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July 10, 2005
By Susan Swagler
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I have a reluctant fascination with Peru. I don't
necessarily want to go there, but I'm compelled to pay attention.
My curiosity is born of terrible circumstances.
When my husband and I were young reporters at The
Tampa Tribune, a friend and fellow reporter named Todd Smith went
to Peru to research a story on the drug trade. He was killed by
Shining Path terrorists. (We called them guerrillas back then, but
the actions amount to the same thing.) They took him from the airport
in Uchiza moments before he was to board a plane back to Lima. They
left him dead in a playground.
And so today, years and what seems like a lifetime
away from that awful incident, Peru gets my attention.
Most of the stories in Daniel Alarcón's debut
collection, "War by Candlelight" (HarperCollins, $23.95),
are set in Peru.
And while they are fiction, these stories offer me
more of a real understanding of the people and place than I've allowed
these past couple of decades.
But there's another connection here, too this one
decidedly more positive. Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru,
but grew up in Birmingham. He graduated from Indian Springs School
in 1995 and is quickly becoming a writer to watch. His work has
been published in The New Yorker and Harper's. He is a former Fulbright
Scholar to Peru and the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award for
2004.
As a child, Alarcón lived here and spent summers
in Lima. The differences between these two cultures and these two
cities are huge. Alarcón embraced these differences, grew
up with them and, I suspect, grew with them. And now he offers them
to us with his words.
The stories are told with unflinching honesty in the
face of extraordinary and everyday cruelty; they are very different,
but they all center on conflict.
The title story, "War by Candlelight" is
the most personal in the collection. It was inspired by Alarcón's
uncle, a political radical who disappeared in 1989.
"The Visitor" is about a father and his
children, the sad, lone survivors of a devastating mudslide.
In "Absence," an artist in New York for
a showing of his work contemplates leaving his country on a 30-day
tourist visa and never going back. "Leaving is no problem.
It's exciting actually; in fact, it's drug. It's the staying gone
that will kill you. This is the handed-down wisdom of the immigrant."
"A Science for Being Alone" explores the
helplessness and hopelessness a man feels when his girlfriend decides
to move with their daughter to the United States.
"City of Clowns," featured in the 2003 debut
fiction issue of "The New Yorker," is the story of a troubled
newspaper reporter who trades his pen for a clown suit and the anonymity
it offers.
I asked Alarcón which he liked best. A little
reluctant to choose, he said, "I'm fond of all of them for
different reasons. I like 'A Strong Dead Man' because I wrote it
in one sitting. I like 'War by Candlelight' because it's a story
very close to my family. I like 'A Science for Being Alone' because
it's the most romantic. If I had to choose, I guess I would say
the last one. I wrote it after a brief trip to Lima in January of
2003. I just love the spectacle of the streets."
Alarcón says he is currently finishing a novel called "Lost
City Radio."
"I hope to be finished by the end of the year,"
he told me. When he does finish, we should pay attention.
Susan Swagler's book column appears Sundays
in The Birmingham News.
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