Latin American crime fiction...Guatemala

When scholars specializing in Latin American crime fiction narrate the history and particular development of the genre in the continent, they refer to a phrase by Mexican intellectual Carlos Monsivais: "Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd...if nobody knows who was responsible for the Tlatelolco massacre". By that, he implies that writing classical detective fiction in Latin America (where a detective solves the crime and order is restored) is impossible, since the State is usually the criminal.

Today, I don't want to suggest crime fiction by Guatemalan authors. I'm sure they exist, but I honestly don't know anything about the subject. However, I've spent the past hour reading a fascinating article on a real murder in Guatemala, that threatened to destroy a whole government. It's one of those stories where reality is stranger than fiction, and if it had been written as a novel, readers would complain about its absurdity. Read it when you have some time, and then comment on it. You won't be disappointed.

Contemporary Latin American detective fiction - the Nicaragua edition

When people in academia studying Latin American literature think about Nicaragua and literature, the first person that comes to mind is obviously Ruben Dario. If their research is on more contemporary writers, Gioconda Belli is probably the best known author. Sergio Ramirez is better known for having been Daniel Ortega's Vice President during the 80s, and then for his book Adiós muchachos (Spanish Edition), a memoir of his involvement in the Sandinista Revolution and later disappointment with it.

What many people don't know is that Sergio Ramirez is also an extraordinary crime fiction writer. I know two scholars who specialize in Central American literature, and neither of them knew it. If I had to recommend one book, I would say his masterpiece is Castigo Divino, that also won in 1990 the Dashiell Hammet Prize awarded by the Semana de Novela Negra in Guijon to the best crime novel of the year. More conventional from a literary point of view, another good choice for those who are interested in Nicaragua is El cielo llora por mi, that captures the disillusion of many former revolutionaries in the 1990s, as well as the corruption of former Sandinista forces and their entanglement with the neoliberal regime that won the elections in 1990.

I'll keep posting later with suggestions for Mexico and Brazil.

Contemporary Latin American detective fiction - some recommendations - part I

Many of us love to read crime fiction for leisure. I include myself in that group. But what is mostly available and circulated in the United States is American and British crime fiction, and, as of late, Nordic crime fiction. I've never seen anybody outside very narrow circles to have any knowledge of Latin American crime fiction. For simplicity, I will talk about crime fiction whether it's more the analytical, classical type (Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Cristie et al.), the noir style (Chandler & Cia), or any other subgenre.

Although it got a late start in Latin America, the genre is alive and booming in the region. In fact, it is also a valid topic of academic inquiry. As an example, we have these recent books: Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons: Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico, by Persephone Braham, and Contemporary Hispanic Crime Fiction: A Transatlantic Discourse on Urban Violence, by Glen S. Close.

Crime fiction is also one of the fields I work in, so I thought it could be a good idea to give my readers some reading suggestions, accompanied by a short comment. I will try to link to books with English translations, but that is not always possible, so some recommendations might be limited to those of you who speak Spanish. So let's start, divided by country:

Argentina

Argentina has the longest tradition in the continent regarding detective fiction. Since Borges wrote essays defending the genre (although he liked the classical detective fiction, not the noir), it became an acceptable mode of narrating within Argentine writers. In fact, some of the most canonical writers in Argentina have written crime fiction.

A good start would be Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, a parody of genre conventions written by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, another important Argentine writer.

Other suggestions, in no particular order, are:

Jose Pablo Feinmann's Ultimos Dias De La Victima and Juan Martini's El Cerco. Both were written during the last dictatorship, and use genre conventions to get around censorship and at the same time convey the paranoid climate that pervaded every day life in Argentina.

Ricardo Piglia's Plata Quemada (Money to Burn) was published surrounded by a big scandal: it won the Premio Planeta of 1997, but soon there were rumors that the literary prize was fixed. Piglia is an institution in Argentine literary field (not necessary a good thing), and also a professor at Princeton. This is his most accessible book, where you do not need an understanding of obscure details of Argentine history to comprehend it. I think it's fabulous. It's a crime story, a reflection on capitalist society and Argentina in the 1990s (even though it takes place in the 1960s).

Another good crime story about neoliberal Argentina is Juan Martini's Puerto Apache / Port Apache (Spanish Edition). Not exactly in the genre, my favorite novel about neoliberal Argentina is Rodolfo Fogwill's Vivir afuera / To Live Outside (Spanish Edition).

