Few major novelists have had important careers as intellectuals as well, but in this as in so many other facets of his writing, Carlos Fuentes is remarkable. In Myself with Others, Fuentes has assembled essays reflecting three of the great elements of his work: autobiography, love of literature, and politics. They include his reflections on his beginnings as a writer, his controversial Harvard University commencement address, and —because Fuentes is, above all, a literary figure—his trenchant examinations of Cervantes, Gabriel Gracía Márquez, and Borges, with detours through the work of Diderot, Gogol, Kundera, and others. As always, Fuentes is concerned with the interplay of cultures, and he illuminates the complex relationship between art, politics, and history as no one else can.
“To bring off a gathering of disparate essays and give it cohesive substance is among the most exacting of literary feats, buy Fuentes accomplishes this with surefooted ease. At one end of the selection stand a pair of autobiographical pieces, a beguiling “How I Started to Write” and a study of the process involved in the composition of the novel ‘Aura’: at the other stands the celebrated Harvard University commencement address of 1983, on hemispheric policy, which is still as relevant as ever."
—Robert Tylor, The Boston Globe.
