1. At what age did you wrote the first story?
I wrote at age 13, in third year of high school, and titled "The secrets of hell." A young reporter went to the depths of hell in the Siberian city of Yakutia, Russia, to interview the devil. I sent a story contest and won Intercollegiate. Then came the awards ceremony before hundreds of students and went to stand among the apalusos. The rector gave me the prize: a Hemingway book with several stories, including "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." It was an unforgettable moment, for there is nothing better than a teen writer: literature there lives its chemically pure state. Is infinite sleep against the cliffs. And it gave me the opportunity to experience the work of Ernest Hemingway, whose books "The Old Man and the Sea" and "A Moveable Feast" I love them.
2. What was the issue?
A rookie journalist and fearless interview is going to hell for the devil and comes to the surface in the city Siberia's Yakutia. No doubt there were influences of Mephisto's "Faust" by Goethe, who had just read in the junior edition of Soper, and the story "In the right hand of God" Thomas Carrasquilla, one of my favorite Colombian writers. In the end the character his interview published in Time and Life magazines, is known throughout the world for the premiere and after the success is about to find somewhere in the world to interview Jesus Christ.
3. What became of that story?
I keep the original with some notes in red ink a literature teacher at the Institute College, I remember, was a man very tall and thin, quixotic. Besides my father, who loved literature and was surrounded by dictionaries, I had very good teachers of letters. Were those who defended me in school authorities and teachers of mathematics, physics and chemistry that I felt unsafe and did everything to annihilate. For them, a boy who dreams of becoming a writer and not an engineer, military, lawyer or doctor is very dangerous to society.
4. When did you know you were going to be a writer?
No doubt the day when I went to receive the award. I liked the sudden and ephemeral sense of literary success. On the way home from school to award the book in hand floated with emotion and pride. I came home and told my father the news. We welcome families. That day I have very clear, was a revelation. Since then unemployment. The teenager from that day is here. " The status of adolescent writer is wonderful and disturbing. We must remain faithful, do not betray.
5. How did the first book?
The first book published as such was "Book of Dreams", a small collection of stories, published in Mexico by Editorial El Tucan Virginia, in 1981, after winning the prize for short story "The other editors." But the first book for me was the short novel "Land of Lions", 1983, a more complex book, which would be the first completed after much work and doubts. However, do not forget that before the teenager's school wrote several books which fortunately never published. I myself bound and distributed to friends, who in turn wrote and bound books filled with poems cursed.
6. What were these books?
The first "book" that stage of "literary archeology" staff would be a short little novel I wrote at age 14 called "The Castle of Anthony Jeffes," written with the stylus green my grandmother in a blue check book and no doubt was influenced by "Portrait Dorian Grey "and horror novels. Then I wrote two or three collections of poems, existentialist, terrible, scatological, to slash their wrists or jump into jump Tequendama. The Nadaísta were fashionable at the time in Colombia and all wanted to be Rimbaud. There were also a poet rocker in Manizales 20, Wadis Echeverri Correa, who organized readings and poetically stirred the city. Those were the days "In a Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly and "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, the wonderful times of the International Theatre Festival which brought Neruda, Asturias, Grotowski, Sabato, among many others. But that stage of the school, as "serious" was a collection of poems Nerudian I worked with more intensity when I was in sixth high school, at age 17. There are achievements, but too much influence Neruda and Latin Americanism in vogue at that time , which emphasized the pre-Hispanic, popular revolutions, the people. Anyway, these books were written with total dedication and intensity. I repeat: there is no more pure than a young writer.
7. Then what happened?
After two years I lived in Bogotá and studied at the National University, before leaving for France. In this environment, I established the basic contact with the national literature. Over there in 1973 I met fellow Truque generational as Sonia and Juan Carlos Moyano, among others, we read our texts in the shop Arturo Alape Red Dot and Isaiah Peña Gutiérrez. There were parties at the house of Rosita phenomenal and Jaime Jaramillo Echeverry, who had just arrived from Argentina and modern contribution to the literature of Colombia. The unforgettable parties were in Torres' apartment in Beijing, where he has always lived Germain Espinosa.
