Morning reading: Yuri Herrera on naming characters

Adam is not the only one reading old newspapers.

I have been listening to Yuri Herrera’s novel Kingdom Cons — it is only available as an eBook at my library — after learning about the Mexican novelist from Lincoln Michel’s newsletter Counter Craft.

Learning about Herrera led me to an interview in the Southwest Review Lisa Dillman, who translated three of Herrera’s novels. I can see myself rereading this interview multiple times. This passage on character naming was especially interesting:

YH: In general, it has to do either with some physical feature or a supposed role the character has to fulfill in the microcosm of the novel. Yet those things are not a definitive path for them but a point of tension, a word that might create certain expectations so that the story can contradict or nuance them. Sometimes it is just an intuition, sometimes it just sounds bold or suggestive, sometimes it is a statement. Each character earns their name in a different way. It is easy for names to come with a sort of baggage. I never want them to be placeholders and instead like to use them to defy expectations.

LD: I love the idea of a tension created by the expectations of a name leading to contradictions. So, in your upcoming novel, given that it is quite historically and geographically grounded, are you using historical names, fictional names, or both?

 YH: Both, but even with the historical names I am not relying on the possibility that the reader knows them beforehand. What is supposed to happen is that the story resignifies the names, so that even if you have heard them before you will hear them in a different way. As for the “non-historical” names, I am choosing from names found in the newspaper of that time. Those are not chosen randomly, but with attention to what they might add to the story.

I too have been reading old newspapers and plucking names out them, a habit I came to in the last couple of weeks. (We discussed it on last week’s episode.) I am choosing them randomly, without almost any of the attention that Herrera pays.