hi jose,
i gotta apologize for not having read your book. i don't seem
to find out who's going to be a guest author until its too
late to read them. i did go to amazon and read all the
reviews they had on your book. looks like lawrence block and
martin cruz smith loved it! and "hardboiled" didn't come up,
but you did get tagged with "noir".
i had to smile when i read your comment about cuban crime
fiction centering around counterrevolutionaries and
assassanation plots. that describes martin cruz smith's
_havana bay_ perfectly. have you read his book? did you like
it? his descriptions of the city and the people were
well-written, although i can't judge accuracy. i especially
liked his description of the inner tube fisherman and the
practice of... is it "santiera"? thats not it. i'm referring
to the belief that parallels haiti's voodoo. as usual, i
thought he did a good job with arkady and the police woman,
too.
do we have to stick to a discussion of literature? i'm
interested in what your life in cuba has been like, and the
things you've seen growing up. guess that would be hard to
describe in a couple paragraphs, huh? haha. i noticed in the
reviews that you were born in 1940, so you've seen a lot,
including the pre-castro days. do you remember all the
casinos being open? do you remember the fishing contest that
resulted in the picture of castro and heming- way together?
have you visited the finca vigia, or is it even still open?
do stories about hemingway still circulate? the only book by
a cuban author that i've read is a biography of hemingway. i
believe the author's name was fuentes, but i'm not certain.
fuentes was also the name of the pilar's captain, and i think
there's an interview with him in the book.
thanks for the recommendations on latin american crime
fiction. exposure to a wide range of authors is a big
advantage of this group. hopefully amazon.com will have some
of them available.
again, i apologize for mostly talking about USA authors
writing about cuban, instead of actual latin american
writers. come around again in a few months and i'll have that
remedied.
thanks, miker
********************* This answers the remaining questions
posed by Manuel Ramos.
In Cuba, the bulk of crime fiction deals with espionage.
Ruthless counterrevolutionaries who plot the assassination of
national leaders, drink, smoke and cheat on their wives, are
neutralized by intelligent, bright and kind-hearted
revolutionaries who don't touch the stuff, have quit smoking
or are cutting down fast, and love their spouses so much they
don't even glance at gorgeous women. But we also have some
good novels, of which I will mention two in the next
paragraph.
Concerning Latin American crime fiction, I recommend reading
the works of Rubem Fonseca (Brazil, "High Art" translated
from Portuguese, NY, 1986), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, "Who
killed Palomino Molero?" translated from Spanish, NY, 1987,
and "Death in The Andes" NY 1996), Alejo Carpentier
(Cuba, "The Chase" translated from Spanish, NY 1989) and Paco
Ignacio Taibo II (Mexican, "The Shadow of the Shadow"
translated from Spanish, NY 1991).
If you read Spanish, try Rolo Diez (Argentinian living
in Mexico, "Luna de Escarlata"), Leonardo Padura (Cuba,
"Vientos de Cuaresma") and Daniel Chavarria (Uruguayan living
in Cuba, "La Sexta Isla").
On Elliot Steil's (the main character of my novel "Outcast")
major personality shift. Perhaps this reflects what I would
do should someone try to kill me and fail. I would go after
the sob with all I got. Simple as that. Retribution is a
human trait only saints lack. I'm no saint.
Since yesterday I was rather long-winded, today I'm
keeping it short.
José atour
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