Abstrakt: | While trying to comment on Quemar las naves o f Alejandro Cuevas, it is impossible
not to notice the intricate net o f tropes and means which makes it one of the most
noteworthy examples of contemporary Spanish narratives. Written with great attention
to details, structured with astonishing precision and based on multiple contrasts, the
novel does not desist from surprising its reader. It seems, for example, paradoxical that
a postmodernist story about the disintegration of a traditional poet’s life can be so perfectly
coherent in its form, diligently organized, and divided into chapters and subchapters
arranged alphabetically.
Furthermore, the novel falls outside any unequivocal interpretation due to the author’s
incessant trifling with mythological allusions, the wittiness and sharpness o f his obliquely
slipped insights concerning today’s culture and the status o f literature, the introduction
o f playful ambiguity, and the unspecified space-time textual frame.
Apart from that, Quemar las naves constitutes a kind o f genealogical guessing game,
as it contains elements o f various genres and, thus, it cannot be analysed only within
the constricting traditional genre classifications. A ll in all, Quemar las naves may be
perceived as a kind of never-ending toying with literary conventions and with the readers’
expectations. |