Risas Enlatadas

This is the first book by Calvo (b.1973), who has been a literary critic for Spain's El Pais and translator of works by David Foster Wallace, Ted Hughes, and Edward W. Said. These five short stories deal with a broad range of characters in diverse milieu: the real-life English actor Alfred Molina, a working-class Glaswegian family, an Indian immigrant in Paris, a literature professor-cum-trash-TV-host in New York, and a Spanish student at art school in London. Structurally and thematically, their narratives address the complex exchanges between popular and ""high"" culture. These intersections are played out in an ironic manner as characters define themselves through their relationships to the mediated realities of film and television, as well as of literature itself. The stories dramatize key issues at stake in current debates surrounding postmodernism, such as the blurring of the lines between fiction and reality. Unfortunately, Calvo's engagement with these questions fails to make his reader care. His exploration of postmodernism doesn't feel convincing; rather, his stories seem to be simple exercises in translating contemporary theoretical ideas and their foregone conclusions. While mildly entertaining, they lack the creativity of works by, say, Manuel Puig, who charted similar territory in a more subtle and an infinitely more provocative fashion. Recommended for bookstores and libraries with a large collection of fiction. Wilson Neate, New York