My grandson is the same way. Robert Birnbaum: What was the first book you remember reading? My wife and daughter had tagged along to get a drink and go window-shopping at Rice Village while I did the interview; they make to exit, but Yuri – smiling, warm, and energetic – insists we all sit together. Especially when a small amount of people show up for an event — has that happened to you? EP: I started to write the book at three, but I didn’t get any further than the title. Yuri Herrera writes about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. EP: Yes, yes. He then uses an English word to describe his house: he calls it a “shotgun.” I’d never heard the term before, so he describes it in Spanish. His writing style is like nobody else’s, a unique turn of language, a kind of poetic slang. (She quotes comedian Danny Kaye when I used the phrase). I suppose in a hardhearted way I forget the sadness of the story I have written. The hero alone is captured by a crazy, fanatic ex-preacher who lives alone. EP: When I was a girl, I‘d go to a double feature in the middle and go around for the part I missed. And I always had a small following. I once was on a lineup that included David Sedaris and I was the first reader and he was the second. RB: It means I have shifted more responsibility to the writer. Pearlman has published over 250 short fictions and works of non-fiction in all the usual (and some unusual) places, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, The Pushcart Prize Collection,and The O. Henry Prize Stories Collection. EP: Thirteen new stories that had not been in a book. En la primavera de 2019, los autores entrevistados serán Achy Obejas, Yuri Herrera and Claudia Hernández. Yuri’s Uber is running a few minutes late, so I step into the Fellini Caffe in Rice Village, our agreed meeting place, and order an Americano. Required fields are marked *. Interview with Yuri Herrera. So I have probably read each book five or seven times. He becomes the court bard at the King’s lavish palace, but soon finds out that the price he must pay to stay in this elevated world far outweighs what he receives in return. I love the experience. By fallible human beings. He’s spent about seven years there and feels comfortable in the Big Easy, but hasn’t quite had enough time to “make memories.” He is very concerned about the gun violence in New Orleans that disproportionately affects young black men – he compares the bloodshed to Ciudad Juárez at the height of the Calderón presidency. EP: I am. No, I think I went back to Mary Poppins. And then over the years they meet. EP: The Tiger Wife. EP: Except for one. I think that view is actually taken from Horace. But it’s the mother who speaks in the first person. It’s going to see these younger women coming through, and they don’t give a damn. In the case of Lisa, we have had a very rich dialogue, with each book we exchanged daily emails for months, and even though I suggested ways to do it, the final decisions were hers, she always found graceful, inventive solutions. I am an overnight sensation of a sort. It can be healthy to purge dark things, but it can also excavate old and new suffering that needs to be attended to. EP: Well, in Dickens, each time I find something, some turn of phrase, a manipulation of plot or a character I hadn’t appreciated. My purpose is not to find new things. I then ask, a bit pointedly, if he feels any tension between the creation of fiction for a general readership and the academic world of theory? Many years ago, the writer Rivka Galchen loaned me Francisco Goldman’s first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens.The musicality and irreverence of the title was equally manifest in the verve of the writing, and in the novel’s searching questions about a … I started a book, I think, at the age of three. As for the other characters, it has to do with the role that the King assigned to them, their names signal the tension between what they might or might not want to do and what power expects from them. RB: Right. People who read, people who write–. They had previously been published in magazines. EP: There is a story by Evelyn Waugh, a novel I can’t remember which one it is. The only way to get through time alive is to spend a lot of it pretending that everything’s fine. Kingdom Cons includes lots of recognizable archetypes that appear in fairy or folktales across the globe—the King, the Witch, the Commoner, the Heir—can you talk a little bit about your choice to use these sorts of stock mythic characters? There were five seasons and every season had a different focus. RB: Do you have enough time to emotionally identify with the characters? I text a description of myself to Yuri, stand near the counter, and wait for a table to open up. Join us for the interview in Spanish in the Greenleaf Conference Room, 100-A Jones Hall at 5:30 PM. He says “it’s possible,” but it’s been “done before” by others. Yuri Herrera: I don’t think everything has to be explained in a novel. EP: Well, I take them to my friend, whom I meet every month, who is ruthless with me and I with her. She wasn’t named after Tess of the D’Ubervilles. And I don’t mind that. Thus begins Yuri Herrera’s brilliant and brutal debut Kingdom Cons, a story set on a fraught but nameless border where a young songwriter, drawn into a lethal world full of glitz and death, is forced to examine the meaning of loyalty and artistic integrity. RB: Are you tempted to write what seems to be a current trend–. The end of it is a about young people and explorers and takes place in Africa — Black Mischief? As it is, Ann Patchett’s introduction to Binocular Vision (Lookout Books), Pearlman’s award-winning story collection and any number of reviews ask the question, “Why have I not heard of this fine writer before?”