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The Reader in Luis Goytisolo's Antagonia Tetralogy: A Study in Narrative Communication. By Kevin E. Teegarden. Potomac, Maryland: Scripta Humanistica, n.d. 211 pages.
Good novels have always required astute readers. This is so no less for Don Quijote from the seventeenth century than for Ulysses from the twentieth, each demanding that readers exercise care and creativity to draw out the intricate and sometimes ambiguous elements of their composition. Some good novels-and Luis Goytisolo's Antagonia stands as one of them-not only require acts of creativity implicitly but also devise the process of writing and reading as the cynosure of their narrative, thus challenging the reader to engage the text from a variety of perspectives. In The Reader in Luis Goytisolo's 'Antagonia' Tetralogy, Kevin Teegarden accepts such a challenge and offers a fine overview of how Luis Goytisolo compels readers to enter and disentangle his novel.
Teegarden divides his study into four main parts, which in turn he devotes to the four parts of Antagonia (Recuento, 1973; Los verdes de mayo hasta el mar, 1976; La colera de Aquiles, 1979; Teoria del conocimiento, 1981). His analysis is shaped by reader-response criticism, defined in the introduction with an eclectic mix...