Jaime Saenz is one of the consummate writers in contemporary Bolivian literature and has exercised more influence on the direction of this literature than any other single figure. Almost as important has been his impact on other disciplines such as philosophy, painting, literary criticism, historiography, and the analysis of contemporary cultural theory. Reticent to systems and deeply suspicious of conventional rationality, he belongs to a generation that, as he told Gonzalo López Muñoz in a 1965 interview published in Presencia Literaria (21 September 1986), "está frustrada. . . . Es una lástima, pero tantos valores han claudicado, se han rendido ante la pequeña tentación del vivir cómodo. Han dejado de ser lo que eran, han dejado de hacer lo que tenían que hacer" (is frustrated. . . . It's a pity, but so many talented people have succumbed to the temptations of...