Carlos Fuentes,the first bestselling Mexican novelist in the US,believed in the power of the people on his pages
A professor at my university urged me to imagine the greats sitting on tall stools behind me as I tried to write,the better to close a bit of the distance between their talents and mine. I added Carlos Fuentes to the gallery after I read The Old Gringo,in which an elderly Ambrose Bierce goes to Mexico looking for death. Now,at the age of 83,Fuentes himself,gentleman leftist and master craftsman of the word,has crossed those dusty and heart-breaking borderlands he wrote so much about.
But it is not a romantic sojourn: He hits hard at both Mexico and the US for letting the borderland sink into hell,and gets grief for it,of course,from the North,where they somehow doubt his convictions. When I satire Mexico Im a great satirist. When I poke fun at the US,Im a mean,clichéd caricaturist.
Those arent the words of a man who doesnt believe entirely in all he writes,of the power of the people on his pages,of their absolute reality: They are you and me,and there is no space between them and us. This is the vicarious joy Carlos produced: A love for the tragic fact of life here and now,for the auténtico,and for the unending voyage through history to see again that so much never changes. Generals or their progeny will always occupy the presidents office; gringos will always come over the border,drink and then go off into the perilous night in search of finality. For Carlos,it was unthinkable not to heed the epic chorus of all our ancestors.
There was also a resolutely fun side to knowing Carlos. When we were at the dinner honoring the 100 writers at the Austin festival,in waltzed a well-known cad named Kinky Friedman whod written a funny book. On his arm was a stunning amazon even taller than he is in a red tube dress that left no curve behind and lit up the room like a rocket. I looked over at Carlos,only to catch him following the womans liquid entrance,smiling the smile youd wish your dad would share with you should a certain gazelle happen by. The spectacle was so out of joint with the pseudo-dignified proceedings that laughter rolled through the crowd. When it came time to give speeches,the writer gave a gracious and wry talk about Mexico and the US that briefly captivated the well-to-do assembly,most of whom probably had not read his new book,or any of the others for that matter. This is the way most Americans treat Mexicans: neutrally. Theyre just there,not much else. Who among the Northerners could imagine that these people could actually write books,much less good ones? (The Old Gringo was the first novel by a Mexican to become a best seller in the US.)
When Ive spoken up for Carlos,people have often asked me,Is he really well known? And yet he was and is,and widely. The French loved him for his sharp,gauche views; for a short while in the 1970s he was Mexicos ambassador in Paris. For Carlos,all that mattered was his current work and the one after that.
