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 Click for words events Bolivian Codes Edmundo Paz Soldan takes on globalization with his novel "Turing's Delirium"
Five years ago, Edmundo Paz Soldan harbored very little skepticism about
globalization. Indeed, the collapsing of international
markets--especially in the realm of intellectual capital--had worked out
for him. Soldan came to America from Cochamamba in 1988 on a
scholarship, and within five years he had earned a master's degree in
Hispanic literature. Within ten the stocky, bespectacled Bolivian was a
professor at Cornell University, the same Ivy League institution where
Vladimir Nabokov lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
But that's where things began to slow down. Soldan soon found
himself in a similar position as the Russian-born novelist. "People
used to ask me," recalls Soldan, sitting at a Vietnamese restaurant in
Ithaca, "when will I get to read your novels? Are you really a
novelist?" After almost two decades of publishing, none of his fiction
had been translated into English. Privately he made excuses for his life
apart. After all, he was published in Spain by the prestigious Alfaguara
house, and was in constant demand as a columnist and journalist in
Bolivia and Chile. He was a global soul. All he needed was a modem.
Then he went home to Bolivia in May of 2000. "A transnational water
company called Bechtel had bought up the water rights," says Soldan,
wincing. "There were these riots that left ten-to-twelve people dead."
As a result of the chaos, Bechtel was forced from the country--a
victory, some say the first, in the anti-globalization movement, but it
was a mixed victory at that. "Now Cochamamba still struggles with the
water," Soldan says. "The poorest neighborhoods do not have good
water: they have to buy gallons and tanks of water for the day."
At the time, Soldan was working on a short, abstract novel about a
battle between a code-maker and a code-breaker. It was Borgesian,
Nabakovian even. "When I got home, though, it hit me that that's what
I needed," he says, "that setting: globalization, this resistance to
transnational companies." The combination worked, as "Turing's
Delirium" went on to win the Premio Nacional de Novela in Bolivia, and
catapulted him, at last, into an English translation.
"Turing's Delirium" is Soldan's second novel to be
translated--preceded by "The Matter of Desire"--but it has the surest
shot of putting him on the radar of readers who like to travel in the
pages of a book. Set in Rio Fugitivo, the fictional Bolivian town at the
heart of Soldan's previous fictions, the novel imagines that a group of
anti-globalization activists set upon the government and GlobalLux, a
multinational that has taken over the town's power grid. Their weapon:
a computer virus.
The hero of sorts is Miguel Saenz, a cryptanalyst for a government
spy agency called Black Chamber. In the past, Saenz's code-breaking has
led to the death of radicals and saved the country from coup d'états,
earning him the nickname Turing, after the famous code breaker Alan
Turing. Saenz knows this new rash of cyber-crimes presents an
opportunity for him to reclaim his former glory. To prove that computers
have not made him obsolete.
A fan of crosswords, puzzles, and anagrams, Soldan thought he could
simply read his way into Saenz's field, but "in the last couple of
decades cryptanalysis has become like a science--before they used
pencils, now they use software." So he had to stop work on the novel to
read up on the field. In doing so he began to realize the book needed a
wider cast of characters. He already had his villain, Kandinsky, a
hacker with a social conscience, but he added several others: a
journalist, a judge, and a teenager hooked on virtual-reality games.
Technology has always played a large role in Soldan's fiction. A
decade ago, he became involved with the McOndo Literary Movement, named
after the fictional town in which Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels were
set. Comprised of writers from Chile, Argentina, and Peru, the group
rejected magical realism and rural essentialism, in favor of a more
contemporary approach to storytelling. "In the eighties, Latin America
became less rural and more urban," Soldan told the Boston Globe. "Four
of the largest cities in the world--Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Rio de
Janeiro and Buenos Aires--are in Latin America."
Initially, Soldan received heavy criticism for reflecting this shift
in his short stories and novels. "As recent as fifteen years ago there
was very little urban fiction," he says. "The majority of Bolivian
novelists felt this obligation to show the state of Bolivia, rural
Bolivia. When I started publishing in the early eighties I can remember
the critics saying, these are stories but where is Bolivia? Where are
the Mayans?"
Since he lived in the United States, Soldan's critics could claim
he was out of touch. "I got this kind of guilt trip, like I am not a
good Bolivian." So he created his fictional town of Rio Fugitivo. "It
was very liberating," says Soldan. "But I remember a friend of mine
telling me, it's still very close to Cochamamba. He said, 'You need to
have a square with a statue of Bob Dylan.' So in `The Matter of
Desire,' there is a statue of Bob Dylan. Now nobody can say anything
about accuracy."
But the real world has not been left behind entirely--especially in
"Turing's Delirium." GlobaLux bears obvious similarities to Bechtel,
and the characters of the novel whiz about using their Motorola and
Ericsson mobile phones. "All these brand names have lots of
connotations in a country like Bolivia," Soldan says: "It's a very
poor country, but you have these islands of modernity. My friends, they
have satellites, they have iPods, they have Nokias. They are so afraid
of being backwards that they overcompensate."
The characters in this novel are similar. Although they'd be happy
to bring down the state, the characters of "Turing's Delirium" just
as happily enjoy the benefits of globalization--a moral ambivalence
which blunts their criticisms. Welcome to the brave new world of Latin
American politics, says Soldan. "Communism is not an option now. I
think in the seventies you had a lot of people with a Plan B. The young
people I see now they are much more diffuse ideologically. They know why
they don't like the system, but they are very hard-pressed to tell you
what needs to be put in place to fix it."
From Ithaca, Soldan will continue to think about these issues--but
he's not about to put answers in his fiction. "This is a novel about
politics but it's not a political novel," he says. "I think there is
a difference." Living here gives him the luxury of not having to
explain such subtleties every day--for the Bolivia he writes about now
exists as much in his mind as it does on the map.
Also by John Freeman NONFICTION REVIEW
FICTION REVIEW
Fiction Review
FICTION REVIEW
High Infidelity
Fiction Review
Death is Not the Plan
The End of Life
Howling Wolves
FICTION REVIEW
Nonfiction Review
Poetry Review
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