wonderful people

EPA
Carlos Fuentes
— Barbara Hoffman

“Don’t be a writer — you’ll die of hunger,” his father told him. “Go to law school!” And Carlos Fuentes did, only to tell his father, after graduating, “Daddy, I’m going back to writing.”

Needless to say, Fuentes — who spent his grade-school years in Washington, DC, the son of a Mexican diplomat — hasn’t starved. A former diplomat himself, he’s written three dozen novels that have been translated into multiple languages; his 1985 “The Old Gringo” was turned into a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda (“wonderful people,” Fuentes says).

He’ll read from his new book, “Destiny and Desire,” which he calls “a kind of Cain and Abel tale,” at the 92nd Street Y tomorrow at 8 p.m. Here’s what’s in his library.


Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes

It’s the great Spanish novel — the birth of the novel itself. Cervantes brings all the genres: mock epic, pastoral, picaresque, novel within a novel — and sets forth a fabulous mystery: Who wrote this novel [within the novel]? Was it found in a trash box somewhere? I think the best translation is the most recent, by Edith Grossman. It really gives you Cervantes as a modern writer, without incurring any falsehoods.

Lost Illusions
by Honore de Balzac

This is a typical Balzac novel, about a provincial man who comes to Paris, enters journalism and is defeated by the Parisians — he doesn’t understand them. He heads home and on the road meets someone who teaches him how to be successful. Back in Paris, he applies those lessons and succeeds. Balzac was very preoccupied with the bourgeoisie.

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

It’s a novel about growing up: A very ambitious young man, Pip, falls in love with someone over his station, who lives with the horrifying Miss Havisham and her crumbling wedding cake . . . It’s a whole world in which the heroes are secondary and the villains — Miss Havisham and the uncouth, horrible convict who is Pip’s protector — are the real spice.

Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner

The most radical modern novelist is Faulkner. He does something extraordinary — gives you a novel that’s narrated and told in parts, with no linear sequence. Faulkner forces you, the reader, to become part of the creative process. I learned so much from him! This tale could have been “Gone With the Wind,” but it isn’t.