Where the Air Is Clear Essay | Critical Essay #11

Where the Air Is Clear Critical Essay #11

The first reactions to La región más transparente from abroad came not from journalists, but from professors of Spanish literature who were working with the Spanish edition. In the fall of 1958 the first two reviews of the novel were published in the United States. George Wing, then a young professor at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote a short review in the fall issue of Books Abroad. He saw Fuentes as an angry young man who felt deeply "the betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution." Wing made comparisons with Dos Passos' writings and concluded by calling La región más transparente the best Mexican novel since Al filo del agua. In November of 1958 Jefferson Rea Spell, a long-time observer of the Latin American novel and professor at the University of Texas, published a brief review in The Hispanic American Historical Review in which he observed:...
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