To talk to Mexican writer, essayist, and columnist Margo Glantz is to enter a world of lucidity, encyclopedic knowledge, and critical thinking about the contemporary world.
This is an adapted excerpt from a conversation on the Hablemos, escritoras podcast, hosted by Adriana Pacheco.
Adriana Pacheco: Born on January 28, 1930, to immigrant parents, Margot Glantz is a fiction writer, critic, and theater specialist. She studied literature and holds a doctorate in Hispanic letters from the Sorbonne. She was a student of Alfonso Reyes, Samuel Ramos, and Leopoldo Zea, among others. She served as the cultural attaché for the Mexican embassy in England, and as director of the National Institute of Fine Arts. She has won several prizes, including the Javier Villaurrutia, the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the Alfonso Reyes award from the International Book Fair at El Colegio de México. Margo, when we look at your oeuvre, do you think it could be said that you write in a hybrid style, mixing genres?
Margo Glantz: Yes, my texts are not very canonical. I’ve always explored this fragmentation of genres in my work, something that I now think has become quite normal. However, El rastro seems to be more of a novelistic book than Por breve herida or Y por mirarlo todo, nada veía.
A.P.: One of the books most frequently mentioned when one talks about your work is Las genealogías, because it speaks about your family, your life. How did you begin writing it?
M.G.: Literature has been a part of my life since I first learned to read. I read a lot from a very young age, and I knew from the start that I wanted to study literature, to become a professor, and to pass literature on to others. I came to writing fiction quite late on, and in a way, essays too. I published my first fiction book, Las mil y una calorías: novela dietética, at 47. It couldn’t find a publisher because they thought it was too unorthodox, it was a genre that didn’t really fit with publishing houses, so I had to self-publish it. My next book, 200 ballenas azules, I also self-published.
My third was Las genealogías, and it first appeared in the Unomásuno newspaper as a serialized story while I was working there. I had a column in the paper, and my family was going through a difficult period—my father suffered an attempted lynching—and I wrote about it. It appeared in the paper and many people said to me, “Why don’t you keep writing about this?” So, I decided to record conversations with my parents. I realized at the time that I might not really know what their lives had been like before they came to Mexico, because they were immigrants from Ukraine.
So, week by week, I recorded them talking about their lives, transcribed the discussions, and published these pieces in serialized form. By the fourth or fifth piece, I thought it was important to give it a title, and Las genealogías came to mind. Then, to understand my parents’ roots, I decided to go to the Soviet Union, where I still had first cousins. When I returned, the book came out and was immediately very successful.
A.P.: Your father was a poet when your parents settled in Mexico. What else did the family do?
M.G.: When they settled in Mexico, they lived off nothing. They arrived with 5 USD, and my father managed to get a job selling bread because one of my uncles was a baker. My father was never very good at making money. He drifted from job to job, and we moved from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood, because things kept getting worse for us, and we had to move. I’ve lived in many places because we were never stable.
A.P.: In your book, you talk about how the family’s bond was also strengthened by being immigrants. How do you see yourself as coming from a migrant family? And how do you view the current situation regarding migration?
M.G.: Well, when I wrote the book, there had always been a strong flow of migration from Mexico to the United States, a type of migration that is often economic. In my parents’ case, they didn’t just migrate for economic reasons, but also to escape persecution, since in the Soviet Union and Russia at the time there were pogroms. Now, migration is an absolutely global phenomenon. Migrations within and from Africa, migrations across the Middle East, the arrival of Syrian children—all of these are part of a heart-wrenching pathos that I don’t think existed during the time my parents migrated.
A.P.: You also talk about memory in your works. For example, in another one of your books, Yo también me acuerdo, published in 2014, you repeat the phrase “I remember that…” You recount the things you remember, saw, collected, learned about, or studied. It’s a 383-page book, and everything follows this pattern. Would you like to tell us about it?
M.G.: It’s a book in which I placed myself within a tradition that I greatly appreciate; it’s another form of genealogy, a written genealogy. At first, I wrote ten individual texts, and then I became engrossed and realized I could make it into a continuous text, an endless book. It’s an entirely personal book because it contains my memories, my relationship with the city, my relationship with the world I’ve lived in, with literature, with my parents. In other words, it’s a book with many elements that, in some way, continue in my latest book, Y por mirarlo todo nada veía. It’s a completely fragmentary book, very much in line with what I’ve always done.
