CUANDO EL PERIODISMO Y LA LITERATURA SE ALÍAN
Algún día, cuando se escriba la historia literaria de la América Latina de principios de este siglo, se tendrá que reconocer que las grandes innovaciones de la prosa latinoamericana vinieron de la mano de los editores, de los cronistas, de los periodistas, de los escritores de non-fiction. En esa historia por contar se verá el notable papel some magazines: Leopard (established in Colombia, published today in Mexico), Black Label Peruvian, Colombian The Malpensante , Chilean The Clinic , Mexican Letras Libres, Brazil Piauí , Argentina Hand.
One of the key features of these magazines is their formal and thematic flexibility. While Julio Villanueva Chang, director and founder of Black Label mentions that the journal is not journalistic or literary, the fact is that it is both things at once, as he says Toño Angulo Daneri, one of the journalists the first stage, Black Label "is a fundamentalist stronghold of narrative journalism." Andres Hoyos, editor of The Malpensante -magazine who moves comfortably in literary journalism and its various genres, arrives to assert forcefully: "We are interested in a well-written no matter much to speak." Martín Pérez, member of the board of directors Hand says the journal of "rock culture": "Although it seems that culture and rock are two words that do not get along together ... in Argentina was always rock understood as more than just music: it also has to do with what books to read, what movies see and a whole way of seeing the world. "Letras Libres , meanwhile, is a magazine more essays, more reflection.
These magazines tap into local traditions - Imagination Express to the Hand, the legendary Back Octavio Paz, in the case of Letras Libres - but the Anglo-Saxon tradition is certainly more influential: Vanity Fair , Mojo, Rolling Stone , Esquire , The New Yorker, Harper's , The New York Review of Books , Prospect . The Anglo-Saxon model appears everywhere: on the issue very carefully and the wide expanse of the texts in the extensive research done to write the chronicles. Rafael Gumucio critic even suggests that if by the major American writers boom were Faulkner and Hemingway, who now have are not writers like Jonathan Franzen or David Foster Wallace, but journalists, essayists, writers like Janet Malcolm, Susan Orlean and Jon Lee Anderson. The renewal of American prose is a starting point for new American journalism.
Mario Jursich, deputy director of The Malpensante , said that one of the keys of the magazine is its cosmopolitan spirit and the rejection of "provincial spirit, especially considering the huge role it has had a lean culture country like Colombia." The paradox of this cosmopolitanism is that the watertight compartments in moving the culture of Latin America mean that, in general, these magazines can only be collected in their respective countries of publication (international subscriptions are prohibitively so expensive). Leopard is that more effort has to be distributed throughout the continent reaches fifteen countries. In terms of internationalization, the vast majority or has failed or not it poses; Letras Libres is one of the exceptions in this panorama, it is an issue that is published in Spain, with articles and reviews that do not appear in the Mexican edition. Letras Libres also places the entire print issue on its website, and have blogs, as well as very complete file, including all Back library, unfortunately, most of the journals published few articles in the print edition and not offers much original material, there is still fear that the digital competition can devour the paper.
What is normal for these magazines have a circulation of between 5,000 and 10,000. Hand exceeds 10,000; The Malpensante reaches nearly 20,000, and Letras Libres to 38,000 in two editions; Leopard is the best selling: its three editions (Mexican, Andean pan-regional) reach 200,000. Due to the cost of paper, magazines are expensive and go mainly to middle-class segments, medium-high and high. These costs make it to highlight when a cultural magazine survives a couple of years in Latin America. The strange thing, however, is that although not all of these journals are commercial advertisers for support. Daniel Titinger, editorial director new Black Label supporters believe that, at bottom, is continuity.
In a continent so unstable, the great achievement for many seems to persist and endure. The editors of these journals, luckily, do not seem interested in making continuity an end in itself. Continue to risk each month (or every forty-five days, in the case of The Malpensante ), which is almost certain that in not all will be with us. There will be bad news and setbacks in this story, but it is essential that the foundations are constructed so that it can speak of a great new American tradition.
(supplement Babelia , The Country , March 29, 2008)
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