. He responded, “Yes, after 20 years in the Borscht Belt.” I’m not an overnight sensation, but at the moment I’m in demand. It made life somehow better. RB: I have recently come across three writers who began writing really young – Gary Shteyngart wrote a novel when he was six or seven. Basically, it’s the sound of somebody saying Hijo de la chingada very fast. He’s wearing a really sharp-looking, white guayabera shirt made from a fabric known as manta Hindu in Spanish. I was so dazzled by that that I didn’t hear the rest of the question. I like words and phrases and paragraphs that do several things at a time. I must have read about you in Variety. I’ve never had my writing translated so I have not yet had this experience and I’m curious how it feels to you to read your words in a different language? EP: I started to write — actually I finished writing a mystery story with a friend but it wasn’t very good. But I would love to be able to create that kind of respiration, to engage with a tempo that depicts a different pace in which emotions develop. But other books are coming along with good reviews. How long does it take to write a story — a year? I read for my other three books a lot and seven people would be there. We know what we are and we’re good with it. What a masterpiece! RB: Do you know Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal? I start all over again with the knowledge that I have gotten from the improvisation. That is to say, my making is finished. RB: Really – writer’s block? You asked about the first book I remember reading — I am sure there were books I read before then. EP: Absolutely. Yuri speaks excellent English, but we converse in Spanish and Yuri answers most of my questions without pause. EP: I don’t remember. I don’t think that obtains any more — especially because I don’t think one can be poor with dignity in the 21st century. And looking around today, it may be true but the contemplative life seems to be losing the battle. I’ve read all of Yuri Herrera’s novels that have been translated to English and I find his work to be fascinating. (Both laugh). Its a recreation of places as a way of transporting yourself, using memories to embellish your virtual surroundings. EP: It is something that clings to you and that you fall in love with. ‘Those things you really want to silence are precisely those you should interrogate’ I listen to interesting interviews. The Millions' future depends on your support. The Peauxdunque Review and the Words and Music Writers Conference are pleased that Michael Zapata has agreed to judge the 2020 Beyond the Bars category of the Words and Music Writing Competition. I have been doing that for a long time. This piece of writing puts a smile on my face with its protagonist's character and saddens my heart with honest depiction of our rotten system. Yuri Herrera Yuri Herrera Interview Author Yuri Herrera on ‘the American problem that Mexico is suffering’ Yuri Herrera (in Spanish) RB: Why are writers like Alice Munro, William Trevor, and yourself admired in a way that seems different than many writers? TM: I’m interested in the influence of fairytales, folklore, and fables on your writing. I have a few — one is a [portable] Hermes 3000, which reportedly was the typewriter of choice for journalists. Cause if you’re just saying what happened, why bother with a song. The Irish tradition has been very male heavy. EP: Linked stories? Has written three novels, all of them translated into several languages: Trabajos del reino, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo, and La transmigración de los cuerpos; which have been published in English by And Other Stories.He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Tulane, in New Orleans. RB: Would you say it should be different? RB: What was the last movie you saw you liked? I don’t think they need much teaching and I was one of those. The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. For example, characters say “Usté” instead of the proper Usted. Like Yuri, I myself studied political science at university, so I’m curious about his path to literature. I go where I am asked. There were 16 stories that had never been collected. EP: My husband plays early music — he plays the viola de gamba as an amateur. EP: Yes, I think I do. I think that’s what reading may become. My purpose is to sink into them. Your “15 minutes” has lasted since the Spring. program at the University of Texas, El Paso and a P.h.D. Sunday, January 17 at 6:00 PM . RB: For some reason, the 3200 comes up in a few stories. RB: You knew about Ann Patchett’s intro to [Binocular Vision]? Not enough to educate myself — if I stopped reading, which would be a horror, I would probably not be a different person. In