When cultural criticism had no mercy: “The freshness has been lost, now everything is agreed with the publishers” | EUROtoday

“Leaves you wanting more. A very good novel. Original proposal in which the narrated events go back in time. New novel by Martin Amis. Anagrama presents its new catalog for returns it of this year. Forgive me in advance for the joke I'm going to play on you,” he writes. Rafael Castillo about The arrow of time in Asterisk Magazine in 1991.

“The debutante Lola Beccaria makes her debut in literature with her new novel, The debutanteand, if I don't write better sentences, the reseista Guillermo Talavera will soon be fired from the newspaper where he works, I fear,” he writes Guille Talavera in The Murcia Chronicle the yr 1996.

“For some time now a certain joke has been taking placemaking some mockery about my supposed relapse into cocaine […] Well, more than one would like to be in my place now, since I very much doubt that anyone who is timid about the White Goddess can enjoy this new novel by the author. enfant terrible American as much, as much, as I have enjoyed it,” says Lino Valverde Glamouramaby Bret Easton Ellis, in 1998, in Information 16.

The names of literary critics have undergone modifications. Same because the headers. They are pseudonyms that they disguise from journalists and newspapers. The solely actual factor are the citation marks, the critiques chosen by the philologist Miguel Alczar in Literary criticism within the nineties (The Broken Nail Editions). The anthology serves as a porthole for the reader. At a look you may see the misplaced world of brutal honesty, literary scores, the adolescence of the sector. Everything that has been misplaced within the transition between the analog plain of then and the up to date digital sphere.

Alcázar has put a masks on the handful of insolent, poorly educated, sensible, cynical, dipsomaniacal, cocaine-addicted, hesitant, gifted and dishonorable women and men distributed all through the literary pages of the newspapers, magazines and dietary supplements of the 90s, when the reader was nonetheless only a reader. Alczar prefers to not look nice. “I don't have a strong opinion. My objective was to do philological, compiler and anthological work. You realize the sociological change that has occurred. What was once considered politically correct is no longer so. The figure of the critic had more power. Now, with the Internet, criticism has been democratized. Everyone has something to say. Before, critics were cultural totems. They gave their opinion. They felt legitimate to tell their lives. “I used to be to know what they considered extra-literary subjects.”

Now everything is more predictable. “Authors are cautious with the literature that’s printed. It is much less wild and transgressive. At this time, each the press and the writers maintain the types to the purpose of self-censorship. These points are taken into nice care“adds the author. Miguel Alczar first tested the possible success of the book on Twitter. Through @critica_lit_90s he has shared the findings. “Many persons are . I believe there’s a feeling that earlier than we are able to specific ourselves extra freely. The 90s are my small homeland. I began by going again to the novels of that decade, like Nobody is aware of no person o History's half The crown, and I took an interest within the criticism of that point.

The anthology reveals the dissolution of literary criticism. Alczar has been motivated, amongst different impulses, by nostalgia. It just isn’t that the anthology's goal was to catch those that preserve a relationship of collusion with the publishers by the chest, however by displaying the feedback from that point, the comparability is inevitable. “The freshness that we associate with the 90s has been lost”, a time thought of by a number of the chosen critics as “revanchist.” Alczar teaches at a college in Scotland. “It may be a consequence of missing Spain. I have recently had a couple of children. I remember my childhood. It is the perfect breeding ground. The result may be a tribute to that decade. Before there was criticism of sensitivity, in which technical arguments were not presented. Boyero is the latest exponent“.

“The freshness has been lost. Before there was criticism of sensitivity. Now everything is agreed”

Miguel Alczar, creator of 'Literary criticism within the nineties'

Anything you write can be utilized towards our personal part. Acidic literary criticism has merely disappeared with the passage of time. A phenomenon by which newspapers have been domesticated, since there’s the sensation that no ebook is so necessary, However poorly written it’s, it needs to be thrown into the pool of public opinion. “Criticism is very important because it is the way to validate the importance of what we are criticizing,” Alcázar defends the place of his critics. “Criticism makes publishing news important. If in philology it is important to read classics, literary criticism reminds us that it is important to publish literature and if it matters, we must be honest and realistic and talk about the positive and the negative“, he delves.

The maid's daughters: the failed Sonsoles nega serial and the self-immolation of the Planeta Prize it was the comet Halley of corrosive criticism. “It may be coming back, even if only superficially. The novels that are published are very conventional, all very commercial. Here in the United Kingdom such criticism is impossible. It is very striking how everything is agreed upon with the publishers. Everything is discounted. It's always positive. “In Spain we now have ended up imitating the Anglo-Saxon world.”

He changed the names of the journalists and the media headlines to avoid a judicial problem. “It was troublesome to get all of the copyrights. It is a gigantic activity. It would have been nice to have them, however we are able to't have them. The writer can't afford it.” Literary criticism in the nineties I passed by the offices of one of the two large publishing groups in the country. “They have been about to publish it. They backed out on the final second out of worry. There was stress to withdraw critiques of in-house authors, which weren’t helpful, regardless that greater than 30 years had handed.“.

“Nightmarish, absurd, complicated, disturbing, surreal, sinister, disturbing, paranoid, loopy, creepy work […] Come on, like that evening on the newspaper's Christmas dinner the place the bitch fillo of the editor-in-chief I put psychotropic medicine in my rum vat,” he wrote Joel Ferreiro in The Galician opinion about Like a silk glove forged in iron, in 93. Alcázar's favorite criticism is the first. In which an analogy is made between jazz musicians and literary critics, delving into the legend, the myth about the dissolute lives that converged in the newspapers. That conception of the newsroom as an after-school with computers and not an office with a printing press. “It is an effective definition of the ebook as a complete. It was an opinion column, But I believe it's a very good abstract of the ebook.”

Miguel Alczar's only intervention is found in the first pages. He writes about the houses of the 90s, he remembers the place where his parents kept the newspaper clippings, the drawers where they kept some magazines. “It was such attribute furnishings. It has all disappeared”. Like reviews, homes are not the same either. “In this twenty first century, all the pieces has turn into homogenized. We have misplaced the sounds, the noises of the inside patios.” The exercise in nostalgia is sometimes exhausting. “It's not passive,” she clarifies. “It encourages us to alter the current. Looking on the previous shapes the longer term. Maybe by going again to the criticisms of now and evaluating them with these of the 90s, somebody will consider altering them.”

That the book was published in the media rounded off the proposal. “Make me snigger.”