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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Who Was H. G. Carrillo? D. T. Max on a Novelist Whose Fictions Went Too Far
00:32:55
H. G. Carrillo was a writer’s writer—not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” was published. The book, which describes a Cuban-immigrant experience, was hailed as a triumph of Latino fiction; Junot Díaz praised the author’s “formidable” talent, calling his “lyricism pitch-perfect and his compassion limitless.” Carrillo went on to literary positions in and outside of the academy. He was an early casualty of the COVID pandemic, dying in the spring of 2020 at the age of fifty-nine. But his obituary—instead of tying a bow on the historical record—unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that Carrillo had worked for decades to conceal. For two years, the staff writer D. T. Max has been trying to trace what happened, and why.
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- [00:03]
Elena Maria Viramontes
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
- [00:05]
DT Max
A co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.
- [00:09]
David Remnick
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. H.G. carrillo, known as Ache, Carillo was a writer's writer, not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. Carillo was in his mid-40s when his first novel was published, and it's called Loosing My Spanish. It was considered a triumph of Latino fiction. Junot Diaz, among others, praised it very highly. Carillo died In April of 2020, an early casualty of the COVID pandemic. Now, usually after a writer's death, the story is told in obituaries and remembrances, giving a sense of closure and evaluation, tying a bow for the historical record. But after his obituary was published, the story unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that he had worked for decades to conceal. For two years, staff writer DT Max has been trying to trace what happened and why. Here's Dan.
- [01:06]
DT Max
About five months after Aceh Creo died, I went to see his husband, Dennis Van Engelsdorp. You know, Dennis was about 10 years younger, and he's from the Netherlands, and he was an entomologist. His expertise was bees. He was a bee guy. And they had lived in this really, really pretty salmon colored clapboard house in this nice little neighborhood in suburban Washington. So all of this pottery and these.
- [01:32]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Wonderful items, these are things we just bought on ebay and in different places. I mean, I wish I had it displayed better.
- [01:38]
DT Max
No, no. This is the way Aceh had been known for his vibrancy, for his exuberance, for his absolute lust for things and colors and experiences. And I saw that everywhere. When Dennis took me on a tour of the house, for instance, the artwork, the walls were just covered. It was almost like a baroque cathedral. There were so many works of art on the walls, and they were mysterious and vaguely Caribbean in tone.
- [02:00]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Very strong points of view. Art was very important to both of us.
- [02:03]
DT Max
And then books, when we went into his office, the books were piled high, and you could tell they were books he'd read and loved and that they'd been signed by his friends. So this is his office. Oh, with the piano. Wow.
- [02:14]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Yes.
- [02:15]
DT Max
So the office is mostly piano. And there were scores piled high. There were all these. He had been a passionate pianist. He played towards the end of his life, five to eight hours a day, according to Dennis.
- [02:25]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
You want to go outside?
- [02:26]
DT Max
Yeah, I do. I mean, then finally we went out into the garden. Dennis took me, you know, just to walk around the Grounds. And I was surprised to see these flowers, you know. And Dennis explained to me that Ache had been a passionate gardener and that he'd wanted flowers to blossom year round, just like in his native Cuba.
- [02:43]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Now I have to move the whole path, but this starts to bloom in about a month. But it smells. You can smell it on the street. It's so strong. Meeting Ache is one of the best things that ever happened. But it also was my greatest sin, I think, because I was married at the time. When I met Ache, he was at Cornell, he was a PhD student, and I had an affair with him.
- [03:12]
DT Max
At first, their affair didn't last. They tried to put it in the past, but 10 years later, they found each other again. When you said you couldn't get him, you couldn't shake him, tell me what that was. You. I realize it's an emotional state.
- [03:25]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Well, it would be like sometimes you would just be making soup and you'd be wishing you were making soup for him. Like, you know, it's just in those moments, and I mean, Aceh wasn't an easy person, but he saw the world in this different way. I mean, he saw. He searched for beauty in everything. And it's very rare that you meet a mind as entangled and as entangling as his.
