Goldman, Francisco 1954–

PERSONAL:

Born May 12, 1954, in Boston, MA. Ethnicity: "Guatemalan American."

ADDRESSES:

Office—Trinity College, English Department, 115 Vernon St., Ste. 302, Hartford, CT 06106. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Harper's magazine, contributing editor, 1980s; Trinity College, (Hartford, CT), Allan K. Smith professor of English, 2002—. Has also taught at Foundation for Ibero American journalism in Colombia.

MEMBER:

PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Sue Kaufman Prize for first work of fiction, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1993, and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, 1993, both for The Long Night of White Chickens; PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and Foreign Nights award, all for The Ordinary Seaman; Guggenheim fellowship.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Long Night of White Chickens, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Ordinary Seaman, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1996.

The Divine Husband, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2004.

OTHER

The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? (nonfiction), Grove Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of short stories. Contributor to periodicals, including Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Harper's, New Yorker, Outside, and the New York Times magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Francisco Goldman published several works of short fiction in Esquire and elsewhere before attempting to enter the journalism field, writing about Central America in the early 1980s. The son of a Guatemalan mother and an American Jewish father, Goldman's narratives, including The Long Night of White Chickens and The Ordinary Seaman, often depict characters caught between two cultures—the United States and Central America. "Central America is an essential place to me," the author noted in a Pif Online interview with Whit Coppedge. "In the 1980s and earlier, the area found itself plunged into a cataclysmic war and a human moral disaster. Needless to say, there can hardly be any Central American whose life wasn't affected by that war." Goldman added: "Guatemala is not an exotic place to me; it is one of my homes. So what happened there does not belong to ‘journalism’ but to my sense of life and the history of what I myself and all Guatemalans have lived through."

In a review of The Long Night of White Chickens for the Times Literary Supplement, contributor Michael Kerrigan wrote that "the task Francisco Goldman has given himself in his first novel is to conjure the country into some kind of existence that can be grasped by readers." The book's title refers to a night when Flor de Mayo Puac, the director of a Guatemalan orphanage, and Luis Moya Martinez, a journalist, fall in love. They linger in a Chinese restaurant long enough to see workers deliver the chicken for the coming day's meals. The fate of the chickens, delivered when they are alive and struggling, dangling two by two, and hanging upside down, is to Flor de Mayo a metaphor for life and death in Guatemala. Constance Casey, a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, quoted Flor de Mayo's allusion to much more than the chickens' death: "Everything gets done here in some stupid, slow and inevitably cruel way." Casey agreed with Flor de Mayo, adding: "And that, of course, is what the novel is about—a stupid, cruel way of life in a small country."

Flor de Mayo, an orphan herself, immigrated to the United States to serve as a maid for the Graetz family in Boston, Massachusetts, and as a companion for Roger, the Graetz's son. Casey noted that "her name, Flor de Mayo, or Mayflower, suggests that she is a twentieth-century pilgrim to Massachusetts." When Flor de Mayo is brutally murdered, Roger Graetz investigates the crime at the urging of Luis Moya Martinez, his friend and Flor de Mayo's love. Yet in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Victor Perera doubted that Roger and Luis would ever solve the mystery. "Because this is Guatemala, Flor [de Mayo]'s murderer will never be known, any more than we will ever discover the authors responsible for the 40,000 ‘disappeared’ and unaccounted for over the past thirty years, not to mention the 100,000 or so Guatemalans known to have been assassinated by the military." A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that Goldman's "accomplished first novel" is a "dark exploration of the chaos of lives held in tyranny's iron grasp."

In an interview with Americas contributor Caleb Bach, Goldman stated, "I wrote [The Long Night of White Chickens] to save my own life! … That sounds dramatic, but as a young writer I had an ambition to grow more, to know more, to bring my two worlds together. I went to Central America to immerse myself in a war, and that war was such an overwhelming experience that for almost six years I didn't write fiction. I tried, but [The Long Night of White Chickens] was my way to see if fiction could bring me out of this horrible morass of politics."

Critics also praised Goldman's second novel, The Ordinary Seaman. The 1996 work, based on an actual incident, depicts the desperation and hopes of seventeen Central American men working on a dry-docked American freighter. In a Guardian Online interview with Maya Jaggi, Goldman described The Ordinary Seaman as the "perfect literary vessel: Heart of Darkness backwards, with brown men coming to the big white jungle. An urban Robinson Crusoe, a modernist Samuel Beckett, like the Odyssey, but the ship doesn't go anywhere." A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted how the men's stories "resolve into a searing picture of human vulnerability and courage." Meanwhile, a KirkusReviews contributor deemed The Ordinary Seaman to be "vividly wrought" and "a fresh and moving take on such matters as longing, love, cruelty, and fellowship, probed in a poignant and original narrative."

