By 2004, Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon had published three books: one about the life and death of Guatemalan painter Carlos Valenti; one about Miguel de Cervantes; one about how writers become writers. Four years later, he released a book of short stories called El boxeador polaco (The Polish Boxer, Editorial Pre-Textos), which inaugurated a new era for him as a writer. The book became an earthquake, and its ripples can still be felt today—nearly ten books later. Its stories went on to expand into novels, their themes and ideas forming a continual thread through the author’s prolific oeuvre, acknowledging the truth that stories, just like life, must be built on what came before. Canción, his latest book to be translated into English (Bellevue Press), borrows characters, plot lines, and entire sections from Signor Hoffman and Mañana nunca lo hablamos, books he published seven and eleven years ago respectively.
Because of this continuity and rehashing of stories, Eduardo’s body of work has often been referred to as a novela en marcha—an ongoing novel. It’s important to note that all of these stories share the same narrator: a Guatemalan author, former engineer, and chain-smoker named Eduardo Halfon, who shares many of the same experiences of real-life Eduardo. It seems all part of an intricate plan—though it’s everything but. Doubt, silence, contradiction, el no sé—not knowing— improvisation, and uncertainty: those are the many hands that pile one on top of another “to dominate” Eduardo’s writing.
In Canción, out last month and masterfully translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn, Eduardo tells the story of his Lebanese grandfather, also named Eduardo Halfon, and the time the Guatemalan guerrillas kidnapped him in 1967. In this impactful and luminous novel, we read about the Guatemalan Civil War—its violence, fear, and, again, the uncertainty. We get glimpses, and nothing else, of the actual kidnapping. We get glimpses, and nothing else, of the time Eduardo’s grandfather was in captivity. Because that’s also part of Halfon’s remarkable style: silence, mystery, darkness.
Recently I spoke with Eduardo about all of that. About Canción, about his novela en marcha, about some of his most memorable characters. We talked about writing in the dark. About the engineering behind a story. We talked about what’s real and the truth. About memory, childhood, silences, and, again—and as always—about not knowing and how important it’s for him to blur the lines between himself and his narrator. We talked, we exchanged emails, voice notes, and messages, and he replied from Guatemala City, Mexico City, Spain, and Germany. As anticipated, after reading Canción and yet again talking to Eduardo about his book, I have more questions than answers.
José García Escobar (JGE): With Canción, it’s the first time I’ve seen you address Guatemalan history so thoroughly in a book. Naturally, you had to mention some events and people because they were relevant to your grandfather’s kidnapping; others, however, seem to be part of the story’s background (Jacobo Árbenz, the 1954 CIA-backed coup, the rise of the guerrilla movement in the 1960s, Julio Ramírez Arteaga). How did that weaving come to be—between foregrounding or backgrounding history?
Eduardo Halfon (EH): When you’re writing a story that’s part of a historical account, that history has to be believable. In the case of Canción, that means its historical background, the Guatemalan Civil War, and the country’s recent history. I needed to investigate all of that, and I felt like I had to include it more for the feeling than for the facts. Some details are in the background—they’re props, so to speak—and some details are part of the story. That weaving is very organic, though. There’s no premeditation. It’s just a feeling of what should be where on the stage. What should be in the foreground. What should be in the background. It’s a very natural process of selection and placing.
JGE: In Canción, we see your narrator reading old newspapers, medical records, logbooks, and going to the library. Can you elaborate on your research process?
EF: Yes, the research in books like Canción has to be very methodical because I am trying to recreate a specific moment in time. So, newspapers, records, log books, accounts, the CIA file on my grandfather’s kidnapping—these were all available to me. Sometimes I need little details, but mostly I just need the prop of facts for the theater as a whole to be believable. That is, for the atmosphere to be believable. I’m not interested in the facts, but in the smell and taste that the facts leave behind.
JGE: I read in an interview that you were reticent to write about Guatemala and Guatemalan history and the Guatemalan Civil War. Did this book and your grandfather’s story push you to finally write about Guatemala?
EF: Yes, I was very reticent. I didn’t consider it my war. I didn’t live through it like most people in Guatemala. I was a kid in the 1970s, and very isolated from what was going on in the country—overprotected, too. When the war finally entered the capital, in the late 70s, we fled the country. So, while I was in Guatemala, I barely noticed it, and when I finally did, I was physically removed. I never considered it my war. But my Lebanese grandfather’s story pushed me to finally write about it. It was very unexpected, and I found my way in quite by accident.
