Mexico

La Semana De Colores, by Elena Garro – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Elena Garro is not well known in the English speaking world, or if known, she is unfortunately known as the wife of Octavio Paz. She has been called the most important Mexican woman writer after Sor Juana, but for the most part her importance has dimmed over time so that only two books are in print in English.  La semana de colores is not one of those books, although the story Es la culpa de las tlaxcaltecas (It Is the Fault of the Tlaxcaltecas)is quite famous.

The stories in La semana range in style from magical realism to stories of criminal twist. Es la culpa de las tlazcaltecas is the best story in the book and shows a mastery of the magical and historical in a story that blends 500 hundred years of history. Garro tells the story of a woman who meets an Indian on the side of the road. He is dressed for battle and keeps mentioning battles of in the distance. Margarita, a woman domineered by her husband, talks with him, but doesn’t understand what he is doing on the side of the road. Latter she sees him in Mexico City and around her home. The Indian, though, is just more than an aparation of the past, he is her cousin and husband, and Margarita continually says she has betrayed him. Yet she has to wait for him in the home of her husband in Mexico City and even tells him about the Indian, which makes him think she is crazy. Throughout the story Margarita shifts between these two realities: the modern Mexican life, and the Indian who is running from a defeat in battle; a loveless and violent marriage, and the true husband. Es la culpa de las tlazcaltecas plays with the idea of a golden past, the past before the Spaniards came, to create a work that criticizes the macho world Margarita lives in. In the house she is a prisoner; outside she is free. The link is made all the more clear by the repeated references to the Tlazcaltecas who were the tribe who helped Cortés defeat the Aztecs. And when she says she was a traitor she plays on the story of La Malinche who helped Cortés and became his mistress. Garro uses these elements to create an opposing world where she would be free from the machismo of her house in Mexico City. There is also a longing to correct the mistake La Malinche made in becoming Cortés mistress. For Margarita to free herself of her husband, to do what she wants to do, is the way to break with the last 500 years of history and return at once to the past and the future.

If Es la culpa de las tlazcaltecas masterfully blends the magical and the historical, some of the other stories are not quite as well rounded and tend towards a mix of peasants and ghosts or peasants and crime that is tiring. More than a few times I thought I was reading a mix of Juan Rulfo and Edgar Allen Poe. An example of the latter is Perfecto Luna where a man who was so overcome with guilt about killing a friend and disposing of the body parts in the adobe of his home he begins to hear him everywhere. Finally, he has to flee his home and town. As he is fleeing he finds a man on the side of the road and tells him everything. The next morning they find the killer dead. Perfecto Luna like other stories has several elements that run through many of the stories and grow a little tedious: peasants who believe in spirits and which manifests itself as a simple mindedness. While these stories were written in 1964 before Magical Realism became the dominant style, at this point to read stories about ghosts or devils or superstitious people who believe in them seems to insult the characters.

The other story that had some real merit was El arból. El arból while using a twist device at the end shows class tensions between an upper class woman and an illiterate woman from the country. The story, of course, shows the classest and racist attitudes of the rich woman, but it dwells more on how those fears become self fulfilling. However, there is, as always in these stories, a question of whether the attitudes bring on the rich woman’s violent end or was it something super natural. Where as some of the stories rely on the simplicity only of the characters, El arból allows for a broader range of thoughts and emotions between the two characters which makes it a richer story. Unfortunately, the ending is a little bit of a one liner that seems a little easy.

While the stories seem uneven, except for the Es la culpa de las tlazcaltecas, there are sufficiently well written to warrant reading one of her few works that are translated into English.

Alberto Fuguet: from Film to Literature, the Hybrid Case of a Writer

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

La Jornada has an interview with the Chilean Author  Alberto Fuguet is a younger author who as a proponent of Mc Hondo has looked to turn away from the over saturated magical realism that came to define Latin American Literature. His book Shorts is available in English and is a mix of story telling methods, some leaning towards the cinematic and the interview makes it obvious that it is one of his focuses. He does have a new book out:

At the beginning of the year he published a new book in most of Latin America and Spain, a novel “mounted”by Fuguet, My Body Es a Cell, which is an autobiography of Andrés Caicedo, a Columbian cult writer whose book has continued to be the best selling book in Columbia.

