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A brief talk with Paco Ignacio Taibo II - happy - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers - Interview

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Ilan Stavans

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of detective fiction

in Latin America. From Buenos Aires to Havana, the publication of

native thrillers, often embarrassingly ignored by critics, has been and

remains a favorite pleasure for thousands of readers. The most prolific

practitioner is Paco Ignacio Taibo II (b. 1949), who despite his young

age has more than 30 books to his credit, most of them with his

protagonist Hector Belascoaran Shayne, a prosaic, lame, one-eyed private

eye. Among his titles, PITII, as he likes to call himself, prefers Some

Clouds (Penguin, 1992), Shadow of the Shadow (Penguin, 1993), and

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Four Hands (St. Martin's Press, 1994), all translated into English. This

interview took place in Mexico City.

IS: When and how did you begin to write?

PITII: When I first learned how to form my letters, the moment I acquired the use of reason. Since then, writing has been my destiny. At age 11, I was making steps toward printing a magazine, and at 13, I wrote my first short story. I have been a journalist since age 15, an obsessive reader since 5, and I managed to finish my first novel, which fortunately was never published, at 20. I suppose that this obsession is part of a family tradition nurtured by a great uncle who was also a writer, and by my father, Paco Ignacio Taibo, a journalist, novelist, and critic according to whom the best trade of the world wasn't to be a trapeze artist or a fireman--those are no doubt the best secondary trades--but a writer. When I was 5 years old, my father used to come home from the newspaper for which he worked, in the middle of the night, and instead of going to bed, he would put newspapers and a towel on the dining room table and over them his Olivetti typewriter. He would then write a novel trying to make as little noise as possible in order not to wake up the family. He would write until dawn. I would silently escape from bed and crawl beneath the table. It was very clear to me that my father was doing something very important, so important that I had to be a witness...I slept the first years of my life lulled by an Olivetti.

What technique do you follow? What schedule? Do you have any talisman that inspires you warding off evil spirits?

I write all day at all hours. I tend to work with music--the more rhythmic, the better. Richard Wagner and Carlos Santana, for example. My only talisman is a change of work. I am a voracious writer. It could be that right now I have begun three novels, another three are outlined with notes, a historical essay about Mexican anarchists of the twenties, two or three reports, and a comic-strip script. I go from one text to another. When I feel that I am not getting anywhere with one project, I abandon it and begin another. I tend to have a few dry spells and when they arrive I don't fight them, but rather, I travel and dedicate myself to helping here and there in community projects.

What was your first encounter with Hector Belascoaran Shayne? Where does his physical appearance and his intellectual capacity come from?

He was born by elimination and his physical presence developed from a variety of things. He is rootless, a refugee of the middle class, madly curious, stubborn, full of humorous feeling toward his fellow Mexicans, a bit melancholic. Actually, his appearance came from an anthropologist friend, Sergio Perello, who wore the clothing of the fashion 15 years ago. Belascoaran Shayne has become what he is over 15 years of backwardness. I should also add that his appearance was formed from injuries and wounds throughout the novels: the loss of an eye, a slight limp, the horror of humidity which makes his bones grind.

Arthur Conan Doyle, tired of his character Sherlock Holmes, once killed him, only to bring him back later on upon the petitioning of his readers. Belascoaran Shayne seems also to have been resuscitated in your novel Return to the Same City and Under the Rain (Planeta, 1989). Does he control you or vice versa?

We control each other. I didn't kill him, dramatic logic killed him, the progression of facts. Then the readers protested. I decided that the saga wasn't finished and revived it. White magic!

What is the relationship between Belascoaran Shayne and Phillip Marlowe? What are their differences?

The differences are in the structure of the lone hero, the outsider: a vocation for solitude, a fidelity to friends (in Marlowe's case) and to certain obsessions (in Belascoaran Shayne's case). Raymond Chandler's character moves within rational histories whereas mine is surrounded by a chaotic atmosphere, Kafkaesque and corrupt: Mexico City.

To what do you attribute your huge popularity?

To exoticism ... I suppose Mexican readers find in my novels a broken mirror, a proposition that invites them not to surrender to an immoral reality.

Why is detective fiction so attractive?

Because of the allure of adventure, the virtues of enigma, an incredible capacity for discovering cities and ancient mysteries, a set of characters in limited situations. A good novel is a good novel, but if it has a detective plot, all the better.

A brief talk with Paco Ignacio Taibo II - happy - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers - Interview

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Ilan Stavans

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