Andrés Caicedo - The protagonist, María del Carmen Huerta, might be described as a countercultural, Spanish-speaking version of Dante’s Beatrice. She pulls the reader along as she plunges into the many-tiered nightlife of Cali, Colombia

Andrés Caicedo, Liveforever, Trans. by Frank Wynne. Penguin Classics, 2014.

Andrés Caicedo's novel Liveforever is a wild celebration of youth, hedonism and the transforming power of music.
María del Carmen Huerta lives a respectable middle-class life in Colombia. One day she misses class, and discovers she cannot return to her ordinary existence but must pursue her passion for dancing across the city. We follow her from rumbas in car parks to concerts in shantytowns as she gives in to every desire - however dark.
Published in 1977, Liveforever was its young author's masterpiece - and final work. Andrés Caicedo took his life the day it was published, but it has been recognized as a landmark in Colombian literature ever since.
Andrés Caicedo was born in Cali, Colombia on September 29, 1951. In his short life, he wrote dozens of articles on film, several plays, screenplays, novellas, and countless short stories, with a prominent focus on social discord. He committed suicide at the age of 25.

In the spring of 1977, Andrés Caicedo’s only completed novel, Liveforever, was published and the author received the first printed copy through the post. Later, on the same day, he took an unassailable quantity of barbiturates and was found dead, slumped over his typewriter. In a letter to his mother were the words: “I wasn’t made to live any longer. I feel a terrible weariness, a disappointment and a sadness, and I know with every passing day, those feelings are slowly killing me.” He was only 25 years of age.
Caicedo was born in Cali, Colombia in 1951 and spent his brief life leading literary and cinema groups, writing articles, scripts, short stories and plays, none of which have thus far made it into English. Belonging to the generation of writers succeeding such Latin American literary greats as Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, his work earned cult status in his homeland and grew a following across the continent. Courtesy of Penguin Modern Classics, English speakers now have access to his masterpiece.
María del Carmen Huerta is a free spirit and a force of nature, driven by the desire for life experience and a lust for new music. She’s also a high class prostitute with her best days behind her. In the novel, she recounts a period of her life in Cali between March 1973 and December 1974 when, as a 15-year-old, she makes the decisions that shape her destiny. At the outset, María is a diligent student with a place at university waiting for her to fulfil architectural aspirations and with it a life of middle class respectability. Standing at the crossroads, shadowed by listlessness, she chooses a different direction and immerses herself in a disturbing vortex of sexual experimentation and drug use.
María’s a breathless and seductive narrator, intelligent, confident and self-aware – ‘my remorseless energy doesn’t frustrate the men who want me but can’t have me, because the more they watch me, the more they realise they don’t deserve me’ -, yet she sinks into a destructive world of junkies and dissolution. As she descends further – ‘Hell itself had taken up residence in my entrails’ –, she attains a worldliness that’s ultimately of little value, because, in attaining it, she’s gone too far to go back.
Liveforever is heavily influenced by two classic American novels: The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road; the former for its depiction of the transition from adolescence to an adult world bereft of originality and integrity; the latter for capturing music as an enduring source of solace and raison d’être: “We’re living the most important moment in the history of humanity, and this is the first time so much has been asked of its children. Looking into their faces, into the gaping mouths or the rings around their eyes – in my humble opinion, these kids, mis amigos, have succeeded. We are the plaintive note whimpered by the violin.”
Caicedo draws themes from these two novels and updates them, amplifying and extending the pursuit of uncomfortable conclusions. The wasteland inhabited by María is riven by social ills – suicide, insanity, parricide, drug abuse, gang violence – which illustrates this is not a bleak celebration of hedonism. It’s a libertine manifesto, a call to arms for the ‘legion’ of disillusioned souls who ‘sing to forget’: “Hey you, make your childhood more intense by loading up on adult experiences. Couple corruption to the freshness of your youth… You’ll pay the price: by nineteen all you’ll be left with are tired eyes, emotions spent, strength sapped. By then, a gentle pre-planned death will seem welcome. Get in ahead of death, make a date with it.”
The thrill of discovering this raw, precocious talent and essential new voice is tempered by the foreknowledge it has already been extinguished. But there can be no ambivalence about its potency. Caicedo’s suicide was clearly premeditated. If he had lived on, his words would have sounded insincere, which in turn would have meant he’d reached adulthood. For Caicedo, failing his peers wasn’t an option. It’s rare to find a writer with such conviction (even if we may feel it’s flawed) that they will not only take us to the edge but throw themselves over it. - Karl Thomas