A inicios del año, salió en la mayoría de los países de América Latina y España, la novela “montada” por Fuguet, Mi cuerpo es una celda, autobiografía de Andrés Caicedo, escritor colombiano de culto, cuyo libro se ha mantenido como el mejor vendido en ese país sudamericano

The interview covers several themes. First, he talks about hos he wished he could direct films instead of write, yet he isn’t interested in being a screen writer either. He has created a website for hosting independent videos. He has also made several short films.

Second, he talks about what he sees the role of the blog and the new media. It is refreshing for an author not to see it as just another means  of publicity, or a half way step to print.

I think that there are people in the virtual world who are very shy and unknown who write very personal things in their blogs; the people who are less shy use the virtual as a type of trampoline to eventually publish on paper. I am sure that there is a Kafka, a Pavesse, and people like that hidden on the web and that we are going to discover them latter. My idea of a blog is to help myself, to help others, as breaking the circle of books, in my case I see that my books come from the same planet.

Creo que lo que hay virtual es de gente muy tímida y muy desconocida, que escribe en sus blogs cosas muy personales; la gente que es menos tímida lo usa como una especie de trampolín para eventualmente llegar al papel. Estoy seguro de que hay un Kafka, un Pavesse, y hay gente así escondida en la red y que vamos a descubrirlo después. Mi idea del blog es apoyarme, apoyar a otros, como romper el círculo de los libros, en mi caso yo veo que mis libros vienen como del mismo planeta.

Finally, he talks about Rulfo and Bolaño.

Rulfo is super global writer, super preliminary, who seems very interesting to me. In general I have voices and companions that interest me. In the future perhaps one should find that not all of the world is Latin American. I am interested in everything hybrid, like chronicles; in Andrés Caicedo, the Argentine Fabián Casas, or what the small presses are doing.

I think that Blaño is a hybrid writer, but one that has the respect of intellectuals. He is very pop, has a much more mixed world…Rather than writing about a nostalgic Argentine exiled to Paris, he wrote about Mexicans or Spaniards. He dared to with other passports. He took on voices that were not his and transformed them.

Rulfo es un escritor súper global, súper liminar, me parece muy interesante. En general tengo voces y compañeros de ruta que me interesan. En el futuro habría que analizar que no todo el mundo es latinoamericano. Estoy interesado en todo lo híbrido, como crónicas; en Andrés Caicedo, en el argentino Fabián Casas, o en lo que se está haciendo en las editoriales pequeñas.

Siento que Bolaño es un escritor bien híbrido, pero que logró tener respeto intelectual; es súper pop, tiene un mundo mucho más mestizo […] Más que escribir de un argentino exiliado nostálgico en París, él escribía sobre mexicanos o españoles, se atrevía escribir con otros pasaportes. Logró meterse en voces que no eran las suyas y las transformó.

José Emilio Pacheco and Elena Poniatowska in La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

There is an excellent, if writterly, appreciation of José Emilio Pacheco in this Sunday’s cultural supplement in La Jornada. It is certainly worth a read if you have an interest and know Spanish. Pacheco is the author of Las batellas en el desierto (The Battles in the Desert) which I reviewed sometime ago and remains one of my most popular posts. Poniatowska focuses on three things: his relation to the past; why young people are so dedicated to him; and what has made him the writer he is. On the first count he is an other of memory but not nostalgia: “José Emilio cree en la memoria, a la nostalgia la repudia.”  Which Poniatowska points out in quoting from the end of Batallas en el desierto

They demolished the school, they demolished Mariana’s building, they demolished my house, they demolished the Roma neighborhood. That city is gone. That country is gone. There isn’t any memory of Mexico form those years. And it doesn’t bother anyone: who wants to remember that horror? Everything goes like the records on a record player. I will never know if Mariana is still living. If she was a live she’d be 70.