Heavily (sometimes too heavily) influenced by Borges, Pablo de Santis has cultivated the genre. Of his novels, my favorite is Filosofia y Letras (Coleccion Ancora y Delfin). By the way, if you read this story, read Feinmann's Ultimos dias de la victima. You will find some unexpected similarities. By the same author, I heard good things about Voltaire's Calligrapher: A Novel. I didn't like The Paris Enigma: A Novel, but some of you might differ.

Probably the most successful (as far as sales go) novel in the genre in the past 10-15 years is Guillermo Martinez's The Oxford Murders. I hated it, but some might enjoy this tale of an Argentine math grad student at Oxford who stumbles upon a body and tries to solve the mystery. As a side note, the writer is a mathematician himself. He used to be a university Math professor, until the success of this novel allowed him to quit and dedicate himself to writing full time. If you want to read something good by him, try an earlier text (not a crime story, though): ACERCA DE RODERER (Spanish Edition).

Changing countries. I recently read Dancing to "Almendra": A Novel, by Cuban - Puerto Rican author Mayra Montero, and really enjoyed it. It's an historical thriller, set in the mob-dominated Havanna of the 1950s. It takes place in 1957, and it's a great recreation of a fun and corrupt society that was self-destructing.

Continuing with Cuba, the inescapable name is Leonardo Padura. His Mario Conde series is one of the closest thing you are going to get to a critical view of the Revolution by an author writing in Cuba. They have been translated into English in non-sequential order, but I highly recommend to read them as they were originally published. However, I have a hard time to figure out the order just from Amazon's descriptions, so I just leave the links to the books: Havana Fever, Havana Red, Havana Gold: The Havana Quartet, Havana Blue (Mario Conde Mystery 3) and Havana Black: A Lieutenant Mario Conde Mystery (Mario Conde Mystery 2).

Ok, I have to run to my class now, but I will follow up the post with new recommendations. I hope you enjoy some of them.

Extroverts vs. introverts

Through this post in Clarissa's Blog, I started thinking about different personalities and the issue of extroverts vs. introverts. Personally, I share many traits with Clarissa, and one of the reason I chose academia as a career was to avoid "team work". The post also made me reflect about something else.

My institution has Service Learning Semesters in different locations (Latin America, Africa, Asia, locally). I belong to the committee that chooses the students that go to the Latin American site. The process for applying has many steps: personal essay, letter of recommendation, interview with the candidates, and, finally, the candidates have an interview with alumni of the program (student that have gone and spend the time there). The alumni then prepare a report with their perceptions of the candidates, and whether they recommend them to go or not (actually, they have 4 categories: highly recommend, recommend, recommend with reservations, do not recommend). We (the faculty committee) are very careful not to influence the students' report, since we are really interested in their perspective. We also pay a lot of attention to it, since they might be able to perceive issues that escape us. There are always surprises in those reports: students that we thought were a great fit for the program, the alumni do not like. And the other way around. Many times (though not always), it boils down to issues of personality. If the candidate charmed the alumni or not. If he/she was outgoing, nice to talk to, or, on the contrary, rigid, kept to him/herself, etc.

There is a certain number of spots in each trip, and usually we have almost as many applications as spots. Therefore, our job is to make sure that we are sending students that are minimally prepared for the experience. Or that we are not sending a psycho. This year, however, we had twice as many applications as spots. So the alumni report became very important. A few students that the alumni had rated as "highly recommended" didn't get chosen, because of academic reasons (they didn't have much idea about Latin America, their GPA was too low, their letters of recommendations were less than enthusiastic). But the opposite also happened. At least two students that we, the faculty, thought that they were ready to go, came back with a "Do not recommend" from the alumni, along with an explanation. In one case, it made sense. Somebody had a better insight on the student and how she/he interacted in group situations, since this person had worked with the student in the past. But on the second case, it was mostly a case of shyness. The student was reserved, didn't talk much, so she/he was labeled as "rigid" and not "flexible". She/he didn't have a great personality, she/he wasn't an extrovert. And since we had so many candidates, this person wasn't chosen.

I still feel that it wasn't fair. I have been on that trip, so I know that problematic personalities can cause problems. You do need to create a good group dynamic, otherwise the trip leader will spend his/her time just solving banal issues. That's why, for the case of the first student described, I think we made the right choice. But I know the second student, and I think she/he was penalized for not being an extrovert. Maybe that made her/him unfit for this type of experiences. I am not sure. I still think she/he would have been a good addition to the group.

