The Year I Went Away (El año que me fui)

Local artist and author receives large turnout for book reading at MOLAA

By Melina Paris, Assistant Editor

Last month, Jorge Schneider, Argentinian author and artist based out of Los Angeles, took listeners on an adventure during a book reading of his most recent novel El año que me fui, at the Museum of Latin American Art or MOLAA. A psychological thriller, El año que me fui is the story of protagonist Julio Von Artens who gets lost in Buenos Aires and discovers the true inhabitants of the city — and the reality he knows begins to dissolve.

With his wife, Alejandra, Jorge owns and operates the Menduina/Schneider Gallery in San Pedro, which specializes in Latin American art.

For this event, the book was read both in English and Spanish by the book publisher Stephen Bramble and the author respectively, with a Q&A hosted by Martin Lucas. Sonidos Nómadas provided entertainment after the book reading with a performance of Tzompantli, its debut album of hard-hitting Mexican psychedelia.

Several months before his book release, I spoke to Jorge about his previous novels and about the stories he writes. He has also authored La sombra de la langosta (2004) and La grieta (2011) or The Fracture on a very good imprint (brand or trade name of a press that is owned by a larger publisher) in Argentina and throughout the Spanish speaking world. His prior novel, La sombra de la langosta, resides in a library in Germany and Lucas: An Adventure of the Spirit (2000) is his first book in English.

For a while he didn’t publish because he didn’t find a publishing house that he liked — or they wanted to change the manuscript too much. But ZQ-287 Press, a small label publishing house in Oakland and Long Beach, gave him the freedom to do as he feels. Started by Stephen Bramble, who is an author himself, Jorge said Bramble is trying to keep the literary world alive in Long Beach and Southern California.

Jorge has written 13 books, all literary fiction on the human condition. For El año que me fui, Jorge said he immersed himself in the human condition and tried to find how every character impacts the life of his main character, Julio.

The book reading gathered a large crowd. Argentinian writer and journalist, Martin Lucas, who interviewed Jorge, was also the director of the Argentinian Public Broadcasting System. He now lives and works in Long Beach. Lucas called El año que me fui a great story of a middle-aged man struggling with his own ghosts and demons.

During their discussion, Jorge said it was never a conscious decision for him to become a writer.

“No one wants to be a writer, “ Jorge said. “You have to sit down and get inside your brain and you might not like the things you find. I had to write … to understand myself, even though I don’t understand myself. That’s the fun part.”

“When you read, the meaning is universal,” Jorge said. “If you understand that, that’s when you go beyond the book and you understand the author. It could be a songwriter too, or a painter.”

El año que me fui contains similar psychological topics. Lucas asked him if these topics are common in Jorge’s writing.

“Yes, it’s the endless question,” he said. “It doesn’t have an answer so, you formulate the same questions five years down the road and you get another story, another book … because you live longer, the answer changes.”

He compared it to moving through a maze but without impeding whatever labyrinth you’re getting into. But there’s no way out.

“If I find a way out, I wouldn’t understand anything because I would think that I hold the tools. And that’s impossible.”

Jorge’s writing has to do more with the feeling of his character. He’s not concerned about the answer to the story but about the road it takes. That’s what the person feels. He said it’s not about whatever the holy grail might be but what is taking you there that remains seductive; or that you can never find. That’s what shapes a person.

Lucas noted one of the most interesting aspects he found about Jorge’s book is how he describes the city of Buenos Aires. He asked him to tell the audience more about this city.

“Argentine people stay in Buenos Aires,” he said. “For me a city is not a city. I am the city. I’m part of the city. When I left Buenos Aires, a piece of Buenos Aires left the city — that was me. In the book, the city is a metaphor for what’s going on within the person who lives there. All that the city has is a reflection of the inhabitants of the city and not the other way around. You’re never a reflection of where you live. Where you live is a reflection of who you are. Because the citizens make the character of the city. The city is within me in my own conception.”

While reading the book, Lucas said many images came to his mind like he was watching a movie.

“To me everything is an image,” Jorge said. “ Whatever comes into my mind comes through my eyes … I see the world the way little kids see it. Like the word table, I see the table first, not the word first. So … for good or for bad that’s what makes this story spring off the page and come alive.”

Lucas proposed a challenge for the author. He asked him to describe this story. Don’t tell me the story, he said. But tell me anything else about the story.

“A snowball of feelings,” Jorge

[See Writer, p. 11] igas is a crumby dish. Literally. The word means “crumbs” in Spanish. It’s also an Iberian recipe that was once popular with hunters and mountain people in the south Spain and Portugal, from where it made its way to Mexico and Texas, made differently wherever it took hold. Migas is a method as much as a recipe, a way to use stale bread, and later, old tortillas.

In the original European version of migas, breadcrumbs were fried in olive oil with garlic and parsley, peppers, tomatoes and chorizo, and served with eggs on top. In Mesoamerica, stale tortillas made of corn and flour replaced bread, but the idea remained the same.

When I first tried corn chip migas, I realized that I would never have to worry about the dregs of a bag of corn chips again. What a relief!

And you don’t have to wait until the bag is nearly gone to make migas. There’s no law against whole chip migas. When made with unbroken corn triangles, the dish is can be almost nacho-esque.

There are as many ways to cook migas as