“This study is, somehow, a fiction,” this is the beginning of ¨Los nuevos paradigmas. Prólogo narrativo al siglo XXI¨ (Letras Cubanas, 2006), by Jorge Fornet. And it’s likely to be true: while the Cuban publishing scene is almost a horror novel, Fornet´s book is like a Latin American fairy tale. And there, Cuban literature is the sleeping and blue princess. Because one thing is certain: none of those writers who make up the family of geeks that Fornet analyzes -Cesar Aira, Roberto Bolaño, Alan Pauls, Jorge Volpi, Rodrigo Fresán, Santiago Gamboa, Héctor Abad Faciolince, among others, has been published in Cuba; bad omen.
But things get really disturbing when a friend tells you as a kind of top-secret plan: “Today, eight years after the publication of Los Nuevos paradigmas … the Cuban publishing leukemia is exactly the same. Do you realize of that? The cancer persists eight years later. “And you want to start counting platelets of Arte y Literatura Publishing House, and do not know if your friend is a genius or a hallucinated. Then a question as the most precise and unforgiving science comes: “And what do our publishing houses do?” The answer is a Pandora box .
I thought of all this while reading “15 000 latas de atún y no tenemos cómo abrirlas, “a story by Jorge Enrique Lage –it is recommended the officials of the Cuban Book Institute with health problems not to read it- who uses our continuous apathy Editorial as fuse:
When I finished my first novel I took it to Letras Cubanas publishing (hear how it sounds: Letras Cubanas (Cuban Letters)) and there I was told they were not receiving originals. More precisely, they were not publishing books .
I visited other publishers: Union, Abril, Zona Franca, Extramuros, Beri-Beri, Unicornio, Sed de Belleza, La Ratonera, and in all I received the same negative: Books? No, we have nothing to do with it. […]
I was leaving when I saw her enter. […] I told her:
‘Anyway, here you are not publishing what I wanted to read.
She looked at me, surprised or reading as reading a manifesto, and looked at the manuscript under my arm. The expected smile. A soft voice said: Poor baby.
I continued: When could we read those books people are talking about that 5, 10, 20 years ago, passed through the hands of the rest of the world? Where are the books of your contemporaries, everything they are now writing out of here? The real publishing system is really far from us, and it is way above our heads.
-‘That publishing system is a business –she replied. 90% of what is printed in the world today is shit.
-Sure, but also it is 90% of what is printed here.
Let us hold up the phrase; because if there’s something really disturbing in this country, that something is the editorial ethics. And the mystery is this: the Cuban Book Institute (ICL by its Spanish acronym) insists on that of being the only made in Cuba institution that says no to piracy. WTF! And while its once lovely distant cousin , the Cuban Radio and Television Institute (ICRT by its Spanish acronym), has become into something like a mad drug addict (It is known that ICRT is a kind of hippie paradise: gigantic illegal movie doses are consumed; complete HBO miniseries, at least twice a day, are sniffed, and huge scoops of documentaries hacked to any television are swallowed. Of course, in reality, they are not documentaries; they are some kind of hypnotic transmission directed to a different part -a part that had not been used until now- of the Cuban brain), ICL is a community of Tibetan Buddhists. To put it in another way: they are the Ingalls family and ICRT is ¨Sin Tetas no hay Paraiso.¨
Another friend -maybe influenced by the recent reading of ¨1984¨-tells me that this is due to “ICL is infected by members of the” Thought Police “and” to prevent readers to want or experience the sensation of present, eliminate certain authors from the catalog, so that the very concept of contemporary literature ceases to exist in the minds of Cuban readers. ” And when asked why not pirating books by Álvaro Bisama or Denis Johnson, for example, respond -making a somewhat insane use of statistics and loyally- that “the best of world literature, not only from Latin America, is already published on the island “and that” Cuba has tremendous respect for the moral and patrimonial rights the law grants to foreign authors. ”
Words, words, words … As I write this column, I leaf through a pirate copy of the Treaty of general semiotics, by Umberto Eco, published by an “anonymous” editorial of the Ministry of Higher Education. A white paper. With no credits: no copyright, place of printing, number of copies, year, etc. The author himself is in exile. It is a volume that, for legal purposes, does not exist. So imagine that one of these mornings Umberto Eco opens –by mistake of course- OnCuba website. And suddenly there he reads, in the cultural section, that a Cuban publishing house decided to publish a few years ago a criminal edition of his book. And the news does not cause Eco any grace and he calls his lawyer because, of course, he never authorized any derived of his work and some figli di puttana put their Cuban hands on the book.
