Pedro Juan Gutierrez

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (b. Matanzas, Cuba, January 27, 1950) is a writer, journalist, painter, poet, reference of Cuban dirty realism. In 1998 his book Dirty Havana Trilogy became a critical and public success.

Biography

First studies

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez lived near La Marina, next to the Yumurí River. At the age of ten he was selling comics at Sloppy Joe's Bar. At age 18 he earned a four-year scholarship to the National School of the Arts. However, in September 1966 he had to attend mandatory military service. He finished on December 19, 1970.

In 1978 he obtained a bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Havana, thanks to a special course for workers. He worked as a journalist on radio, television, a news agency and in the magazines Bohemia and Habanera. In the 1980s he conducted research in several prisons, also in favelas in Brazil, on the border between the United States and Mexico, and in southern Spain.

Visual poetry

Since approximately 1980, P. J. Gutiérrez began experimenting with visual poetry, and participated in hundreds of exhibitions in more than twenty countries with his small-format works. His book Don't be afraid, Lulú combines visual poetry with written poetry.

Gutiérrez's painting technique is material abstractionism, as is the series "Huellas del Animal Tropical." His works are found in private collections in approximately fifteen countries, including Sweden, Germany, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

Literary career

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's short stories pay homage to established writers: "Melancolía de los leones" It was written in the 1980s, was thirteen years in the making and is a small tribute to Franz Kafka and Julio Cortázar.

In 1990, Stowaway on Board, a selection of seven short stories, was published. This series pays tribute to Onelio Jorge Cardoso, Cuba's greatest storyteller. In it, stories by Cuban writers, established and new, were published, such as Cardoso himself, Senel Paz, Miguel Mejides, Gregorio Ortega and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.

In 1991 he won the National Journalism Award with his Crónicas de México. He wrote eight chronicles about the border between Mexico and the United States, of which only four were published in Bohemia.

He started writing Dirty Trilogy of Havana at 44 and in October 1998 Editorial Anagrama, in Barcelona, published it. The critical and public success was instantaneous. It was in the period from 1998 to 2003 that she published the five books of the “Central Havana Cycle.” On January 11, 1999, she finished her journalistic work.

He has written books of poetry (Splendid silver fish, Reality roaring, Fire against the heretics, Me and a lustful old black woman and Lulú the loss and other poems by John Snake), a detective novel (Our GG in Havana) and another, The nest of the Serpent: Memories of the Ice Cream Man's Son, about the youth of his almost ubiquitous character from the "Central Havana Cycle" and alter ego. His last delivery was Corazón mestizo , a travel book about his country.

Its main references are North American authors such as Ernest Hemingway or Charles Bukowski, and also works such as Men without Women by Carlos Montenegro, Boarding Home by Guillermo Rosales or even Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas.

Production context

Dirty realism

Dirty realism was an American literary movement that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that derived from minimalism characterized by sobriety, precision, and brief descriptions. Dirty realism in Latin America shows everyday life and some stereotypes in the lives of its inhabitants: constant violence and dangerous, dirty cities full of miserable people.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's prose is similar to that of Charles Bukowski, which is why he was nicknamed the Caribbean Bukowski by Jorge Herralde.

The treatment of dirty realism in the literature of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is constructed through various mechanisms such as foul, vulgar language and the animalization of society. Socialism is desacralized without the need to make value judgments, only by telling stories. The figures that symbolize the highest, the positive are collapsed or annihilated: the king, the law, the institutions; These models are taken to the smallest level.

The work of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is presented as a social denunciation that includes the miseries of his city and his country, which he accompanies with a large dose of eschatological images. The characters in his works are beings always on the verge of death or madness who fight to survive among beggars and drunks, jockeys and rogues. Among other characteristics of dirty realism is the formation of oral and village tradition, the distancing from any political message and a more marked interest in stories of marginal individuals than in historical facts.

Obscene Hyperrealism

On the other hand, the Italian scholar Gino Tramontana (Ph.D. in Latin American Literature, musician and writer) has a completely different opinion, who maintains that the poetics of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez should not be considered so clearly superimposable to that of Charles Bukowski and completely distant. of the so-called dirty realism. Tramontana considers that the most appropriate definition is obscene hyperrealism. This theory was accepted and disseminated through a doctoral thesis by the Complutense University of Madrid, awakening the interest of international scientific journals such as Cultura Latinoamericana and Cuadernos del Hipogrifo. Furthermore, to support this theory, in 2017 at the Faculty of Philology of the Complutense University of Madrid a conference was held titled Dirty realism or obscene hyperrealism? and Gino Tramontana interviewed Pedro Juan Gutiérrez reaffirming the thesis which sees the Cuban author completely removed from the literary movement defined as dirty realism.

