Authors clear the air at FELISMA 2008
By Krishna Villena and Jesús Ibarra
October 31, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Mexico City has been setting of many novels, but it has never been treated as it was in the novel Where the Air Is Clear (La region más transparente) by Carlos Fuentes, who was honored in San Miguel de Allende during the book fair FELISMA 2008.

The novelist turned 80 this year, and 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of his novel. Mexican author Gonzalo Celorio also gave a master class about Fuentes and his novel during the fair.

According to Celorio, Fuentes took the title of his novel from the epigraph in Alfonso Reyes’ book Visión del Anáhuac: “Viajero, has llegado a la region más transparente del aire” (“Traveler, you have arrived where the air is clear”). Reyes was describing the pre-Hispanic Mexico City. “Fuentes took the title from Reyes’ book, but he used it an ironic sense, since in the late fifties, when the novel is set, Mexico City had begun to transform itself into a monster.

But the reality it depicts has real clarity and is told by Fuentes in a deeply profound way,” he said. For Celorio, Where the Air Is Clear is a kind of epilogue to the Mexican Revolution novels and it has two characteristics that make it stunning: the impressive historical information that Fuentes manages with great critical judgment and the complexity of the narrative.

Celorio is a personal friend of Fuentes and describes him as “a man with great vitality and elegance. He likes movies, music, opera, and vampire literature. Fuentes writes two books a year. He writes with great discipline, using a typewriter instead of a computer.

He only types with his index fingers, which have become deformed through use. Carlos Fuentes is an essential presence in Latin American literature.” 

Celorio also presented his latest novel, Tres Lindas Cubanas (Three Beautiful Cuban Women), at FELISMA 2008. He thanked María de la Paz Espino del Castillo, a teacher and president of the Spanish books committee at the Biblioteca Pública, and Maruja González, a local writer, for their praise of his novel.

When questioned about his book, Celorio said, “Above all, I write so I don’t have to talk, and as the author I consider myself the least qualified person to discuss my own work.” Nevertheless, he admitted that his main inspiration for Tres Lindas Cubanas were the “40 Cuban kilos of the 80 that I weigh” and that he feels tied to Cuba “like a mollusk to its shell.” The novel is a condensed version of his own family’s story.

Book Fever
Finishing up classic American mystery month
By Marcia Loy

Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them. —Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review

In future months, Book Fever will look at the current crop of American mysteries. Lots of good writers are putting out books with private and amateur detectives. But now look at our last three classic mystery writers, traveling to California, Massachusetts and New York.

I apologize for not including any women writers this month. I’d planned to use Amanda Cross, whose amateur detective is a college professor, but the oldest book the library has of hers was published in 2002. Martha Grimes was another choice, but although the library has several of her books, they are all set in England and I needed an American setting for this month. I’ll try to make up for it when Book Fever covers contemporary mystery writers.

The Goodbye Look, Ross Macdonald, 1969. Macdonald is the author of a series of mysteries featuring Lew Archer. One of his books, The Moving Target, was made into a successful film, Harper, starring Paul Newman. The book was called; the movie was called r. The Goodbye Look has twists and turns, a troubled young man, missing money and an old murder.

Excerpt: Her smile was bright and anxious. “Somehow I expected you to be older.”

“I’m older than I look.”

“But I asked John Truttwell to get me the head of the agency.”

“I’m a one-man agency. I co-opt other detectives when I need them.”

She frowned. “It sounds like a shoestring operation to me. Not like the Pinkertons.”

“I’m not big business, if that’s what you want.”

“It isn’t. But I want somebody good, really good. Are you experienced in dealing with—well—” Her free hand indicated first herself and then her surroundings— “people like me?”

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

“But you’re the one we’re talking about.”

“I assume Mr. Truttwell recommended me, and told you I was experienced.”

“I have a right to ask questions, don’t I?” 

Her tone was both assertive and lacking in self-assurance. It was the tone of a handsome woman who had married money and social standing and never could forget that she might just as easily lose these things.

Harry Kemelman shows a consummate ability to throw into the blender the most unexpected ingredients, and to whip them up into a delightful concoction. —The Boston Sunday Globe

Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet, Harry Kemelman, 1976. There’s a “rabbi” book for each day of the week and I’ve read them all several times. Not only do we meet David Small, the engaging rabbi, we learn a lot about Judaism and the inner workings of the temple he leads. Of course, there’s a murder involved in each book. Rabbi Small often works with the police chief, Hugh Lanigan, which gives them an opportunity to discuss the ways in which Judaism differs from Christianity. 

First paragraphs: “I suppose you’re happy about the outcome of the election.”

Rabbi David Small turned and saw that it was Joshua Tizzik, a thin little man with a long nose and a mouth twisted in a perpetual sneer, who had fallen in step with him.

The evening service had just ended, and Rabbi Small was strolling back to his car in the parking lot, savoring the balmy air of the October Indian summer. The rabbi was thin and pale and walked with a scholarly stoop although still under forty. He fixed nearsighted eyes on Tizzik and said, “If you mean that the election of Chester Kaplan and his friends signifies a renewed interest in the temple’s religious function as opposed to its social function, then of course I am. If, on the other hand, you’re suggested that I had anything to do with it, then you’re mistaken. I never meddle in temple politics.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you campaigned for him, but don’t try to tell me you’re not happy he won.”

