"Great caricaturists don't expect applause from anyone, and that's not what they draw for: they draw to annoy, to embarrass, to be insulted." So declares Mallarino upon receiving the highest tribute for his forty years as Colombia's foremost political cartoonist - his self-portrait on the country's newest postage stamp.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez places Javier Mallarino front and center in his short novel, Reputations.
But just because the author is from Colombia, please don't think Gabriel García Márquez or magical realism. Educated at the Sorbonne and having spent fifteen years of his adult life in Europe, Juan Gabriel Vásquez told an interviewer his literary influences have been European and American. Indeed, the author's themes of memory and identity will bring to mind Patrick Modiano; his clear, crisp language (many thanks to translator Anne McLean ) will remind readers of Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, even Richard Ford.
Reputations makes for a compelling, moving story. On the heels of his award ceremony, Javier Mallarino receives an unforeseen telephone call from a journalist, a request for an interview. However, once fetching Samanta Leal is in Mallarino's home and following a conversation revolving around cartooning, Samanta spots a particular painting on the wall. She confesses: she's not a journalist at all, her visit has a much different purpose: to probe Mallarino's memory of the time twenty-eight years ago when she was a seven-year-old girl and a friend of Mallarino's daughter Beatriz, that dreaded day when she paid a visit to this very house.
Yiyun Li wrote in her New York Times review, "Reputations can be read and enjoyed on many levels: for its reflections on art, memory and fate; for its account of recent Colombian history at a slant, which is Vásquez's trademark approach; for its Jungian exploration of lives intersecting."
With Ms. Li's words in mind, I'll let readers discover the many facets of the tale on their own. For the purpose of my review, I'll zero in on what I judge the most captivating aspect of the novel: Mallarino's ideas and feelings regarding the power of art and political cartooning.
“The black square, the slender strokes, the line of text of brief dialogue beneath the frame: the scene that left his desk each day and was praised, admired, commented on, misinterpreted, later repudiated in a column of the same newspaper or another, in the irate letter of an irate reader, in a debate in some morning radio show. Yes, it was a terrible power.”
Juan Gabriel Vásquez is keenly aware of the ways power can influence a person's sense of identity and self-esteem. The author explores the various dimensions of Mallarino's sense of self-worth, most especially his stature in the eyes of Magdalena, both back when Magdalena was his wife and now, living and drawing on his own.
“Painting was his thing. . . . So at that time the caricatures were a short-term way of earning a living.”
How many artists and writers have abandoned their true calling and employed their talents in a much different manner as a way to pay the bills? And once the money starts flowing in, how easily the short-term can turn into long-term, consuming an entire lifetime.
“Why was he still doing what he did, what real effect would his cartoon have on the out-of-focus and remote world that began at the edge of his worktable, that slim wooden precipice.”
The key word here is "real." Sure, Mallarino's political cartoons capture the public's attention, but has he reduced himself to what Nietzsche termed "the hero of the hour"?
“Mallarino was beginning to wonder if it had been worthwhile giving up his oils and canvases for this: the adrenaline rush he no longer felt, the imaginary reactions of imaginary readers he never got to meet, this vague and perhaps false sensation of public importance that caused him private trouble; relatives who greeted him less warmly, friends who stopped inviting him to dinner with their wives. For what?”
Mallarino, the great conscience of an entire country. . . but at a price: friends and family must be sacrificed. Mallarino wrestles with the pros and cons throughout.
“Good cartoons seek and find the constant in a person: something that never changes, what stays the same and allows us to recognize someone we haven’t seen in a thousand years.”
I reflect on Mallarino's statement here in light of the book's teasing, quizzical epigraph, "Identical noses do not make identical men."
“Ricardo Rendón, my master,” he hurried to say, “once compared the caricature to a stinger, but dipped in honey.”
What's a political cartoon without an element of humor? After all, we all enjoy that distinctively human capacity: laughing. Outstanding cartoonist Ricardo Rendón, now long dead, continues to cast his shadow in Mallarino's life. On the beginning pages of the novel, Mallarino even sees Ricardo Rendón walking down a street in Bogotá. Juan, is this an instance of magical realism? I suppose an author growing up in the land of Gabriel García Márquez just can't help himself.
“Life is the best caricaturist. Life turns us into caricatures of ourselves. You have, we all have, the obligation to make the best caricature possible, to camouflage what we don’t like and exalt what we like best.”
The cartoonist's statement reminds me of a quote from German philosopher Artur Schopenhauer, "After a certain age every man is responsible for his face." On a personal note, do you, reader, take responsibility for your face?
“I don’t like them. I don’t even make digital corrections, which is something many do. I don’t. I draw by hand, and what comes out is what goes out. Digital technologies make everything boring, predictable, monotonous.”
This is an aesthetic worthy of respect; particularly since mistakes, so called, frequently enhance an artist’s individuality and signature when creating a work.
Again, I took a particular angle for my review. Many more areas of intrigue within Juan Gabriel Vásquez's fine novel await a reader.
Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez, born 1973
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