Review 101 is the second of two retrospective issues featuring essays published in the magazine from its early years to the present. Review 100 encompassed the period 1968 through 2000; Review 101 covers from 2001 to 2019. This issue is guest-edited by Suzanne Jill Levine and Alfred Mac Adam.
As suggested by the cover-image, by Argentine artist Jorge Macchi, depicting a semi-urban setting seen in a car’s rear-view mirror, Review 101 not only looks back retrospectively but also implies forward movement. Beginning with Mac Adam’s contextualizing preface—including his own role in the magazine over the years, as well as mine, and the various transitions along the way culminating in Review’s current publishing arrangement with Routledge and CCNY—the contents reflect this double perspective. The selection of reprinted texts opens with Carmen Boullosa’s illuminating essay, “Seeing is Believing,” a personal reflection on perception and vision, particularly against the horrific backdrop of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in 2001.
The essays that follow cover a breadth of topics, among them the Latin American city as observed by Latin American writers and scholars (Alfredo Bryce Echenique and Lisa Block de Behar) as well as by Europeans (Christopher Isherwood) and texts on luminary figures such as Pablo Neruda, Clarice Lispector, and Mario Vargas Llosa. The latter in particular is covered from various angles—including José Miguel Oviedo’s analysis of his oeuvre from Conversation in the Cathedral to Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter; Raquel Chang-Rodríguez’s intriguing essay on the Nobel Laureate’s view of Rubén Darío’s early work; and the author’s own “Letter to a Young Novelist.” Also compiled here are memorial pieces on Gregory Rabassa and Rosario Ferré; Homero Aridjis’s reflection on his origins as an environmental activist; Edgardo Cozarinksy’s meditation on an iconic image of Che Guevara; and Philip Swanson’s “Pop Goes the Boom,” a look back at that movement on the fiftieth anniversary of García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The closing essay, Sergio Ramírez’s “Treasures in an Old Armoire,” again on the young Rubén Darío, this time via his formative literary influences, brings the selected reprints and the issue’s double-perspective full circle, encouraging readers to consider how the past helps shape the future, particularly regarding the Latin American literary tradition, from Modernismo to contemporary writing in the early twenty-first century.
In addition to the compilation of reprints, we’re pleased to publish special Features, beginning with commemorations of three giants in the literary world—Peruvian literary critic José Miguel Oviedo, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, and Caribbean poet and cultural historian Kamau Brathwaite. All were significant contributors to Review over the years; thus we honor their contributions to the magazine as well as to literature itself. Review 101 also includes a text by Cuban writer Senel Paz on Gabriel García Márquez; and book reviews of titles in translation as well as of critical works.
My kudos and thanks to all the writers, scholars, and translators, as well as our cover-artist, whose work graces these pages, whether as reprints, features, reviews, or contemporary art. Thanks as well to our copy editor, Jason Weiss, and our editorial assistants Daimys García and Dennis Mejía for all their commitment and hard work. My continuing gratitude to Review’s editorial advisory board, and to The City College of New York, particularly to the Division of Humanities and Arts, and of course, to Routledge/Taylor and Francis, for all their ongoing support.
Finally, special thanks to Suzanne Jill Levine and Alfred Mac Adam, mentors and friends, for their vision and commitment to the magazine via this landmark issue “plus one,” for the opportunity to work together in the service of helping keep Review alive and well, particularly during challenging times. I invite our readers to continue celebrating Review in these pages, with a view to honoring its rich past as we move toward a more hopeful future.