A.P.: Another important theme in your career is your fascination with the Baroque and with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, as seen in Y por mirarlo todo nada veía, published in 2018. The book is a 164-page paragraph, there isn’t a single period break. For me, its rhythm is the most fascinating aspect. If one reads it out loud and quickly, it gives a sense of urgency, of being in constant motion, it almost sounds like a telegraph. What can you tell us about it?
M.G.: I like what you’re saying because I’ve been interviewed many times, and no one has mentioned the idea that it sounds like a telegraph. It’s almost like Morse code because of this tapping sound that comes from the repetition. It’s an anaphora, and at the same time, it’s a reiteration. The tapping conveys monotony, the constant hearing of the same thing, the accumulation of data, phrases, and repetitions. This sets the tone for reflecting on what’s happening in the contemporary world. I’m realizing that the book truly does have an impact because it serves as a form of literary reflection organized in a very careful and thoughtful way.
A.P.: I think it’s fantastic, truly. I believe we needed a book like this; it’s a great contribution to Mexican literature, to universal literature. How long did it take you to write it, and how did you organize it?
M.G.: It only took me a year and a half. I started by working with material from social media, which is ephemeral, but it gave me content. I began to see certain things, certain patterns that I had already noticed in other spheres, but that led me to think more strictly and more intensely about the lack of hierarchy in the modern world. Although there’s always been a lack of hierarchy, it has now grown to an enormous, almost monstrous degree. People can no longer distinguish between what’s essential and what’s accessory. My book highlights something that Hannah Arendt discussed in The Banality of Evil, namely how banality has gained so much ground that the important, the fundamental, becomes trivialized.
At first, I didn’t think it was going to be a book, but then, as always, I started incorporating things from my autobiography, because I’ve always been obsessed with autobiography, as seen in Las genealogías. But it’s always somewhat fragmented, not canonical; it doesn’t follow an Aristotelian structure.
A.P.: Let’s talk about your fascination with India and your book Coronada de moscas, which came out in 2012. Why write about India?
M.G.: Well, for a very long time, I had wanted to visit India, and as I say in the book, when I finally managed to go, I thought to myself, “How is it possible that I, a Mexican visiting India, could write a book about it when there are already such extraordinary books on the country?” But as I continued writing, I realized I had a very particular view of India, and it was important to present it in a more organic way, in a well-structured book, which became Coronada de moscas. I gave it a title that comes from a wonderful poem by one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language, the Peruvian Blanca Varela, which says, “My life passed, crowned with flies.”
A.P.: It’s marvelous, the book truly reflects your very personal vision. And what about La cabellera andante, what does that book mean to you?
M.G.: It’s a book that, like Las genealogías, also started as a serialized piece in Unomásuno. I have worked on themes like breasts, feet, waists, but hair struck me as one of the most interesting elements to analyze because hair is simultaneously a sign of eroticism and resurrection. When a person dies and is buried, hair can still grow, as can nails. So, I thought it was very, very important to offer a critical look at hair throughout different periods of civilization. Diamela Eltit, the great Chilean writer, and Jean Franco, a very important critic in the United States, have written texts about La cabellera andante because they found in it a very particular perspective on the bodily element that is hair.
A.P.: Tell us, Margo, which critics and philosophers have inspired your work over time?
M.G.: I’ve never treated theory like a bible. I’ve read a lot of theory and incorporated it into my texts because I’ve written many essays, and I believe these theories are important—those about Sor Juana, La Malinche, the colonial period, and the nineteenth century. Important theorists for me include Jorge Luis Borges, who, although not technically a theorist, wrote in a way that, to me, was like theory. His writing was very important to me. Georges Perec too, his relationship with literature is a poetics I’ve always worked with. Walter Benjamin is also crucial for me, as is Hannah Arendt. As time passes and my readings change, I find myself drawn to thinkers like Foucault, and Derrida at certain points.
A.P.: Tell us about some contemporary writers you are enjoying reading.
M.G.: There are so many young Latin American writers. María José Navia is a very interesting Chilean writer, and in Mexico we have Verónica Gerber and Guadalupe Nettel. I was recently given a book called O reguero de hormigas by Yolanda Segura, which I loved. Valeria Luiselli and La historia de mis dientes is another one. From Argentina, Fernanda García Lao, and from Bolivia, Giovanna Rivero, along with Magela Baudoin, who won the García Márquez Short Story Prize in Colombia.
A.P.: Thank you so much for this wonderful interview, Margo.
M.G.: Thank you very much.
You can listen and read the complete interview in Spanish
on the Hablemos, escritoras website.
Translated by Alice Banks