“All right,” the rabbi said good-humoredly, “I won’t.” He had found over the years that it was pointless to argue with the perpetually dissatisfied Mr. Tizzik.

A thoroughly absorbing, wonderfully mind-teasing caper by America’s absolute number one fiction writer. —Philip Friedman

The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, Lawrence Block, 1979. Lawrence Block and Alfred Hitchcock conspired to keep me from taking a shower for seven years when I was home alone. Block wrote the book that became Psycho. In The Burglar, he presents an engaging protagonist, rare books and a cast of characters that includes a maharajah, an English gentleman and a Sikh, all of them after the same Kipling book. There is, of course, a murder, too. Bernie Rhodenbarr runs a bookstore in New York where he sells first editions and old books. His best friend is a lesbian dog groomer who lives with cats. Bernie used to be a burglar and did time for it, but he’s given up his old life. Or has he? I think this was my favorite of the mysteries I read for this month’s columns.

Excerpt: I looked up to see a man in a blue uniform lumbering across the floor toward me. He had a broad, open, honest face, but in my new trade one learned quickly not to judge a book by its cover. My visitor was Ray Kirschmann, the best cop money could buy, and money could buy him seven days a week.

“Hey, Bern,” he said, and propped an elbow on the counter. “Read any good books lately?”

“Hello, Ray.”

“Whatcha readin’?” I showed him [Kipling’s Soldiers Three]. “Garbage,” he said. “A whole store full of books, you oughta read somethin’ decent.”

“What’s decent?”

“Oh, Joseph Wambaugh, Ed McBain. Somebody who tells it straight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“How’s business?”

“Not too bad, Ray.”

“You just sit here, buy books, sell books, and you make a livin’. Right?”

“It’s the American way.”

“Uh-huh. Quite a switch for you, isn’t it?”

“Well, I like working days, Ray.”

“A whole career change, I mean. Burglar to bookseller. You know what it sounds like? A title. You could write a book about it. From Burglar to Bookseller. Mind a question, Bernie?”

Coming in November: Book Fever presents travel. We’ll look at the Americas and Europe, then take off for Asia, Australia and Africa. Happy reading.

Food, family and a toy workshop
By Kimberly Kinser

Authors’ Sala Readings
Nani Power & Nancy Miller
Fri, Nov 7, 5–7pm
St. Paul’s Church
Cardo 6
50 pesos

On November 7, the Authors’ Sala Special Series features new perspectives on memoirs from Nani Power and the back-story on Hanni Sager’s Wondrous Toy Workshop from Nancy Miller.

Nani Power, the author of three novels published in four years, has focused on her family in Feed the Hungry. “I believe that everyone should write a memoir at age 30 and again at age 60 to discover where they came from,” Power says. She values the opportunity to look at her family objectively in this new work. Observing parents and grandparents in different scenes let her see clearly how she carries on her family traditions—especially through food.

In fact, her theme is hunger: spiritual hunger, soul hunger and stomach hunger. Power loves to cook, so other books have food themes. Feed the Hungry is full of recipes from her childhood—writing her grandmother’s Damson Pie recipe requires baking the plum pie herself. Power says the downside of writing about food is often being hungry.

Power was raised by artists. Her grandmother could be found in her room writing novels while her stepfather was making a sculpture and her dad was perfecting a photograph or taking young Nani to galleries. They taught her to get out into the world and create something new: the medium was up to her. She started with painting and that took her to France. After a writing course at Georgetown University, she published her first novel, Crawling at Night. Her grandmother would be proud.

Currently Power is working on two novels simultaneously. How is it going? “Great. When I get tired of one story, I can go write the other.”

Nancy Miller reads from the recently published The Wondrous Toy Workshop: Hanni’s Inspiring Life and Her Toys Anyone Can Make. Miller, a Minnesota native, has been visiting Mexico for many years. She first heard of Hanni Sager in Oaxaca; the more she learned about her, the more she knew that she had to write about her remarkable life.

The first half of The Wondrous Toy Workshop is the story of Hanni: living with muscular dystrophy, collecting toys from around the world, an unexpected trip to San Miguel, her discovery of traditional Mexican toys and her fear that they were going to become extinct with the arrival of cheap plastic toys from China. Hanni’s solution was to share her lifelong belief that “nothing is impossible” with disabled Mexican youth and start the toy workshop.

There were struggles. At first, the children at the Oaxaca center for disabled youth were unwilling to participate; they just watched as Hanni worked. Then Hanni needed to drill a hole in a piece of wood and found she could not. A boy with one arm offered to help. He drilled the hole and poco a poco the walls came down and the workshop was born.

The book is also a step-by-step guide to creating a workshop, with photos and patterns for each toy. Hanni, who lives in Oaxaca in a home she designed to allow her maximum mobility, is too disabled to start new workshops herself. Instead, she teaches teachers who take her model around the world.


Miller speaks with Hanni regularly and in their most recent conversation, Miller reported that UNICEF had picked up the book for circulation.