Of Gringos and Goddesses

Mix together Joan of Arc, Billie Holliday, and the goddess Artemis, swirl in a healthy heaping of the-girl-next-door, maybe throw in a dash of a female version of Malcolm X for extra kick and shake thoroughly. The result will be the American movie actress Diana Soren, as portrayed in Carlos Fuentes' latest novel.

The story begins New Years' Eve, 1970, when Fuentes, an acclaimed Mexican novelist, meets Diana Soren. From there, the reader is carried through FBI intrigue, encounters with the Black Panthers, sexual jealousy with Mexican revolutionaries. This novel leaves no stone untouched. It is an extraordinary chronicle of a history intertwined with art, and forever surrounded by love, lust, and humiliation.

At the center of all this mayhem is Diana. With her moody personality and mysterious connections, she undermines Fuentes' confidence in the only two things he ever found salvation in: his ability to write and to love. However, her inward vulnerability, romanticism, and rebellious nature eventually catch up to her; she becomes one of J. Edgar Hoover's "reliable enemies". The goddess is crushed by the onslaught of the FBI and the American media and Fuentes is left to reconstruct the ideals of his literary career and his perceptions of love.

However, it is apparent that he is eventually able to do this; although more than 20 years have passed since the events it describes took place, Fuentes has outdone himself with this imaginative book. In describing his passionate infatuation with this enigmatic blond beauty, Fuentes has opened a great source of literary imagination and innovation. This novel, a somewhat shady mix between autobiographical narrative and fiction, abounds with passages rich in satirical portrayals and thought-provoking philosophies. The language in Fuentes' novel is something to be savored--whether he is discussing society, politics, or Diana herself, he leaves the reader enchanted by his supreme ability to convey his ideas with humor, grace and emotion. It is the little details that add so much flavor: "She laughed so hard she almost left me looking like Van Gogh."

In addition, Fuentes is able to manipulate his novel so as to also touch upon a much larger issue than love and betrayal. Although the book is ostensibly about the relationship of the author and Diana, the political and social issues of the world are brought together in a series of short glimpses of various side-characters. These vary from internationally prominent figures such as Luis Bunuel, to little-known people such as Diana's personal make-up artist. Each character presents a different outlook, but all reveal a time of much trouble and dishonesty.

These side-commentaries convey Fuentes' frustration with the situation around him as well as if he had been writing directly about them. His disgust for the Hollywood society is apparent, as is his confusion over why Diana submits to this artificial universe: "It all reminded me of... the gringo cocktail party, where no one deigns to concede more than two or three minutes to anyone, not the most fascinating stranger, not even one's oldest and dearest friend. Yes you're made of glass, they look right through you... All of this while balancing a drink in one hand and in the other a Vienna sausage wrapped in greasy bacon, which means one shakes hands with only two fingers and with one's mouth more puffed out than the cheeks of Dizzy Gillespie playing his trumpet..."

However, Fuentes' distate for Hollywood is a pretext for a larger commentary on the destructive devices of the United States as a whole. Fuentes always makes the distinction between the world of the "gringos" and his own, that of Mexico: "I looked at the sleeping Diana. She lived in the world of instantaneous gratification... A Mexican, no matter how much he travels the world, is anchored in a society of need." Fueled by a life of gratification, North Americans have an irrational but insatiable desire for upward mobility. According to Fuentes, they never experienced an equivalent of the Middle Ages, when permanence of station was the only expectation. Thus, American ambition for power leads to nothing but jealous destruction of any and all who are in high positions. It is hard to criticize Fuentes for his unkind look at the United States during the early 1970s; the McCarthy era is not a period of which we can be particularly proud.

With this novel, Fuentes demonstrates his well-earned reputation as a great writer and social commentator. More than political affiliation prompted Subcommandante Marcos, the leader of the 1994 Chiapas revolt, to proclaim Fuentes his favorite author. Fuentes' writing captivates and consumes his readers in the destructive societies and the whirlwind of affairs which makes Diana compelling.