In several of his narratives, Carlos Fuentes focusses on the predicament of the Mexican artist, whom he evokes as facing formidable social and psychological obstacles in developing his craft. Throughout both La región más transparente and Cambio de piel, Fuentes portrays a number of artists—poets, novelists, painters—all of whom either abandon their discipline or decide to remain silent, interiorizing the artistic process, rather than communicating their ideas to a society they judge unworthy of receiving them. There are several factors that militate against the success of the artist in the modern-day Mexico depicted by Fuentes. Some of the adverse conditions are external, such as the dominant bourgeois culture that refuses to take the artist seriously and interprets his scathing social, political and moral denunciation as mere diversion instead of as a force that would impel them to change their lives. Indeed, it is not...