The New Yorker Radio Hour - Who Was H. G. Carrillo? D. T. Max on a Novelist Whose Fictions Went Too Far

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

H. G. Carrillo was a writer’s writer—not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” was published. The book, which describes a Cuban-immigrant experience, was hailed as a triumph of Latino fiction; Junot Díaz praised the author’s “formidable” talent, calling his “lyricism pitch-perfect and his compassion limitless.” Carrillo went on to literary positions in and outside of the academy. He was an early casualty of the COVID pandemic, dying in the spring of 2020 at the age of fifty-nine. But his obituary—instead of tying a bow on the historical record—unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that Carrillo had worked for decades to conceal. For two years, the staff writer D. T. Max has been trying to trace what happened, and why. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. H.G. Carrillo, known as Ace Cario, was a writer's writer, not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. Carrillo was in his mid-40s when his first novel was published, and it's called Losing Maya Spanish. It was considered a triumph of Latino fiction. Juno Diaz, among others, praised it very highly. Carrillo died in April of 2020, an early casualty of the COVID pandemic. Now, usually after a writer's death, the story is told in obituaries and remembrances, giving a sense of closure and evaluation, tying a bow for the historical record.

But after his obituary was published, the story unspooled in quite a different direction, revealing secrets that he had worked for decades to conceal. For two years, staff writer D.T. Max has been trying to trace what happened, and why. Here's Dan. About five months after Aceh Carrillo died, I went to see his husband, Dennis Van Engelsdorp. You know, Dennis was about 10 years younger, and he's from the Netherlands,

and he was an entomologist. His expertise was bees. He was a bee guy. And they had lived in this really, really pretty salmon-colored, clabbard house in this nice little neighborhood in suburban Washington. So all of these pottery

these wonderful items. These are things we just bought on eBay and different places. I mean, I wish I had it displayed better. No, no, this is the way it should be. Acey had been known for his vibrancy, for his exuberance, for his absolute lust for things and colors and experiences. And I saw that everywhere when Dennis took me on a tour of the house.

For instance, the artwork, the walls were just covered. It was almost like a Baroque cathedral. There were so many works of art on the walls, and they were mysterious and vaguely Caribbean in tone. strong points of view. Art was very important to both of us. And then books, when we went into his office, the books were piled high,

and you could tell there were books he'd read and loved and that they'd been signed by his friend. So this is his office work? Oh, with the piano, wow. Yes. So the office is mostly piano. And there were scores piled high on the piano. There were all these,

he had been a passionate pianist. He played towards the end of his life five to eight hours a day, according to Dennis. You want to go outside? Yeah, I do. And then finally we went out into the garden. Dennis took me, You know, just to walk around the grounds, and I was surprised to see these flowers, you know.

And Dennis explained to me that Ace had been a passionate gardener and that he'd wanted flowers to blossom year-round, just like in his native Cuba. Uh-huh. But this starts to bloom in about a month, but it smelled, you can smell it on the streak. It's so strong. Meeting Aceh was one of the best things that ever happened, but it also was my greatest sin, I think. because I was married at the time when I met Acey. He was at Cornell. He was a PhD student, and I had an affair with him. At first, their affair didn't last.

They tried to put it in the past, but ten years later, they found each other again. When you said you couldn't get him, you couldn't shake him, tell me what that was, you know, I realized it's an emotional state. Well, it would be like sometimes you would just be making soup, and you'd be wishing you were making soup for him. Like, you know, it's just in those moments. I mean, Ache wasn't an easy person, but he saw the world in this different way.

I mean, he saw, he searched for beauty and everything. And it's very rare that you meet a mind as entangled, and as entangling as his. Aceh's reputation really rests on one novel. It's a book called Losing My Spanish. And it's a strange sort of wonderful book, a tough one to kind of characterize. It's essentially about a Cuban high school teacher who's in Chicago, and it's a rumination about the past and language and what we lose when we go to a new country and also to some extent what we gain. So the reviews, you know, they were exceptional, and especially the top names in Latino writing, seemed to recognize in it something remarkable. For example, Juno Diaz called Ace's talent formidable.

and he said that his lyricism was pitch-perfect and his compassion limitless. Ace started teaching at George Washington University in the late 2000s, and his specialty was, reasonably enough, Latin American literature. When he's there, you know, he's known most of all for his amazing teaching energy. The student love him. After some classes, he gets a standing ovation. And he even does extra work he's not required to do according to his contract. He teaches a class on Garcia-Marca.

as his 100 years of solitude simply because he wants to. Now, for Latino students, he showed them something important. He showed them how to cast off an identity that America has imposed on you and find out who you truly are, an incredibly important mission

and one that he took very, very seriously. A mentor of his, a professor named Elena Maria Viramantes, remembers how much they admired him. When I went to George Washington, There was a group of students, I would say about eight of them, who dressed like he did. They all wore white shirts, ties, and black trousers.

