El país en una maleta: Entrevista a Héctor Torres / Daniel Fermín

The Country in a Suitcase: An Interview with Héctor Torres

                  [Photo: Nicola Rocco]

A man who drives the wrong direction up a one way street; a young man who’s a victim of a crime on a bus; pedestrians who are forced to avoid all the obstacles on the city sidewalks; a boy who jumps from the top floor of a mall. Héctor Torres once again explores Venezuela’s national identity in Objetos no declarados: 1001 maneras de ser venezolano mientras el barco se hunde (2014), which has been published by Puntocero.

“The book complements Caracas muerde (2012). It’s another side of the same topic. If in that book I addressed the spiritual state of the citizen, here I focus on how many of us have contributed to the violence and chaos of the country. Earlier I offered a panoramic view, now I speak introspectively about how each of us participates in the disaster. I felt like I needed to finish saying things that were still unresolved from the first book.”

Emigration is the connecting thread of Objetos no declarados. The title is a metaphor of the elements —good and bad— that Venezuelans carry in their suitcases when they leave the country. Because no matter where you go, your origins travel with you, like contraband. The paranoia typical of Venezuela’s insecurity even when you’re in the safest place in the world, the annoyance of apologizing for everything on the outside, the lack of discipline when it comes to following certain laws.

“The stories came out of conversations I had with friends living abroad. The topic of migration has become something very important. One, because of today’s polarization, two, because until now Venezuela was never a nation of emigrants. People are incapable of seeing the person who emigrates as someone who’s looking for opportunities, but rather as someone who gave up, who betrayed something I can’t even define. The very fleeting idea of thinking they escape the problem yet taking the problem with them. Just like the family, the country is a brand. You can say you’re leaving Venezuela because it’s broken but you go somewhere else and run a red light.”

Power is another topic in several of the stories that make up the book. Power reflected in a girl’s manipulation of her mother so that she’ll scold him in a subway car. Or the bad service of clerks in a store or in any institution, as if they themselves won’t be clients or won’t have to run an errand in the near future. Torres narrates anecdotes that reflect how the obsession with authoritarianism among Venezuelans is still manifested today, even within smaller confines.

“I think we have a long tradition of abusing power. First, we’re a people of caudillos, where the figure of the great father is always fundamental. We’ve grown up with the image that there’s one Venezuela who’s superior to all the rest, which is Simón Bolívar. And that contributes to us living like eternal orphans. If you read La escribana del viento, by Ana Teresa Torres, you realize that Venezuelan society in 1640 already had some of the elements we still see today: abusive, despotic power. When we enter a crisis, the true nature of a society is revealed.”

Héctor Torres nourishes his literature with the streets, with the country’s daily situations. Caracas, because of its stories, its chaos and its violence, is an ideal place for writing. Literature as a reflection of what we are, a way of interpreting a nation from the intimacy of its anonymous characters: the old man who runs a tiny stall for making phone calls, the parents who take their kids to school day after day, the different social classes in Venezuela.

“Reality allows that. Here in Venezuela the crime novel writes itself. Crime, absurdity, contaminated power, we see these every single day. One of the few enviable things about Caracas is the possibility of infinite topics for whoever wants to write. Literature slows down life. It allows us to read ourselves, to relive certain moments. Like watching a video of something we already did. Because daily life impedes us from having a critical attitude toward the events around us, more so in a city as chaotic as Caracas. People live with rules that exist but aren’t applied. According to their individual norms, every man for himself. Because of how corrupted institutions have become in the country, it’s a matter of survival. We’ve become accustomed to violence, to resolving things on our own.”

Héctor Torres has already said he isn’t trying to make an analysis or a social condemnation. His interest is simply literature. The Venezuelan writer is very clear about the fact that a book can’t change a country’s reality, that Objetos no declarados can’t do much in the face of the impunity that reigns in Venezuela. He merely shows it, points to it, exhibits it with a glance that is somewhat removed from the vertiginous rhythms typical of a daily routine.

