Volume 40, Number 15 · September 23, 1993
How Mexican Is It?
By Diane Johnson
Eclipse Fever
by Walter Abish
Knopf, 335 pp., $23.00
'I haven't had time to read up on Cortés,' says Bonny, one of the characters in Walter Abish's new novel, Eclipse Fever. 'Was he the good or the bad guy?' 'Goodness, I suppose that depends entirely on your historical perspective,' says her Mexican companion. 'My father maintains that history and fiction are interchangeable,' Bonny says. This idea informs much of Abish's work. History, because it is narrated, is subjective and interpretative like fiction, and fiction cannot escape the didactic implications of history.
Review, 2617 words
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