Demolieron la escuela, demolieron el edificio de Mariana, demolieron mi casa, demolieron la colonia Roma. Se acabó esa ciudad. Terminó aquel país. No hay memoria del México de aquellos años. Y a nadie le importa: de ese horror, quién puede tener nostalgia. Todo pasó como pasan los discos en la sinfonola. Nunca sabré si aún vive Mariana. Si viviera tendría sesenta años.”

Second, the youth like Pacheco because he is like them and respects them. Part of this is his focus on youth and part of it his willingness to meet with them. When his conferences have filled up he has given two conferences, one in the conference hall and the other outside where the students are waiting for him.

The young who still live their memories of childhood find themselves in El viento distate, El pricipio del placer, Las batallas en el desierto (The Battles in the Desert) and through Condesa neighboorhod of Moriras lefjos and they celebrate the novelist and short story writer with never ending gratitude. It is rare to feel gratitude for a living writer but Jose Emilio gathers all their devotions. When the boy Carlos in Los batallas en el desierto confesses, “I never thought that Jim’s mother was that young, that elegant, least of all that beautiful. I didn’t know how to tell him. I can’t describe what I felt when she shook my hand,” readers relive the torment of their first love. The same occurs with the stories in La sangre de Medusa written between 1956 and 1984. Jose Emilio touches fibers in which they recognize themselves, in which you and him and I and we identify with. On reading it, everyone rewrites “Tarde o remparano”. His is ours. We make the book with him, we are his part, he changes us into authors, he reflects us, he keeps us in mind, he completes us, and the reading takes away our problems. We owe him being readers, as much as we owe him for life.

According to him, those truly unhappy loves, those terrible loves are amongst the young because they have no hope. “In any part of your life you have some little possibility of reuniting with the person you love, but when you are young your history of love has no future.”

Los jóvenes que todavía viven sus recuerdos de infancia se encuentran a sí mismos en El viento distante, El principio del placer, Las batallas en el desierto y hasta en la colonia Condesa de Morirás lejos y le brindan al novelista y al cuentista un testimonio de gratitud interminable. Es raro sentir gratitud por un escritor vivo pero José Emilio reúne todas las devociones. Cuando el niño Carlos de Las batallas en el desierto confiesa: “Nunca pensé que la madre de Jim fuera tan joven, tan elegante y sobre todo tan hermosa. No supe qué decirle. No puedo describir lo que sentí cuando ella me dio la mano”, los lectores reviven el tormento de su primer amor. Lo mismo sucede con los cuentos de La sangre de Medusa escritos de 1956 a 1984. José Emilio toca fibras en las que se reconocen, en las que tú y él y yo, ustedes y nosotros nos identificamos. Al leerlo, cada quién escribe de nuevo “Tarde o temprano”. Lo suyo es nuestro. Hacemos el libro con él, somos su parte, nos convierte en autores, nos refleja, nos toma en cuenta, nos completa, nos quita lo manco, lo cojo, lo tuerto, lo bisoño. Le debemos a él ser lectores, por lo tanto le debemos a él la vida.

Según él, los amores verdaderamente desdichados, los amores terribles son los de los niños porque no tienen ninguna esperanza. “En cualquier otra época de tu vida puedes tener alguna mínima posibilidad de reunirte con la persona que amas, pero cuando eres niño tu historia de amor no tiene porvenir.”

Finally, he is a writer whose history has been influenced by some of the greats of 20th century Mexican Writing. Moreover, his family had been part of the great events of the 20th century, his father escaping execution only through the intervention of President Obregon.

Some of these family friendships were liberal like Juan de la Cabada and Hector Perez Martinez and most of all Jose Vasconcelos. Carlos Monsivais remembers that Jose Emilio used to invite him to eat at his house and they would both listen seriously and quietly to Vasconcelos, an absolutely fascinating personality. Together they would also go to visit Martin Luis Guzman who both of them admired, and don Julio Torri who would tell them in a low voice the secret history of Mexican pornography.