“Literature tries to reflect reality as faithfully as possible. In the hopes it might produce something in the reader. That it might move people. David Foster Wallace said it: whoever’s calm, shake him up; whoever’s uneasy, give him some calm. It’s an epic ambition to think you can modify a city by merely writing. We’ll leave that to the politicians, to the heroes or saviors of the nation. Literature serves as a consolation. Whoever feels like a stranger in his own country can realize he’s not the only one, he can provide a slight feeling of hope. It could produce a factor, that some people might think they can live in a different manner. Literature shouldn’t ever have the ambition of producing a political change because then it becomes a pamphlet. That’s very dangerous.”




{ Daniel Fermín, El Universal, 23 November 2014 }

Primer plato, segundo plato y postre / Luisa Pescoso P.

First Course, Second Course and Dessert

Héctor Torres (1968) is a Venezuelan writer whose short stories have appeared in the newspapers El Clarín of La Victoria, La Antena of San Juan de Los Morros and in the literary magazine Letralia. He has published Trazos de asombro y olvido (1996), Episodios suprimidos del manuscrito G (1998), Del espejo ciego and El pintor de bisontes (still in the process of publication). His most recent creation, El amor en tres platos (2007) combines humor, the everyday and the absurd.


“And in her heart, depression, the sensation of emptiness, the feeling of solitude, a fear of night and the water’s roaring, all of those, had been annihilated by that new torrent arriving from the future, dragging her softly and with her complicity.” (110)


An opulent use of language and metalanguage, a diversity of everyday themes, humor and enchantment are some of the adjectives that arise from reading each of the narratives that comprise El amor en tres platos [Love in Three Courses] by Héctor Torres. A book rich in quotidian situations, impregnated by the urban in which Torres presents recurring themes from the day’s journey.

Each story seems to be a projection of the absurd, of those events we sometimes venture to consider real, typically extravagant and absurd but that, undoubtedly, happen all the time and become part of our astonishment. An astonishment that circulates in the life of Héctor Torres who claims that: “Nowadays, my astonishments are produced by the most invisible aspects of everyday life, searching with as completely a new glance as possible over things that are there but which we sometimes ignore, like desire, the passing of time, the madness of a loved one and the anguishes that exhaust and alienate most people, in their day to day.” This statement, made during an interview with the newspaper El Mundo, contributes to understanding this book’s structure, the way in which Torres conceived and elaborated his narratives, and above all the manner in which the 14 stories combine in perfect coherence with each other to become El amor en tres platos.

One of the most pleasing elements about reading this book is that it induces you to that state of being “surprised,” not just after the stories unfold, but also during their opening and throughout the journey. He denies you the chance to predict the ending and quickens a mix between admiration and astonishment of being able to estrange you with each of the things he narrates. Moreover, he leaves you with that grimace on your face when something truly impresses you, something you don’t expect, something you didn’t guess.

The book establishes a very close relationship with the reader because of the reiterated direct address to him in several stories. “Yo tampoco escogería mayo para comenzar” [I Wouldn’t Choose May to Begin Either] is a good example. It builds a triple relationship between author-character-reader that sometimes seems conscious; let us say that a game is established between an omniscient, a testimonial and a protagonist narrator. The obsession between author and character, dialogue, searches, introspections are made explicit until we reach the ideal character. Dreaming is also one of the author’s recurrences, awakening from a dream, dreaming, the exercise of dream and life through the unchangeable exercise of sleep. This element is persistent and repeated throughout the narratives.

The title that gives the book its name is used in the final story which is an allegory of love during three stages in life: youth, adulthood and old age, perhaps the last one is less explicit, but it is enunciated. El amor en tres platos, then, is the same as saying youth, adulthood and old age, the semblance of first course, second course and dessert. It is the story of the wound that never healed, the sleeplessness of Mrs. Bastidas, a dog’s misadventures, of how Mr. Garminoff became a character in his own script, Sinclair’s confusion at the train station, the story of a bird with a long beak and of La Negra, a few of the characters who come to life in this text. Salsa music, the ghetto, the street, the train station, the house of Mrs. Bastidas and of Ubiedo are some of the locations. This is how this text – which belongs to the publishing imprint of Editorial Equinoccio, as part of its Papiros Collection, fiction series – unfolds, as a pleasant and well cared for edition that gathers the tone of this voice, of Hector Torrés’s, that assumes an optimistic stance regarding Venezuelan literature as we await the future of our letters.




{ Luisa Pescoso P., Papel Literario, El Nacional, 26 January 2008 }