The Dinner at Gonfarone's: Salomn de la Selva and His Pan-American Project in N [Paperback]

The Dinner at Gonfarone's covers five years in the life of the Nicaraguan poet, Salom?n de la Selva, but it also offers a picture of Hispanic New York in the years around the First World War. De la Selva is the forerunner of Latino writers like Junot D?az and Julia ?lvarez.The Dinner at Gonfarone's is organised as a partial biography, covering five years in the life of the young Nicaraguan poet, Salom?n de la Selva, but it also offers a literary geography of Hispanic New York (Nueva York) in the turbulent years around the First World War. De la Selva is of interest because he stands as the largely unacknowledged precursor of Latino writers like Junot D?az and Julia ?lvarez, writing the first book of poetry in English by an Hispanic author. In addition, through what he called his pan-American project, de la Selva brought together in New York writers from all over the American continent. He put the idea of trans-American literature into practice long before the concept was articulated.

De la Selva's range of contacts was enormous, and this book has been made possible through discovery of caches of letters that he wrote to famous writers of the day, such as Edwin Markham and Amy Lowell, and especially Edna St Vincent Millay. Alongside de la Selva's own poetry - his book Tropical Town (1918) and a previously unknown 1916 manuscript collection - The Dinner at Gonfarone's highlights other Hispanic writing about New York in these years by poets such as Rub?n Dar?o, Jos? Santos Chocano, and Juan Ram?n Jim?nez, all of whom were part of de la Selva's extensive network. Peter Hulme's The Dinner at Gonfarone's is a masterful, well-written literary history of the origins of modern literary pan-Americanism that offers the first in-depth biography in English of the early life and work of its seminal figure, Salom?n de la Selva.
Jonathan Cohen, author of A Pan-American Life: Selected Poetry and Prose of Muna Lee

The Dinner at Gonfarone's is a brilliant pioneering lc@