It's inaccrochable!

El autor en Svirtsoy, Federación Rusa.

"It's good," she said, "That's not the question at all. But it is inaccrochable. That means it is like a picture that a painter paints and then he cannot hang it when he has a show and nobody will buy it because they cannot hung it either".
Ernest Hemingway. A moveable feast. Scribner, New York, 1964.

I am feeling the same way as Ernest Hemingway when Gertrude Stein gave her verdict about a short story written by EH. I have written 4 novels in Spanish and none has survive the meticulous examination of the publishers in Barcelona or Madrid. Am I too old? Am I an infame writter? Is my work that of a loner, a lunatic?

In the 60s I wrote a book of poem. Inaccrochable. Screamed Casa de las Américas and Uneac.

In the 60s I painted some oil in canvas. Of course I am a bad drawer. "Herido en ocre/murmuras en harapiento almagre/la destrozada carne". A big snowy mountain with a huge stary hole in the belly and the top seemed like a human face. Inaccrochable. Then a series of oil on wood. Representing old walls in the city. Inaccrochable. Was the unanimous cry of the Bellas Artes officials. "Quelle dommage, M. Bryon, votre peintures sont inaccrochables! " I always wished a french response not the etiquette of "Lamentamos informarle que su obra ha sido rechazada".

Finally, I had a break in 1970s. A book of short stories deserved a Mention at Concurso 13 de Marzo, and that was it. My 15 minutes of fame. Interviews, literary critic, book introduction, even a lecture at Biblioteca Nacional. And after all I was labeled as not submissive enough, especially in 1977 when I refused to go as a volunteer to Angola. Then I became a NON PERSON. Fired from my job and forced to work as a construction worker for four years.

But as the old Cuban saying goes"

Levanta el culantro
que no es para tanto.

So I took a plane and left CUBA. But that is another story. So to be continued...