The Novel and the Globalization of Culture This page intentionally left blank MICHAEL VALDEZ MOSES The Novel and the Globalization of Culture New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1995 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1995 Michael Valdez Moses Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moses, Michael Valdez, 1957- The novel and the globalization of culture / Michael Valdez Moses. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-508951-0 ISBN 0-19-508952-9 (pbk.) 1. English fiction—History and criticism. 2. Cultural relations in literature. 3. Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. Mayor of Casterbridge. 4. Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924. Lord Jim. 5. Achebe, Chinua—Political and social views. 6. Vargas Llosa, Mario, 1936— La guerra del fin del mundo. 7. Culture conflict in literature. 8. World history in literature. 9. Literature and anthropology. I. Title. PR830.C84M67 1995 809.3'9355—dc20 94-19639 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Margarita Valdez, Pedro Salas, and Carmen Salas, in this world and for Margarita Salas y Banuelos, Espiridion S. Valdez, Jr., Consuelo Falcone, and Ettore Falcone in the next This page intentionally left blank Our cultural crisis, for perhaps the first time in history, is the same as the crisis of our species. . . . It is not Western culture that is in danger of being destroyed tomorrow, as the cultures of the Greeks and the Arabs, the Aztecs and the Egyptians were destroyed in the past: it is man himself. The old plurality of cultures, postulating various and contrary ideals, and offering various and contrary views of the future, has been replaced by a single civilization and a single future. Until recently, history was a meditation on the many truths proposed by many cul- tures, and a verification of the radical heterogeneity of every society and archetype. . . . All of today's civilizations derive from that of the Western world, which has assimilated or crushed its rivals. . . . World history has become everyone's task, and our own labyrinth is the labyrinth of all mankind. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude This page intentionally left blank Preface Among the most vivid memories of my childhood are the long warm afternoons I spent in my grandparents' home in Los Angeles, listening to my great-grandmother and her children tell stories of the Mexican Revolution. Under the avocado trees that vaulted over the stone patio next to the house, with its whitewashed walls and Spanish tile roof, I sat while my great-aunt, Carmen Salas, recalled the day in 1914 when, as a young girl, she watched helplessly as her father was assas- sinated on the streets of Valparaiso, Zacatecas, stabbed and shot by Pancho Villa's men. I heard my great-grandmother, Margarita Salas y Banuelos, bitterly recall how her husband's body was brought home over the back of a horse, how she had also lost her father, three brothers, and a first cousin in the revolution, how her hacienda had been burned to the ground. I listened to my grandmother, Margarita Valdez, and her brother and sister, Consuelo and Pedro, remember the day and night they spent as children, without food or water, hiding between the inner and outer walls of an abandoned adobe house, on the run from the villistas who were hunting down the hacendados. They recollected their struggle to keep still—almost a half century later they could still feel the ants crawling over their skin in the dark. The security and middle-class pleasures that I enjoyed growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s—trips to the beach, to the mountains, to Disneyland—seemed utterly remote from the violent world my elderly Mexican relatives had known firsthand, a world of