ABSTRACT
The inclusion of an important novel by a writer not usually mentioned in studies of the era, Peter Matthiessen, offers an opportunity to return to the ethnographic interest in the mystery of cultural difference and the themes of purity and abjection introduced in the chapter on The Sheltering Sky and, in contrast to the open-ended conclusion of that novel, see them brought to closure in a way that points forward to contemporary ideas of cultural hybridity. Here, too, the comparison with Héctor Babenco’s film version reveals difficulties created by its historical distance from the novel and by the filmmakers’ decision to reduce the complexity and ambiguity of the novel’s conclusion, bringing it into conformity with a univocal conception of selfhood consonant with identity politics.
