José María Arguedas
The Fox from Up Above and the Fox from Down Below
Trans. Frances Horning Barraclough
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Pp. 326. $45.00 $19.95

Reviewed by Alfonso González

The importance of José María Arguedas in Spanish-American Literature is well documented, and making his work available in English translation is a worthy endeavor. Arguedas was raised by an Indian family in his native Peru and often uses Quechua words and songs in his novels. The translator, Frances Barraclough, has experience in the Peruvian language and culture and has also translated two other works by Arguedas, Deep Rivers and Jawar Fiesta. The present translation is preceded by an introduction, written by Julio Ortega and translated by Fred Fornaff, which gives us the historical background of the novel. The main body of the translation is followed by a glossary listing the meaning of little-known Spanish and Quechua words and phrases. After this Glossary we find three helpful critical essays by William Rowe ("Reading Arguedas's Foxes"), Christián Fernández ("The death of the author in El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo"), and Sara Castro-Klaren ("Like a pig when he's thinkin: Arguedas on Affect and on Becoming an Animal"). Since this work was published posthumously, and it was organized in part by Arguedas's widow and others, the introduction and the critical commentaries that follow it are essential. Without them, we would be lost with respect to the arrangement of the novel and much of its significance.

Though six different persons collaborated on this book, the major credit belongs to the translator, for what we are reading is, after all, a translation. Robert Wechsler in his Performing Without A Stage: The Art of Literary Translation has aptly defined the role of the translator when he says that the translator "performs not with hopes of fame, fortune, or applause, but rather out of love, out of a sense of sharing what he loves and loving what he does" (9). The commentary fits this translation perfectly. There is a constant effort to make the novel available to an English-speaking audience. Besides the glossary, there are numerous footnotes explaining regionalisms and other potential problem words. The translation flows smoothly for the most part, though the reader may at times be surprised by the alternation of British and American English as in "Asto dodged the blow and lit out running for the brothel" (43). Swearwords are sometimes a problem for the reader in the United States as in "Balls to you, bawdy-house madam!" (47), or "Get out there ya highland cholo son of a bitch, ya kniffin' motherfucker. Take out your knife, ya chicken Indian, boss the whore who's your mother" (43). In spite of these minor interruptions, the translation is a labor of love and a significant contribution to the understanding of Peruvian reality at the end of the twentieth century. The other contributors help the reader understand the novel and its arrangement.