I forget if women had worn the skirts or maybe trousers as well. But I thought it was the cutest thing. I thought it was the cutest thing. And I said, is this a club? I said, no, we're just actually students. And how do you have your tea? Or a little bit of milk if you have it around. When I was talking to Dennis, Acey's husband,

and he told me that Ace had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in January 2020, and the treatment had not gone well, and he had to be admitted to the hospital that spring. And there almost immediately, he tested positive for COVID. So soon after, he's in hospice, and Dennis is sitting with him. And the doctors had told Dennis that Ace couldn't really hear or notice anything anymore. But Dennis decides to play him an album anyway, and the album he chooses is by the Cuban Bolero star LaLoupe,

who'd always been one of Aceh's favorites. And he actually, I think, said something. I don't know what he said, but there was obviously something that went on. After Acey's death, the Washington Post calls Dennis, and they want to do an obituary on Aceh. And they asked Dennis to tell him about his husband,

and Dennis gives the story as he knows it. Now, they've been a couple for 10 years, but weirdly, and Dennis did find this a little bit strange, he'd never actually spoken to Acey's three siblings in all that time. When Ace had been in the hospital, though, he had found their numbers and he'd begun to text them updates. And now, once the obituary runs, he sent Susan Aceh's older sister a link to the piece.

And I got a text back that, oh, I see that Aceh was as good as storyteller in his fiction as he was about his real life, or something to that effect. Well, what happened, Dennis sent us. an article that was coming out in the Washington Post. And I shared it with my daughter. Shared it with, you know, our siblings, my siblings got it as well. We're like, oh, really?

Are you kidding me? They really think this is all true. And I remember, like, taking an hour trying to go, what does that mean? Because I'm easily confused by things, right? So I just thought, am I, I just didn't under, I just could not figure. And then I said, well, yeah, I guess there were some.

This is from the obituary. Carrillo was seven when his father a physician, his mother and educator, and their four children fled Fidel Castro's Island in 1967, arriving in Michigan by way of Spain and Florida. Growing up, he was something of a prodigy as a classical pianist, and by his late teens he was performing widely in the United States and abroad. Now, none of that was true. I mean, except for two small points. Yes, there were four siblings, and it's also true that his mom had been a teacher. Aceh, H.G. Carrillo, was in fact born Herman Glenn Carroll in Detroit to two African-American public school teachers. He was known as Glenn because his father was also Herman.

So this is... So here's him and here's me. We're not that much. I mean... Yeah. I flew to Detroit and when I got there, I met with Susan Ace's sister and she pulled out some of the old family photos. Yeah, you know, it's funny. It's a... it's hard not to think of him as looking. Latino, even though, like, obviously, he doesn't. But, you know, it's kind of like, well, a little bit. Oh, you're more.

Here's one. He and I were little. We loved Halloween and dressing up. He's an angel. And you're... A princess. Who knew he would grow up to be one of the foremost Latin writers of artisan? I don't know what to say about that.

When the kids were little, the family lived in an area called Bagley. But after the riots of 1967, the parents bought a house in a much nicer neighborhood called Sherwood Forest. Susan drove me over to have a look at it. I'll say why it's called Sherwood Forest all the trees. Oh, yeah. It's a handsome house. White brick, gray shutters. I want to move here.

Cute little balconies running in front of the windows. Which was your room? My room was in the back. What I could tell, the kids had a pretty good childhood in there, full of lessons. and going to camp in the summer. There were responsibilities. Each kid had their chores. In the winter, they were skating at the neighborhood ice rink in Palmer Park.

So do you remember the house as a happy place for you? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It looks like a happy. Susan remembers Aceh is adventurous and talented, and she emphasized for me what fun it was to have him as an older brother. But every so often, you know, as she remembered things would go a little bit far, like there was the time that he came up with his fake name in school,

and he insisted that all the teachers and students call him by that name, and he even started signing artwork with it. Now, he could also be competitive, and sometimes that would leave Susan more than a little bit frustrated. Well, it was just, you know, he, it was hard growing up with someone so talented, so smart, because anything I did, he could do better. And he used to play the piano. He was really into the piano.

So I decided, well, okay, he's playing the piano, So I'm going to play the flute. He had no interest in the flute. And I was working on trying to get the song. And he said, let me see that. So I thought, oh, you know, let me show him how to do something. So I show him how to hold the flute. And, you know, and he goes, now, what are you trying to do?

