I
On the cover of Writers, Their Lives and Works, one of those “coffee table books” whose production costs a fortune but later you find them on sale for a pittance, García Márquez appears clad in a gray suit, black shirt underneath, talking on the phone. I thought he had stopped being a writer to become more of the perfect icon for the cover of those books, the archetype of the Latin American author, holed up in a cave, leading a reclusive public life, nonchalantly leftist, not behaving like an intellectual, and publishing books that sell like sausages thanks to a promotional machine that scorns neither the maneuvers of academies nor the gestures of politics. His later books ceased to matter, but the legend insists on enduring.
García Márquez is the Maradona of the Boom, everyone wanted to celebrate him, buy him a drink. Vargas Llosa is the citizen of the world, a polyglot, a columnist for major newspapers, even more so than the glamorous Carlos Fuentes, a fixture at embassies and late-night toasts on VIP rooftops. Vargas Llosa wasn’t offered embassies: he wanted to be president of Peru and, luckily, didn’t succeed—only the gods know what would have become of him if he had.
Time has passed, and the “Boom” is now a collection of powerful novels and a handful of episodes from a shared biography. No matter when you read this: there will be people trying to explain it, and even a recent novel has set out to narrate the most famous punch in the literary world in any language.
A couple of years ago, four editors compiled for the Alfaguara publishing house a volume collecting the correspondence between the four main authors of the Boom: in order of birth, Julio Cortázar (1914), Gabriel García Márquez (1927), Carlos Fuentes (1928), and Mario Vargas Llosa (1936). But what could have been a magnificent complement to answer some questions ends up being a two-way exchange: Fuentes and Cortázar, two consummate lobbyists each in their own way and style, take over the scene amid the Colombian’s exhaustion and the Peruvian’s reluctance and particular ambitions.
Although in Those Years of the Boom, Xavi Ayén notes that García Márquez was consumed by a passion for politics from early on, that’s not what we find in these letters. The first part, titled “Pachanga de compadres,” lets us perceive the institutionalized Boom as a party, a banquet, a carnival, and a masquerade ball. It’s García Márquez who most insists on the need to meet up to keep the revelry going and who least displays his more committed side. The Colombian was the one who best knew the Cuban reality due to his work as a reporter in the early years of the Castro revolution and even, during a trip to Camagüey, had met Fidel Castro, whom he tried to introduce himself to, apparently without the dictator paying him much attention.
Despite Carlos Fuentes being the group’s quintessential ambassador, García Márquez is keen on preserving the brotherhood. In one letter, Fuentes speaks of “defending our little circle of people who know how to work, love, and think,” (305) despite his two failed attempts to push forward projects that would have opened the gallery to nearly a dozen authors. The first of these projects was the cycle of dictator novels, for which they even drew up lists of writers paired with their corresponding dictators.
The second, still in 1970, was an attempt by Fuentes to create a collaborative theater piece, in this case based on the story of a dagger that, forged in Spain, arrives in America and serves equally for domination and revolt, for liberation and passionate crime. He mentions wanting to invite Carpentier (again) to be part of the project, despite the harsh aesthetic judgments Cortázar issues about the Cuban’s “word-coupling” style. “I feel him at my antipodes because the baroque is at least three centuries old,” he says.