In 2015, I was invited to Japan to take part in a writer’s conference for Lebanese authors. At first, I thought it was a mistake or a joke, but they were serious. I am the grandson of a Lebanese man, and therefore that made me, in a way, a Lebanese writer, so I went to Japan. I wrote a short fictionalized piece about the experience, but that trip, in hindsight, ultimately changed my perspective. It brought me closer to my Lebanese grandfather and his story, while before that trip, I was primarily concerned with my Polish grandfather’s story. A few years later, I stumbled upon an account of one of my grandfather’s kidnappers, which interested me, and he became an entryway into Guatemala’s recent past. Then, I could finally write not only about him and his experience, but about that part of Guatemala’s history that I had been so reluctant to work with.
JGE: This is also the first time you revisited Mañana nunca lo hablamos since it came out in 2011. I always felt like that book was not part of the novela en marcha—the ongoing novel. Did you feel the same way about it before writing Canción?
EH: I feel that all of my books are part of that novela en marcha; they’re all interconnected, all related—some perhaps more intimately than others. In Mañana nunca lo hablamos, we see Eduardo as a little boy growing up the Guatemala of the 70s, so it is part of the same narrative project. Recently I’ve taken bits and pieces of that book and expanded on them, as is the case with Canción. The restaurant scene, for example, was initially in that book as a story called La señora del gabán rojo.
That lady, over there, the one in the red coat, whispered my father, but I didn’t know if this was directed at me or at my mother or at the whole table. And then, gesturing toward the front door with his chin, he whispered again: She was one of the guerrillas who kidnapped my father.
The scene in my grandfather’s house also originated in that earlier work.
My grandparents lived in a palace. To me, at least, it was a palace. They used to say that my Lebanese grandfather, on a long trip through Mexico in the mid-forties, had fallen in love with a house and then had its same Mexican architect come to Guatemala, with the same rolled-up blueprints under his arm, to build him the same house on some land he’d recently purchased on Avenida Reforma. I don’t know if the story is true. Probably not, or not so much. Doesn’t really matter. Every house has its story, and every house, to someone, is a palace.
So that book has been spawning scenes in the future, and it will probably continue to do so. Childhood is very important to me as a writer. I keep going back there. I keep going back to my formative years in Guatemala and the relationships that I had there with my brother, with my parents, with my grandparents, with the country itself, with my schoolmates. It’s all there, and Mañana nunca lo hablamos is just another treasure chest to dig in and look for diamonds.
JGE: Can we talk about the use of silence in your books? The preamble seems to be more important to you than the action itself. In Canción, for example, we only get a glimpse of the time your grandfather was in captivity. It’s almost like we’re peeking between the safe house’s boards. One could use fiction to, say, speculate—but you prefer silence.
EH: I’ve always felt that in stories, what’s not said is louder. Or becomes louder. The trick is knowing what not to say, then being able to honor the decision to leave it unsaid. What you want is to generate an emotional response, and silences, the right silences, are far stronger generators than screams. In Canción, you only get a glimpse of the kidnapping; you get a sense of what my grandfather went through and how he felt. I didn’t need to describe it. Perhaps if I had described it and written it out, the book would’ve lost some of its impact and emotional charge. But, as with certain characters in my previous works, I strongly feel that Canción works so well because I don’t let you see my grandfather in captivity, instead allowing you to imagine it.
My grandfather used to say that, in the first days of the kidnapping, he had his bankbook in his trouser pocket, and he sensed that he ought to get rid of it as soon as possible, so as not to give the kidnappers any financial information. He said he’d thought about waiting until they took him to the bathroom and throwing it into the toilet, but that he was worried he’d clog up the plumbing. He said that he then thought of tearing it into pieces and throwing it in the trash—or out the window, he sometimes said—but he was afraid the kidnappers would find it and put it back together. He had no other option, said my grandfather, but to eat it.
JGE: The last time we spoke, you argued that all your writing is based on “not knowing,” but more and more I see you talking about the “ongoing novel” project. Are these two opposing or complementary ideas?
