Richard Serra - Literal

The Excessive Imagination
n Socorro Venegas / Interview with Francisco Hinojosa
Translated to English by Debra D. Andrist
Mexican writer Francisco Hinojosa can presume to
have impacted thousands of readers who have read
his work since they were young children. And to have
impacted them, now grown, to the point where they
buy his books again on the pretext of reading them to
some niece or nephew or younger sibling this time.
Another facet of Francisco Hinojosa, neither less
original nor entertaining, is his excellent adult literature.
In the terrain of children’s fi ction, Juan Villoro
has baptized Hinojosa “the Brother Grimm;” in his
story production for adults, the Mexican literary critic,
Christopher Dominguez Michael, has christened him
the most original of the Mexican storytellers and one
of the “most delightfully-biting wits” of contemporary
literature in the Spanish language.
This interview took place in Cuernavaca, only an
hour from Mexico City, a place where he has lived for
some years and where he shares life and literature with
his wife, the talented and renowned poet, María Baranda,
and with a growing community of artists and
writers who seem to found something of the same
fervent creative atmosphere in this city that inspired
Malcolm Lowry to write his novel, Below the Volcano.
***
Socorro Venegas: What motives are there, what
changes the creative process, when you write for a
child and when you do it for an adult?
Francisco Hinojosa: There’s a sense of enthusiasm.
I believe that when I write for children, I truly am a
child, I put myself in the role of reader and that’s what
makes the difference. And, I laugh distinctly differently
in the case of writing for children rather than how I
laugh when I write stories for adults.
SV: One time you said, “After so many years, I’ve
got it straight that if I write a story for children and
they don’t like it, or it doesn’t interest them, it’s my
fault. Conversely, if I do something for adults, and they
don’t like it, it’s the reader’s fault. Can you expand on
this idea?
FH: I believe that when a child reads a story that
doesn’t interest him, that has a bad beginning, that
doesn’t correspond to his sphere of interest, that he
doesn’t like, that doesn’t make him laugh, the one who
is failing is the author who didn’t fi nd out how to en-
38 4 L ITERAL. LATIN AMERICAN VOICES • FALL, 2007
gage that child reader until he’s well into the story. This
is why I say that, when a child reader isn’t interested in
the story and tosses it away, the author has died.
There is a much higher level of necessary reader engagement
in the story than in the novel. A reader can
easily leave off reading due to this. That’s why I think
that, when a reader abandons the reading, it’s because
he didn’t fi nd out how to maintain this engagement. In
that case, the author hasn’t necessarily failed.
SV: The readers of your children’s stories have consolidated
your status as one of the most read authors.
How have you done with the readers of your stories
for adults?
FH: Response is very meager. I believe that, in the
case of children, I am an author who gets printed a lot,
who gets read a lot, that’s unquestioned, the numbers
support it. But the numbers also say something else
when they refer to the books that I have published for
adults. It’s an absolute fact that the three books of my
books published by Tusquets have sold around 15 copies
in the past year. That says something about the
story, that in general, as a genre, it doesn’t get read
much. I believe that I am an author, in the case of literature
for adults, much more for a specifi c audience, for
a particular kind of reader, and almost always, as I have
told those few readers among adolescents, that this
is something that pleases me a lot. And, I don’t care
about being much more widely read.
SV: Returning to children’s literature, at some
conferences, you have referred to the experience that
North American editors of children’s literature have a
list of prohibited topics.
FH: Yes, there is a kind of requirement that the authors
of books for children must be politically correct.
The academically-oriented system doesn’t accept certain
books that contain topics not considered appropriate
for children, like war, violence, drugs, but also
among those prohibited topics are rock music, candies,
dinosaurs, excessive fantasy, and one that surprised me
a lot, in one publishing proposal made to me by some
editors, houses with swimming pools. The idea is that
a fi cticious house with a pool in a story may make
some child reader who doesn’t live in a house with a
pool feel bad. I believe that, if this concept were true,
practically all classic literature would be banned.