“Literature
overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands
experience and opens new opportunities to readers.”—Carlos
Fuentes
Born on Nov. 11,
1928 novelist
and essayist Fuentes wrote The Death of
Artemio Cruz – often called THE seminal work of modern Spanish American
literature – and The Old Gringo, also made into a terrific movie.
The Guardian called him "Mexico's
most celebrated novelist,” perhaps in part because of his being honored by his
home nation with its highest civilian award, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of
Honor. He often was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won (the Nobel is
only awarded to living artists and writers and he died in 2012).
Fuentes described himself as a
"pre-modern" writer, using only pens, ink and paper. He asked, "Do words
need anything else?" Fuentes said that he detested those authors who from
the beginning claim to have a recipe for success. In a speech on his writing
process, he related that when he began the writing process, he began by asking,
"Who am I writing for?"
many millions, Fuentes hated being pigeonholed
into one classification or another. “I'm
a writer, not a genre. Don't classify me, read me.” As for advice to young writers, he said
simply, “I am not interested in slice of life, what I want (from a writer) is a
slice of the imagination.”
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