Algunas de esas amistades familiares eran libertarias, como Juan de la Cabada y Héctor Pérez Martínez, y sobre todo José Vasconcelos. Carlos Monsiváis recordó que José Emilio lo invitaba a comer a su casa y ambos escuchaban muy serios y callados a Vasconcelos, personalidad absolutamente fascinante. Juntos iban a visitar también a Martín Luis Guzmán, que es una de las admiraciones de los dos, y don Julio Torri les hablaba en voz baja de la historia secreta de la pornografía mexicana.

Carlos Fuentes Wins for El Yucatán de Lara Zavala

~ bythefirelight

Carlos Fuentes has won the González-Ruano prize for journalism for the article El Yucatán de Lara Zavala which is a book review of Península, península, by Hernán Lara Zavala. The article is interesting if you are interested in Mexican history and literature and gives a brief history of the Mexican authors who have used history in their works. The also sounds interesting. You can read another review at Letras Libres too.

The General (El General) – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The General is a documentary about Plutarco Elías Calles, the former President and revolutionary general. But in watching it you will not learn much about the man. Instead, what you learn is fleeting, brief, like the memories of his daughter whose voice describe what he and Mexico were like after the Revolution. The daughter’s memories and the bits of history that fill out his story are fragments of a larger story: the failure of the Revolution to live up to its promises.

The General is Calles’ great grand daughter’s attempt to discover who Calles was and what his legacy was. She looks not only at the historical sources, newspapers, her grandmother’s recorded memoirs, but the lives of the Mexicans in Mexico City. Did the brutality of his regime change anything? Did the Revolution itself change anything? The verdict is no. With 500,000 street vendors in Mexico City 80 years after his presidency, it is obvious what ever he left Mexico it didn’t work. The interviews with the people of Mexico City all come to one conclusion: nothing has changed and the rich still get away with everything while the poor still suffer.

The General is a must for anyone who is interested in Mexico. Although it isn’t a traditional history of Calles, the interweaving of history, memory and documentary makes for a good film.

Jorge Volpi Wins the Debate-Casa de América Prize

~ bythefirelight

El País reports that Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize for his work El insomnio de Bolívar. From the description it sounds very interesting, a little like News From the Empire. All I need to do now is find a copy.

The history of Latin America from its mythic past to an imagined future is what El insomnio de Bolívar touches. With this work the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize yesterday. This book, acording to the jury, is “well documented, avoids an academic tone and contributes with humor, irony and great literary skill, to the understanding of the American continent.” The winning work was selected by the jury from among 42 works.

The writer was in the US when he received the news of the award. “I imagine an American future with enormous problems and challenges and with the dream that all of America, including the English speaking, will form something like the European Union.” Volpi has written an essay divided into four parts about the identity, democracy, narrative, and the future of Latin America. “The las part I have added some bits of fiction,” said the writer.

La historia de América Latina desde su pasado mítico hasta un futuro imaginado es lo que aborda El insomnio de Bolívar. Con esta obra, el escritor mexicano Jorge Volpi (México, 1968) se hizo ayer con el Premio Debate-Casa de América. Este libro, según el jurado, está “ampliamente documentado, escapa al tono académico y contribuye, con humor, ironía y gran oficio literario, a la comprensión del continente americano”. La obra ganadora fue seleccionada por el jurado entre un total de 42 trabajos presentados.

El escritor se encontraba en EE UU cuando recibió la noticia del premio. “Imagino un futuro de América con enormes problemas y desafíos y con el sueño de que toda América, incluida la anglosajona, formase algo parecido a la Unión Europea”. Volpi ha escrito un ensayo divido en cuatro partes en el que se acerca a la identidad, la democracia, la narrativa y el futuro de América Latina. “A la última parte le he podido añadir algunos tintes de ficción”, señaló el escritor.

News from the Empire – A Brief Review

~ bythefirelight

I just finished Fernando del Paso’s News from the Empire which I will be reviewing for The Quarterly Conversation in the fall. However, I do have some brief thoughts. It is a sprawling novel that is worth the read. It may help if you know something about Mexican history. A quick read of a few pages a Wikipedia would suffice. To call it a novel, though, might give the wrong idea. A better name might be fictive history. A times the book is purely novelistic, at other times it reads like a history book. Either way the breath of the novel is impressive and is an achievement.