And I showed him what I was trying to do. And he played it perfectly. And I was like, okay, I'm done with the flute. And after that, he really enjoyed playing the flute. You know, one of the questions people have about Aitchie, is why leave your old identity behind? Does he ever talk about race with you about being black? Well, in black communities, it's a constant.

We had a strong sense of our culture and our family. Both my parents were educators, so we had a strong background as far as our history in where we came from, especially in the 60s. You know, my parents and uncles in the house with the big afros and talking about the Black Panthers

and Angela Davis. And what do you think his response to the black culture in the house in the 60s? He was right there with us. It was positive. It was no different. He had no shame in being a black man. Now, did he just want to be a black man

from Detroit, apparently? He wanted to be a black man from Cuba with an African. Who knows? We'll continue with the story of Ace Carrillo in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. D.T. Max, Dan Max, has been reporting for the New Yorker

on the life of the writer, H.G. Carrillo, known as Ace Cario. He was celebrated for a novel about the Cuban-American immigrant experience. Before the break, we heard the... that after Carrillo died, it came out that his very identity had been a creation, a fiction. Carrillo wasn't a Cuban immigrant. He wasn't Latino at all. Dan Max picks up the story here. Here's where it gets a little bit weird. You know, I've been looking to Ache's life for almost two years, and I still don't entirely understand exactly when it happens. But at some point,

the stories start to take over. I mean, he'd always been in him using storyteller, and I don't think his friends had always believed him. But there's really a change that goes on now. And there are a lot of examples of how far he starts taking these lies. For instance, with one boyfriend, he says that he had had a child with a French woman. So that's a little bit odd. But he goes beyond that. He actually shows the boyfriend greeting cards signed by the child. And then with his mother, his own mother, he tells his mother he's adopted a seven-year-old violin prodigy named Guillermo, and he's so convincing that his poor mother sends Christmas gifts for the child from Detroit. But then all the lies begin to coales around this single foundational story, and that

story is that he was, in fact, born in Cuba, and he is Latino. This story really gets started when he goes to DePaul University in Chicago. So he's an undergrad, but he's already almost 40, and he's had plenty of time to think about his life and to make up a new one. It's around this time that he meets another student at DePaul, a young woman who's interested in exploring her Latin roots. And Acey becomes friends with her and says, well, guess what? I'm exploring my Latin roots, too. And together they take tango lessons at a local folk school and do things like that. Remember, this is the mid-90s. This is the Buena Vista Social Club era. I mean, it's at its absolute peak. This is an album of Afro-Cuban classics, extraordinary music. It's kind of a

revival of a period and of a culture that had almost been forgotten. Well, it's not forgotten in the mid-90s. In fact, it's just everywhere. I mean, all you need to do is hear the first couple of bars and you go, oh, no, that one again. For Aceh, I think this represents a kind of moment where he can finally join something as large and passionate and charismatic as he is. And also popular. I mean, Acey always wanted to be popular and suddenly he's He's in touch with the most popular cultural movement of the moment. It's at this point that he applies for a joint MFA PhD program at Cornell. And when he applies, he talks a lot about his Latin background.

Everything about him now is, he speaks a certain kind of Cubaness. I mean, the language that he interjects into his English, the cultural references he makes, he even puts on those loose shirts in the summer that are vaguely Cuban or Caribbean. Helena Maria Vermontes, who was in the comparative literature department at Cornell, and she herself is Mexican-American, I asked her, and she told me there was no doubt in her mind that he was Latino. You know, he told me that he had spent the summer with a crate of mangoes that slowly began

to rot so that he could smell and feel like he was back in the tropics. And I thought, how ingenious is that? you know, that's how ingenious he is. And when I read, and it was the chapter, I think it was at that time called a Santiago boy, I just was blown away. I was just blown away. That I didn't even really

think of the name Carol or you know, I didn't think about that because it was like it was such so beautifully written, so powerfully imagined, so playful, but also so devastating.

While he's at Cornell, he writes, much of his debut novel, Losing Mai as Spanish. And by 2003, which is just shortly before the book is published, he legally changed his name to H. G. Carrillo, H in Spanish's Ace. Yes, there was, there was, you know, clumsiness of his Spanish. But, I mean, I'm clumsy in my Spanish. There's generations of us that mix Spanish.

