Name Gene Bell-Villada Role Literary critic | Education Harvard University | |
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Nominations National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Books Garcia Marquez: The Man, Borges and his fiction, Art for Art's Sake and Literary Li, Overseas American, The pianist who liked Ayn Rand | ||
Gene H. Bell-Villada (born 1941 in Haiti) is an American literary critic, novelist, translator and memoirist, with strong interests in Latin American Writing, Modernism, and Magic Realism. His works include The Carlos Chadwick Mystery: A Novel of College Life and Political Terror, the short story collection The Pianist Who Liked Ayn Rand, and the critical studies Art for Art's Sake and the Literary Life, Borges And His Fiction: A Guide To His Mind And Art and Garcia Marquez: The Man And His Work. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University and has been a professor at Williams College since 1975.
Bell-Villada was born in Haiti to a Hawaiian mother and a Euro-American father. Besides Haiti he was raised in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Cuba. He wrote of this experience in Overseas American: Growing Up Gringo in the Tropics.
His literary criticism is notable for its harsh views of Vladimir Nabokov. Art for Art's Sake and Literary Life was so negative in its assessment that Publishers Weekly described it as a "bilious analysis" of the Russian-born American writer. Bell-Villada explains the animosity by saying that he himself is a "lapsed disciple" of Nabokov.