Isabel Allende - Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism

Despite her commercial success, Allende has been the subject of biting negative criticism from other authors and literary critics — among them Roberto Bolaño and Giannina Braschi who declared in her novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" that Isabel Allende is "killing García Márquez a little more each day the same way Michael Jackson's sisters are killing Michael Jackson." In an article published in Entre paréntesis, Bolaño writes that Allende's literature is anemic and compares it to a person on his deathbed. Bolaño has been one of her harshest critics, saying that it is to give her credit to call her a writer and that she is rather a "writing machine". Literary critic Harold Bloom concurs with Bolaño that Allende is a bad writer, and adds that she only reflects a determinate period and that afterwards everybody will have forgotten her. Of Bolaño, Allende said to El Clarín that she is honoured to be represented by him as a Chilean, although she remembered Bolaño regarded her as trash. In the same interview, Allende recognises that she has rarely had good criticism in Chile and that Chilean intellectuals "detest" her. Novelist Gonzalo Contreras says that "she commits a grave error, to confuse commercial success with literary quality". Allende disagrees with these assessments of her, and she has also been quoted as saying:

The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing. There was a review of my last book in one American paper by a professor of Latin American studies and he attacked me personally for the sole reason that I sold a lot of books. That is unforgivable.

Alternatively, it has been noted that "Allende's impact not only on Latin American literature but also on world literature cannot be overestimated." The Los Angeles Times has called Allende "a genius," and she has received many international awards, including the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, granted to writers "who have contributed to the beauty of the world." She has recently been called a "literary legend" by Latino Leaders Magazine, which in its 2007 article named Allende as the third most influential Latino leader in the world.