The best of the Latins are pretty solidly in the modernist tradition,… but for the most part without the sterility that "modernist" has come to connote in Europe and North America. We have learned to expect certain other, better things from Latin American fiction: wit, energy, a lively cynicism, freedom from literary dogma, an original vision, innovation in form, vivid characters and a true love of language (as opposed to mere literary crossword-puzzle making). In all of those things, Macho Camacho's Beat is Latin American. And delightfully so.

To explain the plot of Sánchez's novel is to explain the least about it. In one sense, as in Tristram Shandy or Mrs. Dalloway, nothing really happens. Poor Tristam Shandy never gets off his stair landing, Woolf's airplane merely passes over and Sánchez's characters never get unstuck from "traffic jams" of one sort or another. (p. 642)

What "happens...