You know what I mean? And so when Edmond was saying batto, when he was saying cabron, when he was saying these words that are Mexican-Spanish, it didn't bother me. It didn't bother me one bit. Elena, I think I remember you were saying he made you a meal once, is that? Oh, yes, yes. Several meals when he stayed with me a few days at our house. And, you know, there were very involved meals, but he knew him by heart. And he'd just get these big pots and pour this and pour this.

pour that and do this and saute this. But the one that we remember my daughter and I is the flon that he made. Did he, did he, you know, say he'd learned it from his grandmother or was it all sort of vague how he'd become a... He always talked about how these were recipes coming from his family.

Yeah. It's pretty obvious that when you have a tower of lies this tall, it's sooner or later going to collapse. And actually, I think it's kind of amazing that Acey maintained this fiction successfully until his death. But eventually, yes, the lies are revealed. Now, for me, what's touching and wonderful is who's responsible?

It's his niece. It's Susan's daughter, Jessica. One of my best, fondest memories, is going to Chicago, and he had a reception at his eclectic apartment in Chicago, full of stuff, and he made the most amazing old cheese pizza. Jessica knew that Uncle Glenn called himself Ace. You know, but the thing is, for the family, it was kind of a joke. He even asked some of his nieces and nephews to call him Tio Ace, and they did. You know, it was just Uncle Glenn being weird and fun and silly, this out-of-town,

glamorous relative comfort visit. Losing Maya Spanish comes out in 2004, and the family gets a copy. They open it up, and they look at the acknowledgments, and they're amused, possibly amazed, to find that Susan, Christopher, and Maria are now Susanna, Christobal, and still Maria. But they think, oh, that's just our brother making a name for himself in the literary world. He's always been a character. I never feel like we lost touch, but we even reconnected when grandma, his mom, was sick because he came more often. Like, once a month, Glenn was hanging out with me and my family at the house.

So my son even has funny stories of Glenn, which is awesome. You know, it's all fine with the family while Acey's alive. But when Jessica reads the obit in The Washington Post, it doesn't seem so funny to her anymore. Sorry. We should have bought some tissues. He's just an amazing person, and he lived an amazing life. So when I read the article, and I'm like, this is complete lie, like, not even close. And I was so shocked that, yes, there's always been drops of, you know, something going on in the Wikipedia page and Achi Cario.

But I always saw me, my mom, were talking, you know, talking about it. We thought reporters would actually do their research. What did a little more? We'd dig, we ask for our pictures. To correct the record, she puts a short online comment under the post obituary. She says, I'm Acha Carrillo's niece. He was born Herman Glenn Carroll, and we called him Glenn. And then she goes on, I cannot correct all the lies in this article

and tags it with the hashtag fake news. She also sends an email to the obit's author, and by the next day, the Washington Post has amended the article. And finally, Ache's double life lays exposed. You know, I guess not that many people, or maybe they do, you know, know, no love like our family. You know, people are like, didn't you ask? And I don't know why. We just, you accept someone for who they are, you know what I mean?

And you love them anyways, you know? So. But you're not foolish about it. Yeah, you're not foolish. We knew. You know, that's where we're like, okay. you're married. Okay, sure. Maybe he saved the honeybees. Wow, that's a catch. Sure. You know, he's from Sweden. Okay. And again, there can be separate answers. So why do you think he,

why do you think he did put on this whole second personality? What's your answer as a niece? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't know, because when we... I almost wish she didn't, because then we could have enjoyed him more, you know what I mean, and have more time with him.

I talked to a lot of people for this piece, maybe 50, and everyone made sense of this story in their own way. For example, the family. For the family, it was just Glenn living the way he had had to live, the way he was almost destined to live from when he was a little kid playing dress up with his sister. To the extent they blamed anyone, I'd say they blamed journalists, they blamed the institutions, they really couldn't believe that no one had held him accountable. I mean,

they knew the truth the whole time. Now, for others, this is a darker tale. This is a story of a pathological liar or somebody with some undiagnosed or underdiagnosed mental condition, who left an extraordinary trail of pain in his wake. They were playing. Many of ex-boyfriends I spoke to are still trying to sort it out. Was he actually dating them and not dating someone else? Was his father really president of college? Was he from Cuba? For students, I think students are a special group

because I think the students felt they were being led by a Latino person into a truer understanding and a more powerful sense of themselves as Latinos in America. And to find out that your teacher wasn't Latino at all, well, that's a really painful lie to experience. when you're a student. I mean, it's also a different kind of lesson. But most of all, you feel tricked and you were tricked.