Special period

The special period was the historical moment, in the late 1980s, when Cuba lost most of its trade at fair prices with the countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, At the same time, the United States reinforced the economic and commercial blockade against the island, through laws such as the Torricelli Law (1992), all of which caused a series of economic and political changes for the island starting in 1990. The “Central Havana Cycle” It is formed in this period and refers to Gutiérrez's books where the story takes place in Centro Habana, the downtown, in which an evolution of the main character, Pedro Juan, can be observed.

Works

Novels

• Dirty Trilogy of Havana (1998)
• The King of Havana (1999)
• Tropical animal (2001)
• Our GG in La Habana (2004)
• The nest of the serpent: Memories of the son of the fridge (2006)
• Fabian and chaos (2015)
• Stoic and frugal (2019)

Stories

• Police on board (1990)
• Stories of Old Havana (1997)
• Anchored in no man's land (1998)
• I know. (1998)
• Melancholy of lions (2000)
• Dog meat (2002)
• Nothing to do (2002)
• The insatiable Spiderman (2003)
• Dialogues with my shadow (2013)

Poetry

• Measurements and surveys, winner of a mention of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) in 1980
• Reality roaring (Cuba, graphic poetry 1987)
• Poetry (Cuba, 1988)
• Splendid silver fish (Buenos Aires, 1996)
• Fire against the heretics (Buenos Aires, 1998)
• Me and an old lust (Montreal, 2005)
• Luluu the Lost and Other Poems of John Snake (France and Cuba, 2008)
• Die in Paris (2008, Spanish-Cuban publication)
• Draging dry leaves into the dark (2012)
• The red snake (2012) with photos of Carles Mercader Fulquet
• The Last Mystery of John Snake (2013)
• The path of the beasts (2014)

Chronicles

• Living in space (1987)
• Mestizo heart: the delirium of Cuba (2007)

Essay

• Cuban Visual Poetry (1993)
• Old thesis on the story (2000)
• Truth and lie in literature (2001)
• Exploited from the Cuban galaxy (2005)
• Urgent poetry (2004)
• Carpentier in the others (2004)
• Life and literature (2008)
• The chaos (audience)

Anthologies, compilations, selections,

• Dirty Trilogy of Havanacontains the books of stories Anchored in no man's land, Nothing to do and I know. (1998)
• Crazy old man, collection of fifteen unpublished stories and others selected by the author himself of three of his books (2014)
• The dark line of poetry chosen, 1994-2014 (2015)

Paintings and drawings

• Don't be afraid, Lulu. (2006)
• Fish and apples
• Footprints of the tropical animal
• Besos de Gloria

Film adaptations

His novel The King of Havana (1999) was made into a film in 2015 by the Spanish filmmaker Agustí Villaronga. The actors participated in the project, a co-production between Spain and the Dominican Republic: Maikol David, Yordanka Ariosa, Héctor Medina Valdés and Jean Luis Burgos among others. The leading actress received the Silver Shell award from the San Sebastián Film Festival.

Awards and recognitions

• 2000: Alfonso García-Ramos de Novela Award for Tropical animal.
• 2003: South World Narrative Award for Dog meat.
• 2007: Le Grand Prix de Rhum for glorifying rum in his work.
• 2008: Le Prix des Amériques insulaires et de la Guyane édition by The nest of the serpent.

Complementary bibliography

• Castañeda Pérez, Manuel A. Literary Geography of Havana. Santander: Author, 2002.
• Del Vecchio, Alejandro (2013). "Memories of an indecent young man: "The nest of the serpent", by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. In: News of the Flood: Latin American texts of the last decades. Buenos Aires: EUDEM.
• Gutierrez, Pedro Juan. “Truth and lie in literature.” in Caribbean 4.1 (2001): 5-12.
• Linares, Albinson. “Pedro Juan Gutiérrez: ‘The Modernization of Cuba is irreversible’. The New York Times. Latin America. Cuba. 28 December 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/es/2016/12/28/pedro-juan-gutierrez-la-modernizacion-de-cuba-es-irreversible/ 18/04/2017.
• S.C. “El Realismo Sucio de Pedro Juan Gutiérrez” in Confabulario. Mexico: The Universal, 2015.
• Tinajero, Araceli. Cuban culture and letters in the 21st century. Spain: Iberoamericana, 2010.