Eduardo Halfon Takes Questions (and Comments) From a
Group of Throwaways
December 16, 2020
People call them Throwaways because they’re good for nothing. I met them on my last afternoon in Bogotá, in an industrial zone called Puente Aranda, under an airy, almost invisible drizzle that wasn’t enough to get anything wet.
I had been in Bogotá for a week, counting the days until I could go home to Nebraska, where my son was about to be born, and taking part in so many library and bookstore events that they were starting to blend into one. The same audience. The same topics. The same questions. And not only the same questions, but my same answers. Mechanical, worn-out answers I’d polished and practiced until I knew perfectly well which one would spark a laugh, or empathy, or silence. Over the years a writer develops a spiel that doesn’t just prop up his work but also his whole reason for being a writer. He perfects the foundational myth (how he started writing: by accide