I am reading this book as voicing a broader consensus concerning modern literature shared, to greater and lesser extents, by the core members of the Latin American literary "Boom." Paz writes really, really well, and his positions are quite compelling: his dialectical counterposition of analogy and irony as the dual driving forces of modern literature makes a lot of sense, and the way he uses it to demonstrate the continuity between romantic and post-romantic modern literary movements is compelling. Maybe it's best to read this against books like Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde: Paz gives you a strong formulation of the "continuity" thesis, whereas Bürger is interested in establishing the specificity of the avant-garde break with a literary tradition that includes romanticism and the other major movements of the 19th century.

Paz's positions can also be frustrating, especially with regard to the more radical consequences of the student movements of the 60s. While he wants to be magnanimously open-minded, his relative closed-mindedness with regard to sexual orientation and other issues that I consider important is often frustrating. In terms of his particular stances, I often found myself objecting to his positions; in general, though, I really appreciated his panoramic study of modern poetry. ( )