Kingsolver doesn’t appear to suffer from writer’s block and she certainly hasn’t been twiddling her thumbs. Her understanding of Mexico and Spanish in The Lacuna are exemplary, and she must have researched deeply into the lives of Kahlo, Rivera, and Leon “Lev” Trotsky during the time he was one of Kahlo’s lovers. She doesn’t distort them into flawless heroes. They’re iconic figures, but portrayed warts and all: love affairs and self-obsession and revolutionary contradictions on all sides.
I haven’t yet read this review by Tariq Ali of Patenaude’s Stalin’s Nemesis and Robert Service’s Trotsky: A Biography. If anyone reads it, tell me if I should bother.
Casa museo Trotsky, Ciudad de México, Museum at Trotsky’s home, Mexico City. Trotsky y Diego Rivera
Casa museo Trotsky, Ciudad de México, Museum at Trotsky’s home, Mexico City
Images and captions from Lisa Waller Rogers and Hanneorla.
In 1968, Tariq Ali was chanting, “We Shall Fight, We Shall Win; Paris, London, Rome, Berlin.” He was wrong. He didn’t win and there wasn’t really that much fighting. In 1980, Ali concluded his book Trotsky for Beginners with the following words:
Some might think that this former leader of the Trotskyist organisation, the International Marxist Group, and member of the International Executive Committee of the Trotskyist Fourth International is somewhat biased when it comes to Trotsky. I cannot think why.
Nothing wrong with bias, it’s just being biased in the wrong direction!
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