Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes Macías audio was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz, Aura, Terra Nostra, The Old Gringoand Christopher Unborn. In his obituary, the New York Times described him as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s", while The Guardian called him "Mexico's most celebrated novelist". His many literary honors include...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 November 1928
CityPanama City, Panama
CountryMexico
No government functions without the grease of corruption.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you dont necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.
What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.
What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.
In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism - religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with its religious conviction that the market, left to its own devices, is capable of resolving all our problems. This faith has its own ayatollahs. Its church is neo-liberalism; its creed is profit; its prayers are for monopolies.
Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal.
Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt.
I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.
By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.
There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.