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DESPITE its popularity with the reading public, initial critical reaction to Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate (1989) has often tended to dismiss the work as, at best, a poor imitation of the male canon. Probably the most extreme reaction thus far has been Antonio Marquet's analysis. which characterizes the novel as "simplista ... infantil ... plagada de convencionalismos banales, despojada de una intencion estilistica definida y ... [sin] otra aspiracion que ser novedosa" (58). Closer to the mainstream of critical response, George McMurray considers the book "worthy of note," although, he contends, the episodes of magic realism "never would have been written without the precedent of Cien aos de soledad' (1035-1036).(2) Undoubtedly, to read Esquivel's novel the critic must, to paraphrase Susan Leonardi, suspend his or her "academic skepticism" and admit the pleasure of the text (347). Nonetheless, I would like to take this reading one step further: a careful examination of the text reveals that Esquivel has neither replicated the male canon nor popular "woman's" literature. In fact, underlying the apearance of conventionalism may be detected as playfully parodic appropriation(3) that serves not only to undermine the canon but, more importantly, to redirect its focus to an aesthetic project in which such binary oppositions as "high art" and "popular" literature are overturned.
Linda Hutcheon has observed that the transtextual parody of classics is one way of reformulating the tenets of male culture (Poetics of Postmodernism 130). To assert an independent voice and at the same time facilitate communication, the author must effect a means of transtextual appropriation that at once inscribes and recontextualizes the parent text. Such parody, Hutcheon affirms, should be considered an ironic "inversion" or "transcontextualization," not necessarily at the expense of the parodied text (A Theory of Parod 6). By appropriating the resources of magic realism, Esquivel has consciously selected a mode that has become so much a part of the canon that it would be easily recognized by anyone even remotely familiar with contemporary Spanish-American literature. Thus, although the hyperbolic episodes of magic reaiism that appear throughout Ccmzo agua para chocolate may indeed be indebted to Cien anos de soledad, there is a marked difference in perspective between the two novels. While Garcia Marquez' narrative centers on a re-examination...