Young Cubans discover 'tropical Bukowski' online

Описание: (31 Mar 2023)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Havana, Cuba - 15 March 2023
1. Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, standing up and walking towards a bookshelf at his studio
2. Gutiérrez picking a book
3. Gutiérrez signing a book
4. Gutiérrez sitting at his working desk during an interview with The Associated Press
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Cuban writer:
"It is quite clear to me. I am not doing politics. I am leaving a memory of the time and place in which I have lived."
6. Gutiérrez listening to questions
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Cuban writer:
"I arrived in Centro Habana (the neighbourhood, main setting of his firsts stories) when I was 36 years old, and I was amazed by what I saw there. I was a normal, ordinary, middle-class journalist with a car, a family, and a son. With this and that. And I was quite shocked about what I saw there."
8. Gutiérrez published books lying on his desk
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Cuban writer
"I am very grateful towards life because I have been able to write the books I wanted, the way I wanted, and publish them. Even here in Cuba, where I have had the hardest time publishing them."
10. Gutiérrez reading at his house's porch
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Cuban writer:
"I moved away from the political pamphlets and occasional references because I am more interested in the human being. That is what got my attention, always. The characteristics of the human being pushed to crucial situations. What happens to a person when confronted with an extreme case? What would they do? Which path would you take? Commit suicide? Or go ahead. But how could he succeed? So, (each book) it's like an anthropological study of an area, of a specific neighbourhood."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Havana, Cuba - 21 March 2023
12. High view of the Centro Habana neighbourhood
13. Gutiérrez entering to the building where he lives

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Havana, Cuba - 15 March 2023
14. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Cuban writer:
"Good people are not good for literature. What is good for literature are poisonous people with problems, and difficulties, serial killers, bad people, demonic people, and people who live in hell. Nobody is interested in stories about good people. As simple as that, because it is boring."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Havana, Cuba - 21 March 2023
14. Various Gutiérrez looking on from his terrace
STORYLINE:
Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, who became internationally famous with his 1998's "Dirty Havana Trilogy", had only a few copies published in Cuba.

At almost 50, the publication of "Trilogy" resulted in the termination of his journalist job at the state-owned magazine Bohemia.

But in recent years, his work began to appear in the short run locally, thanks to his growing popularity among the younger generation of internet-connected Cubans.

Known as the tropical Bukowski, his books depict a different Havana from the one the government wants to project to the world.

With underground themes, eroticism and the use of everyday language to the point of coarseness, he transgressed the revolutionary parameters of the time, which pursued to show a Cuba without fissures, a lighthouse of social welfare, mass education and health for all.

"What is good for literature are the poisonous people with problems, and difficulties, serial killers, bad people, demonic people, and people who live in hell. Nobody is interested in stories about good people. As simple as that, because it is boring." said Gutiérrez to The Associated Press.





AP Video by Osvaldo Angulo



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