The bad, the flawed in a work of art can generally
be identified with great precision, while we can
never be entirely fair to what is good, especially to
what is perfect.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
It is impossible not to agree with current statistics: literary critics are few, and the best must be searched for under rocks. Literary criticism, even in its most reduced form (the book review) has gradually disappeared, along with cultural supplements, literary gazettes, and book magazines. Discussions on social media, contrary to expectations, have impoverished the debates, filling them with controversies and simplifications that avoid the essential, which is, in essence, talking about literature, talking about books as what they are: books. The outlook for literary culture in Latin America does not seem encouraging. Fortunately, every era has its exceptions. In our time, it seems to me, that exception is embodied by the Mexican critic Christopher Domínguez Michael.
The cover dossier of this edition of LALT is dedicated to his work over more than forty uninterrupted years. Domínguez Michael is not only a literary critic; he is also a biographer and has played a central role in constructing a historiography of Mexican literature. His work has been an exercise in extraordinary freedom and, as such, not without controversy. Both are positive signs of serious work. Domínguez Michael is the first literary critic to appear on the cover of LALT. With this, we wish to send a clear signal. Criticism matters to us, and it matters deeply. That is why we are pleased to have brought together in this dossier not only essays by José Balza and Nicolás Bernales, a letter from the Venezuelan critic Guillermo Sucre, and a conversation between our author and another highly experienced literary critic, Will Corral, but also two essays by Domínguez Michael recently published in his latest book, El crítico sin estatua (Sauvage Atelier, 2025). We hope this dossier serves as an invitation to read one of the most important critics writing in Spanish today.
The second dossier is dedicated to diaries and dietarios (the latter term is not mine but Vila-Matas’s, as is worth clarifying) written by Chilean authors. The tradition of literary diaries in Chile is not very extensive, but, to my surprise, things have changed in recent years. Some poets, novelists, and essayists have turned to a kind of literature in which it is often more important to account for what is read than for what is lived. In this dossier we publish three essays. The first focuses on the legendary diary of the Chilean poet Gonzalo Millán, Veneno de escorpión azul (recently published in Spain by La Esporádica, 2025). Another author included is fiction writer Francisco Díaz Klaassen, who in 2023 published a book in the same vein titled Mínimas (Alfaguara). The final author is Álvaro Campos, who, with two books—Diarios (Laurel, 2022) and Negocio familiar (Tusquets, 2025)—has generated, in the ever-contentious Chilean literary world, significant barking and more than a few bites as well. These are books written by voracious, sometimes arbitrary readers, full of abundant quotations; in other words, books that reveal an unbridled passion for literature. Gonzalo Millán is, in this context, an exception: Veneno de escorpión azul is not a dietario but a diary of death, or rather, a diary of life and death. Its reissue confirms the durability of Millán’s work.
In the interviews section, we present several novelties. María Eugenia Meza talks with the Chilean novelist Jaime Collyer about the publication of his latest novel, Agua que no has de beber (Lom Ediciones, 2024). The book addresses a matter of planetary concern, impossible to ignore: the melting of glaciers. I agree with Óscar Barrientos when he describes Collyer’s work as “highly personal, sober, moving, and eloquent throughout an outstanding career as a short story writer, novelist, and essayist.” Another inclusion is that of Adriana Pacheco, who traveled to Peru to interview playwright and theater director Mariana de Althaus. This interview is something new for us; it has been a long time since theater appeared in LALT. Her written and directed works now exceed fifteen, and we are pleased to feature her in LALT thanks to Adriana Pacheco and Hablemos, escritoras. Finally, Natalia Consuegra interviews Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince about his new book Ahora y en la hora (Alfaguara, 2025). The title says it all. His experience in Ukraine changed his life, since he was almost killed when a Russian missile carrying six hundred kilos of explosives struck the same area where he was having dinner. His guide, Ukrainian writer Victoria Amélina, died hours after the explosion. It is a difficult book. Faciolince ventures into a complex zone of human experience, a territory where the violence of war means unceasing death and destruction.
Just as literary criticism and drama have a place in this issue, so do editors. We all miss those literary editors who were editors in the truest sense. One of them is Jacobo Siruela, today heading the Spanish press Atalanta, who, in the 1980s, founded one of Spain’s most iconic publishing houses, Ediciones Siruela. We remember his work not only for the literary quality of the titles he published—only a great editor can sustain a great collection—but also for the sheer number of imaginative works we know thanks to his efforts at both publishing houses. Let this be a reminder of the Spanish tradition—and, even more so, the Latin American one—so closely attached to realism. Atalanta is a press that releases few titles but never fails.
In translation, we present two interviews. The first is a conversation between U.S. translator Michelle Mirabella and Chilean writer Catalina Infante. Mirabella has just published an English translation of La grieta (Emecé, 2023), titled The Cracks We Bear (World Editions, 2025). Five years of work and collaboration between author and translator are reflected in this interview, prepared especially for LALT. The other interview comes from a longtime collaborator of our journal, Eduardo Suárez, who this time speaks with Mexican translator Selma Ancira, “one of the most outstanding voices in literature translated from Russian and Modern Greek.” But that is not all. Ancira is also responsible for translations of Marina Tsvietáieva, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Her contribution is indisputable, as is confirmed by the numerous awards she has received. In this conversation, Ancira delves into the secrets of her craft and shares her experience bringing readers closer to writers of the stature of Tolstoy and Kazantzakis. Translators like her keep alive the kind of literature that, for its depth and significance, many rightly call universal.
Of course, LALT brings many other surprises: Indigenous and Brazilian literature, translation previews, short stories, and poetry. Each issue is carefully designed to invite today’s readers to discover something of our literature. Reading remains that vicarious act through which readers inhabit, even briefly, the experience, subjectivity, and possible transcendence of others—a unique and irreplaceable encounter. Today, faced with the crisis of reading, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the retreat of the humanities, reading has become a titanic, extremely difficult task, constantly sabotaged by the distractions that surround us. Reading is not just opening a book; it is cultivating taste (that aesthetic capacity so undervalued in academia), dialoguing with the past, present, and future, and, above all, conversing with ourselves. That is why the existence of free, daring, and cosmopolitan criticism seems more necessary than ever. May the work of critics like Christopher Domínguez Michael inspire younger writers to take up the baton and continue along this long path once simply called—without need for any justification—literary tradition.
