Outcast. Outcast. Outcast. Outcast. A Novel.
In another post, someone talked about language being
transparent or language being something the reader lingers
over and savors the writer's taste in words and expressions.
José atour's Outcast seems consciously to promote the latter.
Outcast works hard to create colorful expressions, from
colorful names like Hairball to diner patter like "Keep it,
beauty...Just looking at you is worth ten times that."81 Or,
"And he wasn't even a block leader. He was a lonely asshole
turning paranoid." 193. Latour works hard for the felicitous
phrase. There are, for sure, overreaching stabs, e.g. "in the
moonlit grass of a recently harvested field, she dispensed
pleasure to the first man she'd felt safe with." Yet, only
the paragraph before, "she led him by the hand into the shack
and furiously rode him twice." 244 (There's that Jinetera
theme again.). Language itself occupies a lot of Latour's
attention. His character, the Outcast Elliot Steil, tells
some of the extents to which language professionals in Cuba
go to acquire the latest slang and update their vocabulary. I
think I see the results in Latour. Later, Steil pretends to
be monolingual to allow the character some cultural
eavesdropping. Latour regularly reminds us of Steil's
language culture gap, as when Steil hears that "Chapter 11"
might be motive for crime, he has to interrupt to ask what
that means. Readers will suffer, unknown to most, a language
culture gap, too. In Outcast's Cuban communities, "worm"
slips into everyday vocabulary describing unpopular people.
"Gusano," worm in Spanish, is a word that divides the Cubano
population into polar political groups and is an ugly insult.
Perhaps some things are better said in only one
language?
Like so many other Latina and Latino, Chicana and Chicano
writers, Outcast revolves around cultural identity and
culture shock. I found added interest in the novel's stories
and threads of rafters, the irony of US socialized medicine
for certain refugee Cubans but no other Latino or Latina
immigrant, rationing versus abundance, local color, and FBI
agents. But Latino hardboiled? Latino noir? For me, I don't
know enough to say. That's why I'm new hereabouts.
I think perhaps a different poster observed how style makes
one important characteristic of hard boiled and noir fiction.
All things considered, Latour's novel probably joins the
genre. Martin Cruz Smith's backcover blurb calls Latour "a
master of Cuban noir" so obviously I need to hear from folks
how you might cast Outcast's cast of characters and Latour's
pen.
regards, mvs
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