Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

Four elements in assessing a book

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. 

—Anne Lamott


After my book club read and discussed 15 books, Francesca suggested we rank them in order of preference. I have four elements I consider in assessing a book: the characters must be compelling and behave consistently, the plot must move along nicely, the writing should be innovative and/or beautiful and the ending must work. I eliminated several books on the basis of what I considered weak, inconsistent or unsatisfactory endings.

Everyone thought I’d select Seven Types of Ambiguity as my top choice; I thought so, too. But when I looked over the books and considered the four elements, that book wasn’t in my top three. In fact, each book club member had the same first book. And the same second book. After that we diverged widely. Portia and I had the same third book; Francesca had it dead last. Our club has now read over 30 books and my original top three are still in place. Here then are the best books I read in 2006. All the books mentioned are in the library. 

The Known World, Edward P. Jones, 2003. This is a historical novel, not my favorite genre. I often feel writers of historical novels have a list of things they want to teach the reader and I can picture them checking off things as they insert them in the story. I have no idea how he did it, but Jones managed to tell a compelling story about compelling characters in the pre-Civil War south, and to tell it in beautiful language without teaching or preaching. It’s a first novel and a richly textured story of slavery in Virginia. It was on The New York Times Best Book of the Last 25 Years list and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I can’t say enough about this book.

Excerpt from the first paragraph: The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins. . . . He had been in the fields for all of fifteen hours. He paused before leaving the fields as the evening quite wrapped itself about him. The mule quivered, wanting home and rest. Moses closed his eyes and bent down and took a pinch of the soil and ate it with no more thought than if it were a spot of cornbread. He worked the dirt around in his mouth and swallowed, leaning his head back and opening his eyes in time to see the strip of sun fade to dark blue and then to nothing. He was the only man in the realm, slave or free, who ate dirt, but while the bondage women, particularly the pregnant ones, ate it for some incomprehensible need, for that something that ash cakes and apples and fatback did not give their bodies, he ate it not only to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the field, but 

because the eating of it tied him to the only thing in his small work that meant almost as much as his own life.

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson, 1980. This quirky book is another first novel. After their mother’s death, Ruth and her sister Lucille are raised by their grandmother, then two maiden aunts and finally a free-spirited aunt, Sylvie, a delightful character. The two girls react to her idiosyncrasies in different ways. The scene where Sylvie and Ruth take a boat is worth the price of the book. This is another on The New York Times Best Book of the Last 25 Years list and Robinson was one of only two women included on the list.

Excerpt: Her friends were very old and fond of white cake and pinochle. In twos and threes they would volunteer to look after us, while the others played cards at the breakfast table. We would be walked around by nervous, peremptory old men who would show us Spanish coins, and watches, and miniature jackknives with numerous blades designed to be serviceable in any extremity, in order to keep us near them and out of the path of possible traffic. A tiny old lady named Ettie, whose flesh was the color of toadstools and whose memory was so eroded as to make her incapable of bidding, and who sat smiling by herself on the porch, took me by the hand once and told me that in San Francisco, before the fire, she had lived near a cathedral, and in the house opposite lived a Catholic lady who kept a huge parrot on her balcony. When the bells rang the lady would come out with a shawl over her head and she would pray, and the parrot would pray with her. . . .

The Paperboy by Pete Dexter, 1995. A complex novel about the side of Florida most people never see. Ward James, an investigative reporter from Miami, returns to his northern Florida hometown to look into the death of a sheriff and the conviction of a local redneck. His brother Jack works for him and narrates the novel. It’s a story that stayed with me long after I read it. 


First two paragraphs: My brother Ward was once a famous man.

No one mentions that now, and I suppose no one is inclined to bring it up, particularly not my father, who in other matters loves those things most that he can no longer touch or see, things washed clean of flaws and ambiguity by the years he had held them in his memory, reshaping them as he brings them out, again and again, telling his stories until finally the stories, and the things in them, are as perfect and sharp as the edge of the knife he keeps in his pocket.

Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I discussed in my October 12 column, was fourth. Next week I’ll talk about my number five pick when I take the pulse of Richard Russo. 

Do you have a favorite novel you’ve read recently? If you’d like to share that with San Miguel, please email me at marciabookfever@hotmail.com. Include the title, author, copyright date and a short excerpt. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública.

A Peruvian’s journey to San Miguel
Reviewed by Maline Gilbert McCalla

Diego Rivera, from Cossío del Pomar en San Miguel de Allende with permission.

Felipe Cossío del Pomar painting his youngest sister Carmela’s portrait. Courtesy of Marie-Claire Brillenbourg. Ines Aguerrevere Cossío de Senior

Cossío del Pomar en San Miguel de Allende, recently translated into English by Maline McCalla, is an autobiographical memoir of Felipe Cossío del Pomar’s years in San Miguel, during which time Pomar sowed the seeds for San Miguel as an international arts center, host of world-class artists and art instruction, by founding the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and co-founding the Instituto Allende.

The author was born in San Miguel de Piura, Peru, in 1888. Like other Latin American artists and intellectuals of the period, he traveled to Europe where he associated with some of the famous creative people of the era: Appollinaire, Picasso, Pablo Duran, Modigliani, Paul Fort, Severini, Archipenko, Dop Bles, Paco Durrio, Juan Gris and Utrillo. Among these influential men, three (Diego Rivera, José Vasconcelos and Alfonso Reyes) influenced Pomar greatly in his decision to travel to their Mexican homeland in an effort to understand the Mexican soul emerging from a long and bloody revolution.

