Guillermo Cabrera Infante

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Guillermo Cabrera Infante
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Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 – February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín.
A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally "three sad tigers", but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses.
Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Works
3 Further reading
4 References
[edit]Life

Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party.
Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at he University of Havana.
In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956.[1] Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term.
He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolución, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolución; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro.
He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam Gomez, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attaché. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London.
In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations.
It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point.
Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American "Boom" generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label "novel" for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto.
In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos.
He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.
[edit]Works

Así en la paz como en la guerra (1960, "So in peace as in war")
Twentieth Century Job (1963, film reviews)
Vista del amanecer en el trópico (1964, novel, published in English as "A View of Dawn in the Tropics")
Tres Tristes Tigres (1967, novel, published in English as Three Trapped Tigers; the original title refers to a Spanish-language tongue-twister, and literally means "Three Sad Tigers"); portions of this were later republished as Ella cantaba boleros
Exorcismos de esti(l)o (1976, novel, "Exorcisms of style"; estilo means style and estío, summertime)
La Habana para un Infante Difunto (1979, memoir, published in English as Infante's Inferno; the Spanish title is a pun on "Pavane pour une infante defunte", title of a piano piece by Maurice Ravel)
Holy Smoke, 1985 (in English, later translated into Spanish as Puro Humo)
Cine o sardina (1997, "Cinema or sardine")
Vidas para leerlas (1998, essays, "Lives to be read")
Arcadia todas las noches ("Arcadia every night")
Mea Cuba (1991, political essays, the title means "Cuba Pisses" or "Cuba is Pissing" and is a pun on "Mea Culpa")
Infantería (title is a pun on his name and the Spanish for "infantry")
Cabrera Infante also translated James Joyce's Dubliners into Spanish (1972) and wrote screenplays, including Vanishing Point and the adaptation of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.
[edit]Further reading

English
Cabrera Infante's Tres tristes tigres: the trapping effect of the signifier over subject and text / Hartman, Carmen Teresa., 2003
Guillermo Cabrera Infante: assays, essays and other arts / Nelson, Ardis L., 1999
Guillermo Cabrera Infante: two islands, many worlds / Souza, Raymond D., 1996
Guillermo Cabrera Infante and the cinema / Hall, Kenneth E., 1989
Novel lives: the fictional autobiographies of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Mario Vargas Llosa / Feal, Rosemary Geisdorfer., 1986
Cabrera Infante in the Menippean tradition / Nelson, Ardis L., 1983
A critical study of Tres tristes tigres by Guillermo Cabrera Infante / C.A.H.J Scheybeler., 1977
Seven voices; seven Latin American writers talk to Rita Guibert. / Guibert, Rita., 1973
Spanish
Acoso y ocaso de una ciudad : La Habana de Alejo Carpentier y Guillermo Cabrera Infante / Yolanda Izquierdo., 2002
Para leer Vista del amanecer en el trópico de Guillermo Cabrera Infante / Celina Manzoni., 1999
El heraldo de las malas noticias : Guillermo Cabrera Infante : ensayo a dos voces / Jacobo Machover., 1996
Cabrera Infante y otros escritores latinoamericanos / Ignacio Díaz Ruiz., 1992
Guillermo Cabrera Infante : La Habana, el lenguaje y la cinematografía / Ernesto Gil López., 1985
Discontinuidad y ruptura en Guillermo Cabrera Infante / Isabel Alvarez-Borland., 1982
Guillermo Cabrera Infante / Rosa María Pereda., 1979
Guillermo Cabrera Infante y Tres tristes tigres / Reynaldo L Jiménez., 1977
Guillermo Cabrera Infante / Julián Ríos., 1974
La nueva novela hispanoamericana y Tres tristes tigres / José Sánchez-Boudy., 1971
[edit]References

La Ciudad - Fantasma Cabrera Infante by Jacobo Machover

Londres
Abril 29 1984


En La Habana para un Infante Difunto ,
parece haber una especie de " parti-pris "
erotico. La novela esta exiclusivamente
centrada en el erotismo.....

? Por que " parti - pris " ?

