All the happy families – Carlos Fuentes

Master of Spanish literature who will celebrate this year 80^th birthday, finally decided to do this, what every decent writer thinks of – pertain to the first sentence from Lew Tolstoy`s “Anna Karenina” and develop it on his own way. Tolstoy starts with the statement that: “All the happy families are similar, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This sentence opens for the writer many new doors and gives plenty of possibilities.

Fuentes did realize it very well, that`s why he wrote sixteen different stories of different families and divided them with choirs which sound and look like poems written by American representatives of Big-Beat generation.

After lecture, putting all the plots and pieces together – it requires from the reader plenty of attention and it`s not so easy – we are given a picture of Mexican society torn apart. A society convincingly different from the one we already know from other charming novel “Summer with Laura Diaz”.

“Violence, violence” are last words of the book, dangerously coexisting with Tolstoy`s sentence. When family falls apart, everything falls apart.

 Summarized by Fusinha

Third World, Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes, one of the most famous Spanish-American writers, today almost 80 years old, dislikes George W. Bush, takes part in political debates and promises that when American presidency campaign will rich the hottest phase, he will start writing political essays against Republicans. Reason? They are bad for the world. Bush’s time has to be finished. “I’ve started to criticize him already when he was a presidential candidate. And I’m doing it till now – said the writer. I’ve always known that his tenure as president will end up as huge disaster.”

Fuentes is castigating Americans for the reason that they don’t respect their neighbors, suffer from lack of empathy and conquer the entire world. The writer also takes part in Mexican debates – the most recently is for drugs legalization. Says: “When drugs become legal, won’t be so attractive and a spate of crimes will be declined”.

Everybody recons with his word. Worldly newspapers seek for his essays, like “El Pais” where he regularly publishes his comments. Few years earlier we were reading his “Eagle’s Armchair”, a political fiction about fights for authority in Mexico in 2020,his essay “Contra Bush/against Bush” published in 2004, when George W. Bush was fighting in presidential election, his novel “The Years With Laura Diaz” and essay “I believe in it”, where Fuentes included his political and existential credo. Last year’s “All happy families” is about today’s Mexico.