Vol. XIX, #3 The Best of The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Vol. XIX, #3 The Best of The Review of Contemporary Fiction


Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Marx Family Saga, by Juan Goytisolo

reviewed by Sophia A. McClennan

Trans. Peter Bush. City Lights Books, 1999. 186 pp. Paper: $10.95.

Fans of Goytisolo and avid readers of the postmodern will both find The Marx Family Saga an insightful journey into the ideological chaos of “the new world order.” Beginning with a boatload of Albanian refugees who arrive at an Italian resort in search of the paradise called “Dallas,” the novel intersperses a wry sense of humor with a biting attack on transnational capitalism. With the craft of a skilled movie director, Goytisolo pulls back from the confrontation between hungry refugees and indignant vacationers to reveal the Marx family in a barren flat, channel-surfing before dinner. Karl enters and watches the television screen as scores of refugees are detained while waving photocopies of dollar bills and reciting “God Bless America” in heavy accents. Living in a historical limbo, Karl Marx witnesses “the dismantling of the systems supposedly based on his thought.”

For those concerned with the fate of politics after poststructuralism, The Marx Family Saga provides a brutally vivid characterization of the intricacies of social commitment in a world which consumes more television than literature. In narrative gestures typical of his earlier work, Goytisolo posits a number of surreal hypotheses: How would Karl Marx explain his work if he were alive today? Would he answer the media interest in “scandals”? How does one write about Marx today?

Goytisolo is one the finest masters of the postmodern. Rarely using punctuation, his narrative has a remarkable sense of rhythm and a strong element of self-reflection. The dilemma of writing in today’s market functions as a concern equal to the reaction of a fictitious Marx to the collapse of communism. When the author must face a Faulkner-ish editor (who chastises him for complex style) and his consultant, Dr. Lewin-Strauss, a feminist sexologist (who criticizes Marx’s treatment of the family servant), the reader is thrust into an odd world of hyper-intertextuality and bizarre twists of history.