Near the beginning of Andrés Caicedo’s novel ¡Que viva La música! (“Let Music Live!”) his first-person narrator, a teenage party girl, says, “I would like for the esteemed reader to follow along at my speed, which is energetic.” Energetic? That’s quite an understatement. Caicedo’s novel, first published in 1977, proceeds at a vertigo-inducing pace. The protagonist, María del Carmen Huerta, might be described as a countercultural, Spanish-speaking version of Dante’s Beatrice. She pulls the reader along as she plunges into the many-tiered nightlife of Cali, Colombia. It is a hard-partying 1970s landscape marked by the requisite proportions of sex, drugs and, rock and roll (Rolling Stones and The Cream especially). But early in her nocturnal wanderings, María del Carmen discovers salsa music, and that’s when the book accelerates to an even quicker tempo. The salsa genre was enjoying a heyday in the mid-1970s thanks to a generation of groundbreaking musicians like Richie Ray, Bobby Cruz, and Willie Colón, all whom played on and off for legendary New York-based multinational salsa collective, Fania. Cali, as Latin music buffs may know, emerged as a key hub of hemispheric salsa-mania. In fact, Cali invented its own method of listening to salsa. Albums meant to be listened at the standard 33 1/3 rotations per minute were instead played at 45 RPMs. As Caicedo writes in the novel: “The 33 transformed into a 45 is like being flagellated while one dances, it’s a need to say it all, so that there’s time to say it again 16 more times, to see who can withstand it, who can dance to it. It’s taking the lid off the spirit, the voice . . .” Caicedo, unfortunately, also lived a rock star’s trajectory. He took his own life in 1977, at age 25, the same day he received his first copy of ¡Que viva la música! in the mail. The novel, the only one Caicedo finished, has long been a cult classic in Colombia. But all of Caicedo’s writings, which include short stories and memoir, have been the subject of renewed interest throughout Latin America. Last year, prominent Chilean novelist Alberto Fuguet edited and compiled some of Caicedo’s nonfiction writings and published them as an autobiographical tome titled Mi cuerpo es una celda (“My Body Is a Cell”). It’s hard to imagine ¡Que viva la música! remaining untranslated for very long, if rights haven’t already been purchased. The precocious Caicedo might even be read as a precursor to Roberto Bolaño, so popular now among English-language readers. The two writers have much in common. Both were products of the 1970s and of the intermingled countercultural and avant-garde movements flourishing then in Latin America (at least in places and times where the intensity of government persecution didn’t limit self-expression). María del Carmen, the charming, if self-destructive, protagonist of ¡Que viva la música! might be compared to Auxilio Lacouture, the beguiling Uruguayan poetess who narrates Bolaño’s minor classic Amulet, set in late 1960s and 1970s Mexico. - Marcelo Ballvé

