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Luis Rafael Sanchez La guaracha del Macho Camacho Arcadio Diaz Quinones, ed. Madrid, Catedra. 2000. 313 pages, ill. ISBN 84-376-1863-0
IN A 1981 INTERVIEW titled "The Craft and the Memory," Luis Rafael Sanchez states that the importance he places on language is perhaps due to his experience with radio soap operas (as an actor and as a listener) and to the word, the dialogue or orality of a radio script. However, he could also have been describing his highly successful novel La guaracha del Macho Camacho, published for the first time in 1976 and translated into English as Macho Camacho's Beat. Sanchez, whose treatment of subject, language, and genre places him in the company of such distinguished Latin American writers as Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Puig, Cortazar, and several others, was an established author by the time La guaracha exploded on the literary scene. A variety of works, including plays such as La farsa del amor compradito (1960) and La pasion Begun Antigona Perez (1968), the collection of short stories En cuerpo de camisa (1966), and a series of interviews, essays, and magazine...