It was another eight years before Goldman's next novel, The Divine Husband, was published. Set in an unnamed Central American country during the late nineteenth century, the work traces the lives of two friends, María de las Nieves Moran and Francisca ("Paquita") Aparicio, who enter a convent to protect Paquita from the advances of a older admirer, a revolutionary known as El Antichristo. Once El Antichristo seizes power, however, Paquita willingly becomes his first lady, and after he closes the monasteries, María takes a job as a translator at the English Embassy. There she is pursued by numerous suitors, including Marco Aurelio ("Mack") Chinchilla, a New York businessman, and the celebrated Cuban poet and activist Jose Martí, who may be the father of her firstborn child.

According to New York Times Book Review critic Lee Siegel, The Divine Husband "presents the peculiar crossroads where love and imagination meet politics and history." Bookforum contributor Claire Messud praised the novel's intricate plot, which shifts back and forth through the decades. As Messud noted, "The Divine Husband is, for all its considerable length, tightly compacted. No paragraph is extraneous, or ignorable, as the account—occasionally breathless—doubles back on itself, takes up and reworks strands like a Bach invention, all the while providing distinct narrative tenors for its three central characters, María, and Martí, and Mack." Some critics, however, felt the work suffered from too much digression. Siegel noted that the "hectic transport to and fro of the novel's motifs makes The Divine Husband so involuted, so caught up in its own constructions, that it is difficult to enjoy." Michael Dirda, writing in the Washington Post Book World, offered a more positive assessment. "The Divine Husband is a novel packed with incidents and coincidence, a tour de force of temporal hide-and-seek, full of history and insight into history," wrote Dirda, who praised Goldman's "deep imagination, stylistic verve and psychological acuity."

In 2007, Goldman wrote his first nonfiction work, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? The work concerns the 1998 assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, who was bludgeoned to death just days after the release of a 1,400-page report he coauthored that documented thousands of atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army during the nation's civil war. "The story of this crime—of its origins, its implications and the conviction of Gerardi's murderers—is brilliantly recounted here," remarked San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Daniel Alarcón, who added that the "work reads with all the tension of a thriller, as Goldman brings to bear his many narrative gifts to unravel the complex tale of Gerardi's assassination." Washington Post Book World reviewer Pamela Constable stated: "Goldman's book is both a horrifying exposé and a triumphant tale of justice belatedly served in a country where the concept had lost all meaning, of institutional evil unmasked in a place where it had long operated behind a thousand disguises, of plodding police work and personal courage overcoming a culture of impunity and fear."

In a review for Austin Chronicle Online, Marion Winik referred to Goldman as "one of the important fiction writers of his generation." She added: "Half Jewish, half Guatemalan, having made his home and set his works in Guatemala, Boston, New York City, and Mexico, Goldman cannot be categorized under any one label. He is an American figure rather than a North American one, his work an expression of cultural intermingling rather than strict ideas of ethnicity."

Goldman once told CA: "The characters in my novels are often Central American—not because there is any specific journalistic or political intent in that, but because those are the people and the setting that I am familiar with. (Obviously, Central America is a contemporary setting much marked by war, as was the United States for most of the twentieth century.) But at least half of my first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, is set in the United States, and The Ordinary Seaman is almost entirely set in the United States. I tend to write about characters who, in one way or another, find themselves caught between, or involved in, two cultures—the United States and Central America. This is a theme I return to again and again, a literary theme that has evolved out of the circumstances of my own life. I look for literary equivalents or expressions of this mestizaje (a blend of races and cultures). In this sense, I like to combine influences and genres. For example, in The Long Night of White Chickens, I blended a family novel, bildungsroman (a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character), political-noir-absurdist-mystery, and meta-fiction. In The Ordinary Seaman, the combined influences include a sea adventure tale, urban immigrants, and an urban shipwreck."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Goldman, Francisco, The Long Night of White Chickens, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Americas, July-August, 2005, Caleb Bach, "Francisco Goldman: Writing astride Two Worlds: Raised between Conflicting Cultures, This Remarkable Novelist Weaves Threads of Journalism, History, and Fiction into Stories of Exquisite Detail," author interview, p. 14.

Bookforum, October-November, 2004, Claire Messud, "Martí Girl," review of The Divine Husband.

Booklist, May 15, 1992, Donna Seaman, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 1660; January 1, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of The Ordinary Seaman, p. 817; August, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of The Divine Husband, p. 1899; August, 2007, Jay Freeman, review of The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?, p. 26.

Boston Globe, September 16, 2007, Roger Atwood, "A Meddlesome Priest: Behind the 1998 Murder of Bishop Gerardi, a Guatemalan Human-Rights Activist," review of The Art of Political Murder.

Boston Phoenix, September 24-30, 2004, Richard C. Walls, "Martí and More: Francisco Goldman's Central America," review of The Divine Husband.

Boston Review, September, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 38.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, January, 1993, J.M. Ditsky, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 792.

Christian Century, February 12, 2008, Paul Jeffrey, review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 46.

Christian Science Monitor, July 24, 1992, Marjorie Agosin, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 14; December 3, 1993, Kim Campbell, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 13.