No, no . Uno de los mecanismos de la nove-
la , o del libro, es pretender que el na-
rrador tienen una obsesion sexual que pres-
de toda su vida y que no tienen nada que
cinde ver con el sexo. No hay ningun " parti-
pris "de parte mia, todo lo contrario.
Este libro surgio con una muerte.Se murio
Franco entonces ocurrio en Espana lo que
se llamo el " destape " y ese " destape " se
aplicaba por supuesta a la prensa y a las
sorpresa extraordinaria en varios sentidos.
Primero, en Gran Via todos los puestos de
revistas estaban llenos de mujeres desnudas,
o semi -desnudas o parcialmente desnudas.
Todas pretendian en aquella epoca no ser
españolas .
Siempre
se llamaban Inge o Helga o Gerturd, pretendi-
an ser suecas en su mayoria , no se por que,
pero eso ocurria con esas revistas. Entonces,
yo fui un dia a una entrevista que me iban ha-
cer por television y tenia, por necesidad del
hotel que pasar por la Gran Via , aparte de
que a mi me gusta mucho. En verano la Gran Via
estaba llena de gente y de pronto vi venir ha-
cia mi una vision que yo creia solamente priva-
tiva del " swinging" London". porque una mujer,
bastante joven , que traia un perfecto " see
through". La blusa era transparente , tenia las
tetas absolutamente a la vista sino al aire y
nadie miraba . Entonces me di cuenta que ese era
un espectaulo que debia estar ocurriendo durante
todo ese verano, que Franco hacia poco que habia
muerto y que esa era una vision corriente en Ma-
drid. Decidi, muy voluntariamente , muy delibera-
damente que yo iba a escribir un libro sobre la
unica obsesion que yo tengo como autor , sobre La
Habana, pero un libro que contara aventuras sexua-
les en La Habana. Ya no ocurria como con Tres tris-
tes tigres, que no se si tu sab3es que aun la ver-
sion que tu tienen tiene veintidos cortes de censu-
ra. El censor ademas tenia la obsesion de la t----.
Cada vez que aparecia la palabra " teta" , el dejaba
un blanco o la cubria con la palabra " seno" o ligaba
las divesas oraciones de manera que la palabra " teta"
desapareciera. Me propuse hacer un libro donde todas
las tetas fueram posibles. En ese momento , una de las
primeras revistas espanolas de mujeres desnudas, que
se llamaba Flashman, no me preguntes por que , todas
tenian nombres en ingles, me imagino que al contagio
de Playboy, me pidio un cuento. Yo hice ese cuento .
Es el real nucleo alrededor del cual se escribio La
Habana para un Infante difunto . Es ahora el capitulo
que se llama " La plus que lente". A ellos les gusto
tanto ese cuento que decidieron pedirme otro, que se
llamaba " Mi ultimo fracaso". Como te dars cuenta por
" Mi ultimo fracaso" y por " La plus que lente", no
pasaba nada, eroticamente hablando . Todo lo que habia
eran juegos de palabras alrededor de una muchacha. Yo
decidi hacer una memoria, que es en muchas ocasiones una
falsa memoria, que es la memoria de otra gente, de cuentos
que me contaron .Pasaron dos annos. Yo tenia un titulo de
trabajo que en " La confesion de agosto" Ese titulo parti-
paba de cierto homenaje a San Agustin, pero al mismo tiem-
po las confesiones se llamaban asi porque habia empezado a
escribir el libro en agosto. Un buen dia , yo tenia todo el
libro termiando, dos anos mas tarde, y literalmente del cielo
o, si queires, del cielo raso , me bajo un titulo que era La
Habana para un Infante difunto. Dije: " Este es el titulo per-
fecto para ese libro". Reescribi el libro durante un ano de
acuerdo con ese titulo, insistiendo en la presencia de La Habana
en la novela o en el libro, y, al mismo tiempo , partiendo del
principio de que la novela comienza cuando el nino deja de ser
un infante y se convierte en un adolescente. Eso es en realidad
lo que esta en el origen. Esa es la intencion original al escri-
bir La Habana para un Infante difunto. No hay ? como dijistes tu?






Bio.

Jacobo Machover was born in Havana in 1954 but now lives in Paris. He teaches Spanish language, literature and culture at the University of Paris XII. He has been a reviewer for Libération and the Magazine littéraire. A former supporter of the Cuban revolution, he began to pull back from it in the late 70s, as he learned more about daily life for most Cubans and met former political prisoners. Working with both internal dissidents and Cubans in exile, he translated and distributed texts by opponents of the regime. He has published an anthology of short stories, "L’an prochain à la Havane" (Éd. de Paris, 2003), and is the editor of the collective work "La Havane 1952-1971. D’un dictateur l’autre : explosion des sens et morale révolutionnaire" (Autrement 1994).

Bibliography
"La Havane 1952-1961. D'un dictateur l'autre : Explosion des sens & morale révolutionnaire", Editions Autrement, 1994.

L'an prochain à... la Havane", Les Editions de Paris, 2001

"Cuba, totalitarisme tropical", Buchet Chastel, 2004

"La face cachée du Che", Buchet Chastel, 2007

"Cuba, mémoires d'un naufrage", Buchet Chastel, 2009