[NYTr] Literature: Capote Didn't Invent the Non-Fiction Novel

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Juventud Rebelde via CubaNow - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&item=3123&cont=show.php

An irreverent and parsimonious Argentinean had linked literature and
journalism, convinced that an intellectual’s greatness is in the
compromise assumed with the people.

Walsh Got Ahead of Capote

By Luis Raúl Vázquez Muñoz

Cubanow.- It was a weird message; a salad of numbers and letters, all
spread out over the smooth teleprinting paper of Prensa Latina Agency,
and bearing no other clues to indicate its origin than the idle pursuit
of a madman. Then, Argentinean journalist Rodolfo Walsh most probably
stretched his lips out of annoyance. But something startled him. Within
the chaos that had been sent by Tropical Cable, there were numbers and
words that repeatedly appeared in a skittish frequency and order.

Some days later, after entire nights studying a cryptography manual,
Walsh confirmed what he suspected. The message was far from being
innocent, it was a code message from the head of the CIA in Guatemala
to inform about the arrangements for the invasion of Cuba.

Having taken place a few days before the attack on Bay of Pigs, this
anecdote could have been registered in the history as one of the many
episodes in the daily ups and downs of journalism if it had not been
for the main actor in this story.

Walsh was born on January 9, 1927 in the Choele-Choel, Rio Negro
Province, Argentina. Of Irish background, he liked to play chess,
pretty mysterious women, novels and crime stories. The latter unchained
his passion for literature.

However, his best leap is in late 1956. Six months before, at night and
on broad street, the shooting [in an attempted] coup d’etat against
the military government of general Aramburu took him by surprise.
Eventually, he believed it was a night to be told to his grandchildren
when a man said to him: “One of the men executed is alive.”

And that’s how the inquiries that wound up in Operation Massacre
brought about a report of denunciation, written with the merits of good
fiction novels, and that now reappears in Cuba thanks to the
International Book Fair. Its first line is in itself a lesson of
journalism:

"Nicolás Carrazana was not a happy man, on that night of June 9, 1956."

A couple of years later, North American writer Truman Capote announced
to the world the creation of a non-fiction novel or a report-novel when
he wrote "In Cold Blood," his book on the assassination of a family in a
farming town of the United States.

But good Truman was wrong. It happened that an irreverent and
parsimonious Argentinean had gotten ahead of him, at least in trying to
link literature and journalism. Only that, Capote wrote his book
thinking in advance in making his theory valid, while Walsh wrote his
out of pure inspiration and using his intelligence, and convinced that
an intellectual is not great only for his work, but also because of his
true and ethical commitment to his people.

Nowadays, when so many conceited fools in the world calling themselves
writers and declaring their disregard for everything- except for their
wallet- Walsh reminds us that a writer is not recalled alone for his
pages, but also for the shame of his acts.

Walsh could have gotten away to write the stories that today we would
have as bedside books. But he did not do so, instead he joined the
struggle against his country’s dictatorship, experimenting the startles
of clandestine life and suffering the news on his daughter’s suicide
when she put a bullet in her head before falling into the hands of the
police.

In those days, Gabriel García Márquez, who was very fond of him,
reminded writer Miguel Mujica Laínez of Walsh’s ethical condition. Upon
arriving in Spain the author of Bomarzo said that in the dictatorial
Argentina all great writers (Borges, Sábato, Silvina Ocampo, Bioy
Casares, and himself) were calm and that the military would issue their
passports without any difficulty, and they could even go to Paris if
they so wished.

When Gabo heard this, he answered in a public letter: "There are two
(writers) [whom] I consider great, and however, are not as calm as you
are. I’m referring to Rodolfo Walsh and Haroldo Conti, who several
years ago were abducted from their homes by patrol troops of the
official repression and nothing has been known about them ever after.
You and all the great writers you mention would be even greater if you
sacrifice a little bit of your peacefulness and greatness and asked the
Government of Argentina to issue a couple of those extremely easy
passports, for Rodolfo Walsh and Haroldo Conti."