EH: These are absolutely complementary ideas. I do not know what is happening in two regards. As I write a story, I’m in the dark. I don’t know where it’s headed. I don’t know what it’s about, really. I just know I have to write it and let the story tell me where it wants to go, what it wants to say. It’s like writing inside a dark room. I also have this same feeling with the larger project, where and how all the individual stories fit together. I don’t know where this project is going. It’s never been planned. It’s been growing in front of me. One book leads to the next. One story leads to the next. I then have to assemble the stories in a certain way so that they read well together, but that’s after the fact. That’s after writing them. That is the engineer in me who needs to put things in their proper place.
JGE: How important is it for you to be self-referential in your books? For example, in Canción I found references to stories included in other books—what’s the importance of building those bridges?
EH: I enjoy placing those references in, and I think readers enjoy it as well. They’re references that some will understand and some will not, and that’s fine, but I think those bridges enrich the reading experience and are evidence of that ongoing novel.
JGE: Conversely, how important is it for you to, possibly, build bridges into the future? For example, one of Canción’s most notable characters is Aiko, whom we first saw in 2015’s Signor Hoffman.
EH: Yes, this is very important for me as a writer: to sow seeds.
When Aiko first appeared, she was a one-page character in Signor Hoffman, and I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know she would appear later. I didn’t know her story. I didn’t know her grandfather’s story—which now, years later, I finally tell in Canción. Back then I just knew I had to place her in there, perhaps with the hope of seeing her later. I don’t know.
The same happened with Tamara, who first appeared briefly in The Polish Boxer, and then came back more completely in Monastery. This happens from time to time. I leave little things behind. I sow seeds that can later grow, or not grow. Some are still there. They might show up at some point. They might not. Again, uncertainty seems to dominate my writing. But I do leave seeds behind with the hope of something growing later on.
JGE: It seems that confusion is an important part of your books; you write different theories about why your grandfather was kidnapped, but we never learn the real reason or if there were, in fact, many reasons. Also, we never know why Canción, one of your grandfather’s kidnappers, was killed. And at one point in the book, Eduardo’s father says, literally, “That’s not how it happened.”
EH: Well, perhaps it’s because that’s how memory works. I might remember an event one way, and my father might remember it quite differently or not remember it at all. There is no one correct answer. It’s not an exam. Life is not a math equation. There isn’t just one answer to anything. There are a series of possible answers. Or a series of approaches to an answer. Literature has no answers. Literature is not about answers. But questions.
JGE: You don’t smoke, but Eduardo (the character) does. I read in another interview that you sometimes let people take pictures of you holding a cigarette, that you like blurring the lines between author and character.
EH: I’ll play the part of my narrator in events and interviews. Although I don’t smoke, I will specifically send a photo of me smoking because my narrator does, and it’s all part of getting the readers to believe that his stories are real. They are not. They are stories. They are fiction. All of them. But they are true. Something real is not the same thing as something true. Literature seeks truth, emotional truth, and I will use all the tricks at my disposal to achieve that truth, to feel it together with my readers. So, if I have to send a photo of me pretending to smoke, so be it.
Blurring the lines between writer and character is important to me, but it’s not part of the ongoing novel. It’s just part of the truth I’m after, which is, I insist, not a rational truth, but an emotional truth. An ecstatic truth, quoting Werner Herzog.
JGE: Similarly, I have been to a couple of your presentations, and people always ask you about things in your books as if they happened to you in real life. What do you do when this happens?
EH: I want to contradict myself; I think contradictions are necessary. I want readers to ask me these questions, to think that everything they’ve read happened to me and that these stories are real, and I repeat: they’re not, they’re fiction. Readers know they’re fiction. The books are sold as fiction. We sign a contract, the reader and I. I hereby promise to write fiction, and the reader hereby promises to read it as fiction. But the reader quickly forgets the contract we’ve signed and proceeds to read my work as something real—which is, of course, exactly what I want.
Eduardo Halfon is the author of The Polish Boxer, Monastery, Mourning, and Canción. He is the recipient of the Guatemalan National Prize in Literature, the Roger Caillois Prize, the José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel, the International Latino Book Award, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, among other honors. A citizen of Guatemala and Spain, Halfon was born in Guatemala City, attended school in Florida and North Carolina, and has lived in Nebraska, Spain, Paris, and Berlin.
José García Escobar is a journalist, fiction writer, translator, and former Fulbright scholar from Guatemala. He got his MFA in creative writing from The New School. His writing has appeared in The Evergreen Review, Guernica, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He’s a two-time Dart Center fellow. He writes in English and Spanish. He is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for the Central American region.
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