Guillermo Cabrera Infante, 1929-2005

While most of America's attention is focused on Hunter S. Thompson's suicide--and Rake's Progress does a good enough job collating the memorials that I won't even bother--it's up to two Miami Herald reporters to record the passing of exiled Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante (whose most famous work, Three Trapped Tigers, was brought back into print in this country by Dalkey Archive last year). The Babalu Blog has a statement from Andy Garcia, who is directing his first motion picture from a Cabrera Infante screenplay--the author's first new film in over three decades, following Wonderwall and Vanishing Point (one of my favorites among the existential road movies of the '70s). Another blog, Venepoetics, offers an appreciation as well.