Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi by Frederick Luis Aldama Tess O'Dwyer
2021; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 95; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2021.0039
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Analyses
Resumo0 as a freelance illustrator, he tends to work in public places. McPhail has great fun with these gathering -places-cum-work-stations, giving them terrific names and portraying them in well-drawn black-and-white scenes. Who wouldn’t want to drink in the “Your Friends Have Kids Bar” or grab a latte in “Gentrificciato,” or a macchiato at “Artisanal Kick in the Back” where the Wi-Fi password is “Dialogue Is Not for Exposition 2007.” Nick frequents them all as a loner, until one day he meets Wren. But this is not a boy-meets-girl scenario ; it is, rather, a scenario about a young man evolving, moving forward a few steps and then back a few. Authentic interaction with another human being is not easy for Nick, and much of this novel takes place in his head as he struggles for connection. The graphics finally explode not with sex but with Nick finding emotion, first of all, oddly enough, in a breakthrough conversation with a plumber when each of them admits his embarrassment and awkwardness in the world. The page turns, and we are in a world of intense color and dreamworthy landscape. McPhail brings us to his own version of Oz within Nick’s mind. There is a great deal of verbal and visual wit here, wit that can be seen in much of McPhail’s work as a cartoonist for the New Yorker and Private Eye. A section where Nick is interacting with clients trying to direct his creative energies is filled with priceless babble and offers incisive observations about creative work designed by a committee. Asides about typefaces and his repartee with Wren are also witty but mostly superficial until the book turns much darker and Nick has to come to terms with his inability to relate to the world as an adult. Charmingly, his nephew creates color in Nick’s world with honesty, as does his mother, who demands to be seen as not only Mum but Hannah. While this first graphic novel showcases McPhail’s style in the simple black-andwhite drawings and outrageously gorgeous colorscapes, there is not enough depth to his characters to truly engage us. The story does turn heartbreaking but, ultimately, leaves us feeling that the narrative arc is thin. There is so much more to be fleshed out and felt in the world he has created. Maybe in his next work, or at least I hope so. Rita D. Jacobs New York City Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi Ed. Frederick Luis Aldama & Tess O’Dwyer Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2020. 168 pages. PUERTO RICO–BORN and New York– based Giannina Braschi is a strange writer. A poet and a novelist, over the last four decades she has published three books— the first, El imperio de los sueños, in Spanish ; the second, Yo-Yo Boing!, in Spanglish; and the third, United States of Banana, in English. Together, these form a trilogy of sorts, a nonstop literary romp, which moves from experimental prose-poem, to novel, to theatrical dialogue. They are all shot through with a consistent philosophical and political exploration of the limits and ethics of language, the relationship between freedom and the imagination, and the Puerto Rican colonial situation. If it sounds excessive, it is. Braschi’s contemporary reader—educated after the postmodern heyday—is often at odds to explain what is happening, how it is allowed to happen, and why—despite all this—it works so well. Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi is a collection of academic essays that attempts to answer these questions using the tools available to contemporary literary scholars: contextualization , comparison, exegesis, critique, and theorization. Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Braschi’s translator, Tess O’Dwyer, the book’s main thrust is to reintroduce Braschi to a wider academic public and reframe her, through the critical lens of the day, as “one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors.” For Aldama and the book’s contributors, Braschi participates in a long, albeit less visible, branch of Latinx writing that has been and continues to be driven by aesthetic and literary experimentation rather than...
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