- [04:02]
DT Max
Ace's reputation really rests on one novel. It's a book called Loosing My Espanish. And it's a strange sort of wonderful book, a tough one to kind of characterize. It's essentially about a Cuban high school teacher who's in Chicago. And it's a rumination about the past and language and what we lose when we go to a new country, and also, to some extent, what we gain. So the reviews, you know, they were exceptional. And especially the top names in Latino writing seemed to recognize in it something remarkable. For example, Junot Diaz called Aceh's talent formidable. And he said that his lyricism was pitch perfect and his compassion limitless. Aceh started teaching at George Washington University in the late 2000s, and his specialty was, reasonably enough, Latin American literature. When he's there, you know, he's known most of all for his amazing teaching energy. The students love him. After some classes, he gets a standing ovation, and he even does extra work he's not required to do. According to his contract, he teaches a class on Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude simply because he wants to. Now, for Latino students, you know, he showed them something important. He showed them how to cast off an identity that America has imposed on you. And Find out who you truly are. An incredibly important mission, and one that he took very, very seriously. A mentor of his, a professor named Elena Maria Viramontes, remembers how much they admired him.
- [05:33]
Elena Maria Viramontes
When I went to George Washington, there was a group of students, I would say about eight of them, who dressed like he did. They were all. They all wore white shirts, ties, and black trousers. Or I forget if women had worn the skirts or maybe trousers as well, But I thought it was the cutest thing. I thought it was the cutest thing. And I said, is this. You know, I just. I told him, I said, is this a club or something? He says, no, we're just actually students.
- [06:00]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
And how do you have your tea?
- [06:02]
DT Max
Black is fine. Or a little bit of milk if you have it around.
- [06:04]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Okay.
- [06:05]
DT Max
When I was talking to Dennis Aceh's husband, he told me that Ache had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in January 2020, and the treatment had not gone well, and he had to be admitted to the hospital that spring. And there, almost immediately, he tested positive for Covid. So soon after, he's in hospice, and Dennis is sitting with him. And the doctors had told Dennis that Ache couldn't really hear or notice anything anymore. But Dennis decides to play him an album anyway, and the album he chooses is by the Cuban bolero star La Lupe, who had always been one of Aceh's favorites.
- [06:39]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
And he actually, I think, said something. I don't know what he said, but there was obviously something that went on.
- [07:00]
DT Max
After Aceh's death. The Washington Post calls Denis, and they want to do an obituary on Ache, and they ask Denis to tell him about his husband. And Denis gives the story as he knows it now. They'd been a couple for 10 years, but weirdly, and Dennis did find this a little bit strange, he'd never actually spoken to Ache's three siblings in all that time. When Ache had been in the hospital, though, he had found their numbers, and he'd begun to text them updates. And now, once the obituary runs, he sent Susan, Aceh's older sister a link to the piece.
- [07:33]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
And I got a text back that, oh, I see that Ache was as good a storyteller in his fiction as he was about his real life. Or something to that effect.
- [07:41]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Well, what happened? Dennis sent us an article that was coming out in the Washington Post, and I shared it. I shared it with my daughter, shared it with my siblings, got it as well. We're like, oh, really? Are you kidding me? They really think this is all true.
- [08:00]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
And I remember, like, taking an Hour trying to go. What does that mean? Because I'm easily confused by things. Right. So I just thought, am I miss? I just didn't under. I just could not figure. And then I said, well, yeah, I guess there were some things.
- [08:12]
DT Max
This is from the obituary. Carillo was 7 when his father a physician, his mother an educator, and their four children fled Fidel Castro's island in 1967, arriving in Michigan by way of Spain and Florida. Growing up, he was something of a prodigy as a classical pianist. And by his late teens, he was performing widely in the United States and abroad. Now, none of that was true. I mean, except for two small points. Yes, there were four siblings, and it's also true that his mom had been a teacher. Ache H.G. carrillo was in fact born Herman Glenn Carroll in Detroit to two African American public school teachers. He was known as Glenn because his father was also Herman.
- [09:02]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
So here's him and here's me. We're not that much.
- [09:04]
DT Max
I mean, yeah, I flew to Detroit, and when I got there, I met with Susan, Ache's sister, and she pulled out some of the old family photos. Yeah. You know, it's funny. It's. It's hard not to think of him as looking Latino, even though, like, obviously he doesn't. But, you know, it's kind of like, well, a little bit. Oh, you're more.
- [09:26]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Here's when he and I were little, we loved Halloween and dressing up. He's an angel and you're a princess.
- [09:36]
DT Max
Who knew he would grow up to be one of the foremost Latin writers of our time?