8 - "And when you went to Colombia?
I went in February 1974. The National University was closed, the political environment was terrible. In France I just turned 20 years and there I made my college, loved, drank, went to movies, I went and read a lot. He was a formative stage. Much more to write and enjoy reading French literature, which is inexhaustible. Days and weeks reading and raving about Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust ... Madrugábamos to listen to Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes in the College of France. After France I went to California, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where I discovered a year and "Lolita" by Nabokov. " One day I took a plane from San Francisco and came to Mexico like writing in the press the country and publish my books. In the novel writing there "Land of Lions", influenced by "Lolita," followed by "Heroes Boulevard" and "triumphant trip, which are part of a trilogy. But with the weight of García Márquez and "boom" up crushing you as Marble Mountains, it was very difficult to write. The example and the level of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Hopscotch" were very high as an ant to take the bill of a novel. In addition there were Borges, Rulfo, Cortázar, Onetti, Fuentes, Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier, alive and kicking ....
9. How was the life of all the books?
I owe everything to our Mexican friends. Since 1980 they opened me the doors of the newspapers, I published all the books, always answered many critical texts published in the cultural sections of newspapers and magazines, and made the party in each presentation. In fact recently my last book "Animal no time in Mexico and there was a great party at the home of Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros, Colonia Roma. I grew as a writer among the Mexican people of my generation, which has brilliant authors, intellectuals solid polygraphs are not only behind the best-seller and easy success. They have been my friends and partners. When passing through Paris always see and talk about the ocean that is the Mexican literature of which I have learned so much. I think ultimately I am a Mexican. Do not know how to thank them the attention and the complicity of literature. Now, I am also grateful to France for a life here. Here I did my university studies and work. Paris is a city I love. But in terms my books, I owe everything to Mexico and Mexicans.
10. What book are you graduated from a writer?
I "graduated" as a writer in Mexico with the three novels of the trilogy consisting of "Land of Lions", "Boulevard of Heroes" and "The triumphal tour." "Boulevard of Heroes" and left the U.S. in English with a foreword by Gregory Rabassa. "The triumphal tour" is translated into English and Bengali in Calcutta. Then I published a fourth novel in Mexico, "Tequila coccyx, also unprecedented in Colombia, which is a tribute to the city where I lived many years, the Federal District, and their literature, in this world of cinema of the golden age, surrealism, Tamara de Lempicka, canteens, Maria Felix, Tongolele, Ninon Sevilla, Cantinflas, Agustín Lara and Damaso Perez Prado, known "king of mambo." Each book is a very strong challenge and therefore I believe that one must "graduate" with every book ever written. One does not graduate as a writer ever. It's like the myth of Sisyphus.
11. What Paris has meant for Latin American writers?
is a strong relationship that dates back over two centuries. First writers and heroes of independence, romantic, who passed through here and share their lives with the French. Then the whole XIX century and at the end of the century, modernist authors led by Rubén Darío who adored Paris and late-century French literature. In our case Wikisource trained in Paris and both his novel "desktop" as his poetry is influenced by the symbolist writers and fin de siecle. Throughout the twentieth century that friendship was even more intense. All generation of the 20 and 30, with César Vallejo, Miguel Angel Asturias, Alfonso Reyes, Alejo Carpentier and many built bridges that are still alive and opened the doors to the spectacular success of the "boom" in Latin America that Cortázar, Vargas Llosa and García Márquez lived intensely the 50's, postwar existentialism and cultural liberation of the 60's. Now we are many Latin Americans here, but no group is experiencing the splendor of the three generations mentioned above: that of Ruben Dario, and Asturias of Vallejo and Julio Cortázar. The world is now much more modern world there are many centers that are experiencing new interest in strong interaction. Paris is not the myth or the place needed was in the nineteenth and the twentieth. Now is the web. We are linked by blogs. In fact mine is http://www.egarciaguilar.blogspot.com/
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