We concluded our first month of the MashableReads social book club this week with The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Next up on our list is The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez.
Drawing his reader into an era marked by rampant drug trade, government assassinations and all-consuming fear, Vásquez writes about the daily lives of Bogotanos who lived before, during and after Pablo Escobar's reign in Colombia. Through their collective experiences, we learn abut the importance of memory and its connection with personal identity — and the resilience of individuals in overcoming even the worst tragedies.
We'll hold the Twitter chat with Vásquez on Sept. 24 from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET. You can discuss the book with the author personally, along with other participants all over the world. Make sure to follow @mashlifestyle for discussion about the book, and tweet with the hashtag #MashReads during the chat.
If you haven't picked up a copy of The Sound of Things Falling you can easily download it to your device or pick it up from your local bookstore. We'll announce the third Mashable Reads pick at the end of the Twitter chat, so make sure to tune in.
Want to hang out with the author in person? Tell us what you think of the book using the hashtag #MashReads prior to the Twitter chat, and we will select 10 people to come to Mashable HQ to meet Juan Gabriel Vásquez and participate in our book club.
In the meantime, we spoke with Vásquez about his inspiration for writing the novel, views on social media and take on world literature.
Is The Sound of Things Falling autobiographical at all, or is it more reflective of a common experience in Bogotá?
I call it autobiographical: not because the events described in the novel happened to me, but because I witnessed them and feared them. That stray bullet that hit Antonio Yammara did not hit me, but a close friend of mine. Other events in the novel — Pablo Escobar's zoo, certain specific memories about life in Bogotá during the years of terrorism — correspond to my personal memories.
Do you think organizations like the Peace Corps are still good models to have in emerging countries?
The Peace Corps was a great project involving generous, altruist people. From a basic human point of view (relationships between individuals from different worlds) it was a wonderful effort. My novel sheds some light on the activities of certain volunteers caught between misguided idealism and desire for profit, but it's an exploration of individual choices and moralities, not of the organization as such.
How do you interact with the "connected generation" of millennials? Are you active on any social platforms? If so, how have they helped you spread awareness of your book?
I'm sorry to say I'm not [active on social platforms]. I don't use Twitter or Facebook or any other social network. For two reasons: First, I'm very private, despite the ridiculous amount of interviews I've given; secondly, I have an almost neurotic awareness of how little time a writer has to do his work. I have hundreds of books I want to read in my lifetime and at least another 15 books to write. I have a family whose company I enjoy and friends I like to spend time with (not FaceTime, but face-to-face time). That leaves little time for anything else.
What is your biggest online pet peeve?
I hesitate to choose between unsolicited requests (people thinking that having your email means they own your time) and the idea that online writing, particularly in social networks, condones or even encourages incorrect writing. That when writing a tweet, for instance, grammar, punctuation and good taste are suspended.
What made you decide to write The Sound of Things Falling?
Let me say that I'm not a writer of themes. I mean it's not like I woke up one day and thought: "Hey, a novel about drugs and bombs would be nice." I spent a year writing about this character that was obsessing me, based on a man I saw crying in a public place when I was 20, and little by little I discovered his relationship with the early years of the drug trade. Before long, I discovered I was writing about the drug trade, about the years of Pablo Escobar and his reign of terror, and about the consequences all that had for my generation. Yes, I thought at come point that this novel had not been written before in Colombia, so that was an even stronger reason to go on. You write the books you would like to read but don't find in bookstores.
In a recently published N+1 article, the editors suggest there isn't any true world literature right now — there isn't a world voice. Do you agree?
Has there ever been a world literature? I'm not sure, despite the fact that I keep finding Goethe's idea of Weltiteratur very stimulating. But great novels have always been written by very local people writing about what worried them there and then. The books we call classics were once very locally-minded stories. Anna Karenina, Ulysses and In Search of Lost Time are as local as you can get, and don't get me started about Faulkner. García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was not written to address the 40 or so languages it is now read in; it was written from a little corner of the Colombian experience. We write about our own places because they surprise us: we thought we knew them, and then a revelation comes and we realize we don't. Out of that experience of the unpredictable comes literature.
Image: Mashable, Bianca Consunji