Operation Odyssey Dawn

This is not a political post, nor a post about the merits (or not) of the military operations against Libya. It's just a comment on it's name: "Odyssey Dawn". And I will just say what my Greek friend just posted on Facebook: "Is this supposed to inspire confidence in the campaign? Don't they ask any Greek speaking people?". Brilliant. I guess the reference is too obscure for contemporary politicians.

P.S: I edited the title to make it more clear

Contemporary Mexican Urban Literature

As usual, I get a little ahead of time, so I've started thinking about a possible syllabus I might be teaching next Spring. I can design it as I want, and I was thinking about a course on Contemporary Latin American Urban Literature, were we would discuss urban representations of the neoliberal city. I've been looking for novels to assign, and I've come up with some good ones. I ask to my blogger friends, however, if they could recommend Mexican novels, published after 1990, where I could discuss urban representations (of Mexico City, if possible). Also, I would like to avoid a "neopoliciaco", or noir novel. The only writer I've come up so far is Juan Villoro. Does anybody have additional suggestions?
Thanks!

My first wedding...

Last Saturday, I went to my first wedding. Not the first wedding I've ever been to, obviously, but the first wedding of a former student. She was my student her freshman year, and then started taking every upper level class she could with me. Although her Spanish wasn't the best, she was bright, driven and enthusiastic. She was very conservative (the menu on her wedding invitation stated that children would be served "freedom fries"), and loved getting into discussions with me in class (I don't hide my opinions, but I usually play devil's advocate to all positions).

I was really touched that she invited me to the wedding. I didn't see other professors, either. I met her mother, a single woman who raised three children on her own, and she thanked me profusely for how important I had been to her daughter throughout her education. I was touched. It was really moving. It was one of those few occasions where you have the confirmation that you made a difference in somebody's life. And I felt great for it.

Cities to live vs. Cities to visit

Last year, I spent three weeks in Sao Paulo doing research. I got to meet other colleagues from other fields. One of them, a geographer, said about Sao Paulo: "This is a great city to live in, but not a good city to visit". I understood what he meant: the amount of cultural activities going on in Sao Paulo at any given time is amazing, as is the diversity of the offerings. But it is not a beautiful city in any conventional sense, and it can be difficult to navigate without previous knowledge of it. It doesn't help that it has a reputation for being a violent city, so visitors do not dare to go beyond accepted middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods.

However, I disagreed with him. I love megalopolis. I like chaos. I like just walking down the street and getting pushed by a wave of people busy going from one place to the other. When I was in Sao Paulo, a friend of mine, who used to work in the city as a journalist, gave me a walking tour of certain areas, and it was fascinating. You can find a high rise new tower next to a decaying building covered with graffiti and then a 1920s house that somehow has been saved from demolition. It's a city that wears its history in layers, and they are all available to view for those who are interested.

I got the same feeling of exhilaration last week, while in Mexico City. What both cities share is that they are Latin America's megalopolis. They are very different, however. Mexico City has a colonial architectural past that has been pretty well preserved. It can be pretty by conventional standards. Besides a few mandatory visits (Frida Kahlo's museum, etc), what I did mostly was just to walk the city. And I loved it. The energy, the people, taking the subway. Now, the writings of Monsivais or Paco Ignacio Taibo II make more sense. And as much as I like my Midwest city, I know I need to spend sometime every year absorbing that energy.

So I'm back. And I had a great Spring Break! And tomorrow is probably going to suck. But my husband and I are already fantasizing about our dream vacation: touring the Latin American megalopolises.

Off to give my language students the midterms

... and then, grade them, enter mid-term grades, and finally... SPRING BREAK!!!!

Cortazar's "Casa Tomada"

Yesterday, I emailed my students a list of questions that they have to turn in tomorrow as a written assignment on Julio Cortazar's short story "Casa Tomada". We will be discussing the story tomorrow. Half an hour later, a student emailed me back saying she was so excited that we would be discussing "Casa Tomada", because she had to read it for a high school class and didn't understand it at all, but that I was such a great professor that she knew that now, she would understand it.

For 5 minutes, I felt great about the compliments (I know the student pretty well, and they were sincere). But then, I started feeling performance anxiety. What if my student doesn't understand "Casa Tomada"? Is it my fault? Is it her fault (she is a pretty structured and rigid young lady, and the story mixes fantasy, reality and the weird without differentiating within the narrative)? Will my reputation be ruined in her eyes? Am I just being vain? I've taught "Casa Tomada" plenty of times, but it's the first time I feel nervous about teaching it. So off I go, to carefully design my class for tomorrow.