parallel cultures, parallel languages

The play between languages in a given piece of literature is, at its best, a dodging back and forth across the border between cultures.  The fugitive dirt of one cultural and linguistic terrain can’t help but stick to the soles of the writer’s shoes, and be tracked all over the other.  I love this.  When it’s done appropriately and well, it can be breathtaking.

I just finished reading two books written in English in which Spanish is used liberally and effectively.  Eddy Robert Arellano’s newly released “Cuban Noir” novel, HAVANA LUNAR, and his graphic novel DEAD IN DESEMBOQUE are quirky, surprising, sometimes exhilarating, amazingly cool modern stories that plumb old forms (the detective novel; the comic book) to tell new tales.  I love how Arellano plays off genre conventions to put a new twist on the young man’s (often drunken) stumbles through the landscape of unrequited love, insufficient sex, and unreliable friendship.  (Smiley face.)  And I love still more that these adventures happen during the “special period” of Castro’s Cuba in HAVANA LUNAR, and down through the deserts of Mexico in the wacky/brilliant DEAD IN DESEMBOQUE.

Writers use alternate languages at three different levels, I think.  First is as a kind of surface gloss, a provider of “local color” that might even generate a little street cred for the piece.  That’s language as vivid detail, tropical hues in the author’s more subdued English palette.  Second is because an isolated character or action requires it, and can’t be brought to life otherwise.  Third, and most profoundly, is because a place or set of cultural concepts is untranslatable.  In this case the reader is introduced to not just a vocabulary but to a whole place and way of life.  HAVANA LUNAR is like that.

For the writer who uses more than the occasional word from another language in a piece of writing intended for monolingual readers, a bunch of questions come up.  To what extent do you have to explain the words’ meanings in the text?  How much ambient knowledge of the language will you expect readers to bring to the experience?  What degree of ambiguity do you think readers can tolerate? And – if you’re going to dish it out – how can you use that ambiguity to your benefit?

Some authors opt for a glossary at the end of the book, but unless it’s addressed creatively, a glossary can be pedantic and irritating.  It seems to work much better to integrate the information into the text itself.  Introducing single words is pretty easy; you can talk directly about them, or weave enough ambient information in adjacent that it’s possible to get a clear picture without being provided a definition. 

Using another language in dialogue is much more complex.  Cormac McCarthy, who does this extensively, often follows a line of Spanish with a direct translation as return dialogue.  Arellano has passages where he expects the reader to follow, mystified, for quite a while before he reveals the meaning.  Sometimes that’s rich and even suspenseful, especially when wordplay is involved; but other times – when the payoff doesn’t make it worthwhile – it’s kind of an obstacle to pleasure.  To watch this dance is to recognize the delicate balance that must be struck between the vivid authenticity of alternate language, and the reader’s necessary comprehension.  To complicate matters, the fulcrum shifts reader to reader.

For American writers who grew up bilingual or whose first language was not English, the successful ability to slide back and forth from one language to another can offer a gorgeous display of strength and versatility.  It’s kind of an embarrassment of riches, and Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Arellano and others have made an art of it.  (It’s no surprise that the authors that come to mind are those using Spanish, not Mandarin or Anishinabe.  Spanish words are so embedded in American English that a writer can rely on at least a moderate familiarity among readers.)  Even those of us raised on nothing but cornflakes and the King’s English find it essential sometimes to tap other languages to tell the stories we are motivated to tell.  For that, these writers are a guide and an inspiration.  It’s not just what you hear, but how you lay it on the page that counts.

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