miércoles, julio 26, 2006
Born in Tj
Federico Campbell was born in Tijuana, México, in 1941.
He is the author of three novels, Pretexta o el cronista enmascarado, Todo lo de las focas, Transpeninsular y La clave Morse, and a collection of short stories, Tijuanenses.
He also has written three essays: La invención del poder, La memoria de Sciascia, Post scriptum triste, and a critical anthology of Juan Rulfo, La ficción de la memoria.
Tijuana, stories on the border, was translated and introduced by Debra A. Castillo, Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literarture at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, and published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 1995.
Tijuana is a haunting collection of stories and a novella, all set in the shadowy borderlands between Mexico and the United States. A fresh and evocative voice, Federico Campbell traces the shaping and reshaping of identity, landscape, culture, and nationality, yielding visions both seductive and wrought with seen and unseen tensions. The novella, "Everything About Seals", is part love story and part disturbing tale of romantic obsession; a nameless narrator pursues Beverly, a mysterious American woman, through the streets of Tijuana for many years. The narrator's on-again, off-again relationship with Beverly articulates the fragmented fluid character of the border, reaching into the crossed yet uncrossable gaps of city and self.
Together these stories trace many kinds of borders —geographical, psychological, cultural, spiritual— and the "halfway beings" that inhabit them. The narrative voice is similarly many-sided, moving from the brash teenage gang member whose gang's symbol is a flying horse, to the confused law student unsure whether he owes cultural allegiance to Mexico City or Los Angeles.
Campbell, a Mexico City-based writer, has captured here the ambivalent, fascinating ties between Mexico and the U.S. ties ranging from Hollywood movies to Mexican folklore. The first English-language translation of his work, Tijuana will be welcomed by general readers as well as literary critics, anthropologists, historians and those interested in te culture of the border.
He is the author of three novels, Pretexta o el cronista enmascarado, Todo lo de las focas, Transpeninsular y La clave Morse, and a collection of short stories, Tijuanenses.
He also has written three essays: La invención del poder, La memoria de Sciascia, Post scriptum triste, and a critical anthology of Juan Rulfo, La ficción de la memoria.
Tijuana, stories on the border, was translated and introduced by Debra A. Castillo, Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literarture at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, and published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 1995.
Tijuana is a haunting collection of stories and a novella, all set in the shadowy borderlands between Mexico and the United States. A fresh and evocative voice, Federico Campbell traces the shaping and reshaping of identity, landscape, culture, and nationality, yielding visions both seductive and wrought with seen and unseen tensions. The novella, "Everything About Seals", is part love story and part disturbing tale of romantic obsession; a nameless narrator pursues Beverly, a mysterious American woman, through the streets of Tijuana for many years. The narrator's on-again, off-again relationship with Beverly articulates the fragmented fluid character of the border, reaching into the crossed yet uncrossable gaps of city and self.
Together these stories trace many kinds of borders —geographical, psychological, cultural, spiritual— and the "halfway beings" that inhabit them. The narrative voice is similarly many-sided, moving from the brash teenage gang member whose gang's symbol is a flying horse, to the confused law student unsure whether he owes cultural allegiance to Mexico City or Los Angeles.
Campbell, a Mexico City-based writer, has captured here the ambivalent, fascinating ties between Mexico and the U.S. ties ranging from Hollywood movies to Mexican folklore. The first English-language translation of his work, Tijuana will be welcomed by general readers as well as literary critics, anthropologists, historians and those interested in te culture of the border.
# posted by Federico Campbell @ 6:12 p.m. 
