Reputations
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Bloomsbury, £14.99
Review by Nick Major
ONE problem for the political satirist is the upholding of their own moral authority, or at least the appearance of it. It is difficult to attack another person’s character when your own is compromised. Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s new novel, Reputations, digs down into the heart of this sticky dilemma. Javier Mallarino is Columbia’s most feared and admired political cartoonist. Unlike the people he has spent his life skewering with the pen, his life has given him a physical anonymity that means he can walk through the streets of Bogota without anyone batting an eyelid. It also protects him against violent threats from those whose power he has undermined. Mallarino’s moral reputation is so firmly enmeshed with his artistic integrity that he has lost friends and family in the service of art.
Now in his sixties, his work has been powerful enough to "cause the repeal of a law, overturn a judge’s decision, bring down a mayor or seriously threaten the stability of a ministry, and all this with no other weapon than paper and Indian ink." Any political elite would want to find some way to launch a counter-attack against such a man. There are a few tried and tested tactics. Some politicians buy caricatures of themselves to hang in their bathrooms. In Reputations, the state decide to put the gigantic Columbian machinery of sycophancy into action to create a public homage to the man they fear. Although Mallarino agrees to attend, he sees right through the establishment’s game.
As it turns out, not all publicity is good publicity. After the event, Mallarino is approached by a young female journalist called Lamanta Teal. He agrees to her request for an interview. Once she is in his house she tells him who she really is. Mallarino is forced to remember a few days from his past when he helped destroy the career of a puerile conservative congressman called Adolfo Cuellar. Lamanta’s determination to find out how this man has been implicated in her life forces Mallarino to reflect on the moral imperatives behind his own work, past and present.
Earlier in the book, Mallarino makes a speech to the adoring masses. He says that "political cartoons might exaggerate reality, but they can’t invent it. They can distort, but never lie". It is this porous border territory between lies in the real world and artistic distortion that Vasquez explores with a deft hand. We are invited into the satirist’s mind, and in pellucid prose we discover the nuances of thought, the doubts and assertions that go on behind the shell of moral fortitude. Vasquez has a searching style, which prods at the past and uncovers memories. For Mallarino, it is a strain on the present "to remember something important, to remember something banal, but always to remember, that’s what we all devote ourselves to all the time, that’s where our meagre energies go."
But Reputations is also a fascinating portrait of an artist. We discover the daily rituals and the aesthetic furniture of Mallarino’s life. On the wall of his study is a quote from Ricardo Rendon describing the political cartoon as "a stinger dipped in honey", and a series famous caricatures by Daumier and Gillray. Mallarino has a subtle understanding of his art form, his knowledge accumulated as a result of working day after day, year upon year, in the same vein. Caricature operates through a subversive magic. It can open wounds in the present and shape the images of future history. ‘"It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," says the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, a quote that haunts the cartoonist throughout the book.
Reputations continues Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s preoccupation with how the political can infiltrate the personal. His novel The Sound of Things Falling was about drug trafficking in Columbia. His debut, The Informers, looked back to South America in World War Two. At under two hundred pages, Reputations is a short novel, but a deeply engaging and well-crafted one. It pleases sentence by long, looping sentence, and explores an array of ideas, from the pains of memory to the moral complexities of a life lived as a rebel with a cause.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here