Cuba and the Fall

The literature of Cuba, argues Eduardo Gonzalez in this new book, takes on quitedifferent features depending on whether one is looking at it from ",the inside", or from",the outside,", a view that in turn is shaped by official political culture and the authorsit sanctions or by those authors and artists who exist outside state policies and cultural politics. Gonzlez approaches this issue by way of two twentieth-century writers who are central tothe canon of gay homoerotic expression and sensibility in Cuban culture: Jos Lezama Lima(1910-1976) and Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990). Drawing on the plots and characters intheir works, Gonzlez develops both a story line and a moral tale, revolving around theChristian belief in the fall from grace and the possibility of redemption, that bring the writersinto a unique and revealing interaction with one another. The work of Lezama Lima andArenas is compared with that of fellow Cuban author Virgilio Piera (1912-1979) and, in awider context, with the non-Cuban writers John Milton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner,John Ruskin, and James Joyce to show how their themes get replicated in Gonzlez'sselected Cuban fiction. Also woven into this interaction are two contemporary films-TheDevil's Backbone (2004) and Pan's Labyrinth (2007)-whose moral and politicalthemes enhance the ethical values and conflicts of the literary texts. Referring to this eclecticgathering of texts, Gonzlez charts a cultural course in which Cuba moves beyond the Caribbeanand into a latitude uncharted by common words, beyond the tyranny of place.