- [09:41]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
I don't know what to say about that.
- [09:46]
DT Max
When the kids were little, the family lived in an area called Bagley. But after the riots of 1967, the parents bought a house in a much nicer neighborhood called Sherwood Forest. Susan drove me over to have a look at it.
- [10:00]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Let's see why it's called Sherwood Forest. All the trees.
- [10:03]
DT Max
Oh, yeah. It's a handsome house. White brick, gray shutters. I want to move here. Cute little balconies running in front of the windows. Which was your room? Can you.
- [10:13]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
My room was in the back.
- [10:15]
DT Max
My room had what I could tell. The kids had a pretty good childhood in there, full of lessons and going to camp. In the summer, There were responsibilities. Each kid had their chores. In the winter, they were skating at the neighborhood ice rink in Palmer Park. So do you remember the house as a happy place for you?
- [10:32]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Yeah, absolutely.
- [10:33]
DT Max
And him? It looks like a happy place. Susan remembers Ache as adventurous and talented, and she emphasized for me what Fun it was to have him as an older brother. But every so often, you know, as she remembered, things would go a little bit far. Like, there was the time that he came up with this fake name in school. He insisted that all the teachers and students call him by that name, and he even started signing artwork with it. Now, he could also be competitive, and sometimes that would leave Susan more than a little bit frustrated.
- [11:02]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Well, it was just, you know, he. It was hard growing up with someone so talented, so smart, because anything I did, he could do better. And he used to play the piano. He was really into the piano. So I decided, well, okay, he's playing the piano, so I'm going to play the flute. He had no interest in the flute. And I was working on trying to get this song, and he said, let me see that. So I thought, oh, let me show him how to do something. So I show him how to hold the flute. And he goes, now what are you trying to do? And I showed him what I was trying to do, and he played it perfectly. And I was like, okay, I'm done with the flute. And after that, he really enjoyed playing the flute.
- [11:54]
DT Max
You know, one of the questions people have about Ache is, why leave your old identity behind? Does he ever talk about race with you, about being black?
- [12:04]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
Well, it's. In black communities, it's a constant. We had a strong sense of our culture and our family. Both my parents were educators, so we had a strong background as far as our history and where we came from, especially in the 60s, you know, my parents and uncles and aunts with the big Afros and talking about the Black Panthers and Angela Davis and what do.
- [12:39]
DT Max
You think his response to the black culture in the house in the 60s?
- [12:43]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
He was right there with us. It was positive. It was no different. He had no shame in being a black man. Now, did he just want to be a black man from Detroit? Apparently not. He wanted to be a black man from Cuba with an African who knows?
- [13:07]
David Remnick
We'll continue with the story of Ache Carillo in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. DT Max. Dan Max has been reporting for the New Yorker on the life of the writer H.G. carrillo, known as Ache Carrillo. He was celebrated for a novel about the Cuban American immigrant experience. Before the break, we heard that after Carillo died, it came out that his very identity had been a creation, a fiction. Carillo wasn't a Cuban immigrant. He wasn't Latino at all. Dan Max Picks up the story here.
- [13:57]
DT Max
Here's where it gets a little bit weird. You know, I've been looking at Taje's life for almost two years and I still don't entirely understand exactly when it happens. But at some point, the stories start to take over. I mean, he'd always been an amusing storyteller and I don't think his friends had always believed him. But there's really a change that goes on now. And there are a lot of examples of how far he starts taking these lies. For instance, with one boyfriend, he says that he had had a child with a French woman. So that's a little bit odd, but he goes beyond that. He actually shows the boyfriend greeting cards signed by the child. And then with his mother, his own mother, he tells his mother he's adopted a seven year old violin prodigy named Guillermo. And he's so convincing that his poor mother sends Christmas gifts for the child from Detroit. But then all the lies begin to coalesce around a single foundational story. And that story is that he was in fact born in Cuba and he is Latino. This story really gets started when he goes to DePaul University in Chicago. So he's an undergrad, but he's already almost 40. And he's had plenty of time to think about his life and to make up a new one. It's around this time that he meets Another student at DePaul, a young woman who's interested in exploring her Latin roots. And ache becomes friends with her and says, well, guess what? I'm exploring my Latin roots too. And together they take tango lessons at a local folk school and do things like that. Remember, this is the mid-90s. This is the Buena Vista Social Club era. I mean, it's at its absolute peak. This is an album of Afro Cuban classics, extraordinary music. It's kind of a revival of a period and of a culture that had almost been forgotten. Well, it's not forgotten in the mid-90s, in fact, just everywhere. I mean, all you need to do is hear the first couple of bars and you go, oh, no, that one again. For Aceh, I think this, this represents a kind of a moment where he can finally join something as large and passionate and charismatic as he is. And also popular. I mean, Ace always wanted to be popular. And suddenly he's. He's in touch with the most popular cultural movement of the moment. It's at this point that he applies for a joint MFA PhD program at Cornell. And when he applies, he talks a lot about his Latin background. Everything about him now bespeaks a certain kind of Cubaness. I mean, the language that he interjects into his English, the cultural references he makes. He even puts on those loose shirts in the summer that are vaguely Cuban or Caribbean. Helena Maria Viramontes, who was in the Comparative Literature department at Cornell, and she herself is Mexican American. I asked her, and she told me there was no doubt in her mind that he was Latino.
