Quemar las naves : Juegos novelescos de Alejandro Cuevas

Abstract

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.