El humor en los tiempos del boom

Abstract

The author creates a “genealogy” of humor in the boom period of Latin American literature during the 60’s of the last century. He examines the attitudes related to the same which initially were respected by authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa and García Márquez, and he contrasts them with those sustained and maintained over the years by writers such as Julio Cortázar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Carlos Fuentes and the Chilean Jose Donoso. Iwasaki’s reflections seek to establish humor’s reasons for being, from its destabilizing condition, by differentiating it from joke and paradox, as well as the “conversion” process that some novelists such as Vargas Llosa would assume by recognizing their irreverent condition, capable of more effectively stripping those areas of reality that certain expressive strategies, while solemn, did not do so effectively. The author also considers the work of authors such as Manuel Puig and Jorge Ibargüengoitia, who knew how to turn humor into more than a mere rhetorical boast.