A Letter from a SUNY Professor re BUT FOR THE LOVERS

 March 4, 2016
 Wilfrido D. Nolledo's "But for the Lovers," (E,P. Dutton, New York, 1986), is available at Amazon.com)

January 19, 2011
In remembrance of my husband's 12th death anniversary, am re-posting these excerpts from a letter by a young Dimiti Anastasopoulos in 1995, now a noted American writer, critic, and English professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. The letter, saved by Wilfrido and found among his precious collection of letters from friends, colleagues, mentors, publishers and contemporary writers, was one he had meant to answer and thank the writer for but unfortunately never got down to doing. The complete critique might be included in its entirety in another collection of Wilfrido's works, hopefully to be published later.

August 29, 1995


Dear Mr. Nolledo,

...Finished (But for the Lovers) only yesterday, my enthusiasm for it has carried over and preoccupied my day. There's much to celebrate in such a book. the excitement of reading for the first time the work of a stylist with a wholly original voice. As a young reader I can't help but be thankful for a book that's stylistically long overdue. Surely, American readers and writers must take note of your forward-looking style. I think it has opened up the possibilities of what fiction might look like in the near future.


Your novel certainly stands out among the literary fiction being published today. The only contemporary work I've read that approaches its linguistics verve is Julian Rios's Larva. But there's much more to revel in and digest in But for the Lovers, and it makes me wonder why so many other contemporary literary novels sound alike. I suppose writers have given up on the idea of trying to find their own writerly voice, but I can only hope that a good look at your work will present them with a nobler direction, or---as your narrator might prefer it---an ignoble direction. You've opened the boundaries of writing prose into a world's fair of phrase-making to which all writers and readers should attend.  One of the admirable qualities of your style is the refined yet uninhibited carte blanche you take with words, rather than reducing your narrative to an interior voice. Perhaps, by writing in a variety of languages, rhythms and styles, you've exhausted the possibility of a writer's ever "finding" a genuine (limited to one language) voice, and at the same time proven that contemporary fiction does not have to succumb to the logjam of uniformity in a world with entirely too much information and too much noise. You remind us of the laudable goal of honing one's writerly or readerly ear, tuning it to a medley of voices, a sort of pastiche or harmony that one can call his or her own, even though invariably it may be a hybrid of many voices that have already been heard. I hope it catches on. ...
.....
Best regards,
Signed
Dimitri Anastasopoulos
P.S. I'm hoping to read your previous novels--and looking ahead to the novel that's forthcoming--but I see that Dalkey Archive has published only one to date. It's a shame. It would serve Dalkey well to present us with the rest of your work.