Lookout of poetic passage: in imaginative novellas and stories, award-winning Colombian writer Alvaro Mutis captures the inner turmoil of a universal wanderer.
Americas (English Edition) › Vol. 56 Nbr. 1, January 2004
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Lookout of poetic passage: in imaginative novellas and stories, award-winning Colombian writer Alvaro Mutis captures the inner turmoil of a universal wanderer.
His study is a small workroom as Snug as a captain's cabin; oil an adjoining door an Art Deco-style poster celebrates the heyday of transatlantic crossings by steamship; and a model tugboat perches upon andirons of a fire-place rarely used in temperate Mexico City, where this Colombian author has lived for nearly fifty years. Even a bar off a nearby passageway resembles a galley. But wine these nautical touches doubtless have inspired Alvaro Mutis as he has pounded out his salty yams on an old Smith Corona, this hideaway is also the author's quiet library, where he spends endless hours devouring the books he loves.
Now eighty, Mutis was walking gingerly when we met, recovering from a fall a couple days earlier that had left him with bruised ribs, a broken nose, and dark patches beneath his eyes. Nonetheless, over the objections of his wife, Carmen, he insisted upon navigating many stairs down to the main gate to receive me with the gracious hospitality for which he is famous. "Ay, ay, ay, si!" he laughs in response when I say he reminds me of Maqroll the Gaviero, down on his luck and licking his wounds at a rundown motel on La Brea Boulevar...See the full content of this document
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