En vilo : tension narrativa y entendimiento

Translated title of the contribution: On tenterhooks : narrative tension and understanding

Chris Andrews

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which three recent Latin American novels generate and maintain narrative tension while resisting the kind of understanding that allows the reader to assign a text to a familiar category and rest assured that the conventions associated with that category will be, by and large, respected. Drawing on the recent theoretical work of the Swiss scholar Raphaël Baroni in La Tension narrative (2007), an analysis of Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star, Rodrigo Rey Rosa's The African Shore and César Aira's Shanytown highlights the concepts of suspense, curiosity and surprise, respectively. All three novels are formidably effective in drawing the reader on, yet all three pose serious cognitive challenges. Shantytown presents the reader with ideas which vary from the almost-platitudinous to the outrageous and obliges the reader to assess each on its merits. The African Shore systematically elides explanations, but its enigmas prompt a reflective activity that goes beyond the frame of the story, achieving an "amplitude of vibration" to quote Walter Benjamin in "The Storyteller." Distant Star provokes unease by imaginatively implicating the reader in a situation of moral perplexity: the extra-judicial killing of a serial killer. Thus it fulfills what Joshua Landy sees as literature's cognitive and ethical task, bringing our values into conflict and obliging us to weigh them against each other.
Translated title of the contributionOn tenterhooks : narrative tension and understanding
Original languageSpanish
Number of pages11
JournalDossier
Volume14
Publication statusPublished - 2011

Keywords

  • Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003

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