20th Century Mexican Authors

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There is a great site dedicated to 20th century Mexican Literature called simply enough 20th Century Mexican Literature. Maintained by a professor at Wake Forest University it has a gigantic biography of Mexican Authors. It also contains a blog with somewhat regular updates about Mexican culture. Definitely worth a look. (Primarily in Spanish)

Brief Daniel Sada Interview at El Universal

~ bythefirelight

A brief interview with Daniel Sada appeared in El Universal. It doesn’t get into too much but there are a couple quick quotes worth noting.

In a novel “the characters are the most important, more than the language or the plot” […]

Sada took apart the argument of those who define him as a writer who mainly focuses on the language and that some have called baroque, and affirmed that en the best novels of all time, the characters were the most important.

En una novela “los personajes son lo más importante, más que el lenguaje y que la historia” […]

Sada desmontó los argumentos de quienes le definen como un escritor especialmente centrado en el lenguaje y al que algunos han llegado a calificar de barroco, al afirmar que, en las mejores novelas de todos los tiempos, lo más importante son los personajes.

Having started to read some of his writing (mainly a short story from Letras Libres), it is obvious that he is a great stylist, but he tends to keep his style short and compressed, focusing more on the details, rather than long clause heavy digressions.

He also wanted to note that he isn’t just a northern writer, which if you read Christopher Domínguez Michael’s review in Letras Libres, as I did, you may have that impression.

He also wanted remove what he defined as “the nickname of northern writer” that he always wanted to get rid of it because it guarantees that it limits him a lot and because, en his opinion, “there are many norths.”

También ha querido desvincularse de lo que definió como “el mote de escritor norteño” que siempre se quiso quitar porque asegura que le limita mucho y porque, en su opinión, “hay muchos nortes”.

Best of Mexican Photo Journalism

~ bythefirelight

La Plaza has a good presentation of the best in Mexican Photo Journalism. There are some excellent photos and a good narrative essay that explains what you are seeing.

Mexico Going Bilingual?

~ bythefirelight

La Plaza reports that Tamaulipas has declared itself bilingual and will teach English to 300,000 students in the state. Interesting idea and makes one wonder if the US could ever do such a thing.

Bolaño in La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

There was a good article about Bolaño in La Jornada’s Sunday supplement this week talking about Bolaño’s views of exile. According to Gustavo Ogarrio, Bolaño didn’t really believe in political exile because it made him a victim, which he was not. He also thought it was pointless to be nostalgic about the old country

“Can you be nostalgic for a country where you were about to die? Can you be nostalgic for the poverty, the intolerance, the arrogance, the injustice? The refrain intoned by Latin Americans and also by other writers in other poor or traumatized zones carries on the nostalgia, the return to the country of birth, and to me this has always sounded like a lie.”

“¿Se puede tener nostalgia por la tierra en donde uno estuvo a punto de morir? ¿Se puede tener nostalgia de la pobreza, de la intolerancia, de la prepotencia, de la injusticia? La cantinela, entonada por latinoamericanos y también por escritores de otras zonas depauperadas o traumatizadas, insiste en la nostalgia, en el regreso al país natal, y a mí eso siempre me ha sonado a mentira.”

The article goes on to talk about the novel Amuleto which takes place in Mexico during one of the darker times in recent Mexican history. The link between the dictatorships of Latin America are clear.

The exile, though, is not just political, but literary, yet the literary exile is, too, often over done.

If the novel The Savage Detectives is interpreted and read as the parodic and tragic dissolution of a certain narrative vanguard in Latin America, represented by the search for one of the founding poets of Visceral Realism—Cesárea Tinajero— and the motive for the wild detective investigation of the poets Ulises Lima y Arturo Belano, Amuleto allows another paralel reading, concentrating a parody of the post vanguard in the voice of a melodramatic and earthy poet, Auxilio Lacouture.