Maybe/ I don't really wanna know/ how your garden grows/ 'Cos I just wanna flyWhile the title of today's book immediately brings a certain band to mind for my generation, we're actually travelling a little further afield than Manchester.  Almost twenty years before Liam Gallagher sang those words, in Colombia a young writer was putting pen to paper on a work which was to sear his name into the country's literary history - and yes, it's all about the music...
*****
Andrés Caicedo's short novel Liveforever (translated by Frank Wynne, review copy courtesy of Penguin Classics) is a pulsating, energy-laden work which thrusts the reader into a world of drugs, violence and music (oh yes, lots of music).  It's set in Cali, Colombia, between 1973 and 1974, and is the story of a generation doomed to failure.  There'll be no fading away here, though - these are the kind of kids who like to burn out, often spectacularly...
Our guide through the world of salsa and rumbas is María del Carmen Huerta, a respectable, intelligent, beautiful middle-class teenager, growing up in Cali.  One day, though, she decides it's time to break free of her bourgeois upbringing and explore the world of music.  It proves to be a fateful decision:
"Every life hinges on the course we decide to take at one precise, privileged moment.  On that Saturday in August I broke with my routine, and the same night I ended up at Skinny Flores's 'rumba'.  It was a simple decision, but one that would have extraordinary consequences.  One of them is that I now find myself here, safe in this haven of night, telling my story, shorn of all social standing and the crass manners I was raised with.  No doubt I'll be held up as an example.  'Peace and goodwill over my land'."p.29 (Penguin Modern Classics, 2014)
This one night, a frantic escape into music, is to set the course for her future.  Once she's made the decision to venture into the night, there's no going back.
Liveforever could be described as the story of María's descent into an underworld of drugs and debauchery.  Caicedo, using the voice of María herself, relates detailed descriptions of drug use, hedonism and week-long parties, and we see the youths of the street crumble into pieces, drained by music and drugs:
"Music that feeds on live flesh, music that leaves you with nothing but blisters, music hot off the wax, that's what I want, what I live for; bring it on, sap my energy if you can, turn my values on their head, let me founder, abandon me to criminality, because I don't know anything any more..." (p.115)
This is a generation that will most definitely die before it gets old...
When night falls (as it does, suddenly and brutally, at 6 p.m.), the languid behaviour of the hot day gives way to an outpouring of carnal energy, a situation María quickly comes to terms with:
"So what if I grabbed the night by the balls, so what if I broke its spirit, wore it out and drained it dry?  At least I was still standing: not like the men, who drop like flies." (p.5)
It's then that we see the city come to life, as María pulls us in her magical wake from rumba to rumba, looking for parties, hunting down the music.  Sure, we get to dance, but death and destruction is left in our wake.
Yet that's not how it is for María herself.  Beautiful and vibrant, with the face (and hair) of a goddess, she becomes a focal point of the nocturnal community, the heart of the dance.  She looks damned good on the dancefloor, and she knows it (so does everyone else); in fact, there's something, magical, mystical about her.  In the blonde-haired dancing diva from the right side of town, the street boys find someone to worship.
Worship of this kind is not without its dangers, though, and María is a goddess of the most pagan kind; the music may feed on live flesh, but so does our María.  She's a dangerous woman, a Colombian femme fatale, the flame into which the moth-like youths who surround her at the rumbas cannot help but fly. Like a Latina Medusa, or siren, she inflicts wounds on men, her hair slicing cuts in the soul of any man who moves into her orbit, cuts they cherish when they're coming down after the long night.  Each man that she encounters is entranced by her spell, but ends up wasted, worn, spat out and humbled - she sucks their spirit dry, then moves onto the next.  One night in Cali can make any man humble, hard or otherwise.
The whole book is like one long, pulsating dance, a hypnotic, spell-binding, energy-sapping tribute to music.  María needs music, she senses it, hunts it down, then, when she finds a worthy gathering, a rumba with feeling, she uses the men she meets to absorb it.  From her childhood friend Ricardito, she receives the gift of translated English lyrics, from the red-headed gringo Leopoldo Brook, live music, pulsing and throbbing, from Rubén Paces, lessons in the history of salsa...
...and they all come to a sad end (just stayin' alive is a feat in the underworld of Cali...).  María seems less a woman at times than a force of nature, the goddess of the dark dance, music incarnate.  With Colombian music interfused with African rhythms and pagan language, it's tempting to see her as something otherworldly, a succubus, a wraith...
As you might have realised, this is a book I loved, devouring it in a matter of hours.  The writing is wonderful, with the frantic energy of the voices and the ceaseless, constant twisting of direction, the language is heavily descriptive, attacking the reader's senses with colours, textures, emotions - we can feel the rhythm, smell the sweat, hear the music...  The text is intermingled with song lyrics, half prose, half music, our journey through the world of salsa...
Spare a thought then for the poor translator...  In addition to having to transport Caicedo's dazzling words into English, Wynne also had to identify the lyrics embedded in the prose and make it clear for the Anglophone readers who (as he points out in his Translator's Note) are hardly "...likely to have an in-depth knowledge of salsa and the many related styles of Afro-Cuban music..." (p.xviii).  Poor Frank - I can imagine the time and energy that must have gone into this translation.  Perhaps his wonderful rendering into English comes at the cost of becoming María's latest victim...
In short, Liveforever is a wonderful book - I'd say I'm surprised that it hasn't appeared in English before, but, let's face it, I'm not (I've been in the game of reviewing translated fiction for far too long for things like that to surprise me...).  For those who want to know more about Caicedo though, this, sadly, is just about it.  On the day, he received a copy of the book, he killed himself, overdosing on pills, a sad post-script to his work.
The story, though, lives on, as does the music, and while I prefer the poignant English title, the original is probably a little more apt.  You see, in Spanish the book is called ¡Que viva la música!, which translates to something like 'Long Live Music!'.  This seems a fitting epitaph for the book as we leave María to her life in Cali, with the music beating on into eternity.  You see, you simply can't stop the music - nobody can stop the music... - Tony Malone

