Writers Salvador Plascencia and Michael Jaime-Becerra share a city and common inspiration: El Monte

Source:News Taco

*Suggestions for your summer reading. VL

By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times

Aside from their proximity in age, and the fulsome praise they got for their debut novels, Salvador Plascencia and Michael Jaime-Becerra would appear to have little in common as writers.

Plascencia’s “The People of Paper,” which was published in 2005 by McSweeney’s Books, is a fiendishly inventive meta-fiction that has drawn comparisons to the house-of-mirrors stories of John Barth and Italo Calvino, the self-reflexive screenplays of Charlie Kaufman and the gasp-inducing travelogues of the 16th century Spanish explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

“Part memoir, part lies,” as one review astutely put it. “A novel like no other,” effused T.C. Boyle, “…firmly grounded and soaring at the same time.”