-235

Fascinated by the idea of Western civilization as being a sequence of numerous misinterpretations and misrepresentations, these nineteen essays cover a broad range of topics with the unifying theme being the crossroads where politics and the imagination meet. An essay on linguistics and culture discusses the shaping of Latin America's collective identity; Peru's modern history is approached as a bloody battle between enlightenment and darkness; and in critiques of Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez, Stavans reflects on the dichotomy between pen and sword in the Hispanic world. In 'Letter to a German Friend', Stavans returns to his fate as a Jew in the Southern Hemisphere, and in 'The First Book,' he connects his passion for literature to his initiation into Jewishness. Finally, in a meditation on Columbus's afterlife, he reflects on the many ways in which we reinvent ourselves in order to make sense of the chaotic world that surrounds us.

• enlightenment
• essay
• politics

"Stavans is lively and intelligent, eclectic, sharp-tongued." - Peter Matthiessen

"Ilan Stavans is an inventive interpreter of the contemporary cultures of the Americas." - Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

ILAN STAVANS is Professor of Spanish at Amherst College and the author/editor of over twenty books including The Hispanic Condition (sold over 30,000 copies, 7th printing) and Growing Up Latino (sold over 50,000 copies, 9th printing). In the next year, Stavans's upcoming books include On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (Viking 01) and The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (02). The editor-in-chief of Hopscotch: A Cultural Review, Stavans has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Latino Literature Prize, and was nominated to the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Policies and ethics