An earthquake in Mexico City shocks the protagonist of this Scheherazade series of connected tales into mapping the influence of the United States on the rest of the Americas, of Europe on the Native American cultures, and therefore, of Columbus on reason for political kidnappings, death squads, and tortures. That logic comes to him woven around the figure of Columbus and elaborated as an ironic and tragic theory of world history leading inevitably to his own alienation and victimization. He is forced to travel back to Europe and to Seville, the city where Columbus's adventure began. There, as he relives in imagination the voyages of the great navigator, his own life and energized by an immense momentum, the narrative travels both forward and backward at once, both east to a mythic Cathay and west to the New World, where the protagonist ends up in a desolate town in the New Mexico desert in the company of down-and-outers who are fated to relive, as we all are, the primal contact of east and west initiated by Columbus.
The metaphors of self in "The Beginning of the East" engender vast reverberations, worlds on worlds of complex and reciprocal resonances, rich with echoes and memories. The recognizable, the improbable, the lyrical, the philosophical, the fabulous flow together. As Montesquieu, the grandfather of this genre of the foreign visitor, said about his own work, everything is tired together "by a secret, and in a way, unknown chain."
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An earthquake in Mexico City shocks the protagonist of this Scheherazade series of connected tales into mapping the influence of the United States on the rest of the Americas, of Europe on the Native American cultures, and therefore, of Columbus on reason for political kidnappings, death squads, and tortures. That logic comes to him woven around the figure of Columbus and elaborated as an ironic and tragic theory of world history leading inevitably to his own alienation and victimization. He is forced to travel back to Europe and to Seville, the city where Columbus's adventure began. There, as he relives in imagination the voyages of the great navigator, his own life and energized by an immense momentum, the narrative travels both forward and backward at once, both east to a mythic Cathay and west to the New World, where the protagonist ends up in a desolate town in the New Mexico desert in the company of down-and-outers who are fated to relive, as we all are, the primal contact of east and west initiated by Columbus.
The metaphors of self in "The Beginning of the East" engender vast reverberations, worlds on worlds of complex and reciprocal resonances, rich with echoes and memories. The recognizable, the improbable, the lyrical, the philosophical, the fabulous flow together. As Montesquieu, the grandfather of this genre of the foreign visitor, said about his own work, everything is tired together "by a secret, and in a way, unknown chain."
Imprint | Northwestern University Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | August 1995 |
Availability | Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available. |
Authors | Yeh |
Dimensions | 216 x 140 x 15mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback |
Pages | 193 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-932511-63-8 |
Barcode | 9780932511638 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-932511-63-5 |