Semana Negra Caracas 2018
…a whole month of Crime Fiction in slow motion
Questionary to Marcos Tarre-Briceño
By Israel Centeno
The crime novel always, directly or indirectly, implies an indictment of the flows of the system. It is about telling sordid cases or things, ugly, unpleasant, dark sides of society, and with the umbrella of flexibility that fiction allows. This, of course, cannot please an authoritarian regime.
Even if the dynamics of the police novel develop with contingencies, would you say that the police novel must necessarily be contingent?
If we understand by “Contingency” the possibility of something happening or not, the police novel is fundamentally “contingent.” Although it can start or be based on the main event that has already occurred, the “Contingency” will appear in the boost of the plots, in the options of answers that the reader formulates, in the different erroneous or correct paths of the characters and even in the dialogues between them.
The police novel, or what we understand by it, yes, is contingent.
The Venezuelan crime fiction. Could you establish its origins, some titles, and authors?
Testimonial books such as “Retén de Catia” by Juan Sebastián Aldana in 1972; “Soy un delincuente” by Ramón Antonio Brizuela in 1974; “Cárcel modelo, máxima seguridad” by Yon Cayetano Franco in 1976; and the chronicle “Cuatro Crímenes, cuatro poderes” by Fermín Mármol León in 1976, can be considered the antechamber of the “Venezuelan black genre.”
Lesser-known writers, such as José Miguel Roig, have made outstanding contributions to the diffusion of the Venezuelan novel abroad, with translations of their books into French and Danish.
I published “Colt Comando 5.56” in 1983, and this is how the saga of the serial character Gumersindo Peña originated. Writers such as José Pulido, Valentina Saa, Raquel Rivas Rojas, Ana Teresa Torres, Israel Centeno, Jorge Gómez Jiménez, Sonia Chocrón, Mónica Montañés, or Eloi Yagüe, among others, have contributed to what I prefer to call, more broadly, “Black Gender.” And a new generation of Venezuelan writers is presenting to the world the quality of our writing, within the black genre, such as Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez with his novels “El baile de madame Kalalú” and the sensational “La Ola detenida,” and Juan Carlos Chirinos with his “Gémelas.” Both residing in Madrid and already with international projection…
There are others brilliant Venezuelan writers, such as Francisco Suniaga or Federico Vegas (they do not know that they write black novels), but some of their stories have been seeing things with an absolute amplitude, could fit into the Fiction Noir.
In 2016 we created the group of Crime fiction’s authors “La Orilla Negra Venezuela.” This roundup has allowed us to exchange ideas, to carry out projects, and to establish contact between those of us who are in the country and those who have already been able to leave. The group has allowed us to remain active in spite of such adverse and tragic circumstances in general, and for the literature, in particular, that Venezuela is going through.
A lot of people confuse a police novel with a thriller. Could you establish the differences and coincidences between them?
For me, the “thriller” is a modality that I have used in my novels “Bala Morena” and “El Amor de Nuestras Vidas” — to be published — where there is a lot of action and suspense. It has served me to cover genres such as espionage, drug trafficking, terrorism, organized crime, corruption, and the guerrilla presence on the Colombian-Venezuelan border and its incidence.
The “Thriller” tends to take ownership on the international stage, while the police novel should be more focused on crimes and their investigation, which reveal to us the richness of the local and its most hidden faces.
To make a comparison, one could say that the “Venezuela Case” began as a bad and unpleasant local “police novel” and has become an “international thriller,” even without an end.
There is a question that all of us who write police novels ask ourselves: how fast or slow should action take place and what should be the level of suspense?
It is a question of rhythm, of balance. The writer must dose the elements with which he plays in his plot. He cannot write pages and pages without anything happening or saturate his lines with too much action. You have to put yourself in the reader’s shoes, keep him entertained, interested, and eager to continue reading.
Is there open-ended in the police novel, or as a case, should it be closed?
Of course, there is an open end in what I insist on calling Black Genre. What better example than the film “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.” It’s always good to remember that behind every movie, every television series, screenwriters are writing or adapting.
Nothing is filmed or recorded without prior writing and a writer to do it. Those who wrote that story gave it a fantastic open ending.
What impact did the book “Cuatro Crímenes Cuatro Poderes,” the chronicles of Fermín Mármol León have on the Crime Fiction in Venezuela?
That book was important. It wasn’t really a novel, nor did it shine for its literary quality, but without a doubt, it opened a door for Venezuelans. It started a vision of their own reality, what they now call their “narrative,” the expressions of their society, of their collective conscience. It was a chronicle that wanted to be a kind of call or denunciation from a police chief became a historical milestone because of those things in life. It touched some particular fibers of the society at a specific moment. The other books of Marmol León did not have the same resonance.
Tell us a little about your character Gumersindo Peña. Tell us if it is a stereotyped character or if it escapes the stereotypes of the genre, and if you consider it in that way, why and how you achieve it.