- [17:09]
Elena Maria Viramontes
You know, he told me that he had spent the summer with a crate of mangoes that slowly began to rot so that he could smell and feel like he was back in the tropics. And I thought, how ingenious is that? You know, that's how ingenious he is. And when I read and it was the chapter, I think it was at that time, called the Santiago Boy, I just was blown away. I was just blown away that I didn't even really think of the name Carol or, you know, I didn't think about that because it was like. It was such so beautifully written, so powerfully imagined, so playful, but also so devastating.
- [17:52]
DT Max
While he's at Cornell, he writes much of his debut novel, Loosing My is Spanish. And by 2003, which is just shortly before the book is published, he legally changed his name to H.G. carrillo. H in Spanish is Ache.
- [18:08]
Elena Maria Viramontes
Yes, there was, you know, clumsiness of his Spanish, but, I mean, I'm clumsy in my Spanish. There's generations of us that. That. That mix Spanish, you know what I mean? So when. When Edmond was saying dato, when he was saying cabron, when he was saying these. These words that are. That are Mexican Spanish, it didn't bother me. Didn't bother me one bit, Elena.
- [18:34]
DT Max
Did he? I think I remember you were saying he made you a meal once. Is that.
- [18:37]
Elena Maria Viramontes
Oh, yes, yes. Several meals. When, you know, when he stayed with me a few days at. At. At our house. And, you know, they were very involved meals, but he knew them by heart. He'd just get these big pots and pour this and pour that and do this and saute this. But the one that we remember, my daughter and I, is the flan that he made.
- [18:59]
DT Max
Did he, you know, say he learned it from his grandmother, or was it all sort of vague how he had become a.
- [19:04]
Elena Maria Viramontes
He always talked about how these were recipes coming from his family. Yeah.
- [19:14]
DT Max
It'S pretty obvious that when you have a tower of lies this tall, it's sooner or later going to collapse. And actually, I think it's kind of amazing that Ache maintained this fiction successfully until his death. But eventually, yes, the lies are revealed. Now, for me, what's touching and wonderful is who's responsible. It's his niece. It's Susan's daughter, Jessica.
- [19:38]
Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
One of my best, fondest memories is going to Chicago. And he had a reception at his eclectic apartment in Chicago full of stuff. And he made the most amazing goat cheese pizza.
- [19:56]
DT Max
Jessica knew that Uncle Glenn called himself Ache, you know, but the thing is, for the family, it was kind of a joke. He even asked some of his nieces and nephews to call him Tio Ache, and they did. You know, it was just Uncle Glenn being weird and fun and silly. This out of town, glamorous relative come for a visit. Losing Maya Spanish comes out in 2004, and the family gets a copy. They open it up and they look at the acknowledgments, and they're amused, possibly amazed, to find that Susan, Christopher and Maria are now Susanna, Chris Dobal, and still Maria. But they think, oh, that's just our brother making a name for himself in the literary world. He's always been a character.
- [20:41]
Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
I never felt like we lost touch, but we even reconnected when Grandma, his mom, was sick because he came more often. Like once a month. Glenn was hanging out with me and my family. Oh, how fun, dude at the house. So my son even has funny stories, you know, of Glenn, which is awesome.
