Review by Choice Review
A Brazilian American writer who has taught literature and Latin American studies at Duke since the mid-1980s, Dorfman is a legend in his own lifetime. He consistently encourages one to question modern life in a permanent reiteration of reflection, critique, and engagement. McClennen (Penn State Univ.) first explicates how Dorfman's personal inter-American history has fine-tuned his continuous and continuing confrontation with history. Born in Argentina in 1942, he moved early from Spanish to English in exile in the US; back to Spanish when he returned to Latin America (this time Chile); and finally to bilingualism in exile (Europe and the US) from Pinochet's dictatorship. McClennen creates a composite image of Dorfman as the postmodern storyteller. From his personal relationship with literature came revolutionary involvement in art and human rights activism that led, through a Bakhtinian collaborative-dialogic process, to his signature derailment of writerly authority, overdetermination of the text, and language divorced from context. Controversial, relentless, provocative, and astoundingly creative, Dorfman has been the most single-minded culture critic of the latter part of the 20th century. McClennen's critique is, in turn, an exemplary analysis of Dorfman's remarkable practice of thinking through crisis. An invaluable addition to the literature on literary and cultural studies. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. K. M. Sibbald McGill University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
