Lost in the Supermarxist: The Appeal of Pepe Carvalho

Lost in the Supermarxist: The Appeal of Pepe Carvalho Kevin O'Donnell is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Richmond, where he teaches Spanish and Basque. His research focuses on politics, literature and culture in contemporary Spain, particufaly the impact ofthe Spanish Civil War. He has published articles on the autobiography of Dolores Ibárruri and on nonviolence in the Sintel labor conflict and is currently completing an oral history of a Spanish Republican family exiled in Mexico. The 1972 novel Yo maté a Kennedy launched a literary character, the detective Pepe Carvalho, which by 1990 made Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (19392003 ) Spain's most widely read novelist. The Carvalho series later grew to 25 releases, and a new installment was usually only outsold by a new book by the likes of Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Commercial success aside, the series also garnered much critical attention, thus assuring its place in the literary history of post-Franco Spain. Contemporary Spanish literature has been characterized by its markerability, aided by its broad appeal and its frequent adherence to popular genres. Yet critics ofthe Carvalho series have thus far overlooked the series' relationship with the literary marketplace. In this essay, I will account for some ofthe extra-literary factors which have contributed to Carvalho's commercial triumph and reflect on the series' ideological function as a consumer product. Back when the series began, its ascendancy was far from guaranteed. The initial press run ofthe 1974 novel Tatuaje, the first full-blown detective novel by Vázquez Montalbán, was a mere 2,500 copies. Written on a dare from a friend in a period of 15 days, the book was not even taken seriously, at least initially, by Vázquez Montalbán himself (Hart 95). The reading public greeted the book with surprise because its straightforward narrative style represented a radical shift in the trajectory ofthe author, identified with the "high-brow" techniques ofthe literary experimentalism in vogue in Spain at the time.1 And worse still, it pertained to a genre, detective fiction, which had long suffered particular scorn from Spanish intellectuals. In just five years time, however, the powerful Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 9, 2005 138 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Editorial Planeta would bestow the Premio Planeta on the fourth book in the series, Los mares del Sur, and publish the novel with an initial print run of 300,000 copies (Vázquez Montalbán, "No escribo" 334-35). Part of the success of the series was undoubtedly due to die high public profile of irs author. A longtime member of the PSUC, the Catalan branch of rhe Spanish Communist Party, Vázquez Montalbán was deeply engaged in politics, as evidenced by his presence at demonstrations and his statements in support of a variety of causes. His weekly column in the country's most widely read newspaper, El Pais, brought him further visibility and occasionally he even made political news himself, as he did with his visit with Subcomandante Marcos in Mexico in 1999. His campaigning, along with Bernardo Atxaga and José Saramago, for Esker Batua (United Left) in the Basque regional elections of May 2001 further confirmed Vázquez Montalbán as a throwback to the French public intellectual. The series also benefited from what has been referred to as the "normalization" of the Spanish literary market, that is, the tendency for Spanish readers to read Spanish , rather than foreign authors. From 1980 to 1990, for example, the number of books published by Spanish writers quintupled, and by 1990 the Spanish publishing industry could boast ofthe release of one fiction title per day, a rate on par with that of new fiction in France (Schumacher 13). Part of the normalization process was what many have referred to as a "boom" in Spanish detective fiction from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. While Spanish readers as a whole were turning toward homegrown writers, Spanish mystery readers, who had long been accustomed to works imported from France, Britain and the U.S., had very few mystery writers of quality to turn to in the Spanish context. Then along came Pepe Carvalho...