Eddy Robert Arellano managed to pack an opium dream’s worth of descriptive images into his 2004 Buddy Cianci novel, Don Dimaio of La Plata, along with some bawdy and hallucinogenic illustrations by Will Schaff. But now he has two more artists helping him with Dead in Desemboque, a graphic novel in the tradition of Mexican pulp fiction.
A reading, with multimedia opportunities not neglected, will take place on Friday, May 16 at 7 pm at Ada Books, 330 Dean Street, Providence, in the book’s official launch. Also on hand will be Alec Thibodeau, known for his Thunderground work, and William Schaff, from Warren. The book’s third artist is RISD grad Richard Schuler.
Cuban-American Arellano studied and taught writing at Brown until he moved out West in 2003. He currently heads the Academy of Literacy & Cultural Studies at the University of New Mexico.
Written in the tradition of the historieta — pulp comics sold in the tens of millions monthly from every Mexican newsstand and bodega — Dead in Desemboque comes across like a dying gringo’s border desert mirage — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets El Topo.
Our hero is summoned to Mexico by a bonita signorita named Juanita (my shameless rhyming, not the author’s). Like an exhausted man closing his eyes to what he knows will be nightmares, he ventures across the Rio Bravo into dangerous territory full of Gila monsters and even more monstrous desperadoes. In fact, one of the first things he is told by a Sonoran siren who drugs and robs him is that he is destined to die in Desemboque.
The book is subtitled “Historias de Amor y Sangre!” And while there is the continuing promise and threat of both, the real payoff is the ongoing process of following the story, that delicious, popcorn-munching tension itself.
Three illustrators make for three sections, each prefaced by a few lines of introductory verse. At the beginning of Episode I we are told that, “In the great state of Sonora, from the sea to Copper Canyon/There are many noble souls who help a stranger like a brother/And also there are few, who for lack of love or riches/Always scheme to spoil the simple satisfac-tion of another.”
That ominous atmosphere is pumped up by the darkly aggressive and visually muscular initial illustrations by Schaff. They remind us of mortal peril on every page, from the skulls serving as eyes for our hero to the skull-headed horse he rides. He’s usually called Eddy, like the author, and this first depiction has Arellano the most haggard as well as the most bald-ing.
The illustrated text of that section begins: “Charlie was a gambler. Not in the saloon sense . . . but with every apple that touched his eye. So when a red delicious named Juanita called him to Sonora, he changed his name to Eddy, burned the bridge across the Rio Bravo, & didn’t look back.” Over those four pages, Schaff establishes the grim tone with such images as an erotic, sinuous clench with his absent lover that owes as much to Guernica as Rape of the Sabine Women.
