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On Translation
Translation is of course conspiracy. Whatever else it is or may intend, translation represents a concerted move of the few against the many, the foreign against the domestic, there… More
Facts and Fictions
I first met Gabriel García Márquez on Martha’s Vineyard about ten years ago. Since then it’s been a privilege and a pleasure to count this great Latin American writer… More
Romantic Realism
That dinner party is etched in my memory for many reasons: the discussion during soup of the American embargo on Cuba; the recital during entrées by Bill Styron,… More
The Eternal Present
Many months later, besieged by thoughts of an all-too-foreseeable future as an engineer, which I did not want, I went out one winter for a walk in the snow.… More
Narrative Transmutations
Ralph Manheim, the great translator from the German, compared the translator to an actor who speaks as the author would if the author spoke English. A sophisticated and provocative… More
The Real Worlds
Many of us who come from the Caribbean are astounded when people speak of the “implausibility” of magical realism. For in our worldview, as in our much-loved Gabriel García… More
Beauty’s Kamikaze
Just before noon, he stepped out on the balcony and delivered a short speech, appealing to the soldiers to join him and his men in death as true men… More
We Have the Right to Love Autumn
And we, too, have the right to love the last days of autumn and ask:/ Is there room in the field for a new autumn, so we may lie… More
Socialist Realism
I’ll begin by quoting the first paragraph of my review of One Hundred Years of Solitude when the book was first published in the United States thirty-two years ago.… More
Inverted Realism
I remember when I published my first, very unsuccessful novel, a science-fiction novel, which, to the despair of my publishers, I keep telling people not to read. A friend… More
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