“Caicedo is the missing link of the lost boom. He is the first enemy of Macondo. I do not know if he committed suicide or maybe was killed by García Márquez and the dominant culture of those times. He was less the rocker that the Colombians want and more an intellectual. a super genius tormented nerd. He had imbalances, anguish of living. He was not comfortable with the life. He had problems to stay on his foot. And he had to write in order to survive. He killed himself because he saw too much.”
Albeto Fuguet the acclaimed Chilean writer on his early death .

Now as any one who has been following the books read section of this blog will know I read this a few months ago ,but at time I was reading it was when Richard and I started discussing Spanish Lit month again .I want this to be the first book of the second Spanish lit month .I first heard of this book when Frank the translator mentioned it was meant to be coming a couple of years ago ,but with delays it didn’t arrive to this year .What first grabbed me was when I read up about  Andrés Caicedo life ,this was his only book ,he killed himself after this book came out .He had said to live more than twenty-five years was madness .He lived in Cali the main setting for the book ,had a deep love of cinema which meant he had dreamed of selling his plays to Roger Corman .He ran a club showing films and discussing the films with the students and intellectuals of Cali .Anyway for more go to his Wiki page . 
I’m blonde ,blondissima .So blonde that guys say ,hey angel ,you only have to flick that lustrous mane of hair over my face to free me of the shadows hounding me .it was no shadow on their faces but death .And I was scared to lose my sheen .
The opening lines of Liveforever .
Now to the book ,it’s a sort of coming of age story ,we spend time with María del Carmen Huerta ,Her story is told as she is now a high class prostitute ,her best days in that job behind her she looks at her life and this one day .The day she he miss school and just dance the way through the city of Cali ,from her own end of the city the upper class part of town ,her father is the man the photos the upper classes of the city ,the music she hears and moves to is the rolling stones western rock ,but as she moves down into the seedier darker side of the city ,junkies and drugs but also the salsa beats drive the city out open doors ,dance schools we see Maria drawn further into this world as her body pulsates with the beats of this part of town .As we see Maria drift between the groups within the city .Maria journey is one for her of discovery about herself and her world . 
Who knows who maps our path through this world or how they do so ; here in beautiful Cali I am the queen of guganco I stepped out into the street ,into the sky so clear ! An enormous moon and deep wind from the mountains bore witness to my devastating revelations in that moment : that everything in life is lyrics ,is words .Maybe my words are of  a different order .
I found these lines so poetic, Guganco is a type of Cuban rumba .
Now its hard not to miss connection with other books ,frank posted a review of this book that mention catch in the rye ,yes I agree partly with that but Maria isn’t a Holden for me .Caicedo was known for his wanting to break away from the writers of the Latin american boom in his writing ,so it hard to compare with writers around him from that time like of Marquez or Lllosa  as seen in the opening quote on this review .No this is far more a book about setting forth ,setting free a mind .A woman discovering herself and her body at the same time ,of course Nada springs to mind ,the Spanish catcher in the rye ,but also the style of literature she was involved with the Tremendisomo ,the world told in its brutal and true way ,having just read Cela another master of this art ,I can see part of this in Caicedo writing the brutal nature of the city of Cali comes alive and burst of the page .Add to that his love of films Corman in particular ,Corman made the film The trip about LSD ,which ike this book caught the experience of taking drugs .The other main part of this book is the music there is a three page discography of the music that is feature within the book ,from the driving rolling stones of the seventies ,through salsa ,I brought a number of the tracks from the discography into a spotify playlist  which I suggest you listen too and get a real feel of the book and the pace of Caicedo writing .So welcome to spanish lit month. - winstonsdad.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/liveforever-by-andres-caicedo/