Literary critics disapproved of social realism, too. In Notas sobre literatura española contemporánea (1955; Notes on Contemporary Spanish Literature), which censors sequestered, and La hora del lector (1957; Reader’s Time), critic Castellet first supported social realism. A decade later, in his essay “Tiempo de destrucción para la literatura española” (1968; “Time of Destruction for Spanish Literature”), he wrote that it was necessary to “destroy” Spanish literature and praised the innovations of Latin American fiction. Publishers started to criticize social realism as much as writers and critics did. Editor Carlos Barral stopped publishing social-realist literature in the early 1960s as his company shifted its focus to Latin American literature. He later said that social-realist literature was “mediocre” and that the New Latin American Novel “traumatized . . . many social realists.”34
Growing criticism from some sectors of the literary establishment made it possible to promote Latin American literature as a “challenge and alternative to autochthonous forms of fiction” in Spain.35 Publishers such as Seix Barral started to advertise works of the New Latin American Novel as modernizers of literature in Spanish. Yet the dismissal of social realism did not translate into full support of Latin American literature by the publishing industry in Spain. Writers such as Luis Martín-Santos and Juan Benet, critics such as Rafael Conte and José Blanco Amor, and publishers such as Destino and Planeta favored alternatives that grew out of Spanish literature. Others, like Seix Barral, won the jackpot by targeting the untapped Latin American literary market.
SEIX BARRAL SETS THE AGENDA
Publishers cannot compete in equal terms with government censorship. They either adapt to it or perish. Seix Barral rejected the Franco dictatorship ideologically. But its publishing agenda conformed to the demands of censors so effectively that, in return, Seix Barral became the most influential Spanish-language literary publisher in the 1960s. From this position of power, it championed the dismissal of social realism in Spain, published European and North American avant-garde writers in translation, marketed Latin American writers internationally, and produced and exported affordable and modern-looking paperbacks.36
Founded in 1911 in Barcelona, Seix Barral had in the Latin American publishing market a major revenue source before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This experience of the prewar years became handy in 1958, when Seix Barral created a publicity department to recover its ties with the Latin American market. Its representatives toured the region and offered writers professional incentives, including stylish book design, transatlantic distribution, best-selling sales, international translations, and prestigious awards. These incentives attracted writers of the three generations, which Seix Barral marketed to Spanish and international readers as members of a single tradition: Latin American literature.37
To set its agenda, Seix Barral used aesthetic and ideological gatekeeping. To implement aesthetic gatekeeping, it abandoned social realism. Its acquisitions editor, Carlos Barral, admired cosmopolitan Anglo-American authors, which the company began to publish once censorship softened. He also liked baroque language, which became a trademark of Spanish literature during its Golden Age in the seventeenth century. Barral claimed to have rediscovered this language in the neo-baroque writing of cosmopolitan novels by Latin American authors in the 1960s. This renewed language became part of his aesthetic imagination. As he put it, “It was, linguistically and stylistically, a rich novel. It was like the resurgence of the Baroque.”38 In finding this aesthetic connection with the novel in Latin America, his company began promoting the neo-baroque, which, as discussed in chapter 1, was key to the region’s literary independence from Spain.
Literary language was also connected to ideological gatekeeping, and Seix Barral believed in a unified literature in Spanish. So, it published writers that contributed to this literary Pan-Hispanism. By 1969, this ideological gatekeeping had taken the form of a two-hundred-page catalogue, in which the publisher claimed that literature in Spanish was “a mosaic of equidistant languages from the Castilian of the Baroque.” The catalogue also stated that the company’s goal was to “incorporate the values of Spanish-American narrative into our national culture.”39 The other (and more contentious) ideological filter was sympathy for the Cuban Revolution. Seix Barral published works by writers who had reservations about the revolution. But the publisher was not as enthusiastic about speeding up censorship clearance for these authors, unlike what it did for the works of Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, and Fuentes, who supported the revolution. Seix Barral’s passivity delayed the publication of books by critics of the revolution, especially Cabrera Infante and Puig. And this delay did not help them to secure a position in the star system of the New Latin American Novel.
To promote its publishing agenda, Seix Barral acted on three fronts: commercial partnerships, international awards, and collections. The publisher cemented commercial agreements with major publishing houses. In 1960, Seix Barral, Gallimard (France), Rowohlt (Germany), Eiunadi (Italy), Weidenfeld & Nicholson (United Kingdom), and Grove (United States) created the Formentor Group with the goal of controlling the avant-garde in literature internationally.40
Regarding awards, Seix Barral established in 1958 the Premio Biblioteca Breve, bestowed first to Spanish social-realist writers. Four years later, it reinvented the award as a “transatlantic literary bridge” to promote Latin American literature in the region, Spain, and internationally.41 The award became a magnet for Latin American writers upset with the lack of opportunity, limited distribution of their works, and small print runs in the region. From Vargas Llosa’s win in 1962 and until 1971 (except for three years), all winners of the Biblioteca Breve award were young (thirty-four years old on average) and unknown Latin American writers.
In partnership with the Formentor Group, Seix Barral created two additional awards: the Prix International des Éditeurs and the Prix Formentor. The first was given to books already in circulation and not necessarily released by publishers in the Formentor Group. Their goal was to turn this award into an opponent of the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Italian editor Einaudi actually called it the “anti-Nobel.”) When first awarded in 1961, it was strategically given ex aequo to the world-recognized Samuel Beckett (who then won the Nobel in 1969) and to a heretofore-unknown Latin American writer: Jorge Luis Borges. “As a consequence of that prize,” he confessed, “my books mushroomed overnight throughout the Western world.” By 1964, he was being tapped for the Nobel Prize. The second award, the Prix Formentor, was presented to new literary works published by members of the Formentor Group. This award’s goal was to advance winners to the literary mainstream and immediately translate their winning book into up to ten languages.42
Finally, Seix Barral also changed its literary series. The company refurbished the collection Biblioteca Breve (until then dedicated to social-realist titles) and created the collection Biblioteca Nueva Narrativa Hispánica (including Spanish and Latin American writers) and the collection Biblioteca Formentor. The latter collection published best-selling contemporary U.S. and European writers, began to launch works by three generations of Latin American writers, and introduced modern marketing techniques, such as appealing book design and mass-produced paperbacks. Taken together, these series became the most commercially successful outlets of avant-garde literature in the Spanish language in the 1960s.
By 1967, when One Hundred Years of Solitude was published, Seix Barral monopolized the market of avant-garde literature in Spanish, and had no real competitor. The fact that Seix Barral declined to publish One Hundred Years of Solitude is a good example of how competitors can reap the benefits from the actions of a leading player. As Vargas Llosa put it, “the Boom would have not had the impact it had without Barral.” Seix Barral compelled young Latin Americans writers to embrace the New Latin American Novel, especially its neo-baroque language and cosmopolitanism. Thus, the publisher’s actions paved the way for the regional and international success of books labeled by other publishers