Latin American Boom - Literary Influences

Literary Influences

The rise of Latin American literature began with the writings of Jose Martí, Ruben Darío and José Asunción Silva's modernist departures from the European literary canon. European modernist writers like James Joyce have also influenced the writers of the Boom, as have the Latin American writers of the Vanguardia movement. Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez argues that the writers of the Vanguardia were the "true precursors" to the Boom, writing innovative and challenging novels before Borges and others conventionally thought to be the main Latin American inspirations for the mid-20th century movement.

In 1950, Spanish American novelists were tolerated but marginal in the literary landscape, with Paris and New York representing the center of the literary world; by 1975 they were celebrated as central figures. As well as being a publishing phenomenon, the Boom introduced a series of novel aesthetic and stylistic features to world literature. In general—and considering there are many countries and hundreds of important authors—at the start of the period, Realism prevails, with novels tinged by an existentialist pessimism, with well-rounded characters lamenting their destinies, and a straightforward narrative line. In the 1960s, language loosens up, gets hip, pop, streetwise, characters are much more complex, and the chronology becomes intricate, making of the reader an active participant in the deciphering of the text. Late in the period the political adventure goes sour, while the linguistic sophistication reaches a new height, and novelists turn more to a reflection on their own writing, a fiction on fiction or metafiction, while characters and story lines show the corrosive power of a postmodern society, where all is equally available and insignificant.

With the success of the Boom, the work of a previous generation of writers gained access to a new and expanded public. These precursors include Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Alejo Carpentier, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Juan Rulfo.