Last week, I was reading this fascinating piece in Border Chronicle. It was called “Uncanny Rio Grande Valley.” It was a book review of sorts — the author, Caroline Tracey, was reflecting on the ways that the fiction of writer Fernando Flores has transformed her perception of borderlands literature.
Flores has written a series of novels — his most recent is called "Brother Bronte," and a short story collection called “Valleyesque.”
The quote from Tracey’s piece that grabbed me was this one: “Flores’s work came into my hands at a moment when I had decided that the borderlands evaded literature. The problem, as I had diagnosed it, was that the novel is a personal form, while the border is a societal phenomenon; no character could do justice to the structural forces that loom over the region.”
So, I got this idea: what if we could get Caroline Tracey and Fernando Flores on to talk about why this particular region has been underserved by fiction, and how Flores has found a way to capture what other work seems to miss. Much to my delight, they both agreed to come on — but the conversation went a little differently than I thought it would.
I started off by asking Caroline to expand on that, "how, I asked her, had she arrived at this conclusion that the borderlands 'evaded literature?'"
Full conversation
CAROLINE TRACEY: It was a thought that was coming out of working as a journalist and covering things like, for instance, migrant death at the border, right? These really high numbers in Arizona and Texas of people that have died, thinking about the fact that you couldn't capture that systemic phenomenon in the story of one individual person in the way that a novel would probably set out to do. When I read Flores' work for the first time, it really felt like a revelation because I was feeling a little bit pessimistic about the ability of novels to capture the border.
SAM DINGMAN: Fernando, let me ask you, I'm curious to get your take on that idea that the novel as a form is a difficult means to write about complex systems as opposed to complex characters.
When you sat down to tell a story like the one you're telling in “Brother Bronte” or the stories that you're telling in “Valleyesque” or any of your other works. Is character a principal motivator for you, or are you trying to paint a world? Are you trying to speak to social issues that animate your point of view?
FERNANDO FLORES: No, I'm never trying to insert my own agenda or my own little train of thought even into the storytelling. For me, it's always trying to connect to the once upon a time. Once upon a time, this certain person existed in a certain place, and that's when it becomes interesting to me when I'm like, “Why can't I stop thinking about this person and this place” What is this place and who is this person?”
My pursuit of those answers ends up being the novel itself and you can't escape the reason maybe there's like political things in there is just because maybe our lives are just surrounded by it, and you don't even have to try.
DINGMAN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Caroline, tell me if you disagree, but it sort of feels like that is of a piece with your reaction to Fernando's work, this sense that you're looking for an answer to this broad set of questions, and it just so happens that in the works of this particular author, that answer is presented.
TRACEY: Yeah, absolutely. I think that you follow the stories of the novels and they end up capturing so much of the setting and the political setting and the geographic setting really well just by being the stories that they are.
I came upon "Valleyesque" very much by chance. It was a collection that really had an impact on me in the sense of it made me see my surroundings in a new way and made me experience lots of experiences that I have driving around the borderlands, being a journalist, from this perspective of sort of a touch of absurdity, but also a type of reality that's sort of different than other places.
FLORES: I really appreciate Caroline's piece and how much thought Caroline put into it. To be read that carefully is such an honor and most of the time, I forget that I am the writer in many occasions. I forget because of the way that I pursue my own writing.
I think that when we think about literature of the border of the Southwest, it's a very stark realism that is humorless, devoid of any kind of emotional or maybe even psychological depth. So my pursuit and my desire is always to try to add an extra layer of dimension or something to the region.
DINGMAN: The way that you answered that is very interesting to me, the idea that you forget you're the writer. How do you think of yourself?
FLORES: I'm like the medium. I think about sometimes like Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a writer, but Shakespeare was an actor himself. He was a performer. He has to be aware of the performance of it. He has to be in a way performing in the room. So in many ways I feel that he's performing the play on the page, and in many ways, that's how I feel. I feel that I'm performing the novel on the page.
DINGMAN: From the way that you have described your process, Fernando, there is something, as you said, very organic, very direct about that way of approaching the storytelling. And I wonder if that accounts for something else that you wrote, Caroline.
You said, quote, "While Flores's work traffics in absurdity, I gradually realized its humor is tangled with a deep earnestness. Across his books, his characters confront corruption and find meaning through literature and music, even as their lives are indelibly marked by inequality, poverty, racialization, and militarization.” I wonder, Fernando, what you make of that.
FLORES: I don't know if I have anything to add to it. I mean, what is to me whenever I'm writing, if I'm, whenever I'm writing, or right. Let's say, I'm writing, I'll typewriter, the moment I realized that I'm writing, like, “Oh my God, I'm writing.” I stopped writing. I stopped writing. I start thinking about technical things like that. Am I being earnest? I cannot be conscious of these thoughts because otherwise I feel like an imposter. I feel like a writer. I feel like I'm writing, like I'm performing the part of a writer instead of writing.
DINGMAN: Yes, that makes sense. Well, it's making me realize that perhaps there's a flaw in my premise in terms of wanting to have this conversation with you both is this idea of having a conversation about how Caroline received your work as an iteration in the tradition of borderlands literature and having you speak to that.
From the way you're talking about this, I almost get the sense that you don't really think of it as borderlands literature.
FLORES: It'll be absurd for me to deny that it is, and I know also that even though terms can be flawed, sometimes they are necessary and sometimes they can be helpful.
DINGMAN: Yeah, Caroline, I guess maybe in closing the line that I am coming back to from your piece, which is sort of where we started this conversation is the novel is a personal form, which, I think the conversation with Fernando is really illustrating that the act of creating the novel is also extremely personal.
And yet I know from your piece that you have derived a deeper understanding of place from Fernando's work. So having now had this conversation, where are you sitting with that original assertion?
TRACEY: Well, I think what Fernando was saying about always trying to add more dimensions to literature and narrative resonated with how I felt when I was reading the book, or even the quote that you just read from my review about earnestness.
There are all these moments where the characters engage with music or books that they love, and you see that the characters have these really rich inner lives and that's adding this whole dimension to whatever stereotypes we have about the borderlands and what types of lives go on in the borderlands. I think, for me, it's like that pursuit of the extra dimension that Fernando was describing that gives it that much earnestness.
DINGMAN: Well, thank you both so much for having this conversation with me. Caroline Tracy is a journalist and wrote about Fernando Flores' work in Border Chronicle, and Fernando is the author of many books, most recently "Brother Bronte." Thank you.
FLORES: Thank you both so much. Thank you, Caroline, once again for that lovely piece and for everything you said here and thank you as Sam as well. You all have a very lovely day, OK.
TRACEY: You too, nice to meet you.
FLORES: Nice to meet you as well.
