Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
The recent edition of Julio Cortázar Ibero-American Short Story Prize brought the good news: The Man Who Came to Read by Emerio Medina (Mayarí, 1966) won the coveted and valuable award -for the second time: the first one in 2009 with The Days of the Game-, annually organized by the Cuban Book Institute, Casa de las Americas and the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. The verdict leaves no doubts: “A very well plotted story about literary creation, reading and the blurred borders of the fictional narrative text”.
The occasion brings back one of the most renowned Cuban authors when it comes to such a legendary literary genre, with a work in progression. A glance at books he has accumulated in this regard is explicit: Rendez-vous nocturno para espacios abiertos (City of Holguin Award 2006), Las formas de la sangre (Regino Boti Award 2006), Café bajo sombrillas junto al Sena (Luis Felipe Rodriguez Award 2009), La bota sobre el toro muerto (Casa de las Americas Award 2011), La línea en la mitad del vaso (Alejo Carpentier Award 2016)…
In 2017, I was in charge of editing an anthology with twenty of his narrative pieces for the Holguin Editions label: Una cita en Estambul (An Appointment in Istanbul). About it and for her words on the back cover, the eminent critic and essayist Graziella Pogolotti wrote: “As parables, Emerio Medina’s stories rethink the questions that, since ancient times, contributed to weave the links between culture and values based on a reflection about the human condition”.
Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
A true Creole gentleman in the old style of courtesy and gentleness, affable and prudent and, moreover, a good friend to spend hours of conversation between the human and the divine, his life is the subject of a captivating memoir: Graduated as a mechanical engineer many moons ago – as the Celtic bards would say – in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, traveler through various geographies, Emerio, as a reader, indulges in reading in his original language great masters such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov… Here is the writer who came to win:
How important is the short story for you when it comes to literature?
“The short story, because of its brevity, is the narrative genre that is best suited to explore and expose an idea. Telling the story in a few pages involves a process of synthesis, of arguments and ideas. This process leads the short story writer to discard the superfluous and concentrate on the essential. The result is that short, fast-reading piece, which unfolds before the reader’s eyes a compact package of information, and works like a blow to the head.
Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
Do you consider the short story as a prelude to the novel or not necessarily as a path to the novel?
“The short story is not a prelude to the novel. The path of the short story leads to the short story. The novel has its own birth and evolution. In fact, the novel is an earlier genre. I would say that the novel gave birth to the short story, but, like all good children, the short story very quickly found its own channels and took a different path. Let’s thank Poe, that founding father of so many things.
Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
“Of course, since they are short narrative pieces, short stories serve to train the hand and gain discipline. That’s why many short story writers go on to write novels, and I include myself among them. Although in my case it was the other way around: I started out writing novels. My first literary project was a novel, and I have written novels and short stories without any major difficulties. On the contrary, the fact of alternating one and the other helps me to refresh and find new approaches.
How did you start writing short stories?
“My first story was La propuesta (The Proposal). I wrote it at the end of 2004. It was a hard, existential, very realistic story, and I had other concerns: I wanted to write fantasy and absurdity. Maybe that’s why I abandoned the line of La propuesta and opened the way to Era diciembre (It was December), Plano secundario (Secondary Plane), Verde y azul (Green and Blue), Los culpables (The Guilty Ones), Usted recuerda ese olor (You Remember That Smell), and other fantastic texts. From then on I debated between those two worlds with the same expenditure of strength, but I still bet on fantasy and absurdity. Even in my novels the absurd predominates. It seems to me -and I have said it many times- that it is easier for me to make something improbable credible than any real fact. Although, of course, I still write the occasional realistic text.
“I can’t get rid of those initial stories. They were a sort of answer to personal questions, and today I have those same questions, perhaps to a greater or lesser degree, and those stories still help me.
Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
Which authors would you quote at the time of your formation in the genre?
“Cortázar and Rulfo are fundamental in my formation as a storyteller. I think I read them carefully at the right time, not before or after. I was already old and I knew what I was looking for. And what I was looking for I found in these two authors. Well, not only in these two. At the time I fed from Carpentier, Onetti, Ribeyro and Rubem Fonseca. I don’t think I would have made much progress in the short story if I hadn’t read Los advertidos, Un sueño realizado, Los gallinazos sin plumas, Casa tomada, all the stories of El llano en llamas and many others by Hemingway, O’Henry, Maupassant, Salinger, etc.
“As you can see, there is a whole mosaic of ways of doing in that list. But the most important things came to me from Cortázar and Rulfo, and they are two aspects that complement each other. While from the Argentinean I learned to sow hints, reticence and areas of doubt in the text, the great Mexican taught me what I perhaps consider my best tool as a storyteller: the handling of language. If Cortázar is the genius of the structure of the contemporary short story in Spanish, Juan Rulfo is the God of words. From teachers like those you learn by obligation: either you learn, or your brains will burst”.
Emerio Medina, the writer who came to win
When it comes to writing, do you prefer short stories to novels, or do you write them simultaneously?
“Neither short story nor novel. I consider myself, above all, an author of literature for adolescents. It’s the genre where I really feel comfortable. But writing for that audience is incredibly painful. It’s like leaving your skin on the stone walls of the fortress of Cadiz. That’s why I’m writing less, for the moment. I dedicate more time to writing novels and short stories for adults. I do it simultaneously. Of course, the pressures of daily life take their toll on me… By the way, daily pressures are the subject of El hombre que vino a leer, the story that won the Cortázar Prize”.
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