- [21:03]
DT Max
You know, it's all fine with the family while Ache's alive, but when Jessica reads the obit in the Washington Post, it doesn't seem so funny to her anymore. Sorry, we should have brought some tissues.
- [21:19]
Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
Um, he's just an amazing person, and he lived an amazing life. So when I saw the. When I read the article, and I'm like, this is complete lie. Like, not even close. And I was so shocked that, yes, there's always been drops of, you know, something going on in the Wikipedia page and Achicarillo, but I always thought Meemaw were talking, you know, talking about it. We thought reporters would actually do their research, would dig a little more, would dig, would ask for pictures, you know.
- [21:59]
DT Max
To correct the record. She puts a short online comment under the Post obituary. She says, I'm Ache Carrillo's niece. He was born Herman Glencarroll, and we called him Glenn. And then she goes on, I cannot correct all the lies in this article, and tags it with the hashtag fakenews. She also sends an email to the Obitz author, and by the next day, the Washington Post has amended the article. And finally, Ache's double life lays exposed.
- [22:30]
Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
You know, I guess not that many people, or maybe they do, you know, know, love, like our family. You know, people are like, didn't you ask? And I don't know why. We just. You accept someone for who they are. You know what I mean? And you love them anyways, you know, so.
- [22:51]
Susan (Ache Carrillo's sister)
But you're not foolish about it.
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DT Max
Yeah.
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Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
You're not foolish. We knew, you know, that's where we're like, okay, you're married. Okay, sure. Maybe he saved the honeybees. Wow, that's a catch. Sure. You know, he's from Sweden. Okay.
- [23:06]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
You know.
- [23:09]
DT Max
And again, they could be separate answers, but. So why do you think he. Why do you think he did put on this whole second personality? What's your answer as a niece?
- [23:21]
Jessica (Ache Carrillo's niece)
I don't know. I don't. I'm sorry. I don't know. Because when we. I almost wish he didn't. Because then we could have enjoyed him more, you know what I mean? And had more time with him.
- [23:45]
DT Max
I talked to a lot of people for this piece, maybe maybe 50. And everyone made sense of the story in their own way. For example, the family. For the family, it was just Glen living the way he had had to live, the way he was almost destined to live from when he was a little kid playing dress up with his sister. To the extent they blamed anyone, I'd say they blamed journalists, they blamed the institutions. They really couldn't believe that no one had held him accountable. I mean, they knew the truth the whole time. Now, for others, this is a darker tale. This is a story of a pathological liar or somebody with some undiagnosed or underdiagnosed mental condition who left an extraordinary trail of pain in his wake. There were plenty of ex boyfriends I spoke to who were still trying to sort it out. Was he actually dating them and not dating someone else? Was his father really president of college? Was he from Cuba? For students, I think students are a special group because I think the students felt they were being led by a Latino person into a truer understanding and a more powerful sense of themselves as Latinos in America. And to find out that your teacher wasn't Latino at all, well, that's a really painful lie to experience when you're a student. I mean, it's also a different kind of lesson. But most of all, you feel tricked, and you were tricked. Dennis, though Ache's husband, had probably the softest and most empathetic take that. I heard.
- [25:14]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
I think I got the best of him. I'm really proud to know him. I'm really sorry it cost Some people, the pain that it did, like, I don't know how to equate that, but that's also not mine to figure out for me. And I think anyone who ever met him as ache he was actually, there was no sinister, there was nothing that was him being the best person he could be. And I think that's a great thing and I'm proud of him for doing it.
- [25:37]
DT Max
To be honest, Dennis told me that there were always hints, you know, things that didn't seem to add up. And they were. They were things that for whatever reason, he didn't press, he didn't. He didn't cross examine the way you can when you're full of doubt or concern. He put it this way to me, he said, I saw what I wanted to see. And for him, Aceh had truly become someone else in a way. He'd become someone he was always entitled to be.
- [26:03]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
He really would be very adamant about the fact that culture was performance. That's what he'd say. He'd watch those shows, you know, those TV shows of I can't stand them, where people did crimes and then became other people in another show. And there was one show I remember watching, and it wasn't like the person just did it for no apparent reason. Yeah. And I'd say, wow, that's sort of strange. He says, why is that strange? Maybe they just wanted to, like, you know, it was just like, like, like.
