“The Last Time” by Guillermo Martinez: Latin American boom and its assessment after 60 years

Abstract

The article attempts to trace the general dynamics of the development of Latin American literature before and after the Latin American boom through the prism of Guillermo Martinez’s recently published novel “The Last Time” (2022). Well learned Latin-American literature of “boom” in some sense eclipses the following generations. The purpose of the article is to show the general picture of the development of Latin American literature before and after, to comprehend the processes taking place in Spanish American literature over the past 60 years and to summarize them. The recent novel by argentine writer Guillermo Martinez “The last time” represents some kind of farewell, an attempt of looking to the “golden generation” from long distance and appreciate it in the terms of postmodern poetic. From the Martinez’s point of view the writers of boom were conspirators, and there books were passwords. These conspirations and passwords could ne comprehended as confirmation of their specific reality described throw unique code, precisely mythopoetic. The article deals with the story of search for Latin-American identity and the way towards mythopoetic, witch is analyzed as connected with archaic mentality and archaic categories of myth and magic. The following generations of Latin-American writers gradually returned to plain reality of human world: magic realism turns into naked and dirty. Simultaneously the tradition of Borges and Cortazar brings the literature of continent into the configuration of western postmodern.