Happy Families Fiction

by Fuentes, Carlos; Grossman, Edith

• ISBN13: 9780812978438
• ISBN10: 0812978439
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-11
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Summary

The internationally acclaimed author Carlos Fuentes, winner of the Cervantes Prize and the Latin Civilization Award, delivers a stunning work of fiction about family and love across an expanse of Mexican life, reminding us why he has been called "a combination of Poe, Baudelaire, and Isak Dinesen" (Newsweek). In these masterly vignettes, Fuentes explores Tolstoy's classic observation that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In "A Family Like Any Other," each member of the Pagan family lives in isolation, despite sharing a tiny house. In "The Mariachi's Mother," the limitless devotion of a woman is revealed as she secretly tends to her estranged son's wounds. "Sweethearts" reunites old lovers unexpectedly and opens up the possibilities for other lives and other loves. These are just a few of the remarkable stories inHappy Families, but they all inhabit Fuentes's trademark Mexico, where modern obsessions bump up against those of the mythic past, and the result is a triumphant display of the many ways we reach out to one another and find salvation through irrepressible acts of love. In this spectacular translation, the acclaimed Edith Grossman captures the full weight of Fuentes's range. Whether writing in the language of the street or in straightforward, elegant prose, Fuentes gives us stories connected by love, including the failure of lovebetween spouses, lovers, parents and children, siblings. From the Mexican presidential palace to the novels of the poor and the vast expanse of humanity in between,Happy Familiesis a magnificent portrait of modern life in all its complicated beauty, as told by one of the world's most celebrated writers. Praise for Carlos Fuentes Winner of the Cervantes Prize The Old Gringo "A dazzling novel that possesses the weight and resonance of myth [and] the fierce magic of a remembered dream." The New York Times The Death of Artemio Cruz "Remarkable in the scope of the human drama it pictures, the corrosive satire and sharp dialogue." The New York Times Book Review The Years with Laura Diaz "Reading this magnificent novel is like standing beneath the dome of the Sistine Chapel. . . . The breadth and enormity of this accomplishment is breathtaking." The Denver Post This I Believe "Engaging, offering surprising conclusions, provocations or turns of phrase . . . Put down the page-turner and dare to drink these full-bodied, red, shining words." Los Angeles Times Book Review The Eagle's Throne "Dazzling, razor-sharp . . . prescient . . . a feast of political insight." The Washington Post Book World From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Carlos Fuentes is the author of more than twenty books, including The Eagle’s Throne, This I Believe, The Death of Artemio Cruz, and The Old Gringo. He served as Mexico’s ambassador to France from 1975 to 1977. He has received many awards and honors, including the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the National Prize in Literature (Mexico’s highest literary award), the Cervantes Prize, and the inaugural Latin Civilization Award. He has also been the recipient of France’s Legion of Honor medal, Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Award, Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award, and Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross. His work has appeared in The Nation, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The Washington Post Book World. He currently divides his time between Mexico City and London.

Edith Grossman, the winner of a number of translating awards, most notably the 2006 PEN Ralph Manheim Medal, is the distinguished translator of works by major Spanish-language authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, and Alvaro Mutis, as well as Carlos Fuentes. Her translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote was published to great acclaim in 2003.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

A Family Like Any Other

THE FATHER. Pastor Pagán knows how to wink. He's a professional at winking. For him, winking an eye-just one-is a way to be courteous. All the people he deals with conclude their business with a wink. The bank manager when he approves a loan. The teller when he cashes a check. The administrator when he hands it to him. The cashier when he plays the fool and doesn't inspect it. The chief's assistant when he tells him to go to the bank. The porter. The chauffeur. The gardener. The maid. Everybody winks at him. Headlights on cars wink, traffic lights, lightning in the sky, grass in the ground, eagles in the air, not to mention the planes that fly over the house of Pastor Pagán and his family the whole blessed day. The feline purr of the engines is interrupted only by the winking of the traffic on Avenida Revolución. Pastor responds to them with his own wink, moved by the certainty that this is dictated by good manners. Now that he's on a pension, he thinks of himself as a professional winker who never opened both eyes at the same time, and when he did, it was already too late. One wink too many, he thinks in self-recrimination, one wink too many. He didn't retire. He was retired at the age of fifty-two. What could he complain about? Instead of punishing him, they gave him nice compensation. Along with early retirement came the gift of this house, not a great mansion but a decent place to live. A relic of the distant "Aztec" period in Mexico City, when the nationalistic architects of the 1930s decided to build houses that looked like Indian pyramids. In other words, the house tapered between the ground floor and the third floor, which was so narrow it was uninhabitable. But his daughter, Alma, found it ideal for her equally narrow life, devoted to surfing on the Internet and finding in its virtual world a necessary-or sufficient-amount of life so she did not have to leave the house but felt herself part of a vast invisible tribe connected to her, as she was connected to and stimulated by a universe that she thought the only one worthy to take possession of "culture." The ground floor, really the basement, is occupied now by his son, Abel, who rejoined the family at the age of thirty-two after a failed attempt at leading an independent life. He came back proudly in order not to show that he was coming back contrite. Pastor received him without saying a word. As if nothing had happened. But Elvira, Pastor's wife, reclaimed her son with signs of jubilation. No one remarked that Abel, by coming home, was admitting that at his age, the only way he could live was free of charge in the bosom of his family. Like a child. Except that the child accepts his situation with no problems. With joy.

THE MOTHER. Elvira Morales sang boleros. That was where Pastor Pagán met her, in a second-rate club near the Monumento a la Madre, on Avenida Villalongín. From the time she was very young, Elvira sang boleros at home, when she took a bath or helped to clean, and before she went to sleep. Songs were her prayers. They helped her endure the sad life of a daughter without a father and with a grieving mother. Nobody helped her. She made herself on her own, on her own she asked for a job at a club in Rosales, was taken on, liked it, then went to a better neighborhood and began to believe everything she was singing. The bolero isn't good to women. It calls the female a "hypocrite, simply a hypocrite," and adds: "perverse one, you deceived me." Elvira Morales, to give conviction to her songs, took on the guilt in the lyrics, wondered if her fatal sap really poisoned men and if her sex was the ivy of evil. She took the lyrics of boleros very seriously. Which was why she inspired enthusiasm, convinced her audience, and provoked applause night after night in the white spotlights that fortunately obscured the patrons' faces. The public was the dark side o

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Excerpted from Happy Families: Fiction by Carlos Fuentes
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