- [26:29]
DT Max
He even brought up Rachel Dolezal, who's.
- [26:31]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
The woman who pretended she was black.
- [26:32]
DT Max
But not the one in Spokane.
- [26:34]
Dennis Van Engelsdorp
Yes. And he was like, no. I mean, if, if you want to be like, there's no biology and there is no genetic difference. There's no such thing biologically as race. So it has to be a cultural construct. And if it's cultural, then it's performance.
- [26:53]
DT Max
Obviously, it's one thing for Dennis, who's white, to say these things, but it should be pointed out that for many Cuban writers, the experience was very different. They told me that they felt Aceh had distorted their history and culture and maybe even mocked it. You know, identity is such a fraught topic right now. There's really nothing that we have more trouble talking about, and at the same time, nothing we want to talk about more. So it's not surprising that Ace's story got taken up in popular conversation with the usual lines being drawn. Conservatives, for instance, wanted to know, well, would a white professor have been so easily forgiven? And I also spoke to Helena Maria Virmantes, Aceh's friend, the Chicana writer And Professor Cornell and I asked her what she thought. I'm curious, you know, how it changes, if it changes the way you read his work, you know.
- [27:48]
Elena Maria Viramontes
No, it doesn't. Not at all. Not at all. I mean, I still look at the. I still look at the lushness, the playfulness. I still marvel at it. I still marvel at its. At it. At its power to tell these incredible stories. So I think that. I think he has captured a certain authenticity of. I don't say. How could I even begin to say of the Cuban culture? I can't, and I will not do that. But there is something about the characters within these pages that speak, a consciousness and a sensibility that is real.
- [28:27]
DT Max
If he had appropriated or embodied or infused himself with Mexican American culture, would you have a different response? Does that change. Would that change it for you?
- [28:40]
Elena Maria Viramontes
I don't think so. I don't think so. I think when you're talking about appropriation, when you're talking about that, these are, I think, more questions that we need to examine in greater light. We need to spend more time really, really thinking these things through than just making these judgmental statements about, you know, if. If you're not that person, you know, if you're not from that culture. Because I myself right now, I have written about a Sikh man, I have written about a Filipino man. I have written about an indigenous woman. And if I believed that I was appropriating, I wouldn't pick up another. I wouldn't write. I would refuse to write.
- [29:23]
DT Max
I mean, Elena, certainly the question about who has the right to write about whom is a complicated question. I do think that we have to think of ACE as a case apart. He, for instance, took a job at George Washington University that was, in effect, it was earmarked for Latin American specialists, but it was. I mean, obviously their expectation was a Latin American. Latin American specialist. So, you know, somebody didn't get the job. But, I mean, in the broadest sense, you know, what does it mean when someone becomes, you know, not just a writer, but a voice and a representative of a history or a community that isn't their own?
- [30:12]
Elena Maria Viramontes
That's a good question, Daniel. I mean, I think that's what's been plaguing a number of us as to, you know, its. It's frustrating, it's intriguing. Why he did what he did.
- [30:29]
DT Max
I don't really know, and I don't think anyone really knows whether Glenn Carroll ultimately became H.G. carrillo. But when I spoke to Helena, who knew him pretty well, she was sure of this much she told me, if you want to know ache, I mean, if you really want to know ache, look for him in his writing. Because even if the person was in many senses a fraud, the writing, she says, is real.
- [30:58]
Elena Maria Viramontes
His story is not victimless. I mean, there are victims here involved. But at the same time, you have all these other stories of Achi's impact because of his love. And so going back to the literature, going back to the work that he did, it, you know, by and large, it was always about love. It was always about heart. It was, it was, it was always the exploration of the human heart and how we can exist, how we can exist and love each other in complicated and profoundly disturbing ways.
- [31:44]
David Remnick
The novelist whose Inventions Went Too Far is the title of DT Max's story about HG Korea or Glenn Carroll. You can read the piece@newyorker.com I'm David Remnick and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
- [32:09]
Narrator/Producer
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Breda Green, Adam Howard, Kalalea, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell and Ingofen and Putabwele, with guidance from Emily Bottin and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Michael May, David Gable and Meher Bhatia. Special assistance this week from Adam Presley and from WNYC's Ave Carrillo. No relation to Ache Carrillo. The new Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Churina Endowment Fund.