Author Carlos Fuentes praised three of his closest friends Thursday afternoon in a lecture titled "In Memoriam: John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Miller, William Styron," delivered in Hillel's Wickenden Chapel.
Fuentes, an eminent Latin American political novelist who once served as Mexico's ambassador to France and is now a professor-at-large at Brown, spoke in English a day after he delivered a lecture on his own work in Spanish, also at Hillel. Fuentes was introduced by Professor of Hispanic Studies Julio Ortega.
Fuentes began by recounting his years living in Washington, D.C., during the time of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which was a series of programs instituted to bring relief and reform to the nation during the Great Depression.
For Fuentes, in a time when the rest of the world was turning to militarism and fascism, "the New Deal meant a great deal. The initiatives in themselves did not address the problem directly, but what Roosevelt did was overcome the worst effects that could have come of the Depression."
Those were the times in which economist Galbraith and authors Miller and Styron lived. According to Fuentes, by invoking the era he also invoked the three men - all of whom passed away in recent years - because "we cannot speak of those times without also speaking of those men."
Fuentes shared stories about how he had met each of them. He talked about living in Galbraith's home in Boston in his younger days, and how Galbraith's work had influenced him.
"His foresight allows me to see that the (United States) needs immigrant labor, but Mexico needs their work even more," he said. "What will we do without him?"
Fuentes said Miller helped "renew his faith in America" during a time of tension while he was ambassador, and said he admired Miller for his faith in the imagination.
"According to Miller, if human imagination couldn't change the world, it could at least create an alternative one," Fuentes said.
Fuentes spoke at length about Styron - whose widow, Rose, sat in the first row of the chapel during the lecture - whom he met at a conference for North American writers in Yucatan in Mexico.
Fuentes recounted how he and the Styrons had climbed to the top of a pyramid after a day spent participating in the conference and were shot at by the guards. From that moment, the two men became life-long friends.
He would later realize that even though Styron - who was born in Virginia - came from a different background than he did, they agreed on many things, and they would joke that "Latin America began south of the Mason-Dixon Line."
Fuentes said a trait he valued in Styron, as well as Miller and Galbraith, was the way they accepted others - a trait he said the United States should adopt as well.
"America is at its best when it embraces other cultures," he said.
Fuentes ended his hour-long speech on a melancholy note: "I am losing my best North American friends, and I don't feel like crying anymore," he said.
Members of the audience said they were able to see how much Fuentes admired and missed his friends.
"Carlos Fuentes had a way with words that was really intellectual and a perspective that was clearly well educated, but you could sense just how much each of the authors meant to him," said Dan Cellucci '10.
Many of the audience members present were those who attended Fuentes' lecture in Spanish, "La Muerte de Artemio Cruz: The Politics of Fiction," on Wednesday night, but few attended the second event.
"I am really bothered by the turnout of students," said Alia Lahlou '10. "When we are provided with an opportunity to meet someone like Carlos Fuentes, I don't understand how only a few actually take advantage of it."