II
I wanted to extract some moments that I share here, with a bit of “fisking”:
A letter from Vargas Llosa to Fuentes in 1969: He recounts that he spoke by phone with Retamar but didn’t dare ask if the rumor that Edmundo Desnoes was imprisoned was true. He says he accepted a contract to teach a course at the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras), but he doesn’t like the idea because he’s working on a novel and, besides, he’s been told that “the island is crawling with Cuban worms.” On the United States: “Everything here is going to get worse with Nixon.” It’s a letter with a very leftist sensibility. Although a distancing, not yet a break, with Castroism is noticeable when he says he didn’t travel to Havana because “I didn’t really feel like it.” “The last thing that came into my hands were Lisandro Otero’s speeches, which gave me chills, almost as much as when I read the indecent frivolities against the Revolution by our friend Guillermo.” (289-90)
Cortázar: The Argentinian constantly mentions the radicalization of the Cubans (Fornet, Otero, Retamar…), but he never broke with them, though he distanced himself much later, not forgetting that pamphlet titled “Policrítica a la hora de los chacales.” He complains about the Manichaeism these attitudes introduce and yet continually calls for not collaborating with the enemy. He even reproaches Vargas Llosa for accepting work at North American universities. (297-301)
García Márquez: The Colombian tells Fuentes that the Cubans are “going to end up honeymooning with the gringos soon, and then we’ll see who’s going to demand explanations from whom.” (304)
Cortázar on Carpentier: “Because Alejo is a marvelous case of literary anachronism, and his Century, whether you like it or not, is a resplendent streamlined Victor Hugo (I used that image that day because it saves a lot of explanations). You might tell me (Vargas brought it up last night, because he also greatly admires Alejo) that much of our America is anachronistic in the field of literature, meaning that perhaps one can write in different aesthetic times without ceasing to be ‘new.’ Fair enough, but the sooner Carpentier’s chosen time runs out, the better. Can you reread Salammbô? In 1964, I find it an effort beyond my capabilities. What must happen, and then you’d be right, is that our Salammbô arrives a hundred years late, like so many other things. In that sense, Alejo will deserve the gratitude of the future, because with his work, one of the possible palettes of American narrative is exhausted, and so masterfully that those who come after will inevitably have to seek other paths. Carpentier has perfected what our Leopoldo Lugones attempted in his own way: to fix the American baroque in words. But wasn’t the baroque a style from three centuries ago? (…) And then, Carlos, you’ll have to admit that the man who wrote Rayuela cannot accept The Century of Lights, which is absolutely its opposite in terms of aesthetic and even ethical stance.” (89) [So far, so good, but isn’t it at least curious that shortly afterward he championed Paradiso?].
III
The reader traces their own biographical path for each of the four writers. The one who appears from the start as the least politicized and most festive ends up as the errand boy for a Caribbean dictator, while the most militant of them, Cortázar, so combative, ends up self-exiled in a Paris that would see him die amid the haze of an uncertain illness, though still with enough energy to switch revolutionary commands: from Caribbean beaches to Solentiname. His stubborn support for a state of affairs that couldn’t have been more obvious is quite absurd.
Fuentes always seemed very aligned with caviar leftism, dating actresses and celebrities and combative in his own way. A fierce critic of the Díaz Ordaz government after the Tlatelolco massacre, he soon accepted the post of ambassador in Paris under Luis Echeverría’s presidency. He held a firm stance in the Padilla case, making no concessions or wavering like García Márquez and Cortázar, and supported the vilified Vargas Llosa. He spends all his time talking about “true socialism,” but he had it very close by.
Fuentes’ case with the Cuban Revolution is symptomatic of Castroism’s relations with the cultural field almost from the outset. The ever-mediocre Ambrosio Fornet attacks him over the appearance of the magazine Mundo Nuevo, calling his articles frivolous because they also appear in Life. Both Vargas Llosa and Cortázar found the article’s aggression and pejorative tone unacceptable, which, of course, had Fernández Retamar’s approval. Fuentes’ relationship with Casa de las Américas and the Cuban regime was never the same after that incident, and he can’t be blamed. The disdain for the intellectual world that didn’t align with the Cuban revolution’s urgent demands has remained virtually intact to this day.
As for Vargas Llosa, there are few letters in this volume, and until that gap is filled, the map of the Boom will remain incomplete. But one letter in particular reveals something about how the four related to each other, with certain unspoken concealments and resentments not expressed face-to-face. In 1972, Cortázar wrote to Vargas Llosa saying he was resigning from the editorial team of the magazine Libre. The Peruvian thanked him for the letter because it was “frank and affectionate,” but clarified that his withdrawal would validate “the Cuban mistake.” In a footnote, what he really thought about the incident is revealed. In a letter to Jorge Edwards, he says:
Cortázar sent me a deplorable letter saying that his staying on the magazine was an obstacle to his reconciliation with Cuba, which, despite his self-critical poem (my little caiman, my little belly), still hasn’t forgiven him. Poor Julio, on that slope, he’ll end up doing sad things. (372n)
Vargas Llosa confesses in La trompeta de Deyá that when the Argentine died in 1984, he hadn’t heard from him in a long time.
On the edge of page 400, Cortázar tells Fuentes: “Forgive me for this awful scribble. To think I was a writer!” The journey from birth to disarray has been certified. Along the way, there were praises, affections, ruptures, and reproaches. Also punches. Also the night of politics, which continues to muddy everything.
