PAZ SOLDáN, (José) Edmundo 1967–

PERSONAL: Born 1967, in Cochabamba, Bolivia; married, 1998; children: one son. Education: University of Alabama, Huntsville, B.A., 1991; University of California Berkeley, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1997.

ADDRESSES: Home—103 2nd St., Ithaca, NY 14850. Office—312 Morrill Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and educator. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, visiting assistant professor, 1997–2004, associate professor, 2004–.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association, Latin-American Studies Association, Latin-American Studies Program.

AWARDS, HONORS: Erich Guttentag prize, 1992, for Días del papel; Juan Rulfo Short-Story Award, 1997, for "Dochera"; Premio Nacional de Literatura (Bolivia), 2003, for El delirio de Turing; Romulo Gállegos award finalist.

WRITINGS:

Las máscaras de la nada (title means "Masks of Nothingness"), Editorial Los Amigos de Libro (La Paz, Bolivia), 1990.

Días de papel (title means "Days of Paper"), Editorial Los Amigos de Libro (La Paz, Bolivia), 1991.

Desapariciones, Ediciones Centro Simón I. Patiño (Bolivia), 1994.

Alrededor de la torre, Editorial Nuevo Milenio (La Paz, Bolivia), 1997.

Dochera y otros cuentos (short stories), Editorial Nuevo Milenio (La Paz, Bolivia), 1998.

Rio fugitivo (title means "Fugitive River"), Alfaguara (La Paz, Bolivia), 1998.

Simulacros, Santillano (La Paz, Bolivia), 1999.

Amores imperfectos (title means "Imperfect Loves"), Alfaguara (La Paz, Bolivia), 2000.

(Co-author) Latin American Literature and Mass Media, Garland (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Alberto Fuguet) Se habla español: Voces latinas en USA, Alfaguara (Miami, FL), 2000.

Sueños digitales (title means "Digital Dreams"), Alfaguara (La Paz, Bolivia), 2000.

(With Alejandro Grimson) Migrantes bolivianos en la Argentina y los Estados Unidos, Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (La Paz, Bolivia), 2000.

La materia del deseo, Alfaguara (Miami, FL), 2001, translated by Lisa Carter as The Matter of Desire, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

Alcides Arguedas y la narrativa de la nación enferma, Plural Editores (La Paz, Bolivia), 2003.

El delirio de Turing, Alfaguara (La Paz, Bolivia), 2003, translated by Lisa Carter as Turing's Delirium, Houghton (Boston, MA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Edmundo Paz Soldán "is perhaps Bolivia's most notable contemporary author," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. One of the leading practitioners of so-called "McOndo" literature, Paz Soldán rejects the "levitating grandmothers, clouds of butterflies, or velvet curtains of prose that mark the work of Latin American writers from Gabriel García Márquez to Isabel Allende," as Robin Dougherty noted in the Boston Globe. Instead he affects a gritty urban reality in his novels and short stories, an acceptance and critique of globalization and the Americanization of the Latin American world. The term "McOndo" refers to this cultural imperialism, taking its name from a title of an anthology by a "bad boy of Chilean letters," as Ed Morales termed writer Alberto Fuguet in Library Journal. McOndo "satirizes the McDonaldsization of Gabriel García Márquez's fictitious town, Macondo," Morales further noted. Paz Soldán breaks free of such literary progenitors and stereotypes, taking inspiration instead from writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka.

Educated in the United States, Paz Soldán is an associate professor at Cornell University, but he spends part of the year in his native Bolivia. The winner of numerous literary prizes in his own country, his first work to be translated into English was his 2001 novel, La materia del deseo, The Matter of Desire. The story of a Latin-American professor caught between two worlds—his faculty position in the United States and his Bolivian home—the novel has autobiographical elements. Like his fictional protagonist Pedro Zabalaga, Paz Soldán also earned his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley; also like his protagonist, he teaches at a New York university and misses his home in Bolivia. In the novel, Zabalaga escapes an affair with Ashley, a graduate student, to return to his native Rio Fugitivo, a fictional Bolivian town that Paz Soldán has featured in many of his stories and novels. Back in Bolivia, Zabalaga becomes involved in trying to uncover the secret of his revolutionary father's disappearance. The threads Zabalaga follows in this search lead to startling revelations; meanwhile, this part of the story alternates with the story of the affair between Pedro and Ashley.