Si la novela Los detectives salvajes acepta ser leída e interpretada como la disolución paródica y trágica de cierta narrativa vanguardista en América Latina, representada en la búsqueda de una de las poetas fundadoras del real visceralismo –Cesárea Tinajero–, motivo de la pesquisa detectivesca y salvaje de los poetas Ulises Lima y Arturo Belano, Amuleto admite otra lectura paralela, al concentrar esta parodia postvanguardista en la voz de una poetisa melodramática y telúrica, Auxilio Lacouture.

Roberto Bolaño: los exilios narrados is well worth the read.

Mexico’s Bestsellers for 2008

~ bythefirelight

The LA Times has a list of Bestsellers in Mexico for 2008. Mostly they are are imports from the US (3 different Stefanie Myers books) and histories of Mexican Politics. Only one book really caught my eye and that is Jorge Volpi’s El Jardín Devastado.

Las batallas en el desierto (sp)

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Las batallas en el desierto
Jose Emilio Pacheco

Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading turned me on to this book. I have always loved Mexican writing and his reviews of the book were quite intriguing. Although, there is a translation from New Directions, I read the book in Spanish, a Spanish is actually quite easy to understand and any third years Spanish student could read the book with few problems. Yet the simplicity belies an insightful understatement.

Ostensibly, the book tells a coming of age of age story set in Mexico City of the late 40s and early 50s. Carlos, the narrator, is the youngest son of a middle class family that has fallen on hard times. His father owns a soap factory but now that World War II is over the American corporations are beginning to take over the Mexican market. The family is forced to live in a neighborhood inhabited with people who have been left behind in Mexico’s rise in prosperity. Carlos isn’t aware of the socio-economic changes in Mexico, but he notices the influence of American culture everywhere. American culture has become the in thing and those with money want more an more of it.

With Carlos’ new status he finds him self at a school whose kids come from a mix of economic ranges. He becomes best friends with a boy named Jim. Jim is a mystery because he says his father is from the states and he visits him occasionally, yet his father is never seen. He even has an American sandwich maker that takes bread and ham and creates round sandwiches that look like flying saucers. Despite the exotic link to the United States, it seems so strange he is stuck in Mexico. Why isn’t he in the US? To make the mystery stranger, he says his mother is the lover of a Mexican official, a former general, one of those heroes of the revolution that found wealth in power after the war in the government. The general, though, can’t leave his wife, but pays for everything. She spends much of her time looking good for him. The general is never seen; he is always just of screen, as if he is about to arrive or leave.

The friendship falls apart when Carlos decides to tell Jim’s mother that he is in love with her. While she finds it touching, Jim gets mad at him. Soon Carlos’ mother also finds out and decides he is one step away from hell. She takes him out of the school and moves him to another, better one. The next opportunity he has to visit them he finds they have moved and no one in the building seems to know who he is talking about. A few years latter when his father’s fortunes have changed and he is now driven around in a limo, he sees an old classmate who is polishing shoes and he treats him to lunch. He asks about Jim and the friend says something bad had happened to him.

Throughout the story Pacheo plays with the inequalities of a fast changing Mexico and questions the myth of the Mexican Miracle of the 40s and 50s. He describes the meal Carlos eats at a friend’s home as greasy brain tacos, something Carlos, even in his reduced circumstances, is not used to. At the same time there is the interplay of American culture, the round sandwiches, the movies, the magazines with American stars, which gives one a sense of a culture on the move, yet also separating into the foreign and native. Are these changes really a miracle, or are they signaling the beginning of the undoing of Mexico? Moreover, the mystery of Jim and his mother suggest something dark and troubling about the power structures. If the the boyfriend really was part of the government, did he have her taken care of in some way? If so what does that say about the myth of the revolution and those who served in the revolution? Given what came latter in the late 60s and 70s, starting with the Tlatelolco massacre and the dirty war it is not a stretch to think the boyfriend may have done something.

The mysteries are never resolved–that is part of growing up. What is true is the mysteries of the novel make one question the certainties of the time.