But for me, two things are the most interesting part of the whole matter. The first is the idea of the inevitable and almost automatic reflection of: How does the story continue? And, what is the position of the self-styled ascetic ICL? The second is the supposed integrity of an ethical code that looks like a poem by Nicolas Guillen: “Knock, knock! / Who is this? / The Treaty of general semiotics … / Open the wall! / Knock, knock! / Who is this? / Nazi Literature in the Americas … / Close the wall! “. Some books are published, others no. It seems like a Russian roulette. But make no mistake: there are officials who consult very well the entrails of birds to choose the next titles to publish and not randomly. A Pandora box, I already told you.
Anyway, last week, a reader told me: “What happens Padilla? Leave the problems, brother, let us seek for solutions. “(I remember I thought: is there something that the ICL can do to improve the Cuban publishing catalog? IMPORTANT: piracy option is ruled out). What follows is the result of delirium, fever solution.
Why is the ICL not literally dedicated to invite only to hallucinogens authors like a great “all inclusive”? I mean, you know: invite, “reward” and publish; and to repeat the steps of Casa de las Americas as a tour operator for All Inclusive Vacations.
Absolute proof and perfect moral of all this is what happens at Casa de las Americas during the called Author Week, excellent exchange program organized by its Center for Literary Research (CIL by its Spanish acronym), which works like a Swiss watch. As a result of Jorge Fornet´s work, its director, sightings have been reported in Havana of Ricardo Piglia, Rubem Fonseca, Pedro Lemebel, Sergio Pitol, Luis López Nieves, Juan Villoro, etc. The invitation is seasoned, usually with an Honorary Award (Ezequiel Martínez Estrada Essay Prize, José Lezama Lima Poetry Award and José María Arguedas Narrative Award), but the most important is its trail of books: Respiración artificial, Blanco nocturno, El gran arte, Tengo miedo torero, Nocturno de Bujara, Seva, Espejo retrovisor, Arrecife, etc. And there’s Fornet´s eye as advance reader. (Conspiracy theories say that Fornet has used CIL to bring, one by one, the authors he could not find at any Cuban library while writing Los Nuevos Paradigmas …).
I remember in one of those Author Weeks, I met an Argentine publisher who after an odd number of Heineken beers claimed deeply loving Cuban literature and meeting a lot of writers. “I have contacts with Alan Pauls,” she told me, “do you want me to talk to him? Do you have something prepared? “. (“What a strange way to flirt”, the walls shouted around me.) And subsequently he stated: “Anyway, if you are interested on the best of Argentine contemporary literature, I can put you in contact with Hernán Vanoli”. (Is Vanoli the best of Argentine contemporary literature?) I remember thinking to put Hernán Vanoli in the heart of Varadero and the wonderful Havana. Become him protagonist of his own boring stories about Cuba. I realized that if I said something about it, I’ll never see her again, besides risking getting into an argument that could last to late night hours. I said yes by inertia. This girl was an open address book. I remember after just few minutes she gave me her phone. It was a long number (Mario Bellatin´s number). The woman who answered told me quite naturally that it´s been just hours that Mario Bellatin had taken a flight to Havana. She added: “Who asks for him?”
I remember I put down the phone terrified.
And what does the ICL do? Well ICL is, perhaps, after the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the largest water distiller in the country, judging by the amount of air conditioners.