Reviewers generally responded favorably to The Matter of Desire, but a critic for Publishers Weekly found the novel's dual storylines uneven. While Pedro's affair "is a standard tale of star-crossed lovers," according to the contributor, "less familiar, and more engaging, is the throbbing world of Rio Fugitivo, flooded with American culture but still haunted by years of oppression." Allison Block, reviewing The Matter of Desire in Booklist, called it a "taut, gritty tale of two different Americas." According to Block, the novel is a blend of "history, existentialism, and romantic and political passion" that adds up to an "edgy, urban vision that sizzles from the start." A contributor to Americas wrote that the author "paints a vivid picture of political and moral corruption in Bolivia," and Jack Shreve, reviewing the same novel in Library Journal, felt that Paz Soldán is "especially insightful about the inexorable suffusion southwards of American pop culture and values."

Cultural globalism infuses much of Paz Soldán's work. In the title story of his award-winning 1998 collection, Dochera y otros cuentos, he uses the metaphor of a crossword puzzle to indicate the modern condition. For World Literature critic Naomi Lindstrom, the "diabolical 'Dochera' is the one true standout in the collection, but throughout, the fiction is amusing, stylish, and full of surprises." In Sueños digitales ("Digital Dreams"), Paz Soldán "paints a portrait of young people living in a sophisticated, urban Latin American society," according to Morales. In the book, a magazine editor attempts to discern reality in his life from the virtual reality of the digitally enhanced photographs he works with. Reviewing the Spanish-language version of that book, Library Journal critic Lourdes Vazquez praised Paz Soldán for creating a "fast-paced, easy-to-read novel."

El delirio de Turing (translated as Turing's Delirium) won the 2003 Premio Nacional de Literatura in Bolivia. According to Carmen Ospina in School Library Journal, this novel is characteristically "steeped in references to information-age U.S. culture and postmodern world of Rio Fugitivo." In the novel, Turing is a hacker and cryptographer living in Rio Fugitivo, Bolivia, who is battling the forces of multinationals. Ospina described the tale as a "novel about betrayal, fraud, and hidden truths."

Paz Soldán told CA: "I remember reading Emilio Salgari's novels when I was ten years old and getting lost in his world. I started writing in order to tell stories and hope to get readers lost in my fictional world. My main literary influences are Latin-American writers such as Borges and Vargas Llosa, but I am also influenced by the popular culture around me, movies and music and the internet. I usually write in the morning; when I am writing the first draft of a novel I focus on the main storyline, and afterwards I start adding layers, giving texture to the descriptions, depth and shades to the characters, and tying all the subplots into the main one.

"The most surprising thing is to see how books travel from one place to another, allowing me to find readers in unexpected places. And also, realizing that once the book is published you surrender control over its meaning. Readers do whatever they want with your books, which is wonderful. My favorite book is the last one I wrote, maybe because in a way I'm still living in that world."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Americas, September-October, 2002, review of La materia del deseo, p. 61.

Booklist, April 1, 2004, Allison Block, review of The Matter of Desire, p. 1349.

Boston Globe, April 18, 2004, Robin Dougherty, "Between the Lines with Edmundo Paz Soldán," p. E9.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2004, review of The Matter of Desire, p. 199.

Library Journal, June 1, 2001, Ed Morales, "The New America's Virtual Truth," p. 21, and Lourdes Vazquez, review of Sueños digitales, p. 26; April 1, 2004, Jack Shreve, review of The Matter of Desire, p. 124.

M2 Best Books, November 7, 2003, "Latin American Author New Identity Inspires New Book."

Publishers Weekly, May 10, 2004, review of The Matter of Desire, p. 38.

School Library Journal, June, 2003, Carmen Ospina, "Paz Soldán Wins Bolivia's Fifth National Literature Prize," p. 12.

World Literature Today, spring, 1999, Naomi Lindstrom, review of Dochera y otros cuentos, p. 303; summer-autumn, 2001, Luis Larios, review of Se habla español: Voces latinas en USA, p. 223.