When I imagined the character Gumersindo Peña, there were no serial characters in Venezuela. So there was no danger of falling into local genre stereotypes. But without a doubt, it is the stereotype of the image that one makes, or was made before, of the police officer. He’s a bit of a borderline but he’s nice, he’s a womanizer, Peña’s fucked up, and he ends up solving cases in his own way. But Gumersindo has principles and limits that he doesn’t cross. He had to leave DISIP and remain “angry.” He has to act shallow.
In the stories that are about to be published “Gumersindo Peña y la ciudad perdida” and “¿Quién dijo miedo?” We can re-encounter a current Gumersindo Peña, with more years on top, acting hidden from the SEBIN and suffering the hardships of all Venezuelans.
In countries under dictatorial governments, where literature is a constant suspect, people resort to the Crime Fiction, as is the case in Cuba. Do you think this is happening in Venezuela or it is part of a global phenomenon?
For example, Spain is catching up with the crime novel, it is no longer treated as a sub-genre.
I think that the crime novel that is made and published in Cuba does not cease to have a particular commitment to the regime. One should read the Cubans who write in exile or clandestinity. The case of Venezuela is different. Chávez criticized and censored a few writers and their books. He based his criticism on the fact that few Venezuelans read, and those who already were reading were part of the opposition. Being able to expose some books helped him to say that in Venezuela there was freedom of expression, at least for a while, while; although at the same time he censored television stations, newspapers, and made life impossible for some writers.
In the case of Spain, there seems to be a “saturation” of the crime novel. It is as if they had worn themselves out looking for a worthy successor of Vázquez Montalbán, without realizing that they have outstanding writers such as Andreu Martín, José Luis Muñoz, Carlos Zanón, Verónica Vila-San Juan, José Vaccaro Ruiz, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, and the late Francisco González Ledesma. But it must be acknowledged that Spain, even if it was a little late, contributed to enhance the noir fiction to the point that several writers of the genre have been awarded prestigious prizes.
The crime novel always, directly or indirectly, implies an indictment of the flows of the system. It is about telling sordid cases or things, ugly, unpleasant, dark sides of society, and with the umbrella of flexibility that fiction allows. This, of course, cannot please an authoritarian regime.
Let’s talk a little about the Semana Negra project. Although any cultural event is always welcome, what meaning would you say it has in Venezuela at this particular moment?
We are about to hold, in mid-October 2018, the second edition of the Semana Negra de Caracas. This event has, I would say, three meanings:
First of all, despite all the difficulties and the tragedy that Venezuela suffers, we have been able to overcome barriers and problems to carry out this second edition.
Second of all, for the writers of La Orilla Negra involved in the organization of the event and in the publication of the corresponding second book of stories, it has been a way to keep us active, putting our minds and energy in something else and doing our part to help the people, the lovers of the genre.
And last but not least, from our stages and through our feathers, it has been possible to write and narrate, from different positions and points of view, about the drama, about the tragedy of blood and violence that the country suffers.
What has been the response, inside and outside the country, to this initiative? I’m talking about readers as well as critics and writers.
The responses of the writers, both those of us who are in Venezuela and those of us who are abroad, have been enthusiastic, generous; some have given us their ideas, others their stories, others their desire to do something. I believe that Crime fiction writers, I don’t know for what strange reason, are incredibly generous, spontaneous, collaborative, supportive, creative, and, as in joint agreement, we resist and oppose, each in their own way, authoritarianism and barbarism.
At the public level, the conversations and presentations of Semana Negra are free, they generate interest and people go massively to the events, I don’t know if it’s for the love of the genre or for the void of the Caracas cultural agenda. Last year the full edition of the book was sold. With the percentage gained from the copyright, we made a donation of food supplies to a school in need in the west of the city. This year our book will have a digital version so we can reach out to all Venezuelans outside.
To close, I will ask two more questions about genre:
Do you think that questions about good and evil, about right and wrong, reward and punishment, should always be implicit? Do you think the crime novel is a moralistic novel?
I don’t think the crime novel is moralistic, much less than it has to be. But that doesn’t mean that the great dilemmas about good and evil, in one way or another, will be present. Good, evil, punishment, justice, forgiveness, resilience, revenge, emotions. A whole series of emotions inherent in the human condition are precisely the elements that serve as the basis for the stories of the black genre, and if you look at it more broadly, for any novel, of any type?
Does the premise continue that detectives should never fall in love?
I’ve never heard that before.
Detectives, just like any human being, have the right to their personal lives, to fall in love, to indulge in love, to be happily or boringly married, widowed, divorced, paired, cheated on, or lonely… But they will always be subject to the designs of their creator, that is, the writer who created them… In this case, we can then affirm that detectives, and in general the characters of crime novels, do not enjoy “free will.”
