Miguel Bonnefoy and Big Literature’s Embrace of Magical Realism
Will a rising star resist the appeal of profitable exoticization?
This post is a little bit unusual because I am not commenting on Miguel Bonnefoy’s literary work. From what I know about it, I can tell that it is fantastic, and I hope to write about it some day. In this piece, however, I am rather interested in the literary industry’s workings, and I find the case of Miguel Bonnefoy fascinating. Like a significant number of us, Bonnefoy has experience with cultural multiplicity. First and foremost: Venezuela. Bonnefoy was born and raised in Venezuela; Spanish is his first language, and he lived in Caracas. His father, however, is Chilean. How does he end up as a lauded French writer?
Before getting back to Bonnefoy, I must say that having Venezuelan and Chilean ancestry means having to reckon with some of Latin America’s darkest moments. Chile underwent a brutal dictatorship that helped pioneer the neoliberal trajectory of Latin America and the rest of the world. Augusto Pinochet’s despotic and cruel approach to governance has earned him a permanent place in the world’s list of twentieth century villains. It is easy to forget this terrible history by looking at contemporary Chile. Its embrace of democracy and its unique prosperity and stability in the region have turned it into an appealing destination for immigrants from countries like Venezuela and Haiti. Once, nonetheless, Chile was a place to flee from rather than one to settle in. The dictatorship lingers in the national memory; a film like Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (2023) in which Pinochet is portrayed as a vampire hints at the ghastly leftovers of this dark period in history.
Venezuela’s history is just as difficult to grapple with as Chile’s. A twentieth century oil boom made this South American country one of the region’s wealthiest. This wealth, however, was not distributed equally among the poor and the rich. Hugo Chavez’s socialist government promised to fix this, but many Venezuelans soon lost hope. As the country descended into an unparalleled economic crisis, millions of Venezuelans from all social classes left for greener pastures. Neighboring Colombia, Miami and Madrid were earlier popular destinations; now there are thriving Venezuelan communities elsewhere in Latin America — Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago, Mexico City — as well as Europe and North America.
Bonnefoy’s arrival to the French literary scene is not exactly the direct result of this Venezuelan crisis or the Chilean dictatorship, even if these two have affected him and his family. His French last name indicates his French ancestry. His mother was a cultural attachée for the Paris embassy and his father was a writer. He was not born in Caracas, but in Paris. And back home in Caracas, he had attended French-language schools, a popular educational choice for the children of the bourgeoisie in the Global South. Upon moving to Portugal, he continued studying at the French lycée. Bonnefoy did not necessarily become French after settling in France, but rather, he was French all along. The unique part of his experience, then, is the coexistence of his French identity with his Venezuelan (and to a lesser extent, Chilean) one.
Historically and currently, there are few Latin American descent writers of French expression. In general, due to linguistic factors, France is not as popular a destination for Latin American immigrants in Europe as Spain. Bonnefoy could thus carve out a spot for himself as a Latino-French or Franco-Latin American writer in the French literary scene. And he has done just that. From the beginning, his works of fiction have dealt with his heritage. The press around his latest prize-winning novel Le Rêve du jaguar (2024) has incessantly compared his work to those by Gabriel García Marquez and Alejo Carpentier, the masters of magical realism. It is this comparison that drew me to writing this.
Magical realism, to the detriment of Latin America’s diverse literary scene, has become synonymous with Latin American writing and culture. It has entered the mainstream in the West to such an extent that Encanto (2021), a Disney animated movie lightly borrowing its aesthetics, became a global sensation. That the term magical realism has become identifiable to Western audiences means that Latin American artists worldwide may profit from evoking it to raise their profile. If Bonnefoy is a direct heir of García Marquez and Carpentier, whose writing chops are known, then French readers will pick up his book.
I do not mean to say that Bonnefoy is not talented, nor that he does not borrow from magical realism. What is interesting to me is that the relatively large French literary industry seems to be embracing that label so aggressively for him. Perhaps he embraces it as well because, like I said, it is a known, reliable aesthetic that sells books. For a French and Western public more broadly, it is a flavor of alterity that has been approved by critics for decades. Literature, embedded in capital like any other industry, is not immune from the benefits of branding.
Is this branding good or bad? Well, before being either of those, it simply is. A writer cannot do much to undo the predisposed opinions of audiences. Employing them to share their work seems a smart tactic to raise one’s profile in this hypercompetitive scene. Perhaps these magical realism references will introduce readers to something new. Yet one must wonder if this reliance on foolproof brands impedes innovation. Why must a new Latin American writer be the child of García Marquez? Or, in popular culture terms, why must Stromae be the new Jacques Brel? Could they not be introducing something different rather than continuing the legacy of their elders? Authors from minoritarian backgrounds should have the option to revindicate their individuality, to escape these readymade boxes they are placed inside of to sell more books.
I am sure there are affinities between Bonnefoy and the Latin American Greats, but his history is also anchored in a different period of time with different global dynamics. I think this difference is valuable. Acknowledging it would also bring attention to the fact that Bonnefoy’s experience is not that of most Latin Americans or Venezuelans in France or elsewhere. As a white Venezuelan, he enjoyed and enjoys privileges not afforded to his peers of color, especially those living in Venezuela today. This fact does not take away the quality and value of his work, of course. But it must certainly be remembered before turning Bonnefoy into an avatar of the region in France. I observe a similar dynamic in the US with Nicolás Medina Mora, whose ethnic difference — an essential part of the publicity of his novel América del Norte (2024) — ought not to be mistaken for marginality. We should not let the literary industry flatten the idea of identity for its own benefit.
