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43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Response to Publishers Weekly Review, March 8, 2007
This review is from: Their Dogs Came with Them: A Novel (Hardcover)
As a graduate student at Harvard in literary studies, I was shocked and saddened to read such an ill-informed review of Viramontes' second and astoundingly luminous novel.
Not only was the review factually incorrect--for this is Viramontes' second novel (not her first, as the reviewer claims), but, far more gravely, utterly incapable of appreciating the artistic power of a truly original and monumental novel. American literary scholars have already heralded Viramontes' new work as the "Middlemarch of Los Angeles," justly comparing it in power and scope with the greatest works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.
Viramontes stands out among the even most talented of contemporary writers, and her work (including her first novel, "Under the Feet of Jesus," and her many wonderful short stories, including the widely anthologized "The Moths") has already earned her an unforgettable place in the canons of American and world literature. Her work is regularly taught alongside that of Joyce, Steinbeck, and Cisneros, and she is legendary for her innovations in prose and poetic intensity. "Under the Feet of Jesus" has been cited as a "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman," and is now an indelible part of our literary heritage and one of the most groundbreaking novels in decades.
"Their Dogs Came With Them" is Viramontes' "Ulysses"--a contemporary, multi-lingual, prismatic epic that bears no resemblance to the flat, one-dimensional easy-read novels that Publishers Weekly review seems to favor. The Publishers Weekly review seems to have read the novel haphazardly or perhaps not at all, as it gives no sense of the Viramontes' careful construction and dynamic interweaving of multiple narratives and perspectives--the novel is not 'loosely constructed' (a complaint that was, incidentally, often leveled at Joyces' "Ulysses" when it first appeared), but rather innovative, unconventional, and poetic in the best sense of the word.
Viramontes' novel grows out of its characters and the brute materiality that affects them, and its style is as complex and materially present as the story of Los Angeles life that it tells. The alleged "difficulty" of the novel lies in its challenges to the traditional tropes and characters of American literature--in its original voice, unique form of storytelling, and in the brilliance of its form. Viramontes' rich language demands our attention and, like other great writers, challenges the conventional ways in which we have learned or become accustomed to read.
While Viramontes' first novel was a lyrical tour de force, this current work is of a darker and textually different tone. The depth of the novel lies in its ability to characterize and describe in ways that surprise and illuminate, to render without merely 'reporting.' Traditional tropes of American and Latino literature are displaced, meditated on, and reworked, while Viramontes' lucid and ever-metamorphosizing style evokes the unique subjectivity of each of her characters and the fractured temporality of their experience. Any serious reader seeking unconventional beauty and innovative form will appreciate the texture of "Their Dogs Came With Them," as well as its refusal to conform to conventional storytelling.
Yet Viramontes, like Joyce, never sacrifices content for form, or a powerful portrayal of characters for her ever-deepening linguistic artistry. In its texture and intricately imbricated layers of narrative, it is constructed with genius and care. The ethical and esthetic value of this novel lies in its refusal to sacrifice or to romanticize the baffling, 'frustrating' and incomprehensible violence of urban life in twentieth century. The novel's form demonstrates and reenacts the violence it describes, revealing and rehabilitating the difficulties and frustrations of trying to tell stories about the ignored and the oppressed.
To read and review this novel with no ear for artistry or innovation, and with utterly no appreciation for Viramontes' rich legacy in American literature, as Publishers Weekly has so unfortunately done, is not only to do a great disservice to Viramontes and potential readers, but also to miss what may be the first true masterpiece of twenty-first century literature.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Viramontes looks to roots for setting of her gritty novel, April 15, 2007
This review is from: Their Dogs Came with Them: A Novel (Hardcover)
In 1985, Arte Público Press published Helena María Viramontes' first book, "The Moths and Other Stories," which has become a classic in Chicano literature. Since then, her short stories have appeared in more than 80 anthologies.
Viramontes published the novel "Under the Feet of Jesus" (Plume Books) in 1995, about a makeshift family of migrant workers. It was met with great critical acclaim and now graces many high-school and college reading lists.
Now, fans of Viramontes' writing can delight in the publication of her new novel, "Their Dogs Came With Them" (Atria Books, $23 hardcover). It possesses Viramontes' trademark poetic grittiness, with well-drawn characters who almost leap from the page.
The novel is a heart-rending but hopeful portrait of lives that are rocked by the turmoil and violence of East Los Angeles during the 1960s.
Asked whether she saw some form of redemption arising from her mostly female protagonists' struggles with poverty, bigotry and governmental abuses, Viramontes responded with characteristic candor:
"If I didn't want to recognize the redemption of their everyday ordeals, why write about them in the first place? I marvel, truly marvel, at the everyday, ordinary ordeals of human life, and I want to give justice to an existence that very few people or readers acknowledge."
In many ways, this sentiment is emblematic of Viramontes' perception of writers and their role in society. She asserts that "serious writers have the responsibility to try and disrupt patterns of thought and behavior that damage the integrity of life. That's why most writers do their best work while living on the fringes of a society."
With respect to writers of color such as herself, Viramontes provocatively adds: "Because our communities are constantly bombarded with inhumane violence and racism, I think we writers write with greater urgency." She takes this role seriously: "The greatest compliment to a writer is if a reader is disturbed enough to begin questioning his/her own beliefs."
In choosing the setting and era for her new novel, Viramontes did not need to stray far from her roots. She was born in East Los Angeles into a large family that always extended to relatives and friends who had crossed the border from Mexico to California.
While attending Immaculate Heart College, she worked part time at the bookstore and library to help pay for her education. Viramontes eventually earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of California at Irvine.
She has gone on to win many awards, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, and the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
Today, Viramontes is a teacher and mentor to many young writers. She is a professor of creative writing at Cornell University.
Despite well-deserved acclaim, Viramontes does not pretend that writing is easy. "Their Dogs Came With Them" was more than a decade in the making because teaching and life's other demands often devoured her attention.
When Viramontes could make time to return to her novel, she sometimes suffered from writer's block. But she did not give up:
"I just kept my fingers close to the keyboard, walking distance close, just in case something would happen. I had to pay close attention. I reminded myself that a novel begins by one word following another."
Viramontes also observes: "Writing novels is certainly not for the fainthearted, and writing them on a university schedule can be brutally challenging."
We can be grateful for her perseverance. "Their Dogs Came With Them" establishes that Viramontes is simply one of our finest chroniclers of the ordinary but heroic ordeals of human life.
[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Novel We've Been Waiting For, April 30, 2007
This review is from: Their Dogs Came with Them: A Novel (Hardcover)
In her two previous books, Helena Maria Viramontes stuns readers with her precise language and uncompromising insights. Their Dogs Came With Them has been long in coming but worth the wait. With this novel Viramontes has certainly created something new and powerful. She offers up the talents and gifts of her first two books and adds a breathtaking use of structure, all of this in the service of a striking story. Many writers are defeated by Los Angeles when trying to write about the city because it suffers, for sure, from muliple-personality disorder. But Viramontes is a master, and in her hands, she turns L.A.'s kinetic energies into a tool for her own purposes. In this vision, the city and the characters are scarred, but not hopeless; battle weary, but resilient. Indeed, Viramontes has written a novel for each of us who have fallen to our knees, but knowing we would stand again, and taller.
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