Augusto Monterroso (1921-2003)
THE DINOSAUR
"When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."
The
above short story might qualify as the shortest short story on record.
Appropriately, perhaps, the author, Augusto Monterroso, was the shortest
member of the Latin American boom generation, which included Julio
Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, and Carlos
Fuentes. "Without standing on tiptoe, I easily measure five feet, three
inches. I have been little since I was young... I realized at the age of
fifteen that I was growing into a very short man." Augusto also alludes
to one poetry contest where, on the contest's application, poets were
required to indicate their height in inches!
Augusto Monterroso with 6'4" Julio Cortázar
I urge you to read The Gold Seekers,
a delightful memoir/literary odyssey where Augusto tells us about his
developing awareness of becoming a writer while growing up in Honduras
and Guatemala. There's also an incisive introductory essay complements
of Enrique Vila-Matas. A special call-out to Jessica Sequeira for
translating into clear, accessible English and Sublunary Editions for publishing this short work (114 pages) that can be read in a day.
What
is the nature of the "gold" Monterroso's gold seekers seek? The actual
metal? The golden word that will serve as a writer's literary lightning?
The golden age of Latin American literature? Or, maybe, it alludes to
what Jessica Sequeira outlines in her Translator's Note:
"Monterroso's
elusive gold seems to have to do with this: the richness of being able
to represent and crate experience as an actor does. The "actual" origins
of the writer, his family roots in Central America, give way to a
theory about life as a matter of both "timing and chance" (which one
cannot control) and of the arrangement of those moments (which, to some
extent, one can). Scene cuts of the theater director: choices of when to
arrive at or leave a stage. A place. A situation. A literary passage."
Here are a pair of Gold Seeker quotes that I found especially moving:
An
exposure to inspiring music and reading great books at home with his
family prompts Augusto to write, “All this inculcated within us the very
firm sentiment and conviction that poverty, illness, failure, even
death itself could be bearable, and beautiful, if one remained faithful
to love, to friendship, and naturally, above all, to art.”
Augusto
on imagination versus our hard knocks day-to-day reality: “My world of
childish fantasies was resolved not by the path of reality, but by other
fantasies, as these were resolved in turn by others, in a succession
that didn't ever end and still has not ended.”
Allow me to end on
a personal note. I discovered Augusto Monterroso years ago while
reading an anthology of contemporary literature from Central American.
The author's Mister Taylor was included, a short story where an
American anthropologist travels to Central American and lives with a
forest tribe. He sends the tribe's shrunken heads back to the US and
makes a fortune. The demand for shrunken heads skyrockets but the tribe
runs out. Well, when the government realizes a huge fortune can be made
via exported shrunken heads, a strategy is developed in combination with
the anthropologist’s field work to maximally cash in on shrunken heads.
How? Let’s just say that if you are poor and living in that country,
you had better watch out!
I found this to be one of the most
memorable short stories I've ever read. I subsequently hunted down more
Augusto Monterroso. I'm glad I did. I've enjoyed tremendously the
author's short fiction. And I certainly took delight in The Gold Seekers.
Go for it. Dig up gold. Read this book. 
I can't look at a map of Central America nowadays without thinking of Augusto Monterroso
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