Project overview

The publication in 1958 of La región más transparente is followed by decades of urban novels in Mexico that intentionally or unintentionally form complex dialogic relationship. The ever-increasing catalog of works that contribute to the novela defeña problematizes the role of memory, intertextuality, and location in fictional narrative. Protagonists are often flâneurs who bring their intellectual baggage to the street, and see it challenged by its phenomenological landscape. Their own monumental knowledge and the heavy layers of signification that they encounter on foot or in transit are destabilized and redefined by the city’s penchant for swallowing and regurgitating even the most austere and encyclopedic sensibilities.

These novels form an intertextual palimpsest, in which consistent and divergent sites of encounter are shared by multiple narrative voices. By mapping these works, a process of monumentalizing and de-monumentalizing the city as a literary image emerges. Works by Gonzalo Celorio, Ana Clavel, José Emilio Pacheco, and others are compared and layered with regard to plotted and imaginary trajectories.