Entertainment Weekly, July 24, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, pp. 53-54.

Esquire, June, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 9.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 5, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. C7.

Guardian Weekly (London, England), January 24, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 28; August 8, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 29; December 19, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 29.

Hispanic, September, 1992, Jim Christie, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 70.

Houston Chronicle, September 17, 2007, Steven Weinberg, "Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? Novelist Francisco Goldman, Who Has Ties to Guatemala Himself, Makes an Effort to Find Out," review of The Art of Political Murder.

Independent (London, England), February 15, 2008, Toby Green, review of The Art of Political Murder; March 16, 2008, Peter Stanford, review of The Art of Political Murder.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 484; December 1, 1996, review of The Ordinary Seaman, p. 1690; June 1, 2004, review of The Divine Husband, p. 509; July 15, 2007, review of The Art of Political Murder.

Kliatt, July, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 8.

Library Journal, June 1, 1992, David A. Berona, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 176; January, 1997, Harold Augenbraum, review of The Ordinary Seaman, p. 146; July, 2004, Lawrence Olszewski, review of The Divine Husband, p. 70; September 15, 2007, Elizabeth Morris, review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 69.

London Review of Books, March 11, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 18.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 19, 1992, Victor Perera, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, pp. 3, 8.

National Catholic Reporter, October 19, 2007, Paul Jeffrey, "A Guatemalan Whodunit: Book Probes the Mystery Surrounding the Brutal Murder of Bishop Gerardi," p. 15.

New Age Journal, November, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 102.

New Statesman, February 25, 2008, Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Taking on the Rich," review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 56.

New Yorker, March 31, 1997, review of The Ordinary Seaman, pp. 104-105; October 1, 2007, review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 101.

New York Times Book Review, August 16, 1992, Constance Casey, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 20; August 22, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 20; March 16, 1997, Robert Houston, review of The Ordinary Seaman, p. 17; September 26, 2004, Lee Siegel, "Grand Illusions," review of The Divine Husband, p. 29; September 30, 2007, Carolyn Curiel, "Murder in Guatemala," review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 8.

Observer (London, England), January 23, 1994, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 22.

Panama News, February 3-16, 2008, Silvio Sirias, "A Candle in the Darkness: Reading The Art of Political Murder."

People Weekly, August 3, 1992, Sara Nelson, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 33.

Publishers Weekly, April 13, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, pp. 42-43; June 28, 1993, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 71; November 25, 1996, review of The Ordinary Seaman, p. 55; June 14, 2004, review of The Divine Husband, p. 41; July 30, 2007, review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 72.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 2007, Daniel Alarcón, "Uncover what Violence Begets in [The] Art of Political Murder," p. M1.

San Francisco Review of Books, November, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 24; July, 1996, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 48.

Seattle Times, September 26, 2004, Richard Wakefield, "The Divine Husband: Fanciful Tale Floats along on Lyrical Prose"; October 19, 2007, Jack Broom, "The Art of Political Murder: An Open Wound in Guatemala."

Sunday Times (London, England), February 17, 2008, Matthew Campbell, review of The Art of Political Murder.

Telegraph (London, England), January 19, 2005, Jessica Mann, "Martí the Martyr," review of The Divine Husband; January 23, 2005, Colm Tóibìn, "Made to Kiss the Beggar's Feet," review of The Divine Husband.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), January 15, 1993, Michael Kerrigan, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 21.

Village Voice, July 21, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 90.

Washington Post Book World, June 7, 1992, review of The Long Night of White Chickens, p. 9; September 12, 2004, Michael Dirda, review of The Divine Husband, p. 15; September 30, 2007, Pamela Constable, review of The Art of Political Murder, p. 4.

ONLINE

Austin Chronicle Online,http://www.austinchronicle.com/ (June 5, 1997), Marion Winik, "Literary Guisado: An Interview with Francisco Goldman."

Bomb Online,http://www.bombsite.com/ (July 15, 2008), Esther Allen, "Francisco Goldman," interview with author; (July 15, 2008), Mónica de la Torre, "Francisco Goldman and Silvana Paternostro," author interview with Silvana Paternostro.

Guardian Online,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (February 2, 2008), Maya Jaggi, "A Path in the Darkness," review of The Art of Political Murder.

Identity Theory Web site,http://www.identitytheory.com/ (December 8, 2004), Robert Birnbaum, "Francisco Goldman: Author of The Divine Husband Converses with Robert Birnbaum," author interview.

KGBBar Web site,http://www.kgbbar.com/ (February 25, 2007), "Daniel Alarcón & Francisco Goldman," author interview.

PEN American Center Web site,http://www.pen.org/ (July 15, 2008), author information.

Pif Online,http://pifmagazine.com/ (July 15, 2008), Whit Coppedge, "One on One with Francisco Goldman," author interview.

Trinity College Web site,http://www.trincoll.edu/ (July 15, 2008), author faculty profile.