"Just because you're paranoid...
The Shape of the Ruins. Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean. New York: Riverhead Books, 2018. 513 pages.
…doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
For my generation, Gen-X, conspiracy theories hit the mainstream in the ’90s with the X-files: the truth was out there and every week Scully and Mulder inched closer to it. In the decades prior there were Elvis sightings, UFOs flying over Area 51, questions about who really killed JFK and whether the moonwalk happened in space or on a Pasadena sound stage, -- but these were sensationalist, mostly harmless, stories peddled by supermarket tabloids which no one took seriously. At least, not publicly. But after 9/11 the conspiracy theories became uglier, more pervasive, and have only grown more paranoid, racist, and histrionic in the years since. Speculation about a second shooter on the grassy knoll has escalated to pizza parlor pedophiles and government insurrections.
Some conspiracy theories remain perennial favorites. Like dragons, they appear in almost every culture. For example, the whispering that happens after the assassination of a powerful and popular public figure. Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The Shape of the Ruins is an award winning novel1 that combines fictional documents and real history to tell the stories of the assassinations of two charismatic Columbian politicians, occurring decades apart.
Vásquez, who enjoys writing himself into his own novels, is both the first-person narrator and protagonist of The Shape of the Ruins. He is pulled into a world of overlapping conspiracy theories after being introduced at a party to a strange, obsessive man named Carlos Carballo. Carballo believes that the details of the murder of 1940’s Columbian Socialist Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayalar (a real person and event) were covered up. The alleged murderer killed by an angry mob without revealing his reasons and rumors placed an “elegant man” at the scene. Much like American conspiracy theorists dissect the Kennedy assassinations, believing Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan didn’t act alone, Gaitán’s death remains a source of speculation in his home country. And both Vásquez and his host share Carballo’s interest (if not obsession) with what happened. Carballo wants his new friend to write a book on the subject, containing new evidence which he, Carballo, has compiled through years of research. He goes to far as to claim that they share a mutual acquaintance, an important Columbian writer who had begun work on a draft of the book before he died. Vásquez -- after deciding Carballo is lying, histrionic, or most likely both, -- declines.
Several years pass. Our author/narrator moves to Europe and becomes a successful writer. But when he finally returns to Columbia, he finds himself pulled back into Carballo’s orbit. The man now hosts a late night call-in radio show devoted to conspiracy theories. He resumes his wooing of Vásquez, who for reasons of his own is more amenable this time. Carballo invites him onto his show, where Vásquez takes questions and abuse from the callers. Afterward, Carballo introduces Vásquez to another conspiracy theory popular among his “night owl” listeners. The killing of General Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1907 (also a real person and event) bears some similarities to the Gaitán case, not least being Uribe’s position as a popular leader of the Liberal Party. Slowly, over the remaining course of the novel, Vázquez is convinced to take up Carballo’s cause. The result, it is implied, is the book we now hold in our hands.
That’s what the past is: a tale, a tale constructed over another tale, an artifice of verbs and nouns where we might be able to capture human pain, fear of death and eagerness to live, homesickness while battling in the trenches, worry for the soldier who has gone to the fields of Flanders and who might already be dead when we remember him.
The Shape of the Ruins is burdened by an overly complicated structure and plot. It can drag. Readers are subjected to multiple versions of the Gaitán assassination, as well as a manuscript written by the lawyer hired by the Uribe family to identify and prosecute the people responsible for General Uribe’s death. We’re asked to sit through several conversations explaining why our narrator, his friends, Carballo, their fathers, and, ultimately, an entire nation, are obsessed with the events of April 9, 1948 – the fateful day Gaitán was killed.
For those able to stay the course, though, The Shape of the Ruins has moments of magic. Vásquez is a strong stylist, and the rhythm of his prose is wonderfully soothing. His investigations into the seductive nature of conspiracy theories and obsession, which he beautifully interweaves with his narrative, are insightful. These meditations on how conspiracies are shaped out of a human need to pull meaning from loss; how they provide a sense of purpose and call to action among those who feel irrelevant and powerless; and bestow upon the conspiracy theorist a kind of status as one who sees what everyone else does not; -- all create an elegant backdrop to the messy historical events we are forced to navigate with our hero.
There are also sociological theories at work in The Shape of the Ruins, carried over from Vásquez’s previous novel, The Sound of Things Falling. The author/narrator explains that in the latter novel he attempted to settle “debts with the violence it had fallen me to live through”, and in the former he has come to understand that “our violences are not only the ones we had to experience, but also the others, those that came before” which form a kind of inheritance that we receive “without the benefit of an inventory”. The Shape of the Ruins is about the intangible cultural heritage fathers hand down to their sons, parents their children and a country to its citizens. These days we all struggle with what it means to be a part of a nation, a member of a collective formed around geography, shared customs, and inherited historical complicities. The Shape of the Ruins was originally written in 2015 and, like most things viewed in hindsight, feels prescient. The truth is that the themes Vásquez is exploring, like conspiracy theories themselves, are evergreen.
Other Recommendations: The Shape of the Ruins reminds me of Mark Helprin’s 1995 Memoirs From Antproof Case, a favorite novel of mine I don’t get to talk about as often as I would like. If you’re familiar with Helprin you’ll know that he tends to write these sweeping, historical sagas steeped in magical realism, which follow his characters as they move through events of the 20th century like members of Odysseus’ crew trying to get home. Refiner’s Fire, Memoirs From Antproof Case, and A Winter’s Tale are all just variations on this theme. While A Winter’s Tale is the best known, to my mind Memoirs From Antproof Case is Helprin at his best. It’s narrated by an old man, living out his final years in Brazil with his much younger wife and their son. He’s writing down the story of his life and putting it into a metal case to protect it from the ants. In this way, he is preserving his experiences and memories for his son, who is still a child, to read after he is gone. One of the protagonist’s many peculiarities is his obsessive hatred of coffee, which comes up again and again, in unprovoked rants. Not until the final chapter is this seemingly minor eccentricity, what we assumed was nothing more than a reoccurring (and sincerely funny) joke, explained. Memoirs From Antproof Case is a great book and I highly recommend it.
And, speaking of the X-Files, there is an incredible IG account, @dolls_buzz run by a woman named Kathy. She lovingly builds detailed 1:6 scale dioramas featuring Scully and Mulder, some recreating scenes from the original series. In others, she imagines entirely new stories and characters. The last time I looked, she had 12.3K Followers. If you appreciate the wacky and wonderful, you definitely should check her out.
The Shape of the Ruins was shortlisted for multiple prizes including the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana (2016); the Premio Bienal de Novela Mario Vargas Llosa (2016); and the Man Booker International Prize (2019) . It won the Prémio Literário Casino da Póvoa (2018) and the English Pen Award.