From Publishers Weekly
Salvador Novo (1904-74) boldly displayed his homosexuality when Mexican post-Revolutionary machismo kept his peers closeted. The poet, dramatist, and essayist was the only important artist of his generation to portray gay life and deliberately to outrage polite society, the same circle that ultimately embraced Novo as one of its own. Monsiv is (Mexican Postcards) presents Novo's ironic journey from gifted, malicious enfant terrible to celebrated, artistically broken, conservative burgher in a complex social drama. He traces Novo's trajectory against an authoritatively rendered backdrop of gay history and Mexican politics. Monsiv is, who knew Novo (included as an appendix is an amusing 1967 interview), is his ideal biographer. His equally incisive criticism is bolstered by apt references, some to Wilde and Freud, who, he argues, profoundly influenced Novo. This biography grew from Monsiv is's 30-page preface to La estatua de sal (Statue of Salt), Novo's explicit and long-suppressed midlife memoir. Its 1998 printing by a government publisher (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico City) signaled, says Monsiv is, a crucial advance for tolerance in Mexican letters. These publications, along with Reyna Barrera's 1999 literary biography, Salvador Novo: Navaja de la inteligencia (Salvador Novo: Mind Like a Jacknife, Plaza y Jan‚s, Mexico City), indicate that a long silence has indeed been broken. Recommended for all academic libraries and public libraries whose Spanish-language collections focus on gay culture and/or Mexican literature. Bruce Jensen, UCLA Graduate Sch. of Latin American Studies and Information Studies
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