final pages, you learn explicitly that they were lovers once. Edith Pearlman: Interesting question. There were plenty of children’s books around — maybe I read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew or–. To me it sounded like a wonderful life. It’s being narrowed by all sorts of things. It’s not a temptation so much as I am not through with that character, so I want to write another story about them. YH: There are a lot of words that work as markers of a certain rhythm and a certain character of Lobo, like Simón, which is another word for Yes, but, say, with more attitude. RB: I think not. The early music crowd is eccentric and a world unto itself. YH: I always think my next novel is going to be as long as War and Peace, because I have many notes and I think that once I develop them it is going to be a long breadth book, but then I discover that my notes look a lot like how I want the story to sound, or that they require not more development but more concision and more versatility. EP: You were going to tell me the third story you liked. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the popularity of narcocorridos and their influence and what it means for a society when people are banned from partaking in something? There are writers absolutely as good as I am or better who write their books and don’t get noticed. EP: Well, I do when I make a collection. It won’t last forever, so I am responding to it. So I trust the translators because I assume they know the readership in this other language much better than me, that they know how to activate those new meanings in the text. It has a slightly angelic appeal to me. Silences are important because they are the most eloquent part of a creative work in how it allows the readers to reveal themselves when they fill them. It was fun. EP: It certainly has. EP: And now they have readings. EP: Because literature is important. He mentions his obsession with words. What caused the switch from poly sci to letra? EP: I’ll bet its good — I like her short stories. Suddenly, time rears its ugly head. Yuri Herrera studied Political Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, obtained a master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of Texas, El Paso and a Ph.D., 2009, in Hispanic Language and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.He is the editor of the literary magazine El perro and a Mellow Postdoctoral Fellow at Tulane University. RB: And then you got better since you wrote it? Except for David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. EP: No you didn’t. I don’t think Dickens appears. YH: I don’t know if it’s the main reason, but it’s something that you are going to have to face if you truly engage with the creative labor, because art implies creating new ways of looking at familiar subjects, and in order to do that you have to disassemble rules, meanings, certainties, you have to look at the arbitrariness of certain aspects of reality, or at the nonsense of cruelty, or at the complications of love, and in this manner you can not only mess with your readers’ emotional stability, but with your own. RB: (Chuckles) You bought the book and haven’t read it. EP: It started even earlier. I did not get an MFA — I took a total of three courses. EP: By human beings. I was in an event in which three short stories were read by three actresses which was a lot of fun. In general the writers are — they know how lucky they are. Why did you name her Tess? I was making my living as computer programmer, so writing was in those days confined to letters. RB: Sure, but within the usual window of attention. ’s debut novel, Sugar Run, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in 2018. It’s not one — something I dream–. A small group of people who love it and don’t care if they are thought of as crazy. In the case of the novel, not naming certain places helps avoiding clichés and easy formulations of issues that are much more complex than what the mass media and government speakers say. RB: You chose to have a number of people tell the story. “The Ministry of Restraint,” in part because I didn’t know what was going to happen — how well do you remember your stories — pretty well? I go to bookstores. Outside, Fall weather has yet to take hold in Texas: it’s sunny, slightly muggy, and over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Mexican Migrants are under a "Fascist Offensive" | AL DÍA News It’s supposed to be a tragic ending. The last time I didn’t feel I got anything new and it made me wonder about past judgments about the book. RB: A guy takes a trip to some backwater town, and takes a train back to the capitol and meets a woman. I participate in the process only as much as they ask me to. EP: I used to use a Hermes. Edith Pearlman on Fame and the Importance of Short Fiction, What It Is to Be Alone: The Millions Interviews Anne Enright, Over the Brink of Disaster: The Millions Interviews Elisa Gabbert. I have a feeling that I’d become addicted if I started watching. And she either says, “This is almost done” or “Go back.” And I do. RB: The story’s last two lines were quite powerful. RB: I don’t remember the chain of events that brought us together — it must be because you are an overnight sensation (laughs).