Wave of Ethnic Voices Sweeps Toward Shelves

The great immigration that has influenced U.S. culture in so many ways over the past two decades now is a force to reckon with in American letters as well. The vast movement of people into the United States from Latin America, Asia and the Mideast not only has created whole new communities, but also refreshed the roots of ethnic groups long resident here. One result is a bracing new literature producing books publishers are eager to acquire and readers anxious to buy.

One of the current season’s critical hits is Gary Shteyngart’s “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” an ebullient send-up of traditional immigrant novels. The talent of its 29-year-old, Leningrad-born Jewish author first was recognized by another immigrant writer, Chang-rae Lee, the Korean American author of “Native Speaker,” who also directs the creative writing program at Hunter College.

And last week, St. Martin’s Press won a six-publisher auction earning the right to pay $500,000 for “The Dirty Girls’ Social Club,” the first novel by journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a former Times staff writer who is feature editor at the Albuquerque Journal. (Valdes-Rodriguez, in her early 30s, has described herself as “half Cuban American and half Irish/Mexican/English/Portuguese American.”)

“It’s an absolutely marvelous book,” said Elizabeth Beier, who will edit the manuscript for St. Martin’s. “It’s utterly fresh and the people here who read it literally could not put it down.”

Valdes-Rodriguez describes her novel as a story of “middle-class, assimilated Latina professionals, who may or may not speak Spanish. It is about six women friends and is set in Boston, where they all go to Boston University. The premise is that it is the first time there are so many Latinas in the school’s communications program and they make a pact to meet every six months for the rest of their lives. We catch up with them 10 years after their first meetings.”

“All the chapters are written in the first person and each woman is struggling with different issues,” she said. “I tried to show the diversity of that part of the Latino community, so there’s a blond blue-eyed Cubana Jew from Miami and a black lesbian from Colombia. There’s a Southern California girl raised to think she’s Chicana. The hard part was keeping the various voices distinct.”

St. Martin’s plans to publish the novel next spring.

A Hollywood Story

It’s a literary story with a Hollywood ending and it can be found in the Los Angeles-based Written By, the publication of the Writers Guild of America West. Last summer, Written By editor Richard Stayton launched an annual fiction issue. Its theme was the Hollywood novel, and the selections by guest editor David Freeman were as knowing as his career as a screenwriter and novelist would suggest.

This year’s topic is mystery and crime, and guest editor Dick Lochte--who also reviews mysteries for The Times--has served up something of uncommon interest: an all-but-forgotten short story by Raymond Chandler. According to Stayton, Lochte first came across the 14-page, single-spaced manuscript while working at Playboy in the 1960s. The magazine had purchased the story but never ran it. Attached to the manuscript was a note dated Feb. 3, 1951, from Chandler to his agent, Carl Brandt:

“Herewith a story, ‘A Couple of Writers,’ with which I amused myself quite a lot although realizing it had no commercial value whatever--to our mutual regret, no doubt,” Chandler wrote. “Reading it over last night I thought it was a pretty fancy piece of writing all the same. So there.... “

Stayton, a writer and theater critic, describes the story as “two people on the morning after a very bad night. It’s told from the male writer’s point of view and it’s a brutally honest portrayal of writing and alcoholism gone far. I personally think it’s about Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, a couple of alcoholics going at each other while trying to write in the house they’ve rented out in the sticks. It’s very bleak.”

A version of the story eventually appeared in a volume of miscellany titled “Raymond Chandler Speaking.” But Written By’s editors resolved to publish it in the magazine format Chandler intended, even though, as Stayton said, “I thought we’d have to pay an arm and a leg for it.”

As it turned out, Ed Victor Ltd., the London literary agency which now represents Chandler’s interests, simply asked that the magazine donate $100 to any charity that assists writers, in the name of the Raymond Chandler estate.

Written By’s summer fiction issue will be available on newsstands next week.

Work in Progress

Nina Marie Martinez, another first-time novelist, lives in Yuba City: “I’m currently writing a novel and working with my editor revising another, which will be published next year. Are they ever done? The thing about good books is that you really can’t describe them. The novel we’re editing has six main characters and a volcano set in a fictional Central California town called Lava Landing. My agent and my editor wanted a Spanish title that’s pithy and that people who don’t speak Spanish can understand, so right now it’s called ‘Caramba.’

“It has three sets of major characters. I started writing about them and then they had friends and then their friends had friends and then they all had families and the story was all over the place. What holds them all together is the volcano and Mexican loteria cards, which have not only images, but those wise sayings. They’re part of the novel’s structure. I’d also like to include what you might call artifacts--hand-written letters, the loteria cards themselves, which represent archetypes in Mexican culture, and also paper dolls with regional Mexican costumes since one of the characters dresses like she is right off a Mexican calendar.”