The Half-Life of a Lapsed Ex-Fisher

Abstract

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 15 top photo : fiona bazter ( lickr . com / fiona _ baxter ) author photo : suzanne steele Last names weigh heavily and are important in Latin America, and Luiselli doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Being a middle-class Mexican, from a family of uneducated European migrants who arrived in Mexico City in the early twentieth century, mixed with “indigenous ” Mexicans, and never really “made it,” it was somehow expected of me to finish what my ancestors had started. It was a kind of duty passed on to me. Those before me had worked their necks off so my generation could have a better life. They went through wars and revolutions, they worked since they were six or seven years old, they sustained families of up to ten to twelve children—and still found time to do social service: they were heroic in a way that my generation would never be able to even come close to. So yes, I grew up with a sense of duty toward my ancestors, a sense of having to live up to their expectations , even if most of them died before I was born. I don’t think my late grandparents would care much for any of my accomplishments as a writer. “She writes these strange little experimental books that she then has to overexplain,” they probably say to each other, full of irony, wherever they are. But they would all proudly think of me as someone who finally went to a good school. NR: Do you think you’ll ever translate someone else’s work? If so, what author and book would you like to work on? VL: About ten years ago I translated several poems by Galway Kinnell. I published my translations of a few of his poems in magazines but never managed to convince anyone to publish an entire book. When he died last year, I wallowed in a sense of having failed him. I had met him when, in my early twenties, I interviewed him and told him I would take his work to Spanish readers. I never did, really. I still think The Book of Nightmares is a masterpiece, a testimony of the atrocities of twentieth-century wars and the desolation they left behind them. I was also about to translate Anne Carson’s Nox into Spanish, but my editors at Sexto Piso never managed to buy the rights to the book. I would have loved to work with her writing. She is one of the few writers I admire fully, without any reservations. Kinnell used to say that translation was a way of allowing someone to influence and change you as a writer. I would have loved to let Carson’s work enter my own and leave an imprint there. September 2015 The Half-Life of a Lapsed Ex-Fisher by Stephanie McKenzie i He once sold a portion of himself to a fish packing plant, slipped in the crates of the headless and dressed when all eyes were bludgeoned. Cloudy. Between the jagged tooth of dogfish he placed the holy gift of tongues, crescent moons from whoring acts. He wished to sail to Denmark or Japan, swear with sailors there. ii Righteous in ghettos he cast anchors deep in wet sidewalks. Fish twisted like humans, reeked of truth on the ground. Some fell on their knees in frozen fish sections, cast nets to catch loonies or bills. He tossed coins in the hold of a bus, snarled “float me the hell outa here.” His eyes cut steaks out of them. Stephanie McKenzie (stephaniemaymckenzie.com) has published three books of poetry, all with Salmon Poetry (Cliffs of Moher, Ireland). Recently, McKenzie received first place for her poetry in Room Magazine’s 2015 fiction and poetry contest. ...