Cossío’s first view of San Miguel on arrival at the forlorn train station in 1926 was a little dusty, a little disappointing. The place soon worked its magic on him and in 1936 Pomar came back to settle in San Miguel, remembering fondly that first visit where he saw it as a place which would enable him to escape from a world of pressures and commercialism, where he could write and paint in peaceful seclusion. But at odds with his desire for a tranquil life were his two passionate dreams. The first was to open an international art school for adults which would also serve as an artisans’ school where local children could continue artistic traditions dating back to pre-Colombian times. The second was to try to induce a move from a white Eurocentric dominance in the arts towards one including Latin American influence. 

Pomar’s timing was perfect. The end of the Mexican Revolution was followed by the establishment of a political regime which threw its support behind anything that would help promote a Mexican national identity. The period came to be described as the Mexican Renaissance, an extraordinary explosion of creativity in disciplines ranging from painting and sculpture to architecture, music, theater and literature. As well as good timing, Cossio had the intellectual depth, drive, connections and the financial resources necessary to assist in the pursuit of his passionate dreams.

With Stirling Dickinson providing invaluable assistance, Cossío del Pomar restored a former convent and opened the Universitária de Bellas Artes in 1938 (now known as El Nigromante, or Bellas Artes). In 1951, following a return to Peru and yet another exile, he found himself back in San Miguel where he and Enrique Fernández Martínez, Enrique's wife Nell, and Stirling Dickinson (again), founded the Instituto Allende. The art students and intellectuals whom the schools attracted, and the ensuing ripple effect of that influx of creative people, changed forever the destiny of this beautiful hillside town.

Pomar’s memoirs tell of his adventures; of the homes he restored (La Ermita which he later sold to Cantinflas), the Atascadero (purchased from bullfighter Pepe Ortiz), and lastly El Retoño, on the Salida a Querétaro; and of the fascinating people who passed through his San Miguel life: Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, León Felipe, President Cárdenas and Jesús Silva Herzog, among others. He writes candidly about his achievements and failures, his feverish enthusiasms and his deep disappointments.

This English translation was published so members of the public who do not read Spanish, but who are now finding life-giving energy in San Miguel de Allende, could know to whom they owe a bit of gratitude. This translation is dedicated to all those whose souls have been nourished by San Miguel, a town so profoundly influenced by this Peruvian’s dream and drive. Cossío del Pomar is available in various bookstores in San Miguel and in the Biblioteca’s La Tienda.

Maline Gilbert McCalla has a BA in English literature, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, has an MA in Romance Languages and an MFA from the Instituto Allende. She is the translator of Cossío del Pomar en San Miguel de Allende.






I’m a writer? Really?
By Eva Hunter

Terri Taylor attended both the 2006 and the 2007 San Miguel Writers’ Conferences, as well as numerous others over nearly two decades. Last spring, she received information about a call for submissions to a juried collection of work that would eventually become the anthology Solamente En San Miguel just published by Windstorm Creative. A self-proclaimed South Texas “girl,” Terri had worked in public relations right out of journalism school, promoting nonprofit companies in various Texas cities. She then stayed home to raise her two children and run a home business selling women’s clothing samples.

Terri calls herself a “workshop junkie.” She says that the publication of her piece “Virginia” in the San Miguel anthology is proof to her family and friends that she just wasn’t sitting around playing video games on the computer.

I’m a writer? Really? Seriously, to allow oneself that name. Seeing one of my stories in print has helped, though I know many beautiful writers—my own mom is one of them—who will never try to get published.

Since receiving my first vinyl-covered, lock and key diary when I was six, I’ve been a journal-keeper, though I never thought I’d really write. My childhood dream was to work as an interpreter at the United Nations. In 1960, my grandmother took the girls of my family on a whirlwind train tour to Washington and New York. The United Nations was the highlight of that trip for me. I was eight and starry-eyed. The world of diplomats and negotiations seemed glamorous and noble. I didn’t become a United Nations interpreter, but what is writing if not interpreting?

I’ve taken classes sponsored by San Miguel Workshops, including two with New York-based writer/teacher Kaylie Jones, who is a heat-seeking missile when it comes to zeroing in on an individual writer’s needs. Yes, I suppose I become discouraged from time to time, but I’ve always buoyed myself by thinking that someday someone in the future would discover my unpublished stories and journals. When I read that the San Miguel Authors’ Sala was putting together an anthology, I knew the time was right. I had 12 journals filled with San Miguel stories. Let’s face it—if you can’t come up with story ideas in San Miguel—well, you’re just not trying. The deadline for submission was three days before my fifty-fifth birthday so I made it my goal. I taped a piece of paper next to my desk that said “A crappy draft is better than no draft.” Well, actually I used a more offensive word than “crappy.” I had about three weeks to whip it together. I had already been working on a fictionalized version of my piece. A friend read it a
nd said, “I think you should just tell it like it happened.” And I did.

I wasn’t prepared for the huge swell of emotion I felt when I got the email saying my piece had been accepted. I read that email over and over, thinking there would be a disclaimer or a request for a million dollars or something. Upon hearing that I would be published, my son sent me the following email, “Great! Are we rich now?”

To be able to give a reading on the night of the book launch was a dream come true. But, oh, such stage fright. In broken Spanish, I kept telling the little lady who cleaned my casa that I was not loca; I was just practicing my speech. Finally, I just gave myself a good talking-to and said, “You’ve waited all your life for this moment. For God’s sake, enjoy it!” And I did: seeing the nodding, appreciative faces responding as I read; signing books afterwards. 

“You want my autograph?”

Eva Hunter is an award-winning writer who works and teaches in San Miguel de Allen