Dennis, though, Ache's husband, had probably the softest and most empathetic take that I heard. I think I got the best of them. I'm really proud to know him. I'm really sorry it costs some people the pain that it did. I don't know how to equate that, but that's also not mine to figure out. For me, and I think anyone who ever met him is actually,

He was actually, there was no sinister. There was nothing that was him being the best person he could be. And I think that's a great thing. And I'm proud of him for doing it, to be honest. Dennis told me that there were always hints, you know, things that didn't seem to add up. And there were things that for whatever reason he didn't press. He didn't cross-examine the way you can when you're full of doubt or concern. He put it this way to me.

He said, I saw what I wanted to see. And for him, Acey had truly become someone else. In a way, he'd become someone he was always entitled to be. He really would be very adamant about the fact that culture was performance. That's what he'd say. He'd watch those shows, you know, those TV shows of, oh, I can't stand them, where people did crimes and then became other people in another state. There was one show I remember watching, and it wasn't like,

the person just did it for no apparent reason. Change the right now. Yeah, and I'd say, wow, that's sort of strange. He said, why is that strange? maybe they just wanted to. Like, you know, it was just like... He even brought up Rachel Dolazol. Who's the woman who pretended she was black, but not a...

The one that's cocaine? Yes, and he was like, no. I mean, if you want to be... Like, there's no biological... And there is no genetic difference. There's no such thing biologically as race. So it has to be a cultural construct. And if it's cultural, then it's performance.

Obviously, it's one thing for Dennis who's white to say these things. But it should be pointed out. that for many Cuban writers, the experience was very different. They told me that they felt Ache had distorted their history and culture and maybe even mocked it. You know, identity is such a fraught topic right now. There's really nothing that we have more trouble talking about. And at the same time, nothing we want to talk about more. So it's not surprising that Ache's story got taken up in popular conversation with the usual lines being drawn. Conservatives, for instance, wanted to know, well, would a white professor have been so easily forgiven?

And I also spoke to Helena Maria Vermonthe's, Ache's friend, the Chicana writer and Professor Cornell, and I asked her what she thought. I'm curious, you know, how it changes, if it changes, the way you read his work. You know, no, it doesn't. Not at all. Not at all. I mean, I still look at the, I still look at the lushness, the playfulness. I still marvel at it. I still marvel at it. I still marvel at its at its power to tell these incredible stories. So I think that, I think he has captured a certain authenticity of, I don't say, how could I even begin to say of the Cuban culture?

I can't, and I will not do that. But there is something about the characters within these pages that speak a consciousness and a sensibility that is real. If he had appropriated or embodied or infused himself with Mexican-American culture, would you have a different response? Does that change? Would that change it for you? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think when you're talking about appropriation, when you're talking about that, these are, I think, more questions that we need to examine in greater light. We need to spend more time really, really thinking these things through than just. making these judgmental statements about, you know, if you're not that person, you know, if you're not from that culture, because I, myself, right now, I have written about a Sikh man. I have written about a Filipino man. I have written about an indigenous woman. And if I believed that I was appropriating, I wouldn't pick up another, I wouldn't write. I would refuse to write.

I mean, Elena, certainly the question about who has the right to write about whom is a complicated, you know, question. I do think, you know, that we have to think of Aceh as a case apart. You know, he, I mean, he, for instance, took a job at George Washington University that was, in effect, I mean, it was earmarked for a Latin American specialist, but it was, I mean, obviously their expectation was, you know, a Latin American, Latin American. specialist. So, you know, somebody didn't get the job. But, I mean, in the broadest sense, you know, what does it mean when someone becomes, you know, not just a writer, but a voice and a representative of a history or a community that isn't their own? That's a good question, Daniel. I mean, I think that's what's been plaguing a number of us as to, you know, it's frustrating, it's intriguing.

why he did what he did. I don't really know, and I don't think anyone really knows whether Glenn Carroll ultimately became H.G. Carrillo. But when I spoke to Helena, who knew him pretty well, she was sure of this much. She told me, if you want to know Ace, I mean, if you really want to know Ace,

look for him in his writing, because even if the person was, in many senses, a fraud, the writing, she says, is real. His story is not victimless. I mean, there are victims here involved. But at the same time, you have all these other stories of Achi's impact because of his love. And so going back to the literature, going back to the work that he did, by and large, it was always about love.

It was always about heart. It was always the exploration of the human heart in how we can exist, how we can exist and love each other in complicated and profoundly disturbing ways. The novelist whose inventions went too far is the title of DT. Max's story about H.G. Carrillo, or Glenn Carroll. You can read the piece at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbess of Tune Arts with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

This episode was produced by Max Walton, Brita Green, Adam Howard, Kalalia, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Ingofen and Putabwele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Michael May, David Gable, and Meher Batia. Special assistance this week from Adam Presley and from WNYC's Ave Korea. No relation to Ace Carrillo. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.