Local artist and author receives large turnout for book reading at MOLAA
Last month, Jorge Schneider, Argentinian author and artist based out of Los Angeles, took listeners on an adventure during a book reading of his most recent novel El año que me fui, at the Museum of Latin American Art or MOLAA.
A psychological thriller, El año que me fui is the story of protagonist Julio Von Artens who gets lost in Buenos Aires and discovers the true inhabitants of the city — and the reality he knows begins to dissolve.
Jorge owns and operates with his wife, Alejandra, the Menduina/Schneider Gallery in San Pedro, which specializes in Latin American art. His books are widely available in libraries across the world, including Harvard University, UC Berkeley Libraries, Library of Congress, New York Public Library System and others.
For this event, the book was read both in English and Spanish by the book publisher Stephen Bramble and the author respectively, with a Q&A hosted by Martin Lucas. Sonidos Nómadas provided entertainment after the book reading with a performance of Tzompantli, its debut album of hard-hitting Mexican psychedelia.
Several months before his book release, I spoke to Jorge about this occasion, his previous novels and about the stories he writes. He has also authored La sombra de la langosta (2004) and La grieta (2011) or The Fracture is on a very good imprint (brand or trade name of a press that is owned by a larger publisher) in Argentina and throughout the Spanish world. His prior novel, La sombra de la langosta, resides in a library in Germany and Lucas: An Adventure of the Spirit (2000) is his first book in English.
For a while he didn’t publish because he didn’t find a publishing house that he liked — or they wanted to change the manuscript too much. But ZQ-287 Press, a small label publishing house in Oakland and Long Beach gave him the freedom to do things as he feels. Jorge said ZQ-287 cares about freedom of expression. Started by Stephen Bramble, who is an author himself, Jorge said Bramble is trying to keep the literary world alive in Long Beach and Southern California.
Jorge has written 13 books, all literary fiction on the human condition. For El año que me fui Jorge said he immersed himself in the human condition and tried to find how every character impacts the life of his main character, Julio.
The book reading gathered a large crowd. Argentinian writer and journalist, Martin Lucas, who interviewed Jorge was also the director of the Argentinian Public Broadcasting System. He now lives and works in Long Beach. Lucas called El año que me fui a great story of a middle aged man struggling with his own ghosts and demons.
During their discussion Jorge said it was never a conscious decision for him to become a writer.
“No one wants to be a writer, “ Jorge said. “You have to sit down and get inside your brain and you might not like the things you find. I had to write … to understand myself, even though I don’t understand myself. That’s the fun part.”
As a teenager Jorge was inspired not only by art but by the writing of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Fyodor Dostoevsky. His favorite author is John Steinbeck. Later influences include Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Arlt, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Cormac Mc Carthy, William Faulkner, Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche and Greek philosophers.
Speaking further about his early years Jorge said growing up in Argentina was good because it’s so far from everybody. Being so far down on the continent and so far removed, he explained, they tried to learn everything they could about everyone. His inspiration came from discovering those writers and artists living far away and how they found universal connections to people around the world.
“When you read, the meaning is universal, Jorge said. “If you understand that, that’s when you go beyond the book and you understand the author. It could be a songwriter too or a painter.”
El año que me fui contains similar psychological topics. Lucas asked him if these topics are common in Jorge’s writing.
“Yes, it’s the endless question,” he said. “It doesn’t have an answer so, you formulate the same questions five years down the road and you get another story, another book … because you live longer, the answer changes.”
He compared it to moving through a maze but without impeding whatever labyrinth you’re getting into. But there’s no way out.
“If I find a way out, I wouldn’t understand anything because I would think that I hold the tools. And that’s impossible.”
Jorge’s writing has to do more with the feeling of his character. He’s not concerned about the answer to the story but about the road it takes. That’s what the person feels. He said it’s not about whatever the holy grail might be but what is taking you there that remains seductive or that you can never find. That’s what shapes a person.
Lucas noted one of the most interesting aspects he found about Jorge’s book is how he describes the city of Buenos Aires. He asked him to tell the audience more about this city.
“Argentine people stay in Buenos Aires,” he said. “For me a city is not a city. I am the city. I’m part of the city. When I left Buenos Aires, a piece of Buenos Aires left the city — that was me. In the book the city is a metaphor for what’s going on within the person who lives there. All that the city has is a reflection of the inhabitants of the city and not the other way around. You’re never a reflection of where you live. Where you live is a reflection of who you are. Because the citizens make the character of the city. The city is within me in my own conception.”
While reading the book, Lucas said many images came to his mind like he was watching a movie.
“To me everything is an image, Jorge said. “ Whatever comes into my mind comes through my eyes… I see the world the way little kids see it. Like the word table, I see the table first, not the word first. So … for good or for bad that’s what makes this story spring off the page and come alive.”
Lucas proposed a challenge for the author. He asked him to describe this story. Don’t tell me the story, he said. But tell me anything else about the story.
“A snowball of feelings,” Jorge said. “Like every thought you have makes the snowball bigger and bigger and you can’t get yourself out of the way. Basically the moral of the story is you have to live with it.
“I needed 280 pages to say what that painting says,” he said, pointing to one of two abstract paintings placed next to them on stage. “That’s a snowball. It’s the feeling that it’s coming at you.”
The author said the white and the gray colors in the painting are neutral. Then you have the green which he called warmth. And it’s cold, with its ring and other kinetic forms in black. He compared it to humans constantly moving between all these ends in life.
“The other painting with green [lines] kind of vibrates and makes you dizzy,” Jorge said. “That’s the way life makes it sometimes, like there’s some kind of mystery. You keep thinking and thinking but there’s nothing more there. That’s why painting makes my life easier as a writer too. I understand what I write because I see the image.
“I paint when I get tired of writing and then I write when I get tired of painting. Then when I get tired of the other one, I drink.”
Coming up, Jorge is writing another book, which he described as another psychological thriller.
However, in a few months, El año que me fui will be published in English. Stay tuned for more news when that happens.
Details: www.instagram.com/jorgeschneiderwriter and www.msartgallery.com