Finally, the First Novel of Rafael Alcides / Regina Coyula

Rafael Alcides collects more than thirty years of yellowing manuscript that he likes to call his originals. In red cardboard folders, they fill a two door cabinet. Eighteen years ago, pregnant with Rafael, (at this point, if readers have not discovered, Alcides is my husband) I found among those old papers a tome that I liked. Alcides at that time was in love with another novel, and The Ring lay ignored in the pile. Still an era of typewriters, and a time of major blackouts, with my tummy ridiculous from the Special Period,he took out the Remington typewriter to the doorway and took advantage of the natural light to use a great deal of red pencil and to type. With this result, Alcides noticed for the first time in those hasty–and passionate–notes that he wrote in a fit in 1982.

Then the fights started, this paragraph doesn’t work, this paragraph stays, and to make the long story of all those years short, our son Rafael is already done with high school, Alcides has woven and unraveled like a post-modern Penelope, this book that I’ve come to hate from reading it so many times, and finally, when the version for the editor arrived, I didn’t even want to look at it. Now, with the printed novel, it’s another thing altogether; probably reconciled, I will find as funny and crazy as when I discovered it in the cabinet for unedited novels.

Translator’s Note: El anillo de Ciro Capote can be ordered on-line here.

May 26 2011