Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part VII)

Reeling in pain from the thought that five years of arduous work and total dedication to learning everything I could about Spanish-language literature had been for nothing, I sought refuge in English.

Now free for the first time in ages to read books of my choosing, I started to devour the works of American and British novelists to catch up on the English-language masterpieces I felt I had been missing.

But, more significantly, I found immense solace in writing: my first novel, in English. The idea for the story had come to me a couple of months before the mishap, in what felt like a blinding flash, while I was showering. It was a clear vision, playing in my head like the clearest of films, of a young Nicaraguan who, from the pitcher’s mound, threw a blistering fastball to an American batter. The setting was Nicaragua, 1933, during the final months of the three-decade old U.S. Marine occupation.

I knew the story ended with that pitch, and I became ardently devoted to uncovering everything that preceded the vision. What particularly excited me about writing this novel was the possibility of painting on a canvas so panoramic that I would be able to incorporate a good portion of the history of Nicaragua during the 20th century. (This is something that, I believe, I accomplished years later in Bernardo and the Virgin.)

Writing this book greatly eased the bitter disappointment of having failed my doctoral exams. I found fiction an addicting elixir, capable of lifting the drab clouds of reality that surround our daily lives. What’s more, the magic of creation was taking place in English, and this vastly increased my interest in, as well as my love for, the language.

I completed the novel, polished it as best as I could, and sent the manuscript to a few publishers, absolutely sure that they would jump for joy over having discovered this new and vastly talented writer who was in command of the English language yet wrote from a Latino perspective.

Quite the opposite happened.

I received a series of impersonal form-letters; but among them was one that helped me understand that I still needed to learn a lot about the craft. Structure, characterization, point of view, pacing, and purposeful revision meant little to me. Realizing this, I abandoned hope of publishing this book and set forth on a new venture: a novel, detailing the entire life, from infancy to old age, of the legendary Zorro. (I wrote this fifteen years before Isabel Allende published her Zorro.)

In writing this novel, I was able to conduct considerably more research than with the first one. (In fact, a large part of the problem with my first effort was that I was writing about Nicaragua after having been away for more than ten years, and I’ve since learned that to bring a setting to life the details of the place must be fresh in a writer’s mind.) Over the course of my investigations I became quite an expert in the Spanish colonization of California and the years of Mexican rule.

But as I wrote the rough draft, the subject somehow shifted. Now the story, in addition to being about Zorro, became about the rise and fall of the Californios, and to reflect the importance of the dual protagonists would require a major overhaul of the manuscript, something I felt incapable of performing. Because of this, I shelved the rough draft—never to touch it again—but, still madly in love with writing in English, I immediately embarked on a third novel.

This new effort was influenced by the large amount of children’s literature I was reading at the time. The work was a cross between a fairy tale and a fantasy, but I didn’t ever discover the story and when I was about a hundred pages into the manuscript, the characters held a meeting in my head and told me, in no uncertain terms, that although they were most interesting, I had them performing absolutely boring tasks; and since they were right, I abandoned the work.

Throughout this time I continued working in education, at the University of Arizona, in a non-teaching position. Through my job I was able to keep abreast of developments in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Since I had left, three years earlier, a new chairperson, Dr. Charles (“Chuck”) Tatum—one of the most remarkable persons I’ve ever met—had managed the miracle, and in an amazingly short period of time, of bringing stability to the department. He was well acquainted with my case and one day he contacted me, saying, “Are you ready to return to finish your doctorate? We need to right the wrong that was done to you.”

Knowing that Chuck was a person who could be completely trusted, I accepted, excited about the idea of finishing what I had come to believe was impossible; and almost at the snap of my fingers I once again found myself immersed in Spanish.