Crime and Guilt—De Santis & Cueto On Their Award-Winning Works
By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell -- Críticas, 9/1/2007
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The prize jury, which included prestigious writers such as Spain's Eduardo Mendoza and Mexico's Juan Villoro, unanimously supported De Santis’s El enigma de París (The Paris Enigma), a stylish whodunit set in late 19th century Paris, and Cueto’s El susurro de la mujer ballena (“The Whisper of the Whale Woman”), an insightful journey into self-image and the female perspective.
Gumshoe in Paris
A precocious talent, De Santis published his first novel, El palacio de la noche (“The Palace of the Night”),the first of a series of young adult books, in 1987, when he was only 24. His extensive bibliography includes YA novels and television screenplays. For several years, he was the managing editor of the comics magazine Fierro, for which he wrote numerous scripts, often devoted to the noir genre.
De Santis’s novels frequently foray into noir. La traducción (“The Translation”), a Premio Planeta Argentina finalist in 1997, is a thriller involving a translators’ conference. Other recent titles such as El teatro de la memoria (“Theater of Memory”; 2000), El calígrafo de Voltaire (“Voltaire’s Calligrapher”; 2001), and La sexta lámpara (“The Sixth Lamp”; 2006) combine elements of mystery and fantasy.
El enigma de París features Sigmundo Salvatrio, a novice Argentinian detective sent by his mentor to a rare reunion of “The Twelve Detectives,” the most famous crime investigators in the world, in Paris, during the 1889 World Fair.
In Paris, a city swarming with “hermetic” conspirators vowing to destroy the Eiffel Tower—then a newly erected symbol of modernity—one of the famed 12 detectives is murdered. Although hampered by his “assistant” status, Salvatrio sets off to solve the crime.
“I always enjoyed the genre,” says De Santis about noir. “When I was a child, my parents would watch detective films and tell me all about them.” That’s how he first learned of Alfred Hitchcock and Darío Argento’s sophisticated and violent films.
Later, when he fell for literature and explored the creations of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe, De Santis says he was “intrigued by the relationship between the detective and the assistant,” as portrayed in those tales. “The detective is the one who knows it all, but it’s his sidekick who, in the end, tells the story.” With this last novel, he says, he came up with the Twelve Detectives first and decided the 1889 World Fair would set the scene, but he “didn’t start writing the novel until I realized that the detective-assistant relationship would be central to the plot.”
El enigma de París is a classic crime story that is open to interpretation. “Writers are at once experts on everything and nothing,” says De Santis. “We fill the characters’ worlds with our own experience. The author can write a story, but the interpretations go beyond his jurisdiction.”
Moreover, the detectives and their eccentric assistants—a Spanish “failed bullfighter,” a Sioux Indian—provide a humorous compendium of crime stories, investigative theories, and detective gimmicks that together make for a sort of satire of the noir genre.
An example of De Santis’s sly sense of humor is his mischievous treatment of his own nationality: “Your accent and your arrogance sound familiar,” a character tells Salvatrio in the novel.
“Argentines have a bad reputation, especially when it comes to our excessive sense of pride,” says De Santis, “and it really amuses me what is said about us.”
After winning the Planeta-Casamérica prize, it would seem right for the author to write a sequel or even start a crime series. “I would love to take up again the character of Salvatrio,” he contemplates, “[and] the Tokyo detective, Sakawa, my favorite of the Twelve Detectives.” But, he immediately admits, that works like these “depend both on willpower and ideas that catch on by themselves.”
On ugliness
One of Peru’s most prolific authors, Cueto published his first book of short stories, La batalla del pasado (“The Battle of the Past”; Alfaguara), in 1983. His first novel, El tigre blanco (“The White Tiger”), won Peru’s Premio Wiracocha in 1985. In 2000, he won the Anna Seghers Prize for his oeuvre, and, in 2002, the Guggenheim Latin American and Caribbean Fellowship. More recently, his international reputation has grown thanks to his novels Grandes miradas (“Long Stare”; Anagrama, 2003) and La hora azul (“The Blue Hour”; Anagrama 2005), both dealing with Peru’s dirty war and Alberto Fujimori’s turbulent presidency.
Not a political novel, El susurro de la mujer ballena explores a different kind of cultural issue. It revolves around the reunion of two childhood girlfriends after 25 years apart: the successful journalist Verónica, who narrates, and the troubled, overweight Rebeca, who resents Verónica because she never stood up for her when she was teased in school. “Both women keep a close watch on their bodies for different reasons. Rebeca is rejected for being fat and Verónica is afraid of growing old,” Cueto says, adding that the worship of the body is the century’s new religion. According to Rebeca, “Diets have become penances, gyms replace temples, and fashion shows are the new rituals.”
Writing such a detailed account of female intimacy was a challenge. “While writing the book I would sometimes find myself talking aloud, wondering whether what I said sounded like a woman,” says Cueto.
Though he was very close to the women in his family, the author says he consulted women’s magazines and relied on his wife’s help as well. It worked. “After I won the prize, I found out that the members of the jury thought it was written by a woman,” he says.
Cueto says that “women are more suited for friendship than men” and more capable of emotional compromise, but he admitted that narrating from a woman’s perspective meant he’d gotten in “way over my head, but I think the only way to write is to go for what’s more difficult. That’s what the great adventure is all about.”
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