Violence in García Márquez and Bolaño the Lucky Ones
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“Tragados por la Tierra”: Violence in García Márquez and Bolaño and The Lucky Ones Julianne Pachico Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative and Critical Writing School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing University of East Anglia September 2017 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on the condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotations or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This thesis consists of two related sections. Part One is an essay addressing the representation of fact-based violence in Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel García Márquez and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Part Two, the primary section, is the novel-in- stories The Lucky Ones. The overall goal of this thesis is to understand how violence can be portrayed through a literary approach. In the essay, “Tragados por la Tierra: Violence in García Márquez and Bolaño,” I focus on how both authors write about fact-based violence: how their specific approach, craft, and tools, their style and language are used to depict violence through an interplay between visibility and ambiguity. Set in Colombia between 1993 and 2013—the peak years of violence during the long Colombian conflict—The Lucky Ones centers on a group of wealthy girls, the daughters of expats and local elite, and the teachers, housekeepers, warlords, and guerrilla fighters who surround them. The Lucky Ones examines and enacts many of the themes discussed in Part One, by focusing on the paradoxical nature of violence that is consistently present yet rarely witnessed. 1 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. 4 Part One- “Tragados por la Tierra”: Violence in García Márquez and Roberto Bolaño ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction: The Part About The Lucky Ones............................................................ 6 I. “A special time, not knowing when it might be your turn” ............................................ 6 II. The Lucky Ones ....................................................................................................................... 11 III. Violence as dark matter / The Easiest Way. ................................................................. 13 Chapter One – “Se Los Tragó La Tierra”: The Part About García Márquez ........ 17 I. Héctor Abad Gómez & Santiago Nasar ............................................................................... 17 II. “Los muertos o los vivos” / “The living or the dead” .................................................... 19 III. something so awful / a perfect blend / poetically transmuted ............................... 22 IV. “¡Mierda, primo, ni te imaginas!” / “Shit, cousin, you can’t imagine!” ................... 25 IV. “Vueltas al revés y al derecho, deslumbrado” / “Backwards and forwards, baffled” .......................................................................................................................................... 32 V. A broken mirror, an empty shell ....................................................................................... 34 Chapter Two – “The Dinosaurs Never Showed”: The Part About Bolaño ........... 38 I. “That combination between fiction and reality” / “A different type of pattern” ... 38 II. La violenca verdadera, inescapable / Real violence, unavoidable .......................... 41 III. Exhaustive, Forensic, Repetitive ...................................................................................... 43 IV. An Imperfect Photograph: Sergio González Rodriguez .............................................. 48 V. Strategic Opacity: Keeping A Secret Secret ..................................................................... 51 VI. The disorder of the incongruous ...................................................................................... 53 VII. Poetics of Inconclusiveness.............................................................................................. 56 VIII. “Una Flor Carnivora”......................................................................................................... 58 IX. Seen and Not Seen ................................................................................................................ 62 2 Looking Back, and Ahead ................................................................................................ 66 Part Two: The Lucky Ones ................................................................................................ 70 Lucky ............................................................................................................................................. 72 Lemon Pie ..................................................................................................................................... 91 M+M..............................................................................................................................................129 Siberian Tiger Park ..................................................................................................................156 Honey Bunny .............................................................................................................................176 The Tourists ...............................................................................................................................197 Junkie Rabbit .............................................................................................................................214 The Bird Thing ..........................................................................................................................230 Julisa ............................................................................................................................................249 Armadillo Man ...........................................................................................................................263 Beyond the Cake .......................................................................................................................287 3 Acknowledgements I’m not the easiest person in the world to work with, so I owe much gratitude to the patience and assistance of my supervisors, Trezza Azzopardi and Ceci Rossi. Thank you Nick Bradley and Pansy. Gracias a Elyssa, Edgar, Mambo, y Samba por prestarme la casa en Medellín. Gracias a mis papas. Some formal declarations: Early drafts of several stories appearing in The Lucky Ones were submitted as part of the MA in Prose Fiction undertaken at the University of East Anglia between September 2012 and September 2013. ‘Lucky’ and ‘M+M’ were assessed for Creative Writing: Prose Fiction modules in the Autumn and the Spring terms respectively. Both stories have since undergone substantial changes. ‘Armadillo Man’, ‘Honey Bunny,’ and ‘Junkie Rabbit’ were originally submitted under the heading of Candy Bird for the dissertation project. These fragments were then substantially reworked in order to become linked. 4 Part One “Tragados por la Tierra”: Violence in García Márquez and Roberto Bolaño 5 Introduction: The Part About The Lucky Ones I. “A special time, not knowing when it might be your turn” In 2010 I moved back to Colombia, the country where I grew up until moving to the U.S. for college in 2004. I had a job in microfinance, based in the Middle Magdalena region, which is one of Colombia’s strategic heartlands in terms of the oil economy and civil conflict. I visited sweaty oil towns and paramilitary strongholds, villages with unpaved roads and crumbling walls decorated with graffiti from local criminal bands. My main responsibility was to interview clients, many of whom had been displaced from surrounding areas, and post their stories on the website of the American fundraising NGO that I worked for. There was the family who ran a rotisserie chicken shop and had successfully expanded it into three locations. The girl my age who sold beauty products and shyly offered me free samples of anti-wrinkle face creams. The old man who ran the fritanga (fried food stand); the young woman who sold arepas and tamales, wrapped in white cloth and carried around in a wicker picnic for office lunches. I loved meeting the clients. And not just because doing so made me feel better at my job—more competent than how I felt back at the office, staring bleary-eyed at Excel documents I barely knew how to use and emails I felt too anxious to respond to (“Any updates on the Cost-Benefit analysis? Did you see my last email?”). While interviewing clients, I felt proud of what I was doing. I’d lived in Colombia the first eighteen years of my life, and when I returned in 2010, it felt like I was getting in touch with the “real” Colombia—the one I had been so isolated from in my youth. I was righting a grievous, unacceptable wrong; I was genuinely getting to know the Colombia I had been so 6 disinterested in as a teenager. While attending university in the U.S., my newfound